USURPMENT, TWIST-ORIENTED SPECIAL EDITION
Happy random holiday. I felt like writing this.
=PART ONE=
Havelock Vetinari reclined in his comfortable chair. At one point it had been an uncomfortable wooden chair, because Vetinari was, in his heart of hearts, either a) a traditionalist or b) a lazy bugger who really didn't want to go to the trouble of getting Drumknott to go to a warehouse and get him an actual padded seat while also having to explain to the man that no, curtains would not be a required part of that order; then he had discovered the wonders of arthritis, which made sitting down even more of a torture than the arsenic poisoning and the bullette to the leg had combined. So now it was a comfortable chair, with cushy mysterious springs and velvet and things like that.
His mind went back, reread the sentence preceding the last one he had just thought, took out a red pen, circled certain key phrases. He said aloud, to his paper-piled desk, "Do Patricians even have a pension plan?"
He didn't bother to answer himself, because the 'no' was depressing enough silent. Power transferred by assassination, for gods' sake. There were clauses about it. Mr. Slant would have to search for a long time to find precedent for something that wasn't power transferred by assassination, and might even have to invoke Smince(*).
The idea, such as it was, tickled our hero, that is to say, tyrant's fancy. However, there was the small detail of figuring out who to pass the Patricianship on to, which he had never really bothered to consider, suddenly an oversight of some size and importance. That was the only reason he wasn't out of that comfortable chair and halfway to Be' Trobi already, to be frank, preferably while wearing a pair of Leonard's Colored-Spectacles-For-Not-Seeing-With and a sunhat and possibly changing his cane for one with a tropical theme.
As it turned out, though, he was saved the trouble.
There was a large window in the Oblong Office, and it was always open. It was quite a nice window; thick leaded glass and many small panes that fractured the grubby light almost enough to render it pleasant, although the birdshit spattered across it as of yesterday sort of negated that particular side effect; not to mention the fact that he kept the shutters thrown wide, so that you could get a decent view of the city anyway, more than enough to ruin your day, unless you were the owner of the window and/or any other crotchety old bastard with a sick sense of dramatic timing. This was because there were so many layers of paint over the sill that he could no longer force them shut, but no one knew about that. No one. Not even Drumknott. Not even the little cleaning imps.
And now someone was flying through the wide-open painted stuck window. At a speed and size such that the shape of the window was irrevocably remade, and suddenly involved more humorous silhouettes of outthrust limbs and many-fingered hands and so forth than the shape he remembered from five seconds ago.
The someone picked themselves up off the carpet at length and brushed off their... armor? Or... oversized tin can? And metal wings? And feathers. There were feathers. Lots of feathers. Plumes on top of the pointy helmet and all. Well, that ruled out Vimes' troubled spirit come to haunt him.
"Yes? Did you want something?" Vetinari said to the someone, who was probably male.
"Yes!" probably-he shrieked. "I want you to concede your unjust position to the rightful rulers of this city!"
"Sounds good to me," said Vetinari, who had at this point finished up with being amazed at his occasional tremendous luck. "Who did you have in mind?"
"What?" said the thing, coming to a halt in its mental processes and staring at him blankly. "Er. That is, the just and noble uberheroes who have come to take Ankh-Morpork into hand! They will put a true leader in place! And he will be kind, and just, and... kind..."
"Oh, Captain Carrot," said Vetinari, disappointed. "You know, no one has any original suggestions for the job these days? The best I've heard was Mrs. Cosmopolite, and she refused, said it involved too much for'n parts."
From the thing's expression, he concluded that he was dealing with an easily dismantled, sold, and made into glue kind of mind. "Please, do go on," he said pleasantly, "you were saying? I'm so sick of making Drumknott organize my pill boxes that I may even consider it."
The thing with the feathers found its voice at last. "Stop that, foul fiend! I know your tricks! Stand up! I'll show them all! We'll do this properly!!"
"Would you like a glass of water?" said Vetinari. "You seem to be a little overexcited."
"Up!! Or I'll bite your legs off!!!"
Vetinari gave him a long, long look, and then reached with infinite care for his cane(**). He stood up. 'Unfolded' was perhaps the better word.
"Lead the way," he said.
* And even lawyers didn't invoke the Smince Regime unless they absolutely had to.
** Which did, as it turned out, have a knife in it, though not a sword, and made not from the iron of the blood of a thousand men, but from good Uberwaldean dwarf-forged steel, thankyouverymuch.
=PART TWO=
In the Rats Chamber, Guild heads were doing vaguely Guild head-ish things like, for instance, arguing and in Mrs. 's case intimidating unfortunate bystanders with an ample(*) bosom.
Mostly, though, what they were doing was waiting for Vetinari to come, be briskly ironical at them about all this unpleasant vigilante business not having been sorted out one way or another, and divide them into committees. It was a routine, by now, with all the suggested comfort of the word.
So they all turned expectantly and in sync when the double doors swung open, and they all immediately saw that the figure silhouetted against the light of the hallway was not Vetinari.
"It's a bird!" said Mr. Boggis II of the Thieves' Guild, squinting at the feathers.
"It's a plane!" said Mr. Pantsalot of the Geometrician's Guild, and then tried to figure out why, to no avail. Obviously it was a plane, being a silhouette and therefore to his perception flat and, well, planar, but it wasn't as if it was a sensible thing to shout. It just... felt right.
"It's a man!" said Mrs. Palm, sharply, flouncing through the rows of bewildered men and brandishing her many folds of lacy skirt at the intruder, which did not have quite the intended effect, since the revealed stockinged calf was sixty years old and not as welcome a sight as it had once been to the average male specimen of any... species. "I am a very good judge of these things," she added.
"I am... the BIRDPLANEMAN!!!!" declared the silhouette, striking a pose. "Now get in here, Lord Vetinari."
Lord Vetinari stepped up until he was shoulder to shoulder with the freakish armored Birdplaneman, likewise silhouetted against the sunlight.
"It's a bird!" said the excitable Miss Dixie Voom, eager to emulate her elders, and was shut up by a very pointed glare from the cloudy blue eyes set above that peculiarly large and wickedly curved nose that had caused her mistaken impression.
"Watch, all of you," said the Birdplaneman. "This is a glorious day for justice. Tyrant!" he snapped, turning to Vetinari. "Do you admit to your crimes? Do you admit that you are a dictator, a despot, that you torture and kill and are utterly amoral?"
"Yes," said Vetinari, smiling.
"Oh no? But consider your crimes against the common -"
Lord Downey sidled up to the Birdplaneman and whispered something in his ear.
"...ah. You admit it, then! You are so vile you do not even recoil at such labels!"
"That is correct," said Vetinari.
"Well - no more!" The man rallied. Lord Downey helpfully whispered something else into his ear. "Aha! You are going to be hung, and this city will see the light of day after all your corruption! You have been PWNED, my friend! And none of these cowards will so much as speak up!"
Vetinari's head, which had been nodding along amiably, jerked up at that second to last sentence. He gave Downey a Look, and said, his tone like an icicle, cold, sharp, and briefly but intensely unpleasant, "I'm afraid that is unacceptable. I pwn n00bs. No one pwns me."
The Birdplaneman's expression changed into an ugly sneer. "Doddering old fool! It's been years since your n00b-pwning days!"
"O rly?" said Vetinari, and reaching out with his cane pressed an unremarkable portion of the wall.
Two unusuall occurrences, apparently unbidden and unrelated, followed: a greying, evil, squashed-faced old tomcat(***) wandered in and said "NEDM", and a magnified, echoing voice said, "We Interrupt This Program," and was followed by eardrum-blasting music. Dumdumdumdum dumdumdumdum DOOH DOOH. DODALOODOODOOODIDIDIDIDIDIDOODOOTDOODALOODOODOO. Like that. Only louder, and more psychadelic.
This was invigorating for 99%Colored spotlights started to flash and crisscross. And lo, the speakers began to sandblast. of the inhabitants, but it unfortunately killed the Birdplaneman dead. No one was overly grieved.
"Is that alcohol I spy in your best-friend-betraying hand, Downey?" said Vetinari, insinuating his way over to where Downey was sipping a colorful drink from a glass with a little umbrella in it that he had produced at a moment's notice.
"There's plenty more where that came from," said Downey, "your little instant display apparently includes spontaneous buffet tables."
"Hmm," said Vetinari, watching the remains of Birdplaneman being sandblasted. By sand. Messily and at length.
"Reminds me of that time someone tried to take Big Fido out with an axe," said Gaspode, popping into existence by the old man's foot.
"Does it really," said Vetinari, downing a martini and refilling it.
"Yeah, he just got up again. But his tendons were never the same, you know?"
"I think that's pretty much uncanonical gossip you're pulling out of your betailed arse, no offense," said Vetinari, conversationally.
"Well, yeah," said Gaspode. The music changed fractionally, and the bass began to hammer in earnest. No one was sure why. Because it was a fish, and fishes don't normally hammer. Nevertheless. It was hammering.
"Let's grind it, baby!" said Gaspode, while across the room Drumknott and a suspiciously gorgeous young woman with multicolored orbs for eyeballs made out, Sybil Ramkin did an interesting maneouvre with her husband's ghost, and their son had the following conversation with a charming young woman with coal-black hair, a face unmemorable in repose but transfixing in movement, and a brilliant smile:
"HELLO, HANDSOME!"
"SPEAK LOUDER, I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"
"BUGGER THAT! LET'S GRIND!"
"ALTHOUGH IT GOES AGAINST EVERY JOURNALING INSTINCT IN MY BODY, YOU'RE HOT, SO, OKAY!"
"On second thought I think I should just have let him hang me," said Vetinari to Downey, who was watching with great amusement as Gaspode began pawing at Vetinari's injured leg. "Look, I'm a dog person, Gaspode, but I'm not that much of a dog person."
"Can't hear you," said Gaspode, although it came out rather muffled.
"Okay," said Vetinari, and kicked the little mutt off and beat it to bloody pulp with his cane. "And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how we pwn, here in Ankh-Morpork."
But no one noticed. They were too busy baring their throats and enjoying the rave.
* There is an old joke among Seamstresses, which goes 'It rhymes with sample'. To date, no one but other Seamstresses have been able to decipher what makes this funny in any way whatsoever to anyone, ever(**).
** Other incomprehensible Seamstress jokes include 'That's what IT said' and 'I'm sleeping with your mother'.
*** Whose name was Maurice, and who was possessed at this point by at least twenty separate entities, who called themselves the Loll Cat Mack Rows.
I don't even know. No, seriously, I don't.
=PART ONE=
Havelock Vetinari reclined in his comfortable chair. At one point it had been an uncomfortable wooden chair, because Vetinari was, in his heart of hearts, either a) a traditionalist or b) a lazy bugger who really didn't want to go to the trouble of getting Drumknott to go to a warehouse and get him an actual padded seat while also having to explain to the man that no, curtains would not be a required part of that order; then he had discovered the wonders of arthritis, which made sitting down even more of a torture than the arsenic poisoning and the bullette to the leg had combined. So now it was a comfortable chair, with cushy mysterious springs and velvet and things like that.
His mind went back, reread the sentence preceding the last one he had just thought, took out a red pen, circled certain key phrases. He said aloud, to his paper-piled desk, "Do Patricians even have a pension plan?"
He didn't bother to answer himself, because the 'no' was depressing enough silent. Power transferred by assassination, for gods' sake. There were clauses about it. Mr. Slant would have to search for a long time to find precedent for something that wasn't power transferred by assassination, and might even have to invoke Smince(*).
The idea, such as it was, tickled our hero, that is to say, tyrant's fancy. However, there was the small detail of figuring out who to pass the Patricianship on to, which he had never really bothered to consider, suddenly an oversight of some size and importance. That was the only reason he wasn't out of that comfortable chair and halfway to Be' Trobi already, to be frank, preferably while wearing a pair of Leonard's Colored-Spectacles-For-Not-Seeing-With and a sunhat and possibly changing his cane for one with a tropical theme.
As it turned out, though, he was saved the trouble.
There was a large window in the Oblong Office, and it was always open. It was quite a nice window; thick leaded glass and many small panes that fractured the grubby light almost enough to render it pleasant, although the birdshit spattered across it as of yesterday sort of negated that particular side effect; not to mention the fact that he kept the shutters thrown wide, so that you could get a decent view of the city anyway, more than enough to ruin your day, unless you were the owner of the window and/or any other crotchety old bastard with a sick sense of dramatic timing. This was because there were so many layers of paint over the sill that he could no longer force them shut, but no one knew about that. No one. Not even Drumknott. Not even the little cleaning imps.
And now someone was flying through the wide-open painted stuck window. At a speed and size such that the shape of the window was irrevocably remade, and suddenly involved more humorous silhouettes of outthrust limbs and many-fingered hands and so forth than the shape he remembered from five seconds ago.
The someone picked themselves up off the carpet at length and brushed off their... armor? Or... oversized tin can? And metal wings? And feathers. There were feathers. Lots of feathers. Plumes on top of the pointy helmet and all. Well, that ruled out Vimes' troubled spirit come to haunt him.
"Yes? Did you want something?" Vetinari said to the someone, who was probably male.
"Yes!" probably-he shrieked. "I want you to concede your unjust position to the rightful rulers of this city!"
"Sounds good to me," said Vetinari, who had at this point finished up with being amazed at his occasional tremendous luck. "Who did you have in mind?"
"What?" said the thing, coming to a halt in its mental processes and staring at him blankly. "Er. That is, the just and noble uberheroes who have come to take Ankh-Morpork into hand! They will put a true leader in place! And he will be kind, and just, and... kind..."
"Oh, Captain Carrot," said Vetinari, disappointed. "You know, no one has any original suggestions for the job these days? The best I've heard was Mrs. Cosmopolite, and she refused, said it involved too much for'n parts."
From the thing's expression, he concluded that he was dealing with an easily dismantled, sold, and made into glue kind of mind. "Please, do go on," he said pleasantly, "you were saying? I'm so sick of making Drumknott organize my pill boxes that I may even consider it."
The thing with the feathers found its voice at last. "Stop that, foul fiend! I know your tricks! Stand up! I'll show them all! We'll do this properly!!"
"Would you like a glass of water?" said Vetinari. "You seem to be a little overexcited."
"Up!! Or I'll bite your legs off!!!"
Vetinari gave him a long, long look, and then reached with infinite care for his cane(**). He stood up. 'Unfolded' was perhaps the better word.
"Lead the way," he said.
* And even lawyers didn't invoke the Smince Regime unless they absolutely had to.
** Which did, as it turned out, have a knife in it, though not a sword, and made not from the iron of the blood of a thousand men, but from good Uberwaldean dwarf-forged steel, thankyouverymuch.
=PART TWO=
In the Rats Chamber, Guild heads were doing vaguely Guild head-ish things like, for instance, arguing and in Mrs. 's case intimidating unfortunate bystanders with an ample(*) bosom.
Mostly, though, what they were doing was waiting for Vetinari to come, be briskly ironical at them about all this unpleasant vigilante business not having been sorted out one way or another, and divide them into committees. It was a routine, by now, with all the suggested comfort of the word.
So they all turned expectantly and in sync when the double doors swung open, and they all immediately saw that the figure silhouetted against the light of the hallway was not Vetinari.
"It's a bird!" said Mr. Boggis II of the Thieves' Guild, squinting at the feathers.
"It's a plane!" said Mr. Pantsalot of the Geometrician's Guild, and then tried to figure out why, to no avail. Obviously it was a plane, being a silhouette and therefore to his perception flat and, well, planar, but it wasn't as if it was a sensible thing to shout. It just... felt right.
"It's a man!" said Mrs. Palm, sharply, flouncing through the rows of bewildered men and brandishing her many folds of lacy skirt at the intruder, which did not have quite the intended effect, since the revealed stockinged calf was sixty years old and not as welcome a sight as it had once been to the average male specimen of any... species. "I am a very good judge of these things," she added.
"I am... the BIRDPLANEMAN!!!!" declared the silhouette, striking a pose. "Now get in here, Lord Vetinari."
Lord Vetinari stepped up until he was shoulder to shoulder with the freakish armored Birdplaneman, likewise silhouetted against the sunlight.
"It's a bird!" said the excitable Miss Dixie Voom, eager to emulate her elders, and was shut up by a very pointed glare from the cloudy blue eyes set above that peculiarly large and wickedly curved nose that had caused her mistaken impression.
"Watch, all of you," said the Birdplaneman. "This is a glorious day for justice. Tyrant!" he snapped, turning to Vetinari. "Do you admit to your crimes? Do you admit that you are a dictator, a despot, that you torture and kill and are utterly amoral?"
"Yes," said Vetinari, smiling.
"Oh no? But consider your crimes against the common -"
Lord Downey sidled up to the Birdplaneman and whispered something in his ear.
"...ah. You admit it, then! You are so vile you do not even recoil at such labels!"
"That is correct," said Vetinari.
"Well - no more!" The man rallied. Lord Downey helpfully whispered something else into his ear. "Aha! You are going to be hung, and this city will see the light of day after all your corruption! You have been PWNED, my friend! And none of these cowards will so much as speak up!"
Vetinari's head, which had been nodding along amiably, jerked up at that second to last sentence. He gave Downey a Look, and said, his tone like an icicle, cold, sharp, and briefly but intensely unpleasant, "I'm afraid that is unacceptable. I pwn n00bs. No one pwns me."
The Birdplaneman's expression changed into an ugly sneer. "Doddering old fool! It's been years since your n00b-pwning days!"
"O rly?" said Vetinari, and reaching out with his cane pressed an unremarkable portion of the wall.
Two unusuall occurrences, apparently unbidden and unrelated, followed: a greying, evil, squashed-faced old tomcat(***) wandered in and said "NEDM", and a magnified, echoing voice said, "We Interrupt This Program," and was followed by eardrum-blasting music. Dumdumdumdum dumdumdumdum DOOH DOOH. DODALOODOODOOODIDIDIDIDIDIDOODOOTDOODALOODOODOO. Like that. Only louder, and more psychadelic.
This was invigorating for 99%Colored spotlights started to flash and crisscross. And lo, the speakers began to sandblast. of the inhabitants, but it unfortunately killed the Birdplaneman dead. No one was overly grieved.
"Is that alcohol I spy in your best-friend-betraying hand, Downey?" said Vetinari, insinuating his way over to where Downey was sipping a colorful drink from a glass with a little umbrella in it that he had produced at a moment's notice.
"There's plenty more where that came from," said Downey, "your little instant display apparently includes spontaneous buffet tables."
"Hmm," said Vetinari, watching the remains of Birdplaneman being sandblasted. By sand. Messily and at length.
"Reminds me of that time someone tried to take Big Fido out with an axe," said Gaspode, popping into existence by the old man's foot.
"Does it really," said Vetinari, downing a martini and refilling it.
"Yeah, he just got up again. But his tendons were never the same, you know?"
"I think that's pretty much uncanonical gossip you're pulling out of your betailed arse, no offense," said Vetinari, conversationally.
"Well, yeah," said Gaspode. The music changed fractionally, and the bass began to hammer in earnest. No one was sure why. Because it was a fish, and fishes don't normally hammer. Nevertheless. It was hammering.
"Let's grind it, baby!" said Gaspode, while across the room Drumknott and a suspiciously gorgeous young woman with multicolored orbs for eyeballs made out, Sybil Ramkin did an interesting maneouvre with her husband's ghost, and their son had the following conversation with a charming young woman with coal-black hair, a face unmemorable in repose but transfixing in movement, and a brilliant smile:
"HELLO, HANDSOME!"
"SPEAK LOUDER, I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"
"BUGGER THAT! LET'S GRIND!"
"ALTHOUGH IT GOES AGAINST EVERY JOURNALING INSTINCT IN MY BODY, YOU'RE HOT, SO, OKAY!"
"On second thought I think I should just have let him hang me," said Vetinari to Downey, who was watching with great amusement as Gaspode began pawing at Vetinari's injured leg. "Look, I'm a dog person, Gaspode, but I'm not that much of a dog person."
"Can't hear you," said Gaspode, although it came out rather muffled.
"Okay," said Vetinari, and kicked the little mutt off and beat it to bloody pulp with his cane. "And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how we pwn, here in Ankh-Morpork."
But no one noticed. They were too busy baring their throats and enjoying the rave.
* There is an old joke among Seamstresses, which goes 'It rhymes with sample'. To date, no one but other Seamstresses have been able to decipher what makes this funny in any way whatsoever to anyone, ever(**).
** Other incomprehensible Seamstress jokes include 'That's what IT said' and 'I'm sleeping with your mother'.
*** Whose name was Maurice, and who was possessed at this point by at least twenty separate entities, who called themselves the Loll Cat Mack Rows.
I don't even know. No, seriously, I don't.