Commentfic Dump (Animorphs, Supernatural/Hanna is Not a Boy's Name, Doctor Who, Harry Potter)
Fandom: Animorphs
Characters: Marco (Marci), Rachel (Race), Cassie (Kass), Jake (Jackie), Tobias (Tobi)
Spoilers: None
Rating: PG
Prompt: Alternate Universes: Animorphs, main six, genderswap high jinx with a side of PMSing Marco
< There's someone coming, > Tobi announced from her perch on the rafters. < Oh, no, it's just Marci. >
"Thank you, Bird Girl." Marci tramped into the barn and flung herself down on her usual haybale. "What is it this time, a new doom ray? Oh, no, I've got it, we're going down to the Pool to get ourselves killed. Again."
"What’s wrong, missing a rerun of What Not To Wear?" Race drawled. "You certainly need it."
"Ha ha." Marci made a face. "I happen to be very fashionable, thank you."
"In your pathetic little dr-"
"Okay!" Jackie cut in. "Both of you just- just shut up, please?"
"Yes ma'am," Marci muttered, flopping her head back into the hay.
"We've got a-"
"-problem," Marci finished with a sigh. "Yes, yes, when do we not have a problem?"
"When your mouth is closed?"
"I'm laughing on the inside, Race."
"As I was saying," Jackie said loudly, "Kass thinks there might be something wrong."
"An aliens-are-attacking-us-and-stealing-our-minds kind of wrong or a Crayak-is-about-to-rip-a-hole-in-the-spacetime-continuum kind of wrong?"
"It's that time of the month again, isn't it, Marci?"
"Seriously, you two, zip it. Kass?"
"I'm not sure exactly what it is," Kass admitted, shutting and latching the door to the cage he'd been cleaning and turning towards the others. He hesitated as he stripped off his latex gloves. "But the Ellimist said, once, that I can tell when the universe is wrong, and I can remember bits and pieces of when it was right. And . . . it's wrong now."
"Anyone else getting a spooky sort of vibe here? Where's Ghostbusters when you need 'em?"
"I'm serious," Kass said peevishly.
"Are you sure, Kass?" Race asked, his brow furrowed slightly. "I mean, maybe it's just your imagination or something."
< I've been feeling a little off lately, too, > Tobi admitted, speaking up for the first time in a while. < Not a lot, but weird. You know? >
"Oh, well if Bird Girl and the resident psychic over there say something's wrong . . ."
"Oh for God's sake, Marci, if you're going to be this annoying about it just go home."
"Gladly."
"No," Kass said quickly. "I think we should all be together. We don't know how big this is."
"Um, guys?" They all turned to see Jackie looking down at her - him? - self in amazement. "I think Kass is right."
"You're a guy," Race said in surprise. Marci's head popped up, her dark hair woven with pieces of hay.
"Holy crap. You know, you're kinda cute."
< Okay, that's just wrong. >
Jackie/Jake looked around, as if expecting to see the Ellimist and/or the Drode pop up at any minute with an April Fool's notice. "Why. Am I a guy."
Marci raised her hands, palms out. "Beats me." Fingers flew to her/his throat. "Oh crap."
"Well this is interesting." Race/Rachel looked down at his/her torso in slightly horrified fascination. "I've got boobs."
Kass/Cassie crossed his/her arms modestly across his/her chest. "So do I."
< I think my hawk parts have changed, > Tobi/Tobias reported, feathers fluffing out in alarm.
"Good God, Tobi, ever heard of a little thing called TMI?"
< Hey, if Kass and Race can talk about their boobs . . . >
"Fair point." Marci/Marco raised a hand. "Question. How the hell are we supposed to explain this to our parents?"
*
Fandom: Supernatural/Hanna is Not a Boy's Name
Characters: Dean, Sam, Hanna, Conrad, {. . .}
Spoilers: None
Rating: PG
Prompt: Supernatural/Hanna is Not a Boy's Name, Any, The Winchesters are on a hunt. Hanna&Co. just happens to be at the scene of the crime. Misunderstandings!Chaos!
"We've got repeated zombie sightings, some vampiric deaths, and one ghost involved in some sort of false suicide."
Dean whistled. "This place is haunted."
"You think?"
--
"Okay, everyone dead, undead, or otherwise supernatural, don't move!" Dean handled the shotgun with deft hands, aiming it at the zombie, who seemed at first glance like the most dangerous, although looks were often deceiving.
"HEYwhoawait," the redheaded kid exclaimed, holding up his hands. "No shooting, okay? Shooting is bad."
"Back away slowly," Sam cautioned him, his own gun carefully aimed at the vampire. "They didn't hurt you, did they?"
"Hurt-- wha?" Unexpectedly, the kid laughed. "No, hang on, we're on the same side."
"No, seriously." Dean's face was set, serious - he only looked like this when things were about to get ugly. "You don't know what you're dealing with here."
"Hang on, I'll just-- oop!" Fumbling in his pockets, the kid somehow managed to catch the falling marker on its way to the floor. "Magic markers," he told them, and rolled back his sleeve to begin scribbling runes on his arm.
SKREEEE
"Whoops." He peered up at the small red puffball now winging its way up into the city skyline. "Sorry, Conrad."
*
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Doctor (as Theta Sigma), Master (as Koschei)
Spoilers: None
Rating: G
Prompt: Big Days: Doctor Who, First Doctor & Master, The Day the Doctor and Master became Time Lords.
They're born into the Time Lord society and they grow up learning how to become Time Lords themselves but truly, neither knows quite what it means until the first time they ride a TARDIS.
Their first trip is together, with a group of Academy instructors and a select portion of their class but Koschei and Theta stand to one side, watching as the elder Gallifreyans pilot the vessel. The other students whisper among themselves, spreading rumors and exchanging hearsay about what they'll see.
"I've heard they fly us into a sun--"
"No, my Cousin told me we're going to have to fly ourselves back home--"
Koschei chuckles and elbows his friend in the ribs. "That would be something, eh, Theta? Imagine these dimwits trying to pilot a Type 40."
Theta leans to one side, trying to see the controls. "Do you think they're really going to make us figure out how to fly it?"
"Of course not," Koschei scoffs, rolling his eyes to the ceiling. "If they did we'd all be stuck here for a dozen incarnations."
Suddenly the instructors stop moving and there's a sudden hush. It's eerily quiet without the whispers of the students or the hum of machinery and clicks of levers, and everyone jumps when someone coughs. An instructor reaches for the switch near the Time Rotor and the doors swing open, revealing the blackness of space.
The students cluster around the opening, jostling for position in the narrow space. Koschei and Theta find themselves in the back, craning their necks over the heads of their classmates for a better view.
"Oh," Theta says, his voice catching in his throat as he catches a glimpse of the pulsing supernova just outside the doors. "Oh."
"What is it?" Koschei demands, still bobbing up and down as he tries to find an angle. Then he sees it and stops. "Oh."
Theta hardly breathes, watching the light of the dying star dance across the empty blackness. He's seen them in Academy hololights, of course, but this is different. He wants to reach out and touch it, hold it, to preserve the star in its final moments.
The doors close and the whole class seems to jolt out of a trance, conferring excitedly about what they've seen. Theta looks dazed, touched by the beauty of it, and Koschei has a pensive expression on his face.
Truly this must be what it means to be a Lord of Time.
*
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Doctor (as Theta Sigma), Master (as Koschei)
Spoilers: None
Rating: G
Prompt: Nonsense Words: Author's choice, any, vts[ ,u gomhrtd dlo[[rf pm yjr lrunpstf shsom/ (AKA crap my fingers slipped on the keyboard again)
MasterK has signed on.
DocSigma63 has signed on.
DocSigma63 [16:28:56] Was that you reprogrammed the Lector's holos today?
MasterK [16:29:24] Don't know what you're talking about.
DocSigma63 [16:29:49] Uh huh. So if I go ask Ushas what answer will I get?
MasterK [16:30:12] vts[ ,u gomhrtd dlo[[rf pm yjr lrunpstf shsom/
MasterK [16:30:38] Sorry, my fingers slipped on the keyboard again.
DocSigma63 [16:31:15] Koschei, you don't have a keyboard. You have a psychic link.
MasterK [16:31:32] Oh yeah. Sorry, my mind wandered again.
DocSigma63 [16:32:01] Oh, shut up.
MasterK [16:32:23] Yes, sir.
MasterK has signed off.
DocSigma63 has signed off.
*
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Rory/Amy, Eleven
Spoilers: None
Rating: PG
Prompt: Doctor Who, timelord!Rory/timelord!Amy(/)Doctor. Rory and Amy are changed into Time Lords. Happy ending, please?
"Er, Doctor?" Rory says, looking straight down through the glass floor beneath his feet. "Is it supposed to be making that noise?"
"What noise?" The Doctor is down below, fiddling with the circuitry.
"That beeping noise."
"Oh yes, Rory, that's very helpful. 'That beeping noise,' ha!" The Doctor scoffs at his companion's ignorance and bounds up to the main level, his large bug-eyed goggles distorting his features. He leans over the TARDIS console, crooning softly to her. "There now, dear, what's Rory done to you now?"
"I didn't touch anything," the man in question protests, and is quite predictably ignored.
The Doctor studies the controls for several moments, appearing faintly puzzled, before suddenly bursting into a flurry of action, seeming to flick, press, and pull every switch, button, and lever within reach in no discernible order.
Rory hazards a guess. "Not good?"
"Very not good. I'll be right back, I just need to grab a spare winch from the kitchen . . ." And he dashes off, goggles now perched atop his dark hair.
"You keep winches in the kitchen?" Rory calls after him, silently vowing never to eat anything cooked by the Doctor ever again, but the Time Lord is already long gone.
Suddenly the whole console room lights up in a sort of greenish-tinged gold, and Rory turns helplessly on the spot, unsure whether that's good or bad. Of course, Amy chooses that very moment to emerge from the right-hand corridors, red hair damp and limp from the shower.
"Oh," she says, pausing to take in the new lighting. "Redecorating?"
"Yeah," says Rory, frustrated at his inability to do anything but wait for the Doctor to return. "Something like that."
Suddenly she looks at him with something akin to frightened amazement in her features. "How're you doing that?"
"Doing what?" She gestures helplessly to him and he glances down at himself, which is how he realizes that his hands are, well, glowing.
She approaches and circles him cautiously, as one might do in the presence of a possibly-tamed wild animal or a probably-volatile science experiment. He gathers from the way her eyes flick over his form that it's not just his hands that are shining gold, but his face and neck as well. He stands very still, unsure whether moving might trigger an unwanted reaction.
"Amy," he says suddenly, his eyes wide as her fair skin begins to glow faintly.
"God," she says, looking down at herself, at the light shining through her dark tights. She reaches out and grips his hand tightly, and he squeezes it, glimmering fingers intertwined in reassurance.
"Amy," Rory says again, as his head goes very light very quickly, and he's dimly aware that he can no longer feel his legs which might or might not currently be crumpled beneath the rest of him. The last thing he sees is Amy's shining face before everything winks into black.
--
When Rory wakes up, he feels different.
Not bad different. It's not particularly pleasant either. It's simply different.
He feels lighter, stronger. His head is clearer than he can ever remember it being, and his senses are sharper than they should be. He can hear someone breathing from across the console room, and how he knows he's in the console room in the first place is a whole other question. The two thousand years' worth of memories previously stuffed haphazardly into the spare room in the back of his mind are now organized and shelved in neatly labeled boxes that he can open and access at will - and since when has his brain ever had shelves or boxes or even rooms in the first place?
"Amy?" he murmurs, rolling over slightly, and falls off the couch. "Ow," he says out of habit, but it didn't hurt as much as it should have.
"Oh," says the Doctor, and Rory glances down to see him fiddling with the wires again. "You're awake, then. Brilliant. Hand me the transpacial pliers, will you?"
Rory gets carefully to his feet and, surprised to discover that he knows exactly what and where those are, retrieves them from their place of abandonment midway between the chartreuse knobbly and the half-functional heating system.
"Doctor," he says, passing the pliers into the tweed-clad man's reach. "What's happening to me?"
"Oh, that." The Doctor waves one hand dismissively before taking the tool. "The TARDIS emitted some excess radiation from the last time I used the Chameleon arch. Doused you two with it. Silly girl." He pats the wall fondly. "I keep telling her not to eject stuff when there are people in the console room."
"Radiation?" Rory doesn't know much about alien radiation but in his (admittedly rather small) experience any sort of high-energy subatomic particle tends to have negative effects. "Is Amy okay?" Pause. "Am I okay?"
"Oh, yes. Yes, you're both fine. More than fine, actually. The radiation turned you both into Time Lords." Dead silence. "Irreversible, I'm afraid. Rewrote your DNA but didn't save copies of the original. I didn't think you'd mind."
Rory opens and closes his mouth several times, spends several seconds trying to remember how to breathe (his head is so much larger on the inside now and he keeps getting lost amid all the free space), and then sits down very hard.
"Rory?" There's a faint note of panic in Amy's voice as she bursts into the console room.
"Down here, Pond." The Doctor seems to be utterly indifferent about the whole thing, peering through a gap in the wiring with his bug-eyed goggles.
"Rory, I--" She stops, squints at him. "You look different."
"So do you," he realizes. Her features are mainly the same but slightly less defined, a little softer round the edges. He guesses it's just another effect of the whole holy-crap-we're-Time-Lords thing.
Her fingers close tightly around his wrist as she turns to the Doctor, who is now prodding at the wiring gap with his pliers and appears to be mostly oblivious.
"Doctor," she says loudly, trying to get his attention.
"Yes. Excess radiation, you, Time Lords, Rory can explain the details, can't you, Rory?" He waves the pliers towards the stairs. "Off you go now, Ponds, do happy Pond things. I have to fix this wiring, it's broken. Well, I broke it. Point is, I'm busy."
Unsurprisingly, Amy is very accepting of the whole thing, once Rory manages to stutter out half an explanation from what he can remember of what the Doctor said.
"You don't mind?" he says finally, as a very wide grin begins to spread across her face.
"Mind?" She sounds thrilled. "Not at all."
"Oh." He tries to smile. "Good."
Her expression fades a little. "Do you mind?"
"No," he denies quickly. "No, as long as you're happy."
"You don't look happy."
"It's just hard to take in." Human, plastic, human, Time Lord. Can’t his body make up its mind on what it wants to be, already?
"Yeah." She shrugs. "But -- I mean, we're Time Lords. Time Lords, Rory!" She laughs.
"Technically wouldn't you be a Time Lady?"
"Shut up, you," she says, grabbing his lapels and pulling him in for a long kiss.
"I don't think I'm shut up yet," he tells her after she's pulled away. "Nope, definitely not. I might need another one of those."
*
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters: Sirius, James
Spoilers: None
Rating: PG
Prompt: First Words: Harry Potter, Sirius /& any, "I *am* terribly sorry about your shoes."
Merlin's beard, he swears to himself, silently fuming as he edges down the corridor. I'm going to curse that little runt into half a dozen pieces at Christmas break, I swear to--
"Take cover!" someone yells from nearby, cutting him off mid-thought. The door to the compartment just beside him slams open with a loud bang and emits a rather large cloud of puffy pink smoke as well as a small wave of vivid orange gunk that laps at Sirius' shiny new shoes -- already scuffed in several places, of course, but still.
A tousled head of dark hair follows the cloud and mysterious liquid through the door, peering through the smoky air. "All right there, mate?"
"What," Sirius breathes, half annoyed, half amazed, and (no one ever said maths was his strong suit) half in shock, "the hell was that?"
"Just a little experiment."
Sirius stares.
"Okay, not little. So sue me." Seeming to notice the expense of Sirius' robes, the other boy draws himself up in a (to be honest rather poor) imitation of the haughty bearing all Blacks were trained to exude from birth. "I am terribly sorry about your shoes."
They're the first words the boy has spoken so far that haven't set Sirius' teeth on edge, and he smiles in return. "Mind showing me how you do that? It would drive Mum's house elf bonkers."
The boy looks him over in mock consternation. "Dunno, it depends. I don't tell my secrets to just anybody, you know."
"Who do you tell them to, then?"
The boy thought it over for a moment. "Tell me your name and buy me a chocolate frog from the trolley and we have a deal."
"Sirius Black." He tries very hard not to put emphasis on the surname, and just to annoy Mum (who isn't actually there, of course, but old habits are hard to break) he adds, "Of the noble and most pompous House of Black."
"Potter. James Potter." James grins and strikes a pose, his hands clasped together by his head with the thumbs and index fingers extending. Sirius looks back at him blankly, and James throws up his hands in exasperation. "Oh, come off it! Don't tell me you've never heard of James Bond?"
*
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters: James, Sirius, Remus, Peter
Spoilers: None
Rating: PG
Prompt: Pranks: Harry Potter, the Marauders, The prank war had spread throughout the school but they had started it all
It started when James first discovered the door to the kitchens in their second year.
Advised by a newly-graduated Potter cousin, he and Sirius ventured down to the still-life just before supper and tickled the pear to get inside. A half hour later most of Slytherin House was doubled over in the bathrooms from the laxatives that had been added to their meals.
"How'd you do it?" Peter asked in the common room later that evening.
"Oh, it wasn't hard." James shrugged with one shoulder. "The house elves are a bit dim; we just said that we wanted to add a bit of spice to it."
"That we did," Sirius said with a grin, and the whole group roared with laughter.
They weren't laughing the next morning, however, when the Gryffindor Quidditch team arrived on the pitch for practice to find that overnight someone had charmed a large black cloud to hover over the field and storm like mad, lightning, buffeting winds, and the occasional flurry of hail included. They had to practice over the lake and James returned to the common room later that day sopping wet from an unplanned swim in the frigid water when a dive for the Quaffle went poorly.
Fortunately or unfortunately, the clever little trick with the weather had affected the Ravenclaw team's practice as well and Slytherins returning to their common room that evening found the door sealed shut with a note graffitied onto the wall: The new password is 'I am a stupid racist git and so's my mum'. And although the Gryffindors hadn't directly targeted them yet, a group of third year Ravenclaws decided that they deserved punishment for the initiation of the whole thing and rigged the Fat Lady's portrait hole to splatter indelible blue paint over anyone going in or out.
So the pranks included a good three-fourths of the school but the Hufflepuffs remained more or less unaffected, going about their business as normal and doing their best to ignore the carnage. Unaffected, that is, until a sixth year Ravenclaw's flock of charmed owls taking a dump over the Gryffindor table at breakfast caught most of Hufflepuff (and quite a few teachers as well) in the crossfire, and then all hell really broke lose.
Few people know that though Hufflepuffs in general usually aren't as skilled as some of the other houses, they work extraordinarily hard to keep up and surpass, and when they join forces, well, run for cover.
The Ravenclaws found their door knocker asking extraordinarily easy questions and declaring them wrong no matter the response unless the answerer waited at least five minutes to speak. The Slytherins' dungeon was suddenly overrun with fully grown Venomous Tentacula, and the Fat Lady had been lured away from Gryffindor Tower by the painting of a handsome young man that resided inside the Hufflepuff common room.
Even the ghosts joined in on the fun. Mostly they just turned invisible and passed through thick knots of students from opposing houses on their way to class, but Nearly Headless Nick had taken to popping up in dormitories with his head half off in the wee hours of the morning, and Peeves, well, Peeves was just himself.
When the Hufflepuffs released a load of dungbombs in the corridors around Gryffindor Tower, most of the students took to wearing protective spells between classes and the house elves had plenty to do, given how dirty people's clothing was getting.
James and Sirius, however, strutted about the castle as if unaffected, a noseplugged Peter scurrying to keep up and a bubbleheaded Remus trailing behind, simply proud to have been the perpetrators of such magnificent chaos.
*
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters: Remus, James/Lily, Sirius
Spoilers: None
Rating: PG-13 for teenage teasing
Prompt: Flight: Harry Potter, the Marauders (Remus/Sirius and/or James/Lily, if you please), Remus is with them when they ride in an airplane for the first time
"You've done this before, then, Moony? And it turned out all right?"
Remus shrugs in answer to Sirius' question, steering the group towards the check-in counter. "I'm still here, aren't I?"
"And I've been up loads of times," Lily adds, lifting her bag onto the scale. "It's just like the Hogwarts Express. Honest."
"Yeah, except we're about ten kilometers up and if it breaks down we all plunge to our dooms."
"Shut up, Padfoot." James looks slightly green around the gills and they haven't even set foot on the plane yet.
"Merlin's beard, Prongs, you're a Quidditch player!"
Remus sighs. Oh, this is going to be a long flight.
"Don't worry, James, they've even got a little food trolley," Lily assures him as they head for the security queue. "You like the food trolley."
"Blimey, this is a long queue." Sirius' shaggy dark head bobs above the crowd as he tries to see what's ahead. "What's it for, surely the food's not that good?"
Remus chuckles. "This is the security checkpoint. So they know no one's going to try to blow up a plane or anything."
James pales. "Muggles do that?" Lily pats his arm in what's supposed to be a reassuring manner, but she's not quite straight-faced enough to pull it off.
"Only sometimes."
"Here," Remus says, trying hard not to laugh as he thrusts plastic bins into everyone's arms. "Shoes, coats, anything metal, in these." He pauses for a moment. "Wands are probably all right."
"Why?"
"Merlin knows." Shaking his head, Remus turns to note, with mild amusement, that James is now staring just a little too hard at Lily as she bends over to untie her trainers. "Oi, Prongs, stop gawking at your girlfriend's arse and get your shoes off, will you?"
They pass through the rest of the security without too much trouble (Sirius is a bit overawed by the metal detectors, and James has to go through twice when he forgets to empty his pockets) but getting through the terminal is another matter entirely.
"You've all been in Muggle London before," Lily says impatiently, when even Remus gets a bit bedazzled by the endless reams of merchandise - t-shirts saying "I ♥ UK" and mugs adorned with a Union Jack and so, so many mindless magazines.
"Yes, but this is so much more--" Sirius pauses, unable to think of a fitting word, and James finishes his sentence for him.
"--touristy."
"Is that even a word?" Remus wonders, as James wanders off to peer at the snow globes.
"Incredible," he decides, watching the tiny flakes swirling around the glass. "And all without magic!"
The loudspeaker crackles on. "Flight 724 to Vancouver is now boarding. All passengers please return to gate C32."
"Damn it," Lily hisses, grabbing James' wrist and dragging him away from the shotglass display. "That's our flight."
"Right." Taking the hint, Remus steers Sirius away from the magazine rack. "On we go, Padfoot."
--
"It's a bit small, isn't it?" James says, glancing around the cramped cabin. He frowns, prodding at the seat cushions.
"Get a move on, kids," a man says angrily from behind them. "You're holding up the aisle."
"Sorry," Remus replies quickly, as Sirius declares his claim to the window seat. James slides in beside him and Lily takes the aisle, leaving Remus with the lone seat in front. He's starting to think that means his duties as a Muggle-world guide are over for the duration of the flight until Sirius pokes at his shoulder from between the seat backs.
"Moony," he says excitedly, holding up a dogeared Skymall. "Have you seen what they've got for sale in these things? They've got an automatic dog feeder!"
"Get Padfoot one of those and he'll love you for life," James adds, earning himself a sharp elbow to the ribs. "Ow! Blimey, Padfoot, do you file your bones when we're not watching?"
"Oh!" Lily exclaims, leaning around James to peer out the window. "I think we're moving." At this, Sirius and James lunge for the window at the same time, fighting for space to look through the tiny pane. Being closer, Sirius wins.
"We're going faster," he notes. "And I think we're up!" He leans back, shaking his head. "Muggles. Are we sure they're not secretly all wizards?"
Lily laughs. "I'm pretty sure, Sirius."
"Oh. Well, then."
--
"That," James declares, squeezing past Lily to his seat, "is the smallest bathroom I have ever seen. Ever."
Sirius sighs, occupying himself by sliding the window shade up and down. "This is so boring. How much longer is it, Moony?"
"You asked me that ten minutes ago." Remus feels slightly snappish. "If you wanted to get there quickly you could have taken the Portkey."
"And wait around with Wormtail?" He snorts. "No thanks."
"Honestly," James insists, still fixated on his previous train of thought. "It's not even a loo, it's like . . . half a loo!"
Sirius waggles his eyebrows. "Well then it's a good thing you've only got half a-- ow! What was that for?"
"Merlin help us," Lily sighs, trying hard not to smile. "How much longer did you say it was again, Remus?"
Characters: Marco (Marci), Rachel (Race), Cassie (Kass), Jake (Jackie), Tobias (Tobi)
Spoilers: None
Rating: PG
Prompt: Alternate Universes: Animorphs, main six, genderswap high jinx with a side of PMSing Marco
< There's someone coming, > Tobi announced from her perch on the rafters. < Oh, no, it's just Marci. >
"Thank you, Bird Girl." Marci tramped into the barn and flung herself down on her usual haybale. "What is it this time, a new doom ray? Oh, no, I've got it, we're going down to the Pool to get ourselves killed. Again."
"What’s wrong, missing a rerun of What Not To Wear?" Race drawled. "You certainly need it."
"Ha ha." Marci made a face. "I happen to be very fashionable, thank you."
"In your pathetic little dr-"
"Okay!" Jackie cut in. "Both of you just- just shut up, please?"
"Yes ma'am," Marci muttered, flopping her head back into the hay.
"We've got a-"
"-problem," Marci finished with a sigh. "Yes, yes, when do we not have a problem?"
"When your mouth is closed?"
"I'm laughing on the inside, Race."
"As I was saying," Jackie said loudly, "Kass thinks there might be something wrong."
"An aliens-are-attacking-us-and-stealing-our-minds kind of wrong or a Crayak-is-about-to-rip-a-hole-in-the-spacetime-continuum kind of wrong?"
"It's that time of the month again, isn't it, Marci?"
"Seriously, you two, zip it. Kass?"
"I'm not sure exactly what it is," Kass admitted, shutting and latching the door to the cage he'd been cleaning and turning towards the others. He hesitated as he stripped off his latex gloves. "But the Ellimist said, once, that I can tell when the universe is wrong, and I can remember bits and pieces of when it was right. And . . . it's wrong now."
"Anyone else getting a spooky sort of vibe here? Where's Ghostbusters when you need 'em?"
"I'm serious," Kass said peevishly.
"Are you sure, Kass?" Race asked, his brow furrowed slightly. "I mean, maybe it's just your imagination or something."
< I've been feeling a little off lately, too, > Tobi admitted, speaking up for the first time in a while. < Not a lot, but weird. You know? >
"Oh, well if Bird Girl and the resident psychic over there say something's wrong . . ."
"Oh for God's sake, Marci, if you're going to be this annoying about it just go home."
"Gladly."
"No," Kass said quickly. "I think we should all be together. We don't know how big this is."
"Um, guys?" They all turned to see Jackie looking down at her - him? - self in amazement. "I think Kass is right."
"You're a guy," Race said in surprise. Marci's head popped up, her dark hair woven with pieces of hay.
"Holy crap. You know, you're kinda cute."
< Okay, that's just wrong. >
Jackie/Jake looked around, as if expecting to see the Ellimist and/or the Drode pop up at any minute with an April Fool's notice. "Why. Am I a guy."
Marci raised her hands, palms out. "Beats me." Fingers flew to her/his throat. "Oh crap."
"Well this is interesting." Race/Rachel looked down at his/her torso in slightly horrified fascination. "I've got boobs."
Kass/Cassie crossed his/her arms modestly across his/her chest. "So do I."
< I think my hawk parts have changed, > Tobi/Tobias reported, feathers fluffing out in alarm.
"Good God, Tobi, ever heard of a little thing called TMI?"
< Hey, if Kass and Race can talk about their boobs . . . >
"Fair point." Marci/Marco raised a hand. "Question. How the hell are we supposed to explain this to our parents?"
*
Fandom: Supernatural/Hanna is Not a Boy's Name
Characters: Dean, Sam, Hanna, Conrad, {. . .}
Spoilers: None
Rating: PG
Prompt: Supernatural/Hanna is Not a Boy's Name, Any, The Winchesters are on a hunt. Hanna&Co. just happens to be at the scene of the crime. Misunderstandings!Chaos!
"We've got repeated zombie sightings, some vampiric deaths, and one ghost involved in some sort of false suicide."
Dean whistled. "This place is haunted."
"You think?"
--
"Okay, everyone dead, undead, or otherwise supernatural, don't move!" Dean handled the shotgun with deft hands, aiming it at the zombie, who seemed at first glance like the most dangerous, although looks were often deceiving.
"HEYwhoawait," the redheaded kid exclaimed, holding up his hands. "No shooting, okay? Shooting is bad."
"Back away slowly," Sam cautioned him, his own gun carefully aimed at the vampire. "They didn't hurt you, did they?"
"Hurt-- wha?" Unexpectedly, the kid laughed. "No, hang on, we're on the same side."
"No, seriously." Dean's face was set, serious - he only looked like this when things were about to get ugly. "You don't know what you're dealing with here."
"Hang on, I'll just-- oop!" Fumbling in his pockets, the kid somehow managed to catch the falling marker on its way to the floor. "Magic markers," he told them, and rolled back his sleeve to begin scribbling runes on his arm.
SKREEEE
"Whoops." He peered up at the small red puffball now winging its way up into the city skyline. "Sorry, Conrad."
*
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Doctor (as Theta Sigma), Master (as Koschei)
Spoilers: None
Rating: G
Prompt: Big Days: Doctor Who, First Doctor & Master, The Day the Doctor and Master became Time Lords.
They're born into the Time Lord society and they grow up learning how to become Time Lords themselves but truly, neither knows quite what it means until the first time they ride a TARDIS.
Their first trip is together, with a group of Academy instructors and a select portion of their class but Koschei and Theta stand to one side, watching as the elder Gallifreyans pilot the vessel. The other students whisper among themselves, spreading rumors and exchanging hearsay about what they'll see.
"I've heard they fly us into a sun--"
"No, my Cousin told me we're going to have to fly ourselves back home--"
Koschei chuckles and elbows his friend in the ribs. "That would be something, eh, Theta? Imagine these dimwits trying to pilot a Type 40."
Theta leans to one side, trying to see the controls. "Do you think they're really going to make us figure out how to fly it?"
"Of course not," Koschei scoffs, rolling his eyes to the ceiling. "If they did we'd all be stuck here for a dozen incarnations."
Suddenly the instructors stop moving and there's a sudden hush. It's eerily quiet without the whispers of the students or the hum of machinery and clicks of levers, and everyone jumps when someone coughs. An instructor reaches for the switch near the Time Rotor and the doors swing open, revealing the blackness of space.
The students cluster around the opening, jostling for position in the narrow space. Koschei and Theta find themselves in the back, craning their necks over the heads of their classmates for a better view.
"Oh," Theta says, his voice catching in his throat as he catches a glimpse of the pulsing supernova just outside the doors. "Oh."
"What is it?" Koschei demands, still bobbing up and down as he tries to find an angle. Then he sees it and stops. "Oh."
Theta hardly breathes, watching the light of the dying star dance across the empty blackness. He's seen them in Academy hololights, of course, but this is different. He wants to reach out and touch it, hold it, to preserve the star in its final moments.
The doors close and the whole class seems to jolt out of a trance, conferring excitedly about what they've seen. Theta looks dazed, touched by the beauty of it, and Koschei has a pensive expression on his face.
Truly this must be what it means to be a Lord of Time.
*
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Doctor (as Theta Sigma), Master (as Koschei)
Spoilers: None
Rating: G
Prompt: Nonsense Words: Author's choice, any, vts[ ,u gomhrtd dlo[[rf pm yjr lrunpstf shsom/ (AKA crap my fingers slipped on the keyboard again)
MasterK has signed on.
DocSigma63 has signed on.
DocSigma63 [16:28:56] Was that you reprogrammed the Lector's holos today?
MasterK [16:29:24] Don't know what you're talking about.
DocSigma63 [16:29:49] Uh huh. So if I go ask Ushas what answer will I get?
MasterK [16:30:12] vts[ ,u gomhrtd dlo[[rf pm yjr lrunpstf shsom/
MasterK [16:30:38] Sorry, my fingers slipped on the keyboard again.
DocSigma63 [16:31:15] Koschei, you don't have a keyboard. You have a psychic link.
MasterK [16:31:32] Oh yeah. Sorry, my mind wandered again.
DocSigma63 [16:32:01] Oh, shut up.
MasterK [16:32:23] Yes, sir.
MasterK has signed off.
DocSigma63 has signed off.
*
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Rory/Amy, Eleven
Spoilers: None
Rating: PG
Prompt: Doctor Who, timelord!Rory/timelord!Amy(/)Doctor. Rory and Amy are changed into Time Lords. Happy ending, please?
"Er, Doctor?" Rory says, looking straight down through the glass floor beneath his feet. "Is it supposed to be making that noise?"
"What noise?" The Doctor is down below, fiddling with the circuitry.
"That beeping noise."
"Oh yes, Rory, that's very helpful. 'That beeping noise,' ha!" The Doctor scoffs at his companion's ignorance and bounds up to the main level, his large bug-eyed goggles distorting his features. He leans over the TARDIS console, crooning softly to her. "There now, dear, what's Rory done to you now?"
"I didn't touch anything," the man in question protests, and is quite predictably ignored.
The Doctor studies the controls for several moments, appearing faintly puzzled, before suddenly bursting into a flurry of action, seeming to flick, press, and pull every switch, button, and lever within reach in no discernible order.
Rory hazards a guess. "Not good?"
"Very not good. I'll be right back, I just need to grab a spare winch from the kitchen . . ." And he dashes off, goggles now perched atop his dark hair.
"You keep winches in the kitchen?" Rory calls after him, silently vowing never to eat anything cooked by the Doctor ever again, but the Time Lord is already long gone.
Suddenly the whole console room lights up in a sort of greenish-tinged gold, and Rory turns helplessly on the spot, unsure whether that's good or bad. Of course, Amy chooses that very moment to emerge from the right-hand corridors, red hair damp and limp from the shower.
"Oh," she says, pausing to take in the new lighting. "Redecorating?"
"Yeah," says Rory, frustrated at his inability to do anything but wait for the Doctor to return. "Something like that."
Suddenly she looks at him with something akin to frightened amazement in her features. "How're you doing that?"
"Doing what?" She gestures helplessly to him and he glances down at himself, which is how he realizes that his hands are, well, glowing.
She approaches and circles him cautiously, as one might do in the presence of a possibly-tamed wild animal or a probably-volatile science experiment. He gathers from the way her eyes flick over his form that it's not just his hands that are shining gold, but his face and neck as well. He stands very still, unsure whether moving might trigger an unwanted reaction.
"Amy," he says suddenly, his eyes wide as her fair skin begins to glow faintly.
"God," she says, looking down at herself, at the light shining through her dark tights. She reaches out and grips his hand tightly, and he squeezes it, glimmering fingers intertwined in reassurance.
"Amy," Rory says again, as his head goes very light very quickly, and he's dimly aware that he can no longer feel his legs which might or might not currently be crumpled beneath the rest of him. The last thing he sees is Amy's shining face before everything winks into black.
--
When Rory wakes up, he feels different.
Not bad different. It's not particularly pleasant either. It's simply different.
He feels lighter, stronger. His head is clearer than he can ever remember it being, and his senses are sharper than they should be. He can hear someone breathing from across the console room, and how he knows he's in the console room in the first place is a whole other question. The two thousand years' worth of memories previously stuffed haphazardly into the spare room in the back of his mind are now organized and shelved in neatly labeled boxes that he can open and access at will - and since when has his brain ever had shelves or boxes or even rooms in the first place?
"Amy?" he murmurs, rolling over slightly, and falls off the couch. "Ow," he says out of habit, but it didn't hurt as much as it should have.
"Oh," says the Doctor, and Rory glances down to see him fiddling with the wires again. "You're awake, then. Brilliant. Hand me the transpacial pliers, will you?"
Rory gets carefully to his feet and, surprised to discover that he knows exactly what and where those are, retrieves them from their place of abandonment midway between the chartreuse knobbly and the half-functional heating system.
"Doctor," he says, passing the pliers into the tweed-clad man's reach. "What's happening to me?"
"Oh, that." The Doctor waves one hand dismissively before taking the tool. "The TARDIS emitted some excess radiation from the last time I used the Chameleon arch. Doused you two with it. Silly girl." He pats the wall fondly. "I keep telling her not to eject stuff when there are people in the console room."
"Radiation?" Rory doesn't know much about alien radiation but in his (admittedly rather small) experience any sort of high-energy subatomic particle tends to have negative effects. "Is Amy okay?" Pause. "Am I okay?"
"Oh, yes. Yes, you're both fine. More than fine, actually. The radiation turned you both into Time Lords." Dead silence. "Irreversible, I'm afraid. Rewrote your DNA but didn't save copies of the original. I didn't think you'd mind."
Rory opens and closes his mouth several times, spends several seconds trying to remember how to breathe (his head is so much larger on the inside now and he keeps getting lost amid all the free space), and then sits down very hard.
"Rory?" There's a faint note of panic in Amy's voice as she bursts into the console room.
"Down here, Pond." The Doctor seems to be utterly indifferent about the whole thing, peering through a gap in the wiring with his bug-eyed goggles.
"Rory, I--" She stops, squints at him. "You look different."
"So do you," he realizes. Her features are mainly the same but slightly less defined, a little softer round the edges. He guesses it's just another effect of the whole holy-crap-we're-Time-Lords thing.
Her fingers close tightly around his wrist as she turns to the Doctor, who is now prodding at the wiring gap with his pliers and appears to be mostly oblivious.
"Doctor," she says loudly, trying to get his attention.
"Yes. Excess radiation, you, Time Lords, Rory can explain the details, can't you, Rory?" He waves the pliers towards the stairs. "Off you go now, Ponds, do happy Pond things. I have to fix this wiring, it's broken. Well, I broke it. Point is, I'm busy."
Unsurprisingly, Amy is very accepting of the whole thing, once Rory manages to stutter out half an explanation from what he can remember of what the Doctor said.
"You don't mind?" he says finally, as a very wide grin begins to spread across her face.
"Mind?" She sounds thrilled. "Not at all."
"Oh." He tries to smile. "Good."
Her expression fades a little. "Do you mind?"
"No," he denies quickly. "No, as long as you're happy."
"You don't look happy."
"It's just hard to take in." Human, plastic, human, Time Lord. Can’t his body make up its mind on what it wants to be, already?
"Yeah." She shrugs. "But -- I mean, we're Time Lords. Time Lords, Rory!" She laughs.
"Technically wouldn't you be a Time Lady?"
"Shut up, you," she says, grabbing his lapels and pulling him in for a long kiss.
"I don't think I'm shut up yet," he tells her after she's pulled away. "Nope, definitely not. I might need another one of those."
*
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters: Sirius, James
Spoilers: None
Rating: PG
Prompt: First Words: Harry Potter, Sirius /& any, "I *am* terribly sorry about your shoes."
Merlin's beard, he swears to himself, silently fuming as he edges down the corridor. I'm going to curse that little runt into half a dozen pieces at Christmas break, I swear to--
"Take cover!" someone yells from nearby, cutting him off mid-thought. The door to the compartment just beside him slams open with a loud bang and emits a rather large cloud of puffy pink smoke as well as a small wave of vivid orange gunk that laps at Sirius' shiny new shoes -- already scuffed in several places, of course, but still.
A tousled head of dark hair follows the cloud and mysterious liquid through the door, peering through the smoky air. "All right there, mate?"
"What," Sirius breathes, half annoyed, half amazed, and (no one ever said maths was his strong suit) half in shock, "the hell was that?"
"Just a little experiment."
Sirius stares.
"Okay, not little. So sue me." Seeming to notice the expense of Sirius' robes, the other boy draws himself up in a (to be honest rather poor) imitation of the haughty bearing all Blacks were trained to exude from birth. "I am terribly sorry about your shoes."
They're the first words the boy has spoken so far that haven't set Sirius' teeth on edge, and he smiles in return. "Mind showing me how you do that? It would drive Mum's house elf bonkers."
The boy looks him over in mock consternation. "Dunno, it depends. I don't tell my secrets to just anybody, you know."
"Who do you tell them to, then?"
The boy thought it over for a moment. "Tell me your name and buy me a chocolate frog from the trolley and we have a deal."
"Sirius Black." He tries very hard not to put emphasis on the surname, and just to annoy Mum (who isn't actually there, of course, but old habits are hard to break) he adds, "Of the noble and most pompous House of Black."
"Potter. James Potter." James grins and strikes a pose, his hands clasped together by his head with the thumbs and index fingers extending. Sirius looks back at him blankly, and James throws up his hands in exasperation. "Oh, come off it! Don't tell me you've never heard of James Bond?"
*
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters: James, Sirius, Remus, Peter
Spoilers: None
Rating: PG
Prompt: Pranks: Harry Potter, the Marauders, The prank war had spread throughout the school but they had started it all
It started when James first discovered the door to the kitchens in their second year.
Advised by a newly-graduated Potter cousin, he and Sirius ventured down to the still-life just before supper and tickled the pear to get inside. A half hour later most of Slytherin House was doubled over in the bathrooms from the laxatives that had been added to their meals.
"How'd you do it?" Peter asked in the common room later that evening.
"Oh, it wasn't hard." James shrugged with one shoulder. "The house elves are a bit dim; we just said that we wanted to add a bit of spice to it."
"That we did," Sirius said with a grin, and the whole group roared with laughter.
They weren't laughing the next morning, however, when the Gryffindor Quidditch team arrived on the pitch for practice to find that overnight someone had charmed a large black cloud to hover over the field and storm like mad, lightning, buffeting winds, and the occasional flurry of hail included. They had to practice over the lake and James returned to the common room later that day sopping wet from an unplanned swim in the frigid water when a dive for the Quaffle went poorly.
Fortunately or unfortunately, the clever little trick with the weather had affected the Ravenclaw team's practice as well and Slytherins returning to their common room that evening found the door sealed shut with a note graffitied onto the wall: The new password is 'I am a stupid racist git and so's my mum'. And although the Gryffindors hadn't directly targeted them yet, a group of third year Ravenclaws decided that they deserved punishment for the initiation of the whole thing and rigged the Fat Lady's portrait hole to splatter indelible blue paint over anyone going in or out.
So the pranks included a good three-fourths of the school but the Hufflepuffs remained more or less unaffected, going about their business as normal and doing their best to ignore the carnage. Unaffected, that is, until a sixth year Ravenclaw's flock of charmed owls taking a dump over the Gryffindor table at breakfast caught most of Hufflepuff (and quite a few teachers as well) in the crossfire, and then all hell really broke lose.
Few people know that though Hufflepuffs in general usually aren't as skilled as some of the other houses, they work extraordinarily hard to keep up and surpass, and when they join forces, well, run for cover.
The Ravenclaws found their door knocker asking extraordinarily easy questions and declaring them wrong no matter the response unless the answerer waited at least five minutes to speak. The Slytherins' dungeon was suddenly overrun with fully grown Venomous Tentacula, and the Fat Lady had been lured away from Gryffindor Tower by the painting of a handsome young man that resided inside the Hufflepuff common room.
Even the ghosts joined in on the fun. Mostly they just turned invisible and passed through thick knots of students from opposing houses on their way to class, but Nearly Headless Nick had taken to popping up in dormitories with his head half off in the wee hours of the morning, and Peeves, well, Peeves was just himself.
When the Hufflepuffs released a load of dungbombs in the corridors around Gryffindor Tower, most of the students took to wearing protective spells between classes and the house elves had plenty to do, given how dirty people's clothing was getting.
James and Sirius, however, strutted about the castle as if unaffected, a noseplugged Peter scurrying to keep up and a bubbleheaded Remus trailing behind, simply proud to have been the perpetrators of such magnificent chaos.
*
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters: Remus, James/Lily, Sirius
Spoilers: None
Rating: PG-13 for teenage teasing
Prompt: Flight: Harry Potter, the Marauders (Remus/Sirius and/or James/Lily, if you please), Remus is with them when they ride in an airplane for the first time
"You've done this before, then, Moony? And it turned out all right?"
Remus shrugs in answer to Sirius' question, steering the group towards the check-in counter. "I'm still here, aren't I?"
"And I've been up loads of times," Lily adds, lifting her bag onto the scale. "It's just like the Hogwarts Express. Honest."
"Yeah, except we're about ten kilometers up and if it breaks down we all plunge to our dooms."
"Shut up, Padfoot." James looks slightly green around the gills and they haven't even set foot on the plane yet.
"Merlin's beard, Prongs, you're a Quidditch player!"
Remus sighs. Oh, this is going to be a long flight.
"Don't worry, James, they've even got a little food trolley," Lily assures him as they head for the security queue. "You like the food trolley."
"Blimey, this is a long queue." Sirius' shaggy dark head bobs above the crowd as he tries to see what's ahead. "What's it for, surely the food's not that good?"
Remus chuckles. "This is the security checkpoint. So they know no one's going to try to blow up a plane or anything."
James pales. "Muggles do that?" Lily pats his arm in what's supposed to be a reassuring manner, but she's not quite straight-faced enough to pull it off.
"Only sometimes."
"Here," Remus says, trying hard not to laugh as he thrusts plastic bins into everyone's arms. "Shoes, coats, anything metal, in these." He pauses for a moment. "Wands are probably all right."
"Why?"
"Merlin knows." Shaking his head, Remus turns to note, with mild amusement, that James is now staring just a little too hard at Lily as she bends over to untie her trainers. "Oi, Prongs, stop gawking at your girlfriend's arse and get your shoes off, will you?"
They pass through the rest of the security without too much trouble (Sirius is a bit overawed by the metal detectors, and James has to go through twice when he forgets to empty his pockets) but getting through the terminal is another matter entirely.
"You've all been in Muggle London before," Lily says impatiently, when even Remus gets a bit bedazzled by the endless reams of merchandise - t-shirts saying "I ♥ UK" and mugs adorned with a Union Jack and so, so many mindless magazines.
"Yes, but this is so much more--" Sirius pauses, unable to think of a fitting word, and James finishes his sentence for him.
"--touristy."
"Is that even a word?" Remus wonders, as James wanders off to peer at the snow globes.
"Incredible," he decides, watching the tiny flakes swirling around the glass. "And all without magic!"
The loudspeaker crackles on. "Flight 724 to Vancouver is now boarding. All passengers please return to gate C32."
"Damn it," Lily hisses, grabbing James' wrist and dragging him away from the shotglass display. "That's our flight."
"Right." Taking the hint, Remus steers Sirius away from the magazine rack. "On we go, Padfoot."
--
"It's a bit small, isn't it?" James says, glancing around the cramped cabin. He frowns, prodding at the seat cushions.
"Get a move on, kids," a man says angrily from behind them. "You're holding up the aisle."
"Sorry," Remus replies quickly, as Sirius declares his claim to the window seat. James slides in beside him and Lily takes the aisle, leaving Remus with the lone seat in front. He's starting to think that means his duties as a Muggle-world guide are over for the duration of the flight until Sirius pokes at his shoulder from between the seat backs.
"Moony," he says excitedly, holding up a dogeared Skymall. "Have you seen what they've got for sale in these things? They've got an automatic dog feeder!"
"Get Padfoot one of those and he'll love you for life," James adds, earning himself a sharp elbow to the ribs. "Ow! Blimey, Padfoot, do you file your bones when we're not watching?"
"Oh!" Lily exclaims, leaning around James to peer out the window. "I think we're moving." At this, Sirius and James lunge for the window at the same time, fighting for space to look through the tiny pane. Being closer, Sirius wins.
"We're going faster," he notes. "And I think we're up!" He leans back, shaking his head. "Muggles. Are we sure they're not secretly all wizards?"
Lily laughs. "I'm pretty sure, Sirius."
"Oh. Well, then."
--
"That," James declares, squeezing past Lily to his seat, "is the smallest bathroom I have ever seen. Ever."
Sirius sighs, occupying himself by sliding the window shade up and down. "This is so boring. How much longer is it, Moony?"
"You asked me that ten minutes ago." Remus feels slightly snappish. "If you wanted to get there quickly you could have taken the Portkey."
"And wait around with Wormtail?" He snorts. "No thanks."
"Honestly," James insists, still fixated on his previous train of thought. "It's not even a loo, it's like . . . half a loo!"
Sirius waggles his eyebrows. "Well then it's a good thing you've only got half a-- ow! What was that for?"
"Merlin help us," Lily sighs, trying hard not to smile. "How much longer did you say it was again, Remus?"