Final 3 AUs sets
Done! Just in time to do a different meme, too... ;-)
1. Doctor Who: Poul, for
sovay:
Wild West
A death amongst those prospecting for gold wasn’t uncommon, nor even a murder, but this had been deliberate: Chub had been lured to his death, and then poisoned and, in any case, he was not a prospector but a scientist. Poul sighed. “This isn’t going to be easy,” he said to the prototype clockwork man who was accompanying him. “And why,” he added under his breath, “am I talking to you? It’s not as if you even truly understand anything but the simplest directions. I don’t know why I had to bring you!”
Coffee Shop
“There’s nothing wrong with the espresso machine!” said Uvanov. “Or the cappuccino machine or any other machine around here that makes any sort of liquid refreshment, hot or cold. That’s ridiculous, and I’m firing Borg if he comes out with any more nonsense like that.”
He and Poul looked inevitably at the espresso machine. It made a distinctly worrying grating and growling sound.
“As you say,” murmured Poul. “Ridiculous.”
Shapeshifters
“You changed,” said Leela. “Can all your people do that?”
“The majority,” Poul brushed down his clothes. “Although most of them think it’s a little undignified - scurrying around in the shape of a rodent or a bird. I find it helps, though. It’s an escape of sorts.”
Leela nodded. “I think I can understand that. I should like to fly like a bird - could I learn to do it?”
“I don’t think it could be learned,” said Poul. Then he smiled. “On the other hand, if anyone could, it would be you.”
Fantasy/Fairy Tale
“I have said all the correct incantations and fought the monster at the door. I believe you should be free now,” said Leela, releasing Poul from his chains. She gave him a stern look. “Next time, you should be more careful.”
Poul let her help him to his feet. “Yes, very true. It was rather an unpleasant spell, however. I don’t think I’m entirely to blame. And I have an alternative solution.”
“Oh?”
He smiled at her. “How about you stay with me and make sure nothing like that happens again?”
. . . In SPACE!!
Liv had been called to the medbay to attend one of the ship’s few passengers, but by the time she got there, he seemed calm enough.
“Sorry,” he said. Liv checked her passenger list for the name - Ander Poul. “There was an incident with - with one of them. I shall be fine now, provided I keep out of their way. It’s good to know there’s a human medtech to hand, though. That makes a change.”
Liv raised an eyebrow. “Oh,” she said. “Okay, but do you think a small vessel like this was really the place for someone with, er, your particular issues?”
He gave her a dark look. “Why do you suppose I’m trying to escape off-world?”
“Right,” said Liv. “Good luck with that, then, sir.”
It took a few hops from ship to ship, although with notably less robots as he went, but eventually Poul found somewhere obscure, on the edge of the next galaxy. The person who had mentioned it hadn’t sounded keen, calling it an uncivilised place full of barbarians and farmers, but certainly they hadn’t mentioned robots, or the Company, or this Federation that everyone was talking about in these parts. Yes, Gauda Prime. It would do.
Apocalypse
They tried to hush up the sandminer’s return, empty of its human crew and full of all-too evidently murderous robots, with visible blood on their metallic hands, but it couldn’t be kept secret, not in a place like Kaldor. The end had come - again.
Schoolfic
“It’s always the same,” said Uvanov to Poul as they waited outside the head’s office. “The Founding Families get away with murder, but we so much as raise our voice in class and it’s detentions all round.”
Poul stared at the ceiling. He was only here because he’d walked in the door at the wrong moment - that was to say, about the point that everyone Uvanov had been sneering at that morning lost their patience with him. “Yes, well, next time perhaps you should think before you pick a fight with half the class at once.”
“You would say that. You’re frightened of the soft drinks dispenser!”
Police/Firefighters/Medical
“What do you think?” said Poul, surveying the battered body on the floor. “Not quite the open and shut case that Landerchild would have us believe.”
“The killer could not have been Kiy Uvanov,” said D84. “Two separate witnesses have placed him in a meeting in the Company Headquarters. And the damage was done by a prototype laser gun, which Kiy Uvanov could not have had access to.”
Poul crouched down by the victim. “No. The Company Chairholder set this up himself in order to dispense with his rival. I don’t suppose he wants to know what we think. Damn him.”
He sighed. The eternal problem of being a Company detective in Kaldor... You could get rich quick, or wind up dead. Or both. It wasn’t the place for a human and a robot who preferred to get at the truth, that was for certain.
Supernatural
The arrival of the actual undead did not improve Poul’s state of mind…
Regency
“And what,” asked Leela,” is a Bow Street Runner? Is it a vegetable? I believe the Doctor has mentioned something of the kind. He said I should not like them.”
Poul considered the lady before him: she was wearing a conventional enough outfit, even if it was a few years out of date, but it clearly didn’t come naturally to her. He gave a slight smile, putting his hand to his mouth. “Not a vegetable. But somehow I suspect you would not like them much, no.”
“Well, I like you,” she said, bristling at being told what she should and shouldn’t like.
“I’m the exception.”
***
2. The Avengers: Emma Peel, for
liadtbunny:
Wild West
“I keep a very well run town, you know,” said Sheriff Peel. “Quiet, clean, tidy - no brawls.”
“And very impressive it is, too.”
“So, how come is that every time you turn up, it takes about five minutes and twenty seconds for all hell to break loose?”
Steed looked injured. “I’ve been here for five minutes already and nothing has -”
Outside, the bank exploded.
“Right on cue,” said Sheriff Peel, putting away her pocket watch. She threw a look at him. “I suppose we’d better go and sort it out.”
Coffee Shop
“But I didn’t order any coffee,” said the man who opened the door.
“Ours is a very special coffee delivery service,” said Steed. “You tell him, Mrs Peel.”
“We feed in all known variables to my computer, calculating who in the city has the greatest need for caffeine and, voila, there we are, ready with coffee for the needy soul.”
As the door shut in their faces - again - they exchanged a glance.
“And it seemed like such a good idea on paper,” said Emma.
“I told you we should have tried champagne delivery instead.”
Shapeshifters
The wolf howled at the door.
Emma stuck her head out of the window. “Patience, Steed - just give me a moment to change!”
Fantasy/Fairy Tale
Sir John helped the Lady Emma down the last few inches of rope stretching from the tower she’d been locked in.
“At last,” she said, with a smile. “I’d begun to think something had happened to you.”
“I got waylaid.”
She pulled a sympathetic face as she touched the cut on his cheek. “Poor Sir John. Still, it gave me time to deal with the witch. Now, what?”
“I think we’ll finally have to put a stop to that dragon.”
They both stared down from the hill, across the forest below to where smoke was belching out of the mountains.
“Much smoke, tiny flame?” said Lady Emma hopefully.
Sir John shook his head and held out his arms as wide as they would go. “But I hear tell there will be a banquet for the victors.”
“Oh, well,” said Lady Emma, “in that case, lead on. I’m starving. They only feed you gruel in these towers.”
. . . In SPACE!!
Emma had almost finished cataloguing a unique collection of alien flora and fauna picked up during an exploratory voyage. She had had a marvellous time, although there had been one thing lacking, she’d found. She merely hoped now that she could complete the cataloguing before -
She picked up her mobile info-device only to find that a familiar message had appeared on its screen. She lifted her head, biting down on a smile. “Steed. I suppose it’s too much to hope that you’ve come to take me out on a celebratory dinner in honour of my successful research?”
“That too,” said Steed, approaching her. “But there is the little matter of the murder of the Home Secretary to attend to first.”
She held out her hand. “I might have known. And yet -”
He raised an enquiring eyebrow.
“I’ve missed you,” she said.
“Ah, the nights are long on Saturn, are they?”
She gave him her hand. “Something like that.”
Apocalypse
“So,” said Steed, after a long period of silence in the cellar, where the two agents were currently tied back to back. “It’s been a while. He can’t have gone through with it, can he? He can’t have ended the world. We’d have heard something.”
“Not with a bang, but with a whimper,” murmured Emma. “The logic is inescapable: he had the means, we know he was ready to do it, and we were the only people who could stop him. And we’re a bit tied up. I’m afraid this must be it.”
Steel glanced around the cellar. “Ah. He did say he’d had the place altered to double as a bunker. I suppose now we just linger on here until we run out of supplies. An ignominious fate.”
“Could be worse,” said Emma.
“Mrs Peel, it’s the end of the world!”
“And we’re locked together in a wine cellar. It could be worse.”
Schoolfic
Emma caught John’s paper aeroplane before it flew onto the teacher’s desk. Surreptitiously, she unfolded it.
“Emma,” it said, “we’re needed. Behind the bike sheds, after school.”
Police/Firefighters/Medical
“Scalpel,” said Mrs Peel, about to begin the operation - a delicate technique she was pioneering and her patient’s last hope.
Her assistant passed her a rose.
“A nice gesture, Steed,” she said, hiding her smile. “And I’m sure the patient will appreciate it after I’m done with him. But for now, the scalpel, please.”
Supernatural
“Mrs Peel, I’m in desperate need of your help,” said the gentleman at the door. “That is - you are Emma Peel, the renowned specialist in psychic activity?”
Emma allowed herself to preen a little at the flattery. “I like to think so. Come in. What seems to be the problem?”
“It’s my flat,” he said, removing his bowler hat. “It appears to be haunted.”
“Hmm. And has anyone died there, particularly in late years?”
The man hunted around in his pockets. “Wait, now, where did I put the list?”
Regency
“Good afternoon, Mrs Peel,” said a stranger, having the nerve to accost her in the park.
Emma gave him a frosty look, but he persisted.
“You will forgive me introducing myself, I trust,” he said, “but you have been pointed out to me as a lady with a unique set of skills. My name is Steed - John, Steed - and it’s my business to put to flight the enemies of the Crown - Bonapartist agents, over-enthusiastic steam enthusiasts, Revolutionaries, murderous Methodists and the like. We’re badly needed - the department is sorely overstretched.”
“Well, then,” said Emma, who found herself considerably intrigued. “Never let it be said that I was not willing to serve my country. Where do we start?”
***
3. Discworld: William de Worde & Sacharissa Cripslock, for
daibhid_c:
Wild West
A bullet shot through the window, smashing the pane.
“Not again,” said William without looking up from scribbling his latest lead article.
Sacharissa pulled herself out from under the desk and reached for the latest edition of The Times, surveying the list of outlaws on the front page. “Hmm, I wonder which one we’ve annoyed this time?”
Coffee Shop
“This,” said the young lady who’d just burst into the local branch of Astraquids, “is an abomination!” She seemed to feel quite strongly about it, glaring at him.
William took a step backwards. “I’m fairly sure it’s just a coffee shop.”
“Just a coffee shop?” she said. “Oh, yes - ‘just’ a coffee shop that is currently putting my father’s tea shop out of business!”
Shapeshifters
Shapeshifting was a useful way to hide from irate readers - and Mr Wintler - but it had its downsides. Sacharissa brushed ash off her jacket. “Next time, remind me - anything but the ash tray.”
William was having worse troubles. “Well, I can’t say I recommend being a wastepaper basket, either.”
“Where’s Otto?”
They both stared around and then, simultaneously, looked to the ash on the floor.
“Oh, dear, not again,” said Sacharissa.
Fantasy/Fairy Tale
It wasn’t that the princess had wanted to remain in her slumber for another century, of course. Naturally, she was pleased to have been awoken and by the requisite eligible young nobleman, no less. It was just that there seemed to Sacharissa to be something vital lacking in the proceedings.
“Now,” said the young man, ready with a pencil and notebook, “perhaps you could tell our readers how it feels to be a century out of time?”
Sacharissa glared. “Strangely irritable, now that you ask!”
. . . In SPACE!!
Sacharissa was busy dictating her account of the annual Star Captain’s ball into the central computer, when a message flashed up on the screen.
++Fancy a drink later?
Sacharissa turned to William, busy editing the text of another article beside her. “You could have just asked, you know.”
Apocalypse
“Do you remember,” said Boddony, “back when we started and the Patrician asked us about whether or not we’d built the Press on the site of something eldritch?”
William nodded.
“Turns out we should have checked a bit harder…”
Schoolfic
“Gosh,” said Sacharissa, as she and William pressed themselves up against the side of the bike shed, both out of breath. “I didn’t realise running the school magazine would be so exciting.”
“Perhaps we shouldn’t have tried to expose the Head in the first edition?”
“Or done that article about bullying at school?”
But, after all, it had been the truth.
Police/Firefighters/Medical
“Are you sure we should be doing this?” asked Otto. “DCI de Worde said -”
DS Cripslock breathed in and out heavily. “I know what the Chief Inspector said. Nothing suspicious about that nice Mr Smith, ha! We should leave the investigation alone and stop pestering innocent citizens. Well, even if he’s fooled, I’m not. Now, photograph those footprints and then we’ll break into his study. That’ll show him!”
“Smith?”
“No, Chief Inspector de Worde!”
Supernatural
“Sacharissa,” said William, gently taking the bloodied stake from her hand. “I think the Professor meant well and you should probably stop hitting him now.”
She subsided, but she was still shaking with anger. “Yes, but look what he tried to do to poor Otto, the -ing scoundrel!”
Regency
“I understand that you would like to become a journalist, but the Morning Post already has a full complement -”
Sacharissa raised her chin. “What you mean, Mr de Worde, is that a newspaper is no place for a genteel young lady, I believe?”
“Well, now that you say it, no, it isn’t.”
“And have you considered the means by which an genteel young lady may make a living?”
William did. He blushed and then coughed. “Um. A governess?”
“Currently,” said Sacharissa, “if you don’t oblige me by letting me write a society column, I’m considering applying myself to something involving a very sharp needle.”
William took her point.
Crossposted from Dreamwidth. Please click through to comment. -- Current comments:
1. Doctor Who: Poul, for
sovay:
Wild West
A death amongst those prospecting for gold wasn’t uncommon, nor even a murder, but this had been deliberate: Chub had been lured to his death, and then poisoned and, in any case, he was not a prospector but a scientist. Poul sighed. “This isn’t going to be easy,” he said to the prototype clockwork man who was accompanying him. “And why,” he added under his breath, “am I talking to you? It’s not as if you even truly understand anything but the simplest directions. I don’t know why I had to bring you!”
Coffee Shop
“There’s nothing wrong with the espresso machine!” said Uvanov. “Or the cappuccino machine or any other machine around here that makes any sort of liquid refreshment, hot or cold. That’s ridiculous, and I’m firing Borg if he comes out with any more nonsense like that.”
He and Poul looked inevitably at the espresso machine. It made a distinctly worrying grating and growling sound.
“As you say,” murmured Poul. “Ridiculous.”
Shapeshifters
“You changed,” said Leela. “Can all your people do that?”
“The majority,” Poul brushed down his clothes. “Although most of them think it’s a little undignified - scurrying around in the shape of a rodent or a bird. I find it helps, though. It’s an escape of sorts.”
Leela nodded. “I think I can understand that. I should like to fly like a bird - could I learn to do it?”
“I don’t think it could be learned,” said Poul. Then he smiled. “On the other hand, if anyone could, it would be you.”
Fantasy/Fairy Tale
“I have said all the correct incantations and fought the monster at the door. I believe you should be free now,” said Leela, releasing Poul from his chains. She gave him a stern look. “Next time, you should be more careful.”
Poul let her help him to his feet. “Yes, very true. It was rather an unpleasant spell, however. I don’t think I’m entirely to blame. And I have an alternative solution.”
“Oh?”
He smiled at her. “How about you stay with me and make sure nothing like that happens again?”
. . . In SPACE!!
Liv had been called to the medbay to attend one of the ship’s few passengers, but by the time she got there, he seemed calm enough.
“Sorry,” he said. Liv checked her passenger list for the name - Ander Poul. “There was an incident with - with one of them. I shall be fine now, provided I keep out of their way. It’s good to know there’s a human medtech to hand, though. That makes a change.”
Liv raised an eyebrow. “Oh,” she said. “Okay, but do you think a small vessel like this was really the place for someone with, er, your particular issues?”
He gave her a dark look. “Why do you suppose I’m trying to escape off-world?”
“Right,” said Liv. “Good luck with that, then, sir.”
It took a few hops from ship to ship, although with notably less robots as he went, but eventually Poul found somewhere obscure, on the edge of the next galaxy. The person who had mentioned it hadn’t sounded keen, calling it an uncivilised place full of barbarians and farmers, but certainly they hadn’t mentioned robots, or the Company, or this Federation that everyone was talking about in these parts. Yes, Gauda Prime. It would do.
Apocalypse
They tried to hush up the sandminer’s return, empty of its human crew and full of all-too evidently murderous robots, with visible blood on their metallic hands, but it couldn’t be kept secret, not in a place like Kaldor. The end had come - again.
Schoolfic
“It’s always the same,” said Uvanov to Poul as they waited outside the head’s office. “The Founding Families get away with murder, but we so much as raise our voice in class and it’s detentions all round.”
Poul stared at the ceiling. He was only here because he’d walked in the door at the wrong moment - that was to say, about the point that everyone Uvanov had been sneering at that morning lost their patience with him. “Yes, well, next time perhaps you should think before you pick a fight with half the class at once.”
“You would say that. You’re frightened of the soft drinks dispenser!”
Police/Firefighters/Medical
“What do you think?” said Poul, surveying the battered body on the floor. “Not quite the open and shut case that Landerchild would have us believe.”
“The killer could not have been Kiy Uvanov,” said D84. “Two separate witnesses have placed him in a meeting in the Company Headquarters. And the damage was done by a prototype laser gun, which Kiy Uvanov could not have had access to.”
Poul crouched down by the victim. “No. The Company Chairholder set this up himself in order to dispense with his rival. I don’t suppose he wants to know what we think. Damn him.”
He sighed. The eternal problem of being a Company detective in Kaldor... You could get rich quick, or wind up dead. Or both. It wasn’t the place for a human and a robot who preferred to get at the truth, that was for certain.
Supernatural
The arrival of the actual undead did not improve Poul’s state of mind…
Regency
“And what,” asked Leela,” is a Bow Street Runner? Is it a vegetable? I believe the Doctor has mentioned something of the kind. He said I should not like them.”
Poul considered the lady before him: she was wearing a conventional enough outfit, even if it was a few years out of date, but it clearly didn’t come naturally to her. He gave a slight smile, putting his hand to his mouth. “Not a vegetable. But somehow I suspect you would not like them much, no.”
“Well, I like you,” she said, bristling at being told what she should and shouldn’t like.
“I’m the exception.”
***
2. The Avengers: Emma Peel, for
liadtbunny:
Wild West
“I keep a very well run town, you know,” said Sheriff Peel. “Quiet, clean, tidy - no brawls.”
“And very impressive it is, too.”
“So, how come is that every time you turn up, it takes about five minutes and twenty seconds for all hell to break loose?”
Steed looked injured. “I’ve been here for five minutes already and nothing has -”
Outside, the bank exploded.
“Right on cue,” said Sheriff Peel, putting away her pocket watch. She threw a look at him. “I suppose we’d better go and sort it out.”
Coffee Shop
“But I didn’t order any coffee,” said the man who opened the door.
“Ours is a very special coffee delivery service,” said Steed. “You tell him, Mrs Peel.”
“We feed in all known variables to my computer, calculating who in the city has the greatest need for caffeine and, voila, there we are, ready with coffee for the needy soul.”
As the door shut in their faces - again - they exchanged a glance.
“And it seemed like such a good idea on paper,” said Emma.
“I told you we should have tried champagne delivery instead.”
Shapeshifters
The wolf howled at the door.
Emma stuck her head out of the window. “Patience, Steed - just give me a moment to change!”
Fantasy/Fairy Tale
Sir John helped the Lady Emma down the last few inches of rope stretching from the tower she’d been locked in.
“At last,” she said, with a smile. “I’d begun to think something had happened to you.”
“I got waylaid.”
She pulled a sympathetic face as she touched the cut on his cheek. “Poor Sir John. Still, it gave me time to deal with the witch. Now, what?”
“I think we’ll finally have to put a stop to that dragon.”
They both stared down from the hill, across the forest below to where smoke was belching out of the mountains.
“Much smoke, tiny flame?” said Lady Emma hopefully.
Sir John shook his head and held out his arms as wide as they would go. “But I hear tell there will be a banquet for the victors.”
“Oh, well,” said Lady Emma, “in that case, lead on. I’m starving. They only feed you gruel in these towers.”
. . . In SPACE!!
Emma had almost finished cataloguing a unique collection of alien flora and fauna picked up during an exploratory voyage. She had had a marvellous time, although there had been one thing lacking, she’d found. She merely hoped now that she could complete the cataloguing before -
She picked up her mobile info-device only to find that a familiar message had appeared on its screen. She lifted her head, biting down on a smile. “Steed. I suppose it’s too much to hope that you’ve come to take me out on a celebratory dinner in honour of my successful research?”
“That too,” said Steed, approaching her. “But there is the little matter of the murder of the Home Secretary to attend to first.”
She held out her hand. “I might have known. And yet -”
He raised an enquiring eyebrow.
“I’ve missed you,” she said.
“Ah, the nights are long on Saturn, are they?”
She gave him her hand. “Something like that.”
Apocalypse
“So,” said Steed, after a long period of silence in the cellar, where the two agents were currently tied back to back. “It’s been a while. He can’t have gone through with it, can he? He can’t have ended the world. We’d have heard something.”
“Not with a bang, but with a whimper,” murmured Emma. “The logic is inescapable: he had the means, we know he was ready to do it, and we were the only people who could stop him. And we’re a bit tied up. I’m afraid this must be it.”
Steel glanced around the cellar. “Ah. He did say he’d had the place altered to double as a bunker. I suppose now we just linger on here until we run out of supplies. An ignominious fate.”
“Could be worse,” said Emma.
“Mrs Peel, it’s the end of the world!”
“And we’re locked together in a wine cellar. It could be worse.”
Schoolfic
Emma caught John’s paper aeroplane before it flew onto the teacher’s desk. Surreptitiously, she unfolded it.
“Emma,” it said, “we’re needed. Behind the bike sheds, after school.”
Police/Firefighters/Medical
“Scalpel,” said Mrs Peel, about to begin the operation - a delicate technique she was pioneering and her patient’s last hope.
Her assistant passed her a rose.
“A nice gesture, Steed,” she said, hiding her smile. “And I’m sure the patient will appreciate it after I’m done with him. But for now, the scalpel, please.”
Supernatural
“Mrs Peel, I’m in desperate need of your help,” said the gentleman at the door. “That is - you are Emma Peel, the renowned specialist in psychic activity?”
Emma allowed herself to preen a little at the flattery. “I like to think so. Come in. What seems to be the problem?”
“It’s my flat,” he said, removing his bowler hat. “It appears to be haunted.”
“Hmm. And has anyone died there, particularly in late years?”
The man hunted around in his pockets. “Wait, now, where did I put the list?”
Regency
“Good afternoon, Mrs Peel,” said a stranger, having the nerve to accost her in the park.
Emma gave him a frosty look, but he persisted.
“You will forgive me introducing myself, I trust,” he said, “but you have been pointed out to me as a lady with a unique set of skills. My name is Steed - John, Steed - and it’s my business to put to flight the enemies of the Crown - Bonapartist agents, over-enthusiastic steam enthusiasts, Revolutionaries, murderous Methodists and the like. We’re badly needed - the department is sorely overstretched.”
“Well, then,” said Emma, who found herself considerably intrigued. “Never let it be said that I was not willing to serve my country. Where do we start?”
***
3. Discworld: William de Worde & Sacharissa Cripslock, for
daibhid_c:
Wild West
A bullet shot through the window, smashing the pane.
“Not again,” said William without looking up from scribbling his latest lead article.
Sacharissa pulled herself out from under the desk and reached for the latest edition of The Times, surveying the list of outlaws on the front page. “Hmm, I wonder which one we’ve annoyed this time?”
Coffee Shop
“This,” said the young lady who’d just burst into the local branch of Astraquids, “is an abomination!” She seemed to feel quite strongly about it, glaring at him.
William took a step backwards. “I’m fairly sure it’s just a coffee shop.”
“Just a coffee shop?” she said. “Oh, yes - ‘just’ a coffee shop that is currently putting my father’s tea shop out of business!”
Shapeshifters
Shapeshifting was a useful way to hide from irate readers - and Mr Wintler - but it had its downsides. Sacharissa brushed ash off her jacket. “Next time, remind me - anything but the ash tray.”
William was having worse troubles. “Well, I can’t say I recommend being a wastepaper basket, either.”
“Where’s Otto?”
They both stared around and then, simultaneously, looked to the ash on the floor.
“Oh, dear, not again,” said Sacharissa.
Fantasy/Fairy Tale
It wasn’t that the princess had wanted to remain in her slumber for another century, of course. Naturally, she was pleased to have been awoken and by the requisite eligible young nobleman, no less. It was just that there seemed to Sacharissa to be something vital lacking in the proceedings.
“Now,” said the young man, ready with a pencil and notebook, “perhaps you could tell our readers how it feels to be a century out of time?”
Sacharissa glared. “Strangely irritable, now that you ask!”
. . . In SPACE!!
Sacharissa was busy dictating her account of the annual Star Captain’s ball into the central computer, when a message flashed up on the screen.
++Fancy a drink later?
Sacharissa turned to William, busy editing the text of another article beside her. “You could have just asked, you know.”
Apocalypse
“Do you remember,” said Boddony, “back when we started and the Patrician asked us about whether or not we’d built the Press on the site of something eldritch?”
William nodded.
“Turns out we should have checked a bit harder…”
Schoolfic
“Gosh,” said Sacharissa, as she and William pressed themselves up against the side of the bike shed, both out of breath. “I didn’t realise running the school magazine would be so exciting.”
“Perhaps we shouldn’t have tried to expose the Head in the first edition?”
“Or done that article about bullying at school?”
But, after all, it had been the truth.
Police/Firefighters/Medical
“Are you sure we should be doing this?” asked Otto. “DCI de Worde said -”
DS Cripslock breathed in and out heavily. “I know what the Chief Inspector said. Nothing suspicious about that nice Mr Smith, ha! We should leave the investigation alone and stop pestering innocent citizens. Well, even if he’s fooled, I’m not. Now, photograph those footprints and then we’ll break into his study. That’ll show him!”
“Smith?”
“No, Chief Inspector de Worde!”
Supernatural
“Sacharissa,” said William, gently taking the bloodied stake from her hand. “I think the Professor meant well and you should probably stop hitting him now.”
She subsided, but she was still shaking with anger. “Yes, but look what he tried to do to poor Otto, the -ing scoundrel!”
Regency
“I understand that you would like to become a journalist, but the Morning Post already has a full complement -”
Sacharissa raised her chin. “What you mean, Mr de Worde, is that a newspaper is no place for a genteel young lady, I believe?”
“Well, now that you say it, no, it isn’t.”
“And have you considered the means by which an genteel young lady may make a living?”
William did. He blushed and then coughed. “Um. A governess?”
“Currently,” said Sacharissa, “if you don’t oblige me by letting me write a society column, I’m considering applying myself to something involving a very sharp needle.”
William took her point.
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