fic: The Female of the Species (St. Trinian's/Macdonald Hall)
Late, late, very very late, but this fic has been begging to be written ever since amaresu's pimp post introduced me to St. Trinian's.
Title: The Female of the Species
Fandom: St. Trinian's/Macdonald Hall
Characters: Kelly Jones, Cathy Burton, mob ensemble
Rating: G
Words: 2250
Summary: The girls of St. Trinian's meet their match. (crossover)
The Great St. Trinian’s Round-The-World Road Trip was currently experiencing some slight technical difficulties. Namely, their bus had broken down about five miles back, stranding them in the middle of the Canadian wilderness. (It looked a lot like ordinary countryside, not at all like the polar-bear-infested tundra that they had expected. But the girls all armed themselves with their hockey and lacrosse sticks anyway-if there were any polar bears out there, the girls of St. Trinian’s intended that the bears should be watching out for them. )
The girls tramped along the side of the highway, belting out the school song as Miss Fritton led them, waving her hands like an orchestra conductor. Suddenly, one of the girls who had been keeping a sharp eye out yelled:
“Buildings! I see buildings!”
Everyone looked up and raised a cheer when they saw the distant shapes. They broke into a run, whooping and waving their weapons triumphantly while the teachers huffed and puffed and attempted to keep up. As they drew closer, they saw that there were two clusters of buildings on opposite sides of the highway. Signs proclaimed one to be Macdonald Hall, and the other to be Miss Scrimmage’s Finishing School for Young Ladies.
“Ah!” exclaimed Miss Fritton when she saw the latter, “A kindred spirit!” She made a beeline for the gate of the school, and the girls followed her, smirking at each other. The place was probably full of pushovers and softies, all prim and proper. Miss Fritton shouldn’t have any trouble conning or bullying the teachers into giving them a bus.
The headmistress patted her hair and straightened her dress before striding into the main building to find this Miss Scrimmage. The girls stayed outside, flopping down gratefully on the lawns or stretching out on the front steps.
The first years recovered fastest, scrambling to their feet after a short rest and fanning out to explore the rest of the school. After a few minutes, one of the scouting parties reported back to Kelly, grinning excitedly.
“The bus is just sitting out in the open, no one watching it, no locks or anything! It’d take about five seconds to hotwire it.”
Kelly thought for a moment, finger tapping her full lips. Miss Fritton would almost certainly be able to get the bus for them, but if taking was faster than asking… and if a bus that was “borrowed” instead of really borrowed didn’t carry any pesky obligations like returning it at any particular time… She nodded decisively.
“Go do it, then. I’ll round up the girls and get Miss Fritton.”
The first years nodded and ran back to hotwire the bus, while Kelly rounded up the older girls and set them to herding everyone to the parking lot. They ran silently and stealthily across the asphalt, flinging themselves behind the bus for cover with the ease of professional soldiers. Kelly herself went into the main building, intending to excuse Miss Fritton from her meeting with Scrimmage with a story about their own bus being fixed and not needing to borrow a bus anymore.
While she was still looking for the headmistress’s office, a speaker system crackled to life with a shriek:
“Intruder alert! Intruder alert! Someone is stealing our bus! Stop them, girls!”
Doors slammed open all over the campus and suddenly there were girls everywhere, pouring past Kelly in a strangely familiar shrieking tide of chaos. She hesitated for a moment, but decided that Miss Fritton could take care of herself and ran back outside.
It was chaos out there. Her girls had started the bus and were inside with Taylor driving, but the Scrimmage girls had mobbed the bus and were blocking its way with their very bodies. Some of them were trying to break in through the windows and door, while others heaved at the side of the bus, trying to rock it enough to tip it over. The hockey team jumped out through the bus windows and formed a vanguard in front of the bus, using their sticks to force a path through the mob so the bus could drive forward.
Suddenly someone slammed into Kelly’s back and tackled her to the ground, then twisted her into a painful armlock.
“Who are you and what do you want?” the person yelled in her ear.
Kelly twisted expertly out of the armlock and threw the person off her, rolling to her feet and into a fighting stance. The other girl had long dark hair and a snarl on her pretty face. She was shorter than Kelly but sturdily built, and the vague impression of a rugby player was reinforced when she charged at Kelly again. Kelly tossed the girl over her shoulder with a judo throw, then yelped as the girl reached out pulled her ankles out from under her. It was a brawl from then on as the girls punched, kicked and clawed at each other. Kelly could tell that the Scrimmage girl hadn’t had real martial arts training, but she was a hell of a fighter and as vicious as any of her own girls.
“Kelly!” A cry went up from the bus as the St. Trinian’s girls finally noticed the plight of their beloved Head Girl. More girls began jumping out the bus windows to fight their way through the Scrimmage’s girls and get to Kelly.
“Cathy!” The girls of Miss Scrimmage’s followed the others’ line of sight and saw their own beloved leader locked in combat. They wavered indecisively, some trying to block the reinforcements from St. Trinian’s while others started forward to help Cathy.
Kelly managed to get an arm locked around the other girl’s throat and hauled her upright, turning to face the crowd.
“Scrimmage’s girls, I have your leader! Surrender now or she gets it!” she yelled, shaking her hostage for good measure.
Cathy clawed the arm away from her throat to suck in a breath and shrieked, “Never retreat! Never surrender!”
“Yaaaaaaaaaaaah!” Her girls screamed with one voice and turned on the intruders once again, tears in their eyes at her bravery and self-sacrifice. The St. Trinian’s girls, better armed and organized, were gradually winning, but Scrimmage’s girls were no slouches in a fight. They kicked, bit, scratched and pulled until both sides were equally bloody and battered.
BOOM! A shotgun blast split the air and everyone dropped to the ground.
Miss Scrimmage appeared on her balcony, waving her shotgun wildly. “My girls! My poor girls! Don’t worry, I’ll save you from these fiends!"
Everyone watched in horror as she brandished the shotgun in the bus’s general direction.
Miss Fritton burst out onto the balcony behind her. “Miss Scrimmage! Please don’t overreact!” She grabbed Miss Scrimmage’s arm and tried to wrestle the gun away from her.
“Your little fiends have attacked my poor helpless girls!” Miss Scrimmage shrieked, pulling her arm loose and swinging around to hold the other headmistress at gunpoint.
“Miss Fritton!” the St. Trinian’s girls cried.
Miss Fritton swung her handbag and knocked the gun’s muzzle aside. CRASH! It shot a hole through the glass door just as Miss Fritton punched Miss Scrimmage, knocking her over with a strong right hook.
“Miss Scrimmage!” screamed the entire population of Scrimmage’s, running to her aid. Seeing an opportunity, Taylor gunned the bus’s engine.
“Everyone get in!” she yelled, leaning out the driver’s window. The hockey team scrambled to get in the door. Kelly dropped Cathy and ran for the bus, but Cathy stumbled to her feet and chased after her. She managed to tackle Kelly to the ground just before she reached the bus’s door.
Suddenly, there was a roar and a thunder of running footsteps from across the highway. A surging tide of boys was running toward Miss Scrimmage’s from Macdonald Hall. At their head was a dark-haired boy roaring “Scrimmage’s is under attack! Forward, men, and defend our girls!”
The boys flooded across the highway and surrounded the bus. The hockey team vaulted out the windows again to fend them off, this time as backup for the Specialist Anti-Boy Command unit. Two of the most angelic-looking first years ran and spread their arms wide to block the boys’ way, turning on the tears and pushing their adorability as high as it would go. On another front, Chelsea and two of the other Posh Totties planted themselves squarely in the boys’ way, cocking their heads coyly and tossing blonde curls over their shoulders.
The boys stumbled to a halt, looking back and forth between all the girls in bewilderment. “Forward, and stop the intruders!” the lead boy yelled, trying to get his companions on the move again. The others shuffled awkwardly, shooting uncertain looks at each other.
“But Bruno…they’re girls!”
“Pretty girls!” (A collective blush ran through the crowd. “Shut up!” someone hissed.)
“We’re not supposed to hit girls!” one protested, clearly in the grip of a moral dilemma.
“We can’t abandon Scrimmage’s in their time of need, no matter who the enemy is!” Bruno roared. “Look past the pretty faces and innocent tears to see the evil within! And never forget: the female of the species is deadlier than the male!”
Having lived across from Miss Scrimmage’s for years, the boys knew for a fact that this was true. Nodding decisively at each other, they advanced on the girls.
“Ow!”
“Arrrrgh!”
“Sidney! Are you okay?”
“By dose is bleeding! Id won’d sdop!”
“My eye!”
After brief and bloody struggle, the boys retreated cautiously out of hockey-stick range, nursing bruises and black eyes. Taylor gunned the engine again and boys stiffened in surprise, but then they rushed to stand firm in front of the bus to block its way.
In the meantime, Kelly had broken free of Cathy’s hold again and the two girls were circling each other warily.
“What do you want?” Cathy asked again. “Why are you trying to steal our bus?”
“Sorry, girlie, but we need your bus to get to Montreal and make our rendezvous in two days. If we don’t make this meeting with Flash’s contacts, our school will have to close down for lack of funds.”
Cathy stared at the taller girl, who glared back icily. She didn’t seem to be joking, but what were the odds that this kind of thing happened to schools besides Macdonald Hall?
“Bruno, get over here!” she yelled over her shoulder, keeping an eye on Kelly.
“What is it?”
“This is their leader. She says they’re trying to save their school from closing down.”
Bruno perked up. “Save their school! Well, why didn’t they say so? We would never turn down a school in need!”
Kelly turned an incredulous look on Bruno, who grinned back at her. “Saving schools is what we’re best at! Well, usually it’s our own school, but I’m sure we could do it for someone else’s as well.”
“Are you serious?” Kelly asked, looking back and forth between Cathy and Bruno.
Bruno nodded and opened his mouth to say something else, when a clear voice rang above the din. “Stop this at once!”
“At once!” Mr. Sturgeon repeated sharply, skidding to a stop near the bus after running all the way from the Hall. The boys all fell silent immediately, turning pale. The St. Trinian’s girls poked their heads out the bus windows and jeered at him, but the heckling trailed off grudgingly under his cold, fishy stare.
“Walton, to my office. Everyone else, back to your classrooms!”
“I’ve been here less than five minutes!” protested Bruno as the Macdonald Hall boys trickled back across the highway.
“For you, Walton, five minutes is more than enough time to cause any kind of trouble.”
“Uh, Mr. Sturgeon, I’m afraid there has just been a misunderstanding!” said Cathy, stepping forward and putting on her best smile. “These girls are some friends from another finishing school-”
“…we are?” asked the St. Trinian’s girls hanging out of the bus windows.
“…they are?” chorused a few of Miss Scrimmage’s girls who had made their way over to the bus.
“They are!” Cathy proclaimed, shooting a quelling look over at her girls before turning back to Mr. Sturgeon. “They’re friends of ours, and I’m afraid we were just a bit overenthusiastic while greeting them. The boys mistakenly thought we were in trouble, and very kindly came to our aid.” She widened her eyes in an innocent look, meeting the Fish’s stare eye to eye.
Mr. Sturgeon visibly swept his gaze over Cathy’s black eye and split lip, Kelly’s bloody nose, and the various bruises and rips in clothing decorating all three sets of students.
“Miss Burton, I have no authority over you or Miss…”
“Jones,” Kelly supplied.
“Miss Jones. But Mr. Walton will be seeing me in my office, regardless of whether this was all a friendly misunderstanding or not.”
The Fish turned on his heel and stalked back towards the Hall. Bruno stage-whispered “Room 301, tonight, after lights-out!” to Cathy and Kelly, then turned to follow Mr. Sturgeon.
Kelly and Cathy were left side by side, eyeing each other warily. Finally Cathy gave a decisive nod. “Right. Well, if we’re going to help you save your school, we’ll have to put you up at least for the night. Come on back to the school and we’ll straighten things out with Miss Scrimmage. Just don’t ever let your bully of a headmistress punch Miss Scrimmage again, or we won’t be responsible for our actions.”
END
This fic ends on a very abrupt note because (a) I have to sleep and (b) it would take an entire Macdonald Hall book to explore this concept the way it deserves to be explored!
Title: The Female of the Species
Fandom: St. Trinian's/Macdonald Hall
Characters: Kelly Jones, Cathy Burton, mob ensemble
Rating: G
Words: 2250
Summary: The girls of St. Trinian's meet their match. (crossover)
The Great St. Trinian’s Round-The-World Road Trip was currently experiencing some slight technical difficulties. Namely, their bus had broken down about five miles back, stranding them in the middle of the Canadian wilderness. (It looked a lot like ordinary countryside, not at all like the polar-bear-infested tundra that they had expected. But the girls all armed themselves with their hockey and lacrosse sticks anyway-if there were any polar bears out there, the girls of St. Trinian’s intended that the bears should be watching out for them. )
The girls tramped along the side of the highway, belting out the school song as Miss Fritton led them, waving her hands like an orchestra conductor. Suddenly, one of the girls who had been keeping a sharp eye out yelled:
“Buildings! I see buildings!”
Everyone looked up and raised a cheer when they saw the distant shapes. They broke into a run, whooping and waving their weapons triumphantly while the teachers huffed and puffed and attempted to keep up. As they drew closer, they saw that there were two clusters of buildings on opposite sides of the highway. Signs proclaimed one to be Macdonald Hall, and the other to be Miss Scrimmage’s Finishing School for Young Ladies.
“Ah!” exclaimed Miss Fritton when she saw the latter, “A kindred spirit!” She made a beeline for the gate of the school, and the girls followed her, smirking at each other. The place was probably full of pushovers and softies, all prim and proper. Miss Fritton shouldn’t have any trouble conning or bullying the teachers into giving them a bus.
The headmistress patted her hair and straightened her dress before striding into the main building to find this Miss Scrimmage. The girls stayed outside, flopping down gratefully on the lawns or stretching out on the front steps.
The first years recovered fastest, scrambling to their feet after a short rest and fanning out to explore the rest of the school. After a few minutes, one of the scouting parties reported back to Kelly, grinning excitedly.
“The bus is just sitting out in the open, no one watching it, no locks or anything! It’d take about five seconds to hotwire it.”
Kelly thought for a moment, finger tapping her full lips. Miss Fritton would almost certainly be able to get the bus for them, but if taking was faster than asking… and if a bus that was “borrowed” instead of really borrowed didn’t carry any pesky obligations like returning it at any particular time… She nodded decisively.
“Go do it, then. I’ll round up the girls and get Miss Fritton.”
The first years nodded and ran back to hotwire the bus, while Kelly rounded up the older girls and set them to herding everyone to the parking lot. They ran silently and stealthily across the asphalt, flinging themselves behind the bus for cover with the ease of professional soldiers. Kelly herself went into the main building, intending to excuse Miss Fritton from her meeting with Scrimmage with a story about their own bus being fixed and not needing to borrow a bus anymore.
While she was still looking for the headmistress’s office, a speaker system crackled to life with a shriek:
“Intruder alert! Intruder alert! Someone is stealing our bus! Stop them, girls!”
Doors slammed open all over the campus and suddenly there were girls everywhere, pouring past Kelly in a strangely familiar shrieking tide of chaos. She hesitated for a moment, but decided that Miss Fritton could take care of herself and ran back outside.
It was chaos out there. Her girls had started the bus and were inside with Taylor driving, but the Scrimmage girls had mobbed the bus and were blocking its way with their very bodies. Some of them were trying to break in through the windows and door, while others heaved at the side of the bus, trying to rock it enough to tip it over. The hockey team jumped out through the bus windows and formed a vanguard in front of the bus, using their sticks to force a path through the mob so the bus could drive forward.
Suddenly someone slammed into Kelly’s back and tackled her to the ground, then twisted her into a painful armlock.
“Who are you and what do you want?” the person yelled in her ear.
Kelly twisted expertly out of the armlock and threw the person off her, rolling to her feet and into a fighting stance. The other girl had long dark hair and a snarl on her pretty face. She was shorter than Kelly but sturdily built, and the vague impression of a rugby player was reinforced when she charged at Kelly again. Kelly tossed the girl over her shoulder with a judo throw, then yelped as the girl reached out pulled her ankles out from under her. It was a brawl from then on as the girls punched, kicked and clawed at each other. Kelly could tell that the Scrimmage girl hadn’t had real martial arts training, but she was a hell of a fighter and as vicious as any of her own girls.
“Kelly!” A cry went up from the bus as the St. Trinian’s girls finally noticed the plight of their beloved Head Girl. More girls began jumping out the bus windows to fight their way through the Scrimmage’s girls and get to Kelly.
“Cathy!” The girls of Miss Scrimmage’s followed the others’ line of sight and saw their own beloved leader locked in combat. They wavered indecisively, some trying to block the reinforcements from St. Trinian’s while others started forward to help Cathy.
Kelly managed to get an arm locked around the other girl’s throat and hauled her upright, turning to face the crowd.
“Scrimmage’s girls, I have your leader! Surrender now or she gets it!” she yelled, shaking her hostage for good measure.
Cathy clawed the arm away from her throat to suck in a breath and shrieked, “Never retreat! Never surrender!”
“Yaaaaaaaaaaaah!” Her girls screamed with one voice and turned on the intruders once again, tears in their eyes at her bravery and self-sacrifice. The St. Trinian’s girls, better armed and organized, were gradually winning, but Scrimmage’s girls were no slouches in a fight. They kicked, bit, scratched and pulled until both sides were equally bloody and battered.
BOOM! A shotgun blast split the air and everyone dropped to the ground.
Miss Scrimmage appeared on her balcony, waving her shotgun wildly. “My girls! My poor girls! Don’t worry, I’ll save you from these fiends!"
Everyone watched in horror as she brandished the shotgun in the bus’s general direction.
Miss Fritton burst out onto the balcony behind her. “Miss Scrimmage! Please don’t overreact!” She grabbed Miss Scrimmage’s arm and tried to wrestle the gun away from her.
“Your little fiends have attacked my poor helpless girls!” Miss Scrimmage shrieked, pulling her arm loose and swinging around to hold the other headmistress at gunpoint.
“Miss Fritton!” the St. Trinian’s girls cried.
Miss Fritton swung her handbag and knocked the gun’s muzzle aside. CRASH! It shot a hole through the glass door just as Miss Fritton punched Miss Scrimmage, knocking her over with a strong right hook.
“Miss Scrimmage!” screamed the entire population of Scrimmage’s, running to her aid. Seeing an opportunity, Taylor gunned the bus’s engine.
“Everyone get in!” she yelled, leaning out the driver’s window. The hockey team scrambled to get in the door. Kelly dropped Cathy and ran for the bus, but Cathy stumbled to her feet and chased after her. She managed to tackle Kelly to the ground just before she reached the bus’s door.
Suddenly, there was a roar and a thunder of running footsteps from across the highway. A surging tide of boys was running toward Miss Scrimmage’s from Macdonald Hall. At their head was a dark-haired boy roaring “Scrimmage’s is under attack! Forward, men, and defend our girls!”
The boys flooded across the highway and surrounded the bus. The hockey team vaulted out the windows again to fend them off, this time as backup for the Specialist Anti-Boy Command unit. Two of the most angelic-looking first years ran and spread their arms wide to block the boys’ way, turning on the tears and pushing their adorability as high as it would go. On another front, Chelsea and two of the other Posh Totties planted themselves squarely in the boys’ way, cocking their heads coyly and tossing blonde curls over their shoulders.
The boys stumbled to a halt, looking back and forth between all the girls in bewilderment. “Forward, and stop the intruders!” the lead boy yelled, trying to get his companions on the move again. The others shuffled awkwardly, shooting uncertain looks at each other.
“But Bruno…they’re girls!”
“Pretty girls!” (A collective blush ran through the crowd. “Shut up!” someone hissed.)
“We’re not supposed to hit girls!” one protested, clearly in the grip of a moral dilemma.
“We can’t abandon Scrimmage’s in their time of need, no matter who the enemy is!” Bruno roared. “Look past the pretty faces and innocent tears to see the evil within! And never forget: the female of the species is deadlier than the male!”
Having lived across from Miss Scrimmage’s for years, the boys knew for a fact that this was true. Nodding decisively at each other, they advanced on the girls.
“Ow!”
“Arrrrgh!”
“Sidney! Are you okay?”
“By dose is bleeding! Id won’d sdop!”
“My eye!”
After brief and bloody struggle, the boys retreated cautiously out of hockey-stick range, nursing bruises and black eyes. Taylor gunned the engine again and boys stiffened in surprise, but then they rushed to stand firm in front of the bus to block its way.
In the meantime, Kelly had broken free of Cathy’s hold again and the two girls were circling each other warily.
“What do you want?” Cathy asked again. “Why are you trying to steal our bus?”
“Sorry, girlie, but we need your bus to get to Montreal and make our rendezvous in two days. If we don’t make this meeting with Flash’s contacts, our school will have to close down for lack of funds.”
Cathy stared at the taller girl, who glared back icily. She didn’t seem to be joking, but what were the odds that this kind of thing happened to schools besides Macdonald Hall?
“Bruno, get over here!” she yelled over her shoulder, keeping an eye on Kelly.
“What is it?”
“This is their leader. She says they’re trying to save their school from closing down.”
Bruno perked up. “Save their school! Well, why didn’t they say so? We would never turn down a school in need!”
Kelly turned an incredulous look on Bruno, who grinned back at her. “Saving schools is what we’re best at! Well, usually it’s our own school, but I’m sure we could do it for someone else’s as well.”
“Are you serious?” Kelly asked, looking back and forth between Cathy and Bruno.
Bruno nodded and opened his mouth to say something else, when a clear voice rang above the din. “Stop this at once!”
“At once!” Mr. Sturgeon repeated sharply, skidding to a stop near the bus after running all the way from the Hall. The boys all fell silent immediately, turning pale. The St. Trinian’s girls poked their heads out the bus windows and jeered at him, but the heckling trailed off grudgingly under his cold, fishy stare.
“Walton, to my office. Everyone else, back to your classrooms!”
“I’ve been here less than five minutes!” protested Bruno as the Macdonald Hall boys trickled back across the highway.
“For you, Walton, five minutes is more than enough time to cause any kind of trouble.”
“Uh, Mr. Sturgeon, I’m afraid there has just been a misunderstanding!” said Cathy, stepping forward and putting on her best smile. “These girls are some friends from another finishing school-”
“…we are?” asked the St. Trinian’s girls hanging out of the bus windows.
“…they are?” chorused a few of Miss Scrimmage’s girls who had made their way over to the bus.
“They are!” Cathy proclaimed, shooting a quelling look over at her girls before turning back to Mr. Sturgeon. “They’re friends of ours, and I’m afraid we were just a bit overenthusiastic while greeting them. The boys mistakenly thought we were in trouble, and very kindly came to our aid.” She widened her eyes in an innocent look, meeting the Fish’s stare eye to eye.
Mr. Sturgeon visibly swept his gaze over Cathy’s black eye and split lip, Kelly’s bloody nose, and the various bruises and rips in clothing decorating all three sets of students.
“Miss Burton, I have no authority over you or Miss…”
“Jones,” Kelly supplied.
“Miss Jones. But Mr. Walton will be seeing me in my office, regardless of whether this was all a friendly misunderstanding or not.”
The Fish turned on his heel and stalked back towards the Hall. Bruno stage-whispered “Room 301, tonight, after lights-out!” to Cathy and Kelly, then turned to follow Mr. Sturgeon.
Kelly and Cathy were left side by side, eyeing each other warily. Finally Cathy gave a decisive nod. “Right. Well, if we’re going to help you save your school, we’ll have to put you up at least for the night. Come on back to the school and we’ll straighten things out with Miss Scrimmage. Just don’t ever let your bully of a headmistress punch Miss Scrimmage again, or we won’t be responsible for our actions.”
END
This fic ends on a very abrupt note because (a) I have to sleep and (b) it would take an entire Macdonald Hall book to explore this concept the way it deserves to be explored!