That Darn Cat
Disclaimer: First and foremost, the PPC originated from the wonderful brains of Jay and Acacia. Discworld is the intellectual and legal property of, of course, Sir Terry Pratchett, as are all featured characters thereof. This fic, however, is the creation of one Bard Kayna. Athough s/he seems to have forgotten about it for the time being, Agents Kayla Richards and Teek Virtanen are nevertheless disposing of it, and belong to Cassie Cameron-Young and Lycaenion, respectively. The fic in its original form can be found here: What the Cat Dragged in.
Betaed by the most awesome and amazing lady_rilwen.
This mission follows on directly from the interlude Meeting The Squad.
Everything was peaceful in RC #1123. Not quiet, with the snuffling of the bright blue ypur currently being absently petted and the splashing coming from the bathroom, but peaceful. Kayla Richards, veteran Assassin of the PPC, was sprawled comfortably on her bed, reading a slightly battered book which bore the legend "Jingo" across the front. This state of affairs had lasted for a whole ten minutes now.
Up in the ether somewhere, however, the Narrative Laws of Comedy were watching and waiting.
The splashing stopped abruptly. Kayla looked up from her book, and began counting quietly.
"Three... two... one..."
[BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!]
"Let the record show," came a muffled yell from the direction of the bathroom, "that even from a different room, with the door closed, and I have water in my ears, that is still really bloody loud!"
At the familiar sound of his owner shouting at the top of her lungs, Ares the small rage sat up on his haunches and roared, to add to the effect; unfortunately, as he was little more than seven inches from draconic snout to barbed tail, this did not add much.
"All right, all right, quiet down, will ya?" Kayla called back as she stood up, directing her comment partly towards the bathroom and partly towards Ares. "I'm sortin' it." She put her book down regretfully and went over to the console, barely reaching it in time to hit the acknowledgement button before it went off again. A few moments later, as she began reading the fic, her generally amiable mood faded, to be replaced with severe annoyance.
"Teek? Hurry up, will you?" she yelled, after a minute or so had passed with no sign of the teenager emerging from the bathroom.
"Okay, how bad is it?" were the first words out of her partner's mouth, as the younger Assassin came bounding out as fast as was sensible (socks and Generic Surface had remarkably little friction with one another, and this had been learned the hard way) and grabbed her boots.
Kayla's fist thudded against the Console; luckily, it wasn't so hard or in so delicate a place that anything was damaged. "Goddamn Discworld Sue. A werecat in the City Watch. Come an' check it out for yourself."
"A were...cat?" Teek echoed, pronouncing the word like it was a new and particularly nasty disease, and approached the console with according trepidation. "Never been on a Disc mission before," she offered, as though it might, against all odds and particularly against Kayla's expression, turn out to be fun.
She craned her head forward to peer at the screen, and had barely got past the first line of text before grimacing. "What kind of name is Phellinna?" She went through a few more pronunciations, looking each time as though the word left a rancid taste in her mouth, before recognising the pun on 'feline.'
"A Sue's, obviously." Kayla continued to seethe for a few moments, then turned towards her equipment. "C'mon, I don't wanna hang about. Nobody messes with Sir Sam Vimes." She was already fastening knives to various places about her person, her expression resembling that of an enraged tiger.
Teek, hurrying to her side of the room, was about to reach for her mek'leth when she saw how many weapons Kayla had outfitted herself with, and then got an even better look at the woman's face. Hastily, she grabbed an ordinary short sword she'd acquired a while previously, and fastened the belt about her waist. There were times when you fought your Sue one-on-one with a Klingon blade, and there were times you just stood back and let your partner deal out vengeance.
Besides, Teek recalled, adjusting the scabbard at her hip with one hand and shoving the needed items into her bag with the other, the hilt of this one had some silver inlaid into it, or at least something silvery. Depending on how much the author remembered about lycanthropes, if worst came to worst and Kayla was incapacitated, she could always just bonk the Sue over the head and hope for the best.
Once her weapons were in place, including one silver knife she'd been keeping for in case they did get a werewolf-type Sue, Kayla marched back over to the Console, shoving an inoffensive chair out of her way as she went, and began entering the disguises forcefully. "Random Watchmen suit you?" she queried over her shoulder.
"Best thing for the Watch House," Teek agreed, slinging her bag over her shoulder and heading towards the Console herself, making a few absentminded attempts to dry her still-soaking hair with her old Convenient Towel as she did so.
"Well, Watchwomen," Kayla clarified as an afterthought, as she finished setting their disguises and hit the portal button. "Get ready, 'cause you're gonna be doing the charges," she added, grabbing a pair of nose plugs as an afterthought and handing another set to Teek. The blue doorway flickered into life, and she stepped through without a moment's hesitation. As her partner joined her a few seconds later in the featureless pre-fic grey, the disclaimer echoed around them.
Disclaimer: Terry Pratchett owns this, not me. Unfortunately.
"Excuse me?" Kayla frowned, and peered at the words again. "Is she sayin' this story belongs to the Great God PTerry?" An absent but reverential holy-horns gesture followed this comment.
"If she is, it's a pity he's not the smiting type," Teek commented, but quietly; three things had just popped into existence before them. One was a desk, behind which sat the second, a slightly unfocused-looking Vimes, and the third, of course, was the Sue. With the lack of any other written detail, canon asserted itself around these three things and the scene resolved itself into Commander Vimes's office in the Pseudopolis Yard Watch House.
Kayla, though giving the Sue a Death Glare, spared Teek an appreciative nod and tugged her towards the door. They didn't need to share the room with the Sue to keep an eye on her, and besides, Kayla could feel a rant or several approaching. Once they were out in the corridor, she turned to the teenager and nodded towards the notepad. "All right, what've we got so far?"
The other Agent squinted down at her own abysmal handwriting. "Well, she claims she's the only werecat, so that probably makes her Speshul by default... er, and I had to quote this bit from the Words because I couldn't even believe it. Her mum's a werewolf that 'had a defect so that when she was Changed she was about the size of a Chihuahua. My father was a rather blind tomcat.'"
"She what?" Kayla leaned over to look at the charge list. "Nu-uh. No way. The only way I'd buy a cat gettin' with a werewolf is if the cat's Greebo, and I can't see him in any position to try." She peered at the Words, just in case, and nearly swore, but caught herself just in time. No point setting a bad example, she decided. "Put down 'implyin' that cutting your hair short is a sign of bein' a female werewolf'," she said instead, mentally listing all the things she'd have preferred to say.
Obediently scribbling this down, Teek looked at the Words again herself, and promptly snorted. "And screwing with Ankh-Morpork logic. She says she'll be good for watching people since no one notices street cats - yeah, unless you're a furrier or..." She adjusted her badge, trying to remember the other perils of the city streets, then realised the folly of trying to even count them. "Besides," she added, "I bet some of 'em probably end up being sold by Dibbler at some point."
Her brief grin was quickly and ruthlessly wiped from her face. "Tell me if I'm wrong, but would Vimes really get nervous about her possibly not liking Angua? I mean, he's... Vimes..." Glancing back at Kayla, Teek let her voice trail away before it headed somewhere dangerous. The good part was, from her partner's expression, she most likely wasn't wrong. The bad part was, also from said expression, that they'd been here for less than ten minutes.
"Yeah. He's Vimes." Kayla's scowl grew a little deeper. "He doesn't give a damn about what people like or not. And why ain't he puttin' her with Detritus and Colon? They handle the new recruits first. ...Wait, stupid question. Ugh." She pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes. "Damnit. I guess there's a reason they don't stick me on the Discworld beat much."
Footsteps from inside the office made her look round sharply, and she ducked aside from the door quickly as Vimes and Phellinna emerged. One hand strayed to her silver knife's hilt, but she restrained herself and focused on the Watch Commander. This seemed to calm her down a little.
Teek, feeling strangely depressed at how, well, damp this weak-willed version of Vimes was, had chosen to look around the hallway instead of at the characters or, more notably, the Words. This soon proved to be a mistake, as moments after the Sue left the building, the chapter ended.
The first thing the teenager heard, as she slowly raised her head and tried very hard not to be sick, was a high-pitched "Bingely-bingely-beep!" Groaning (in tandem with Vimes, as it happened), she sat up and carefully edged into a corner, wondering if she should even bother with a CAD reading. It was, she reflected, rather like trying to categorise a hurricane when your house was already lacking a roof.
Unsurprisingly, with the Ironic Overpower watching, Kayla immediately nudged her. "Got the CAD?" She'd kept her balance a little better during the two-month time jump, and was staring at Vimes once again.
Teek sighed. "It's your burned fingers," she cautioned, and dug the device out of her bag. "Please tell me I can charge for having 'a cat's talent to stare at one thing for hours on end'" - this with disparaging gestured quotation marks - "be a reason for her doing so well that Vimes picks her to come to Vetinari's banquet and promotes her? Ooh," she amended, squinting at the ensuing Words, "yeah, let her work for Vetinari, that'll get rid of her and we can go do something fun..."
"Hm? Yeah, sure, charge for that." Kayla aimed the CAD at Vimes with a dubious but hopeful expression, and raised an eyebrow as it beeped quietly.
[Duke Samuel Vimes. Ankh-Morpork City Watch Commander. Human. Canon. OOC 24.9243%.]
"Huh. He's pretty in-character right now, apart from goin' on about little miss Risin'-Star-In-The-Ranks. Then again, not wanting to go to the banquet and abusin' his Dis-Organiser is like him."
"I've never seen it work it out to that many decimal places," Teek said thoughtfully, leaning over to get a look at the screen. "It's probably confused. Oh, damnit, there goes Vimes... c'mon, they leave for the bloody banquet in a couple paragraphs from now. Suethor likes timeskips."
"No, she just doesn't seem to know how to do it right. Not even a paragraph break or anything." As they headed down the stairs after the put-upon Duke, Kayla reached over and deftly plucked the notebook and pen from Teek's hands. "One sec, something I just remembered." She scrawled a charge as carefully as was possible when going down a flight of stairs before handing the items back.
"There you go." On turning back to where she was going, she almost walked into Vimes's back before catching herself and sidestepping smoothly. "Damn, that was close. Anyway -" She cut herself off, gaping at what the Sue was currently eating. "Is she serious? Rat-onna-stick?"
"Possibly better for your health than sausage-inna-bun." Teek shrugged. "As long as she doesn't start cleaning herself with her tongue or drinking milk out of a saucer, I can handle i- oh, sodding hell, I think my eyes just fried..." She covered her face with her hands and groaned again; immediately after the Sue had left the common room to, at Vimes's direction, "put something fancy on," she arrived at the palace gate, having done so. As such, the world did not so much shift as fast-forward; the resulting blur did nasty things to the human retina, which the sight of Phellinna's figure-hugging silvery dress did little to help.
"Ow. Ow ow ow." Kayla rubbed her eyes rather gently in an attempt to massage them back into functioning properly. Once they (reluctantly) did so, she watched Phellinna with bemusement. "So... d'you reckon that dress means she's immune to silver, or not?"
"Dunno, do you think they'd be using actual silver thread? And would the Suethor pay that much attention?" Teek rolled her eyes, and added the traditional "spectacular figure" charge with an air of resigned duty.
As they followed their quarry, who was now accompanied by Sam Vimes and Sybil Ramkin-Vimes, Kayla shrugged. "I guess you're right. Well, she ain't mentioned it, so that makes killin' her a lot easier when the time comes."
"It might just give her a nasty rash," Teek grumbled, as the unusual optimism she had maintained thus far decided it had overstayed its welcome.
"We can dream." Indeed, a slightly reminiscent look had come over Kayla's face. "Last time I saw a Sue with a rash, it was 'cause I sneaked poison ivy into her bath lotion. A bit petty, I know, but she was reeeeeeally irritating me, so I thought I'd irritate her back."
"Hey, nothing happens till the second course," the other Agent noted, once she'd recovered from her uncontrollable snickering. "Let's get some Generic Appetisers."
"We ate not that long ago," Kayla pointed out, but she went along willingly enough, nibbling on a few tasteless appetisers once she'd stuffed some of the more long-lasting types into a small box in her bag. PPC Agents never turned down edible food.
For a little while after that, the pair of Assassins hung around doing nothing much except chatting and intermittently watching the fic. A feast wasn't exactly the most thrilling of things to observe, after all. That was, until halfway through the second course, as Teek had pointed out. At this point, Vetinari decided to offer a toast to the Sue, apropos of completely nothing. He then grinned at her.
Kayla was visibly less amused. "She. Made. Him. Do. What?"
Teek, who thus far had been paying unusual attention to the Words out of a mixture of morbid curiosity and an utter inability to believe what she was seeing, tried not to flinch. Knowing the future, she decided, was a bugger.
After the banquet, the table was rolled away and everyone stood up and mingled, except for the people who didn’t care about politics. Vimes didn’t, but Lady Sybil did, and so Phellinna remained. At least, she remained in a corner. Cats were very social creatures, when they felt like it, but it was near enough to full moon that Phellinna didn’t want to give in to the cat’s instinct.
"If she's a bother, just use the spray bottle," Teek muttered, watching the mingling with a jaded eye indeed. Here it comes...
Vetinari climbed up onto the dais at the end of the hall, and the second bomb dropped.
Vetinari had been smiling oddly at Phelinna all evening, and so it was to everyone’s surprise but Phellinna’s when he announced:
“My dear Phellinna… Will you marry me?”
Kayla swore very, very quietly, as the entire room had fallen silent. Luckily, instead of doing anything which would have attracted attention, she simply leaned against the wall, closed her eyes, and took several deep breaths. Only her white-knuckled fists betrayed how utterly close to exploding she was. The third chapter took over, though as it was in exactly the same point in place and time, this went unnoticed.
“Of course not.”
The entire hall stared as one, their mouths open. Refusing Vetinari anything often meant your death warrant. Vetinari seemed just as shocked as anyone.
“But- but- Why not?” he stammered. This was almost as shocking. Vetinari never stammered.
"I think there are some pretty goddamn good reasons," Kayla snapped quietly, as Phellinna got round to pointing out a "young man dressed in wizard's robes". "You got 'using cheap and implausible plot devices' and 'making a goddamn wizard out of character'?"
"Can you give me a minute?" Teek hissed, darting around on the opposite side of the room, far away from her notepad and pen. The younger Assassin seemed to be engaged in some bizarre one-woman dance, alternately lunging down to grasp at what seemed to be empty air, and straightening up only to whirl around and lunge again. From the amount of grumbling which accompanied this, as well as the way her teeth were gritted, she was clearly not enjoying herself. There was also a quiet, high-pitched hiss, as of a very small kettle on the boil, but it did not seem to be coming from Teek.
After a few moments more, the mystery was resolved, as the teenager hurried back with her hands clamped tightly around something, grinning with a savage sort of triumph. "Got the sparkly little qoH!" The hissing was noticeably louder now, and mingled with other noises that, though extremely muffled, did not sound polite.
"Whoops. Sorry, didn't see you go." Kayla leaned closer for a better look, and began rummaging in her pack on recognising the mini-Sue 'Phelinna'. "What d'you want to do with it? Dump it somewhere to get eaten, or finish it ourselves?"
Opening her hands just a fraction, Teek peered in at her irate little captive. "Do you think Ares might want it?"
"Good point." The older Assassin produced her RA and hunched over to hide what she was doing from anyone who might have been looking their way, before opening a very small portal. "There. Shove her through. Hey, Ares, snacktime!" she added, through the portal.
Without any further ado, Teek dropped the mini-Sue in and sat back, making a bit of a show of dusting off her hands. "Problem solved. Ooh," she added suddenly, turning back to look at the genuine article, "if she's charging the wizard, it'd be pretty funny if we went and charged her now, right?" Because I really don't want to see you end up like Crebaina...
"Maybe, but..." The charge list was taken off her and examined briefly. "We ain't got enough yet, and there's a couple of doozies coming up. We can wait. Lucky for us this fic's nice and short." Kayla settled down to watching as Vetinari was led off to recover from the love potion he'd been somehow slipped, and Vimes and the Sue arrested the unnamed "wizard". Fortunately for the Agents, or at least for Teek's nerves, Kayla's temper seemed to have been improved somewhat by the mini-Sue incident.
Teek sighed, and tried not to hope for the best in case the Narrative Laws were watching. "How much you want to bet the real Vetinari's at the bottom of a plothole?" she offered instead.
"...Nah. He's just been possessed, that's all. A quick exorcism and neuralysation'll sort him out once we're done with the Sue. Which is good, 'cause I don't wanna have to try tanglin' with him."
Teek nodded fervently. "Good. Because even after we got rid of a replacement, I might still associate his face with the need to punch it." She shook her head. "I think it was the stammering what did me i- ugh!"
Once again, the scene degraded to a blur of motion, light and darkness as events shifted to the following day; the word 'phantasmagoria' might have come to mind, if either Agent's brain could have found it under the circumstances. After a mercifully short time, things settled back - and then did it again, only faster.
"Goddamnit!" was the first coherent contribution made once the scene finally settled properly, after a set of Author's Notes and yet another chapter change. This, along with other complaints, was quickly stifled once the Agents realised exactly where they were: the Oblong Office. They scrambled into a corner out of sight very quickly as Phellinna entered the room, which caused Vetinari to raise one eyebrow in what the author chose to call an "awesome display of skill". Unable to do anything without drawing attention to themselves, Kayla and Teek made themselves as comfortable as possible and watched the scene.
“You summoned me, my lord?” she asked. She knew what he wanted to talk about, of course.
“I did. Please sit.” Phellinna sat.
“I’m assuming you wish to discuss last week’s… ah, incident.” It didn’t show, but Phellinna was nervous. Causing Lord Vetinari any sort of embarrassment, even unintentionally, was often fatal.
Teek dearly wished she'd had a beverage in hand; there was no way to do justice to that without a spit-take. "Don't you mean always fatal?" she snapped, regardless of this misfortune, and then immediately slapped a hand across her face. "If Vetinari still had his head on straight right now, you'd bloody well think twice about accepting tea from him... or, no, you probably wouldn't." Having been about to work herself up into quite a good fury, Teek deflated a bit and sat back. Sheer Sueish obliviousness made a difficult obstacle. Kayla patted her sympathetically on the shoulder.
"It's painful to watch, but at least we haven't got much more t'go," she said in as cheerful a tone as she could muster up. In truth, however, she was finding it difficult not to thump her head against the nearest wall as Phellinna made baseless speculations about the cause of the banquet scene.
"He or she is probably a political rival trying to embarrass you. I think the eyes have something to do with it.”
Vetinari, predictably, raised his eyebrow.
"What the hell? Does she think his eyebrows are on springs or something? The way they've been goin' up and down... Wait, I'll shut up before the Word World takes me literally."
"Maybe he thinks he's Spock."
"How'd I know you were gonna mention that?" Kayla chuckled.
Teek gave her the most wide-eyed, winning expression she could manage. "You've got used to me." She happened to glance back at the Sue, and the winning expression contorted into something that wouldn't have won much except a call for an ambulance. "You remember when I said the whole cat thing didn't bother me unless she started drinking like one? I think the Ironic Overpower heard me. Eurgh," she moaned, "that tongue's bloody creepy..."
"We can always remove it before we take her out, if it bothers you that much."
Teek tensed perceptibly. "No, thanks. I've gone right off inventive Sue surgery."
"Ah, okay. Just a thought." Kayla glanced back at the scene, only to find they'd missed the rest of the conversation and Phellinna was now being dismissed for the "pressing matter" of a bath.
"Let's catch up with her at the Watch House," Teek decided, perusing the following Words and pulling her Remote Activator from her bag. "She goes to talk to Angua - pfft," she snorted, "what a little copycat! She wants to get a collar with a Watch badge too. Oh," this upon seeing the face her partner made at her, "pun not intended, I swear."
"I know, I know... I've gotta admit, though," Kayla said reluctantly as she stepped through the portal, "that the idea makes sense in context. Probably the first thing we've seen about her that does."
"Yeah," Teek conceded, once she'd followed suit, "I just don't feel like giving her any points at all right now. My eyes still hurt." She glared at the door now before them as though it was personally responsible, which, since Disc canon still dictated the scenery, was rather unfair. "Flip to see who neuralyses Angua?" she asked, digging through the pockets of her uniform and then her bag to find a coin or anything comparable.
"Nah, you get to handle her. I get the kill this time, remember?" Kayla pulled out her sunglasses and slipped them on neatly, tapping her fingers on the hilt of one knife. "Soon as she comes outta the room, go for it. Then we can nip in and handle Miss Werecat."
"Right, right." There was no way Teek was going to argue this one. Holding the neuralyser ready, she waited until the door opened and the sergeant walked out; her eyes had a touch of the same glassiness which had afflicted Vimes, but to nowhere near the same extent. Upon a sudden, bright flash of light, of course, this changed.
"Sergeant Angua von Überwald," Teek announced, being formal more or less for the hell of it, "you did not just give advice to a werecat constable named Phellinna, reason being that she doesn't actually exist. You can go back to your regularly scheduled duties."
Angua nodded and headed off, taking no further notice of the unruly-haired Lance-Constable in the dark glasses, nor of the Sergeant who stood a few paces behind, fairly bristling with knives. "Nice job," Kayla murmured, patting her partner on the shoulder. "Got your charge list ready?"
Teek fairly brandished the notepad. "Do I ever."
"Let's do this, then." Whipping off the sunglasses and tucking them into a pocket, Kayla entered the room quickly. "'Scuse me, Constable... Vineet? Me an' my colleague here need a quick word."
The werecat Sue heaved a long sigh, and walked forward to meet them, idly running her fingernails up and down the wood of the doorjamb. "Make it fast, I'm starving and have important things to do."
"I hope you were talking to me," the young Lance-Constable snapped, glaring bloody murder. "'Cause unless you can't see those stripes on her, I'm gonna have to add insubordination to this."
Phellinna blinked, narrowing her eyes. Cats did not like being caught by surprise, and something about these two just stroked her fur the wrong way. "To what?" she hissed, and did so rather more literally than a human would.
"Close the door, please, Kayla?" the junior officer asked, then cleared her throat and held up a small pad of lined paper. "Ahem. Phellinna Vineet -"
"That's Constable Vineet to you!"
"In that case, Constable, I'm tellin' you to sit down an' shut up," Kayla snapped; her patience had just been worn too far.
Teek gave her a brief nod of thanks, and resumed her speech to the thunderstruck Phellinna. "Like I was saying, you are hereby charged with being a Mary Sue, being a werecat in a continuum where no such thing is known to exist, being the only one of said species as the result of a mating which is not only biologically impossible but bloody ridiculous, messing with the laws of Disc werewolf physiology, having naturally tabby-striped hair, implying that cutting your hair short is a sign of being a female werewolf, retaining animal characteristics while still in human form, messing with Ankh-Morpork logic in respect to street cats, making Sir Samuel Vimes nervous for no good reason and having him perform duties unsuited to his current station, messing with Vimes in general, providing illogical reasons for promotion, causing really eye-searing time distortions, willingly eating a rat-onna-stick, making specific note of your spectacular figure, disrupting the character of Vetinari by causing him to offer toasts, grin, allow a love potion to be slipped into his drink and nearly give PPC Agents heart attacks as a result of such, and stammer, in that order."
She paused for breath, and to make sure that the Sue wasn't going to risk Kayla's wrath too soon by trying to protest. "You are further charged with using cheap and implausible plot devices, making a wizard out of character, briefly creating a mini-Sue, causing even worse time distortions, attempting and failing to create a plausible and interesting mystery, having the Watch choose not to investigate a murder for no specified reason, causing Vetinari to raise his eyebrow far too often, causing Vetinari to make pathetic attempts at his usual sarcasm, infuriating PPC Agents to the extent of probably giving them ulcers, worrying the partners of said Agents, annoying PPC Agents, and just plain being annoying. For all these crimes, you are sentenced to death. And that's my bit. Have fun trying to chase Death of Rats, kitty." Okay, as witty last one-liners went, that kind of sounded better in my head... oh well.
The gentle sound of the notepad's cover being flipped down didn't make a very good death knell, but at least it wasn't likely to attract attention. Kayla gave her partner a bemused look. "Ulcers? Come on, I ain't that far gone yet."
"...I did say 'probably'?" Teek offered meekly, not wanting to risk offending the senior Agent. This earned her a quick grin.
"I know, I know, I'm kiddin' with you - Oi! I didn't say you could go anywhere!" This last was to Phellinna, who had finally twigged that her number was up and was making a run for it. "Damnit!" Kayla pulled her silver knife and dived after the Sue, managing to get one arm around her waist just as they reached the nearest window. There was a brief struggle, but Phellinna's much-touted catlike abilities allowed her to haul them both through the open window and into the street below. Luckily, it was on the ground floor.
"Goddamnit! Will you stay still?" echoed back through to Teek. There were a lot of muffled struggling sounds, a soft organic noise, a shout of, "Oh no you don't - Ow! Bitch!" and finally, a rather heartrending yowl that most definitely did not come from a human throat.
What'd Kayla do, step on her tail? "Is victory ours?" Teek called, leaning cautiously out of the window and looking around. The Agent in question looked up at her from the gutter she and the Sue had landed in, looking very disgruntled. In one hand was the knife, now smeared with the glittery red substance that passed for Sue blood (which, incidentally, was also smeared rather liberally across Kayla's current uniform), and in the other was the now very definitely dead Sue, in cat form. A set of liberally-bleeding scratches was clearly visible on Kayla's arm.
"Yeah, we're just goddamn peachy," was the snippy reply as she stood up and dropped the Sue unceremonially. "Smartass Sue draggin' me outta the window..."
"Well, we can think of a hundred and one things to do with her later, or see if there's enough room to swing her." Teek paused, but she had exhausted her repertoire of dead cat jokes for the moment. "In the meantime, let's hurry up so we can get you to Medical. Cat-scratch fever's supposed to be bad enough without the cat being a Sue." Wondering exactly how in hell she felt so calm, the teenager looked back towards the door, then shrugged and vaulted out of the window herself.
She didn't land quite as gracefully on the cobbles as she'd hoped, and her right ankle quickly let her know it hadn't been overly thrilled with the idea, but Teek shrugged this off. They still had quite a few neuralysations to go, and she hadn't sprained or twisted anything. "Want me to see if I can find a bandage for that?" she asked, trying to see how deep the scratches were.
"Should be a couple in my pack, if you wanna dig one out." Kayla was dabbing at the injury with the cleanest part of her shirt she could find - not an easy task, after falling into an Ankh-Morpork gutter and rolling around in it with a Sue. "Lucky these ain't too deep. She was panickin' too much." There was a thoughtful pause. "Gotta hand it to her, Changing was a good move."
"Might've worked better if she'd actually been a werewolf like everyone else. Then again, I'm not complaining." Eventually, Teek found a roll of gauze in a side pocket, and motioned for Kayla to hold out her arm so that she could bind it. "Where do you think Vimes has got to?" she mused as she worked. "Vetinari's probably still in his office practising his eyebrow raises, or wondering where his brain's gone, or something."
"Good question. We can try his office first, but you know what he's like; he's more likely to be out on patrol if he thinks he can get away with it. So that just means searchin' the whole city - owowow, not so tight!"
"Sorry!" Teek yelped, and frantically unwound the gauze a little, loosening it, though she herself remained rigid with panic. "It's just - I just remembered, sod cat-scratch fever, werewolves pass on their condition by biting you! Clawing's pretty much the same damn thing, right, and she drew blood, and -"
Kayla swore rather comprehensively, her face going rather pale as she processed this. "She - hell with this, you figure Medical can block it or somethin'? This ain't good..."
"Medical can do practically anything." Teek's assertion sounded just a little too fervent.
"Yeah - yeah, you're right." Kayla closed her eyes for a moment and took a few deep breaths, trying to calm the frantic thumping of her heart. Keep it together in front of your partner, don't worry her by freaking out, at least it's a Disc werething even if it was a Sue... "I'll be okay. Maybe I should - do you think you can handle the neuralysations if I head back to Medical and just... get it checked out to make sure? Sooner the better, and all. If you want I'll stay and help you get them done, though. Get 'em done faster."
Teek's tenuous ponytail flew wildly as she shook her head. "Neuralysing I can handle, I've done a bunch of 'em alone before. Besides, you're right, it'll take close to forever to track down Vimes, and I really don't want you staggering along being sick, or slowly transmogrifying, or whatever the hell happens..."
"Okay, if you're sure. I mean, it's probably nothin', I'm sure Angua's bitten a few people before now in fights and whatnot," Kayla replied, managing a quick smile as she fumbled for her RA. "But better safe than sorry, huh? Just be careful with Vetinari, and I'll see you back at the RC in a bit, I should think."
"Right. Yeah. Sure." Teek tried to smile back, and found that the muscles required did not like working under these conditions. She'll be fine, she's got to be, I can't lose another partner I just started to like, not again, even if she starts chasing yarn balls at full moon and scratching up the furniture they'll still let her stay with me... She watched as the portal unfurled and Kayla stepped through, and stood there for some moments after it had vanished, looking at the place where it had been.
The problem of how to find Vimes eventually sidled back and presented itself, and Teek scuffed one boot against the cobbles of the street for a while, thinking hard. Epiphany struck, and she dug out the CAD from her bag, hoping it might have some kind of character locating system.
Several fruitless minutes of button-pushing later, epiphany stormed off in a huff. "Great. Just Glaurunging wonderful. I should just start walking, but how am I supposed to find Vimes before my legs give out?" Teek asked of nothing in particular.
"I might be able to give you some wossname, assistance there, miss," came a voice from behind her.
Having by no means expected to receive an answer, Teek turned around, very slowly... and saw no one. Then she looked down, and the hand which had already been drawing her sword fell limp, as did the other one, with shock. "It's Gaspode the bloody Wonder Dog," she said, to what was presumably a different nonexistent audience from the first one.
"Shoulda known your type'd reckernise me," he commented, scratching absently at one ear. "I seen your lot around plenty o' times before, every time one o' these weird 'uns turns up makin' things go wrong and all the other big 'uns go funny in the head." He sniffed at the remains of Phellinna. "This'n's not as messy as the last, though."
"...My lot?" Teek repeated, staring blankly at the dead werecat as though the answer was hidden in its stripes. Then understanding dawned, and she only barely managed to hold back the yelp of The PPC?! that leapt to her lips. "What did the last, er, weird one do?" she asked weakly instead. "And who was chasing it?"
"You prob'ly don't want to know what happened, miss." He paused. "And I couldn't tell you 'oo it was chasin' it, on account of as they never told me what their names was. Anyway, you want me to lend a paw with this problem of yours or not?"
"Uh, sure," Teek managed, rubbing her temples with her fingertips to nudge her brain back into working. "Okay, I need to get Vimes, Sybil, and Vetinari... Sybil's probably at home," she said, thinking aloud, "and I don't think Vetinari could figure out how to leave the Palace right now even if he wanted to, so I just need help with finding Vimes..."
"Lady Ramkin? Nah, she's down at the Sunshine Sanctuary. That place where she looks after all them swamp dragons," Gaspode added helpfully. "Dangerous little buggers, they are, explodin' if you so much as sneezes near 'em. I ain't going near there. But I'll help you find Vimes. Saw him heading off towards the Brass Bridge not half an hour ago."
Teek nodded knowledgeably, privately wishing she did know her way around Ankh-Morpork, even if it wouldn't be half as well as Gaspode did... "I'm good with that," she told him, and then glanced back at the body of Phellinna. "Guess I'd better get rid of that first, before we get going... I bet I can just throw her in the Ankh. Or, well, on it," she amended. For obvious reasons, she didn't particularly want to carry the small corpse until they passed by the river, and a moment's thought found an equally obvious solution.
One small portal and absolutely no splash later, this had been accomplished. "You said he's at the Brass Bridge?"
He sniffed the air. "Yeah, mebbe half an hour ago now. Dunno where he's got to, but don't you worry. Gaspode'll set you straight." He trotted off cheerily, leaving her to catch up.
Even though her guide clearly knew what she was doing in his city, and had offered to help entirely of his own free will, Teek couldn't help wondering if this was strictly legal; innumerable tellings-off by the Flowers had finally made her wary of the rules. After a long and tricky bout of trying to rationalise things, she eventually concluded that all the time she would have spent trying to find Vimes herself was time in which she might have found something worse to muck about with.
Unfortunately, considering the very wide variety of things that might entail on the Disc, this wasn't entirely reassuring. Dammit, she grumbled to herself, I'm an Assassin, not a psychologist... Her brain chose that moment to remind her that real Assassins were one of the many things she probably ought to be watching out for, now that the canon had nearly made a full recovery from Phellinna, and she heaved a rather weary sigh as she walked.
Whatever the dangers of her current locale, though, Teek was still captivated enough to try to look at everything they passed by, despite the sadly limited rotation of which the human neck was capable. It took all her concentration not to lose sight of Gaspode.
Several minutes later, they had reached the Brass Bridge, and searched the full length of it. This produced a noticeable lack of Commander Vimes - "You didn't really expect him to hang around this long, did you?" - and they proceeded to follow Gaspode's nose rather further into the city.
Oh no, more sightseeing, Teek thought, grinning a little as she continued after the swiftly trotting dog. Wish Kayla could see this, it'd cheer her up... okay, okay, mind on the job. As Ankh-Morpork continued to be chock-full of distractions, however, this proved to be quite difficult. In the end, with a bit more perseverance, they finally found Vimes having a quiet smoke on the Street of Cunning Artificers.
Teek headed forward, pulling a neuralyser and sunglasses from her bag, trying her utmost not to look like she had violence in mind. Hopefully the uniform would free her from most suspicion. "'Scuse me, Commander?" she called, trying to keep her voice relatively low to avoid any other attention.
He looked round, frowning slightly. "Do I know you? I don't recall seeing you at the Watch House before..."
"Er, I just..." Why am I trying to make up an excuse? He's only... well, he's Vimes... "Um, if you'd just look at this light for a moment I'll explain everything, so -"
FLASH.
Whew. "Commander Sir Samuel Vimes," Teek recited, "you are the Commander of the City Watch of Ankh-Morpork, you're not nervous, you don't promote people without good reason, and you've got much more personality than you probably think... oh, and you never allowed a werecat named Phellinna Vineet into the Watch, because werecats don't exist. And you'd probably better get back to work, come to think of it." Still a little dazed from the neuralysing, he nodded and made his way out of the street.
"He seemed to be coming out of it all right," Teek mused, pushing her own sunglasses up to rest on top of her hair. "I wonder how long it takes for all the Suefluence to fade. Oh well. Now it's off to the Sanctuary..." She paused and looked back at Gaspode, who had sat down nearby and was idly scratching again, then at the neuralyser still in her hand, then back at Gaspode. Repeating the steps brought her no closer to any kind of decision; did she need to wipe his memory or not?
He finished scratching and looked up at her. "What you standin' there like that for? You ain't got me with yer little flashy-memory-changer stick. I ain't that daft. Seen 'em before, ain't I? I knows to look the other way. If yer really worried about me talkin', though... pound of steak does wonders for my memory."
Stuffing the neuralyser back in her pocket, Teek retrieved the Remote Activator instead. "Got a favourite butcher?" she asked, fingers poised over the keys.
"Butcher's Guild's usually good," he noted airily. "If you can get in an' out o' there without any of the wily buggers spotting you. They even spot me, whenever I tries gettin' in."
"I'll just be a second," Teek confidently assured him; the Somebody Else's Problem field, she figured, would be more than enough, but there was no way she was going to explain that. "Besides, if they ask, I can come up with some kinda Watch excuse." Unless they bring it up with Vimes later... well, that's what the neuralyser's for. I can't go back on this now, anyway, or he might not help any other Agents.
Removing the incongruous sunglasses at last, she opened yet another portal, this one large enough to walk through. Mere moments later, she returned, trying to keep hold of an extremely large steak as she stepped back onto the street. Placing it down in front of Gaspode (who suddenly looked even smaller), she wiped her hands on her uniform pants and closed the portal. "How's that?"
"Nice one, miss. Now iffen you don't mind, I'll just nip off and have me lunch nice and peaceful while you goes and does your mystical flashy juju or whatever it is. Pleasure doin' business with you."
"Same to you. You've been a really great help." Teek almost reached down to give him a pat, then thought better of it. Much as she wanted to make sure Kayla was all right, she couldn't afford to have to run back to Medical herself.
Once Gaspode had left, steak in tow, Teek entered another set of co-ordinates and hopped through the next portal, only to find herself immediately regretting this as the smell of swamp dragon gastrointestinal issues hit her nose. Her brief wish to have a swamp dragon as a pet, she silently swore to every Discworld god she could name who might be listening (up to and including, perhaps somewhat unwisely, Bel-Shamharoth), was completely bloody stupid.
"Nngh," she added aloud, suddenly swaying a little as her head spun one way and her stomach another. Clamping one hand over her nose and mouth didn't seem like it would do much but stave off the inevitable, and Teek was beginning to wonder if she ought to run for it and find the nearest gutter when she remembered a better solution.
At long last, and after much frantic one-handed scrabbling in her bag, the nose plugs Kayla had given her were discovered. Once they were installed, Teek realised it hadn't been the Cafeteria food she'd wolfed down earlier that had been causing so much internal trouble, nor even the organ-lurching temporal distortions. Her persistent nausea had been caused by nothing more nor less than good old Ankh-Morpork stench; it had only reached crisis levels now because of the swamp dragons.
They were, she had to admit as she set off, passably cute if seen - though certainly not smelled - from a certain angle, but she desperately hoped she wouldn't accidentally trip over one, or things would really get messy. Speaking of which, her own stomach seemed to have calmed down a little, but it didn't seem wise to hang around. Best to find Sybil and then hightail it to the Palace... where being sick all over the floor would get her in infinitely more trouble. She'd just have to hope for the best, albeit while the Narrative Laws of Comedy weren't looking.
Thanks to the SEP field, all the Sanctuary workers she passed paid absolutely no attention at all to a young member of the Watch with nose plugs and glitter-stained boots; then again, this being Ankh-Morpork, they probably wouldn't have noticed anyway.
Lady Sybil, having escaped all but a few minor mentions, seemed to be doing quite well when Teek found her; the same, unfortunately, could not be said for the dragon she was currently attending to, which was lying on its side, stomach worryingly distended, and staring quite pathetically at one of the very thick walls.
When Teek tentatively called the duchess's name, the look in her eyes as she straightened up to meet the interruption was more than enough proof that Phellinna's effects were waning. Nonetheless, despite how freakishly clement the Flowers had been lately, Teek didn't want to risk it. Quickly raising the neuralyser, she smiled encouragingly and adjusted her sunglasses -
FLASH.
"Lady Sybil, you never met a newly recruited werecat officer named Phellinna Vineet. There are no werecats like that on the Disc. Oh, and your husband's not all soppy and nervous, just for the record, and even if he wanted to be I don't think you'd let him. That'd be it. You can go back to your patient now... oh, oops." The dragon's eyes, she saw, were even glassier than usual. "Er, dragon, you didn't see anything odd happen either, got it?"
She got a nod from the dazed woman and an unpleasant bodily noise from the dragon, both of which she supposed were as good as she was going to get. And, with that, she hurried off to a remote corner by the back wall of the main building, which was as good a spot as any to quietly open a portal.
With her hands still smelling vaguely of steak, and most of the rest of her smelling much less vaguely of the Sanctuary, Teek headed off to the Oblong Office, hoping fervently that Vetinari hadn't recovered his senses yet. She'd rather lost the element of surprise.
Luckily, the final neuralysation went off as smoothly as the others had, and soon Teek was stepping through the final portal into her RC.
Kayla was already there, sitting on her bed and stroking Temujin absently, her face rather wan as she stared into space. At the sound of Teek's arrival, she looked over, managing a slight smile. "Oh, hey. Take it everything went smoothly, then?"
"Gaspode found Vimes all right, I was at the Sanctuary for practically five minutes and none of the dragons exploded, so if anything did hit the fan, it waited till after I left. Oh, and Lady Sybil's in her right mind again, and so's the Patrician - you should've seen how fast that worked, I never jumped back through a portal so fast in my life." Teek stopped there for breath, finally remembering to take off her sunglasses and revealing worried eyes. "I should probably ask you the same thing... am I gonna have to start putting out saucers of milk at night, or what?" She tried to grin, wondering if the tone of her voice had ruined the attempt at a joke.
She received a weak smile in return. "They said - well, they don't think there's a risk, not after disinfectin' it an' all, but... they ain't certain. Said we'll hafta see what happens." Kayla buried her face in her hands.
Something about that little act - seeing the tough, determinedly cheery Raider, the partner she had thought unshakable, so upset - tugged hard at Teek. Almost before she knew it, she was sitting on the bed beside Kayla and putting an arm around her shoulders, hoping to provide comfort as the older woman had so recently done for her. "Hey," she said, cursing her years of failure at motivational speeches, "don't worry. That doesn't sound to me like you should abandon hope..." She debated trying to lighten things up again, but didn't think it would do much good.
"I know." There was silence for a moment. Then Kayla took a deep breath, shook her head slightly, and straightened up a bit, returning the hug. "Just bein' silly. I'll be okay, it's not like Disc werewolves are even that dangerous if they're not nuts." She sat back, smiling properly. "Honestly. I'm gonna be fine. If we need to check, we can always go somewhere with a full moon an' see what happens."
"Whenever you want," Teek said firmly. "Besides, there've been were-Agents before - wait, that sounds like they turn into Agents, but you get what I mean, right? And besides," she added, nudging Kayla very lightly in the ribs, "this'll make up for the time when I was six and really wanted a cat..."
The older Agent couldn't help but laugh. "So now I'm the potential substitute? Cheeky. Besides, I already said I'll be okay. Just as long as we check before our next mission, there'll be nothin' to worry about." A rather large weight had lifted off her shoulders already; knowing Teek wasn't going to be acting any differently around her was a relief, and as long as they made certain of just what her condition was, it'd be manageable.
Now she was thinking properly again rather than just sitting and worrying, however, another solution made itself known. She winced at the idea, but even if it did give bad news it'd only burn a bit. "Teek," she said slowly, "could you maybe pass me that knife of mine?" She nodded to the space by the console, where her things had been put neatly.
"Which one?" The words had barely left Teek's mouth, though, when she cottoned on. The silver knife had been cleaned since she'd seen it last, and now gleamed brightly from among the others. Unconsciously, she put her hand back to the hilt of the sword she still wore. "This didn't bother you just now," she ventured, "unless it's a proximity thing... or this just isn't silver." She scratched dolefully at it with her fingernail, and sighed when this produced, as expected, absolutely nothing. "Knife it is."
Getting up off the bed, she retrieved the weapon in question and handed it to Kayla hilt-first, then stood back a pace and waited, eyes never leaving her partner.
"As far as I know," Kayla pointed out, holding the knife calmly and revealing none of her nervousness, "it only causes damage if it actually touches the skin..." She held out her other hand, and after a moment's hesitation, pressed the flat of the blade firmly to her palm. After a few seconds of silence, she pulled it away and put the knife down, flexing the hand carefully.
"Okay," Teek said after a moment. "No burning, no screaming, no hissing, and no crazed meowing. How's the hand?"
"It's... fine," Kayla replied quietly, running her fingers over the completely unmarked palm. "Nothing's happening." She sounded almost surprised, but then a broad grin took over as she stood up. "I'm gonna be okay!"
Teek answered with a joyful whoop that quite startled Temujin, who had remained by Kayla's bed in case either of the Agents needed reassurance or decided to feed him. "All right! But there's still one other way we can be really sure. Better safe than sorry, right?" Very slowly, Teek raised her hand, reached over... and scratched Kayla behind the ears.
She'd had to do some very quick darting around, and then hide behind the already perplexed ypur; but, Teek decided, it had completely been worth it.
~~~
Author's Notes (Cassie): That was a surprisingly fun mission, even if we did have to go back and rewrite the second half. The decision on which way things would end for Kayla was rather a late one; thanks go to the very helpful people on the PPC Board who offered their suggestions and opinions on the issue. I decided, however, that there really wasn't any extra mileage to be gained from giving her that extra issue to deal with. (Chalk up another success for Medical!) In any case, I absolutely adore this pair of Agents, and look forwards to more missions for them.
Author's Notes (Lycaenion): I don't think I could've asked for a better first Discworld mission (much as the existence of Disc badfic grieves me). It had a kind of light-hearted - well, initially so, anyway - grassroots feel to it. In both versions, it was great to watch the relationship between Teek and Kayla strengthen; the editing was time-consuming, but I feel better for it, and I did get the opportunity for more internal monologuing. Including Gaspode was Cassie's idea, and I just sort of delightedly ran with it. I think Teek might actually have picked up the beginnings of a sense of duty. Must've been by accident; we'll have to see where this leads. Here's to further adventures!
Betaed by the most awesome and amazing lady_rilwen.
This mission follows on directly from the interlude Meeting The Squad.
Everything was peaceful in RC #1123. Not quiet, with the snuffling of the bright blue ypur currently being absently petted and the splashing coming from the bathroom, but peaceful. Kayla Richards, veteran Assassin of the PPC, was sprawled comfortably on her bed, reading a slightly battered book which bore the legend "Jingo" across the front. This state of affairs had lasted for a whole ten minutes now.
Up in the ether somewhere, however, the Narrative Laws of Comedy were watching and waiting.
The splashing stopped abruptly. Kayla looked up from her book, and began counting quietly.
"Three... two... one..."
[BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!]
"Let the record show," came a muffled yell from the direction of the bathroom, "that even from a different room, with the door closed, and I have water in my ears, that is still really bloody loud!"
At the familiar sound of his owner shouting at the top of her lungs, Ares the small rage sat up on his haunches and roared, to add to the effect; unfortunately, as he was little more than seven inches from draconic snout to barbed tail, this did not add much.
"All right, all right, quiet down, will ya?" Kayla called back as she stood up, directing her comment partly towards the bathroom and partly towards Ares. "I'm sortin' it." She put her book down regretfully and went over to the console, barely reaching it in time to hit the acknowledgement button before it went off again. A few moments later, as she began reading the fic, her generally amiable mood faded, to be replaced with severe annoyance.
"Teek? Hurry up, will you?" she yelled, after a minute or so had passed with no sign of the teenager emerging from the bathroom.
"Okay, how bad is it?" were the first words out of her partner's mouth, as the younger Assassin came bounding out as fast as was sensible (socks and Generic Surface had remarkably little friction with one another, and this had been learned the hard way) and grabbed her boots.
Kayla's fist thudded against the Console; luckily, it wasn't so hard or in so delicate a place that anything was damaged. "Goddamn Discworld Sue. A werecat in the City Watch. Come an' check it out for yourself."
"A were...cat?" Teek echoed, pronouncing the word like it was a new and particularly nasty disease, and approached the console with according trepidation. "Never been on a Disc mission before," she offered, as though it might, against all odds and particularly against Kayla's expression, turn out to be fun.
She craned her head forward to peer at the screen, and had barely got past the first line of text before grimacing. "What kind of name is Phellinna?" She went through a few more pronunciations, looking each time as though the word left a rancid taste in her mouth, before recognising the pun on 'feline.'
"A Sue's, obviously." Kayla continued to seethe for a few moments, then turned towards her equipment. "C'mon, I don't wanna hang about. Nobody messes with Sir Sam Vimes." She was already fastening knives to various places about her person, her expression resembling that of an enraged tiger.
Teek, hurrying to her side of the room, was about to reach for her mek'leth when she saw how many weapons Kayla had outfitted herself with, and then got an even better look at the woman's face. Hastily, she grabbed an ordinary short sword she'd acquired a while previously, and fastened the belt about her waist. There were times when you fought your Sue one-on-one with a Klingon blade, and there were times you just stood back and let your partner deal out vengeance.
Besides, Teek recalled, adjusting the scabbard at her hip with one hand and shoving the needed items into her bag with the other, the hilt of this one had some silver inlaid into it, or at least something silvery. Depending on how much the author remembered about lycanthropes, if worst came to worst and Kayla was incapacitated, she could always just bonk the Sue over the head and hope for the best.
Once her weapons were in place, including one silver knife she'd been keeping for in case they did get a werewolf-type Sue, Kayla marched back over to the Console, shoving an inoffensive chair out of her way as she went, and began entering the disguises forcefully. "Random Watchmen suit you?" she queried over her shoulder.
"Best thing for the Watch House," Teek agreed, slinging her bag over her shoulder and heading towards the Console herself, making a few absentminded attempts to dry her still-soaking hair with her old Convenient Towel as she did so.
"Well, Watchwomen," Kayla clarified as an afterthought, as she finished setting their disguises and hit the portal button. "Get ready, 'cause you're gonna be doing the charges," she added, grabbing a pair of nose plugs as an afterthought and handing another set to Teek. The blue doorway flickered into life, and she stepped through without a moment's hesitation. As her partner joined her a few seconds later in the featureless pre-fic grey, the disclaimer echoed around them.
Disclaimer: Terry Pratchett owns this, not me. Unfortunately.
"Excuse me?" Kayla frowned, and peered at the words again. "Is she sayin' this story belongs to the Great God PTerry?" An absent but reverential holy-horns gesture followed this comment.
"If she is, it's a pity he's not the smiting type," Teek commented, but quietly; three things had just popped into existence before them. One was a desk, behind which sat the second, a slightly unfocused-looking Vimes, and the third, of course, was the Sue. With the lack of any other written detail, canon asserted itself around these three things and the scene resolved itself into Commander Vimes's office in the Pseudopolis Yard Watch House.
Kayla, though giving the Sue a Death Glare, spared Teek an appreciative nod and tugged her towards the door. They didn't need to share the room with the Sue to keep an eye on her, and besides, Kayla could feel a rant or several approaching. Once they were out in the corridor, she turned to the teenager and nodded towards the notepad. "All right, what've we got so far?"
The other Agent squinted down at her own abysmal handwriting. "Well, she claims she's the only werecat, so that probably makes her Speshul by default... er, and I had to quote this bit from the Words because I couldn't even believe it. Her mum's a werewolf that 'had a defect so that when she was Changed she was about the size of a Chihuahua. My father was a rather blind tomcat.'"
"She what?" Kayla leaned over to look at the charge list. "Nu-uh. No way. The only way I'd buy a cat gettin' with a werewolf is if the cat's Greebo, and I can't see him in any position to try." She peered at the Words, just in case, and nearly swore, but caught herself just in time. No point setting a bad example, she decided. "Put down 'implyin' that cutting your hair short is a sign of bein' a female werewolf'," she said instead, mentally listing all the things she'd have preferred to say.
Obediently scribbling this down, Teek looked at the Words again herself, and promptly snorted. "And screwing with Ankh-Morpork logic. She says she'll be good for watching people since no one notices street cats - yeah, unless you're a furrier or..." She adjusted her badge, trying to remember the other perils of the city streets, then realised the folly of trying to even count them. "Besides," she added, "I bet some of 'em probably end up being sold by Dibbler at some point."
Her brief grin was quickly and ruthlessly wiped from her face. "Tell me if I'm wrong, but would Vimes really get nervous about her possibly not liking Angua? I mean, he's... Vimes..." Glancing back at Kayla, Teek let her voice trail away before it headed somewhere dangerous. The good part was, from her partner's expression, she most likely wasn't wrong. The bad part was, also from said expression, that they'd been here for less than ten minutes.
"Yeah. He's Vimes." Kayla's scowl grew a little deeper. "He doesn't give a damn about what people like or not. And why ain't he puttin' her with Detritus and Colon? They handle the new recruits first. ...Wait, stupid question. Ugh." She pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes. "Damnit. I guess there's a reason they don't stick me on the Discworld beat much."
Footsteps from inside the office made her look round sharply, and she ducked aside from the door quickly as Vimes and Phellinna emerged. One hand strayed to her silver knife's hilt, but she restrained herself and focused on the Watch Commander. This seemed to calm her down a little.
Teek, feeling strangely depressed at how, well, damp this weak-willed version of Vimes was, had chosen to look around the hallway instead of at the characters or, more notably, the Words. This soon proved to be a mistake, as moments after the Sue left the building, the chapter ended.
The first thing the teenager heard, as she slowly raised her head and tried very hard not to be sick, was a high-pitched "Bingely-bingely-beep!" Groaning (in tandem with Vimes, as it happened), she sat up and carefully edged into a corner, wondering if she should even bother with a CAD reading. It was, she reflected, rather like trying to categorise a hurricane when your house was already lacking a roof.
Unsurprisingly, with the Ironic Overpower watching, Kayla immediately nudged her. "Got the CAD?" She'd kept her balance a little better during the two-month time jump, and was staring at Vimes once again.
Teek sighed. "It's your burned fingers," she cautioned, and dug the device out of her bag. "Please tell me I can charge for having 'a cat's talent to stare at one thing for hours on end'" - this with disparaging gestured quotation marks - "be a reason for her doing so well that Vimes picks her to come to Vetinari's banquet and promotes her? Ooh," she amended, squinting at the ensuing Words, "yeah, let her work for Vetinari, that'll get rid of her and we can go do something fun..."
"Hm? Yeah, sure, charge for that." Kayla aimed the CAD at Vimes with a dubious but hopeful expression, and raised an eyebrow as it beeped quietly.
[Duke Samuel Vimes. Ankh-Morpork City Watch Commander. Human. Canon. OOC 24.9243%.]
"Huh. He's pretty in-character right now, apart from goin' on about little miss Risin'-Star-In-The-Ranks. Then again, not wanting to go to the banquet and abusin' his Dis-Organiser is like him."
"I've never seen it work it out to that many decimal places," Teek said thoughtfully, leaning over to get a look at the screen. "It's probably confused. Oh, damnit, there goes Vimes... c'mon, they leave for the bloody banquet in a couple paragraphs from now. Suethor likes timeskips."
"No, she just doesn't seem to know how to do it right. Not even a paragraph break or anything." As they headed down the stairs after the put-upon Duke, Kayla reached over and deftly plucked the notebook and pen from Teek's hands. "One sec, something I just remembered." She scrawled a charge as carefully as was possible when going down a flight of stairs before handing the items back.
"There you go." On turning back to where she was going, she almost walked into Vimes's back before catching herself and sidestepping smoothly. "Damn, that was close. Anyway -" She cut herself off, gaping at what the Sue was currently eating. "Is she serious? Rat-onna-stick?"
"Possibly better for your health than sausage-inna-bun." Teek shrugged. "As long as she doesn't start cleaning herself with her tongue or drinking milk out of a saucer, I can handle i- oh, sodding hell, I think my eyes just fried..." She covered her face with her hands and groaned again; immediately after the Sue had left the common room to, at Vimes's direction, "put something fancy on," she arrived at the palace gate, having done so. As such, the world did not so much shift as fast-forward; the resulting blur did nasty things to the human retina, which the sight of Phellinna's figure-hugging silvery dress did little to help.
"Ow. Ow ow ow." Kayla rubbed her eyes rather gently in an attempt to massage them back into functioning properly. Once they (reluctantly) did so, she watched Phellinna with bemusement. "So... d'you reckon that dress means she's immune to silver, or not?"
"Dunno, do you think they'd be using actual silver thread? And would the Suethor pay that much attention?" Teek rolled her eyes, and added the traditional "spectacular figure" charge with an air of resigned duty.
As they followed their quarry, who was now accompanied by Sam Vimes and Sybil Ramkin-Vimes, Kayla shrugged. "I guess you're right. Well, she ain't mentioned it, so that makes killin' her a lot easier when the time comes."
"It might just give her a nasty rash," Teek grumbled, as the unusual optimism she had maintained thus far decided it had overstayed its welcome.
"We can dream." Indeed, a slightly reminiscent look had come over Kayla's face. "Last time I saw a Sue with a rash, it was 'cause I sneaked poison ivy into her bath lotion. A bit petty, I know, but she was reeeeeeally irritating me, so I thought I'd irritate her back."
"Hey, nothing happens till the second course," the other Agent noted, once she'd recovered from her uncontrollable snickering. "Let's get some Generic Appetisers."
"We ate not that long ago," Kayla pointed out, but she went along willingly enough, nibbling on a few tasteless appetisers once she'd stuffed some of the more long-lasting types into a small box in her bag. PPC Agents never turned down edible food.
For a little while after that, the pair of Assassins hung around doing nothing much except chatting and intermittently watching the fic. A feast wasn't exactly the most thrilling of things to observe, after all. That was, until halfway through the second course, as Teek had pointed out. At this point, Vetinari decided to offer a toast to the Sue, apropos of completely nothing. He then grinned at her.
Kayla was visibly less amused. "She. Made. Him. Do. What?"
Teek, who thus far had been paying unusual attention to the Words out of a mixture of morbid curiosity and an utter inability to believe what she was seeing, tried not to flinch. Knowing the future, she decided, was a bugger.
After the banquet, the table was rolled away and everyone stood up and mingled, except for the people who didn’t care about politics. Vimes didn’t, but Lady Sybil did, and so Phellinna remained. At least, she remained in a corner. Cats were very social creatures, when they felt like it, but it was near enough to full moon that Phellinna didn’t want to give in to the cat’s instinct.
"If she's a bother, just use the spray bottle," Teek muttered, watching the mingling with a jaded eye indeed. Here it comes...
Vetinari climbed up onto the dais at the end of the hall, and the second bomb dropped.
Vetinari had been smiling oddly at Phelinna all evening, and so it was to everyone’s surprise but Phellinna’s when he announced:
“My dear Phellinna… Will you marry me?”
Kayla swore very, very quietly, as the entire room had fallen silent. Luckily, instead of doing anything which would have attracted attention, she simply leaned against the wall, closed her eyes, and took several deep breaths. Only her white-knuckled fists betrayed how utterly close to exploding she was. The third chapter took over, though as it was in exactly the same point in place and time, this went unnoticed.
“Of course not.”
The entire hall stared as one, their mouths open. Refusing Vetinari anything often meant your death warrant. Vetinari seemed just as shocked as anyone.
“But- but- Why not?” he stammered. This was almost as shocking. Vetinari never stammered.
"I think there are some pretty goddamn good reasons," Kayla snapped quietly, as Phellinna got round to pointing out a "young man dressed in wizard's robes". "You got 'using cheap and implausible plot devices' and 'making a goddamn wizard out of character'?"
"Can you give me a minute?" Teek hissed, darting around on the opposite side of the room, far away from her notepad and pen. The younger Assassin seemed to be engaged in some bizarre one-woman dance, alternately lunging down to grasp at what seemed to be empty air, and straightening up only to whirl around and lunge again. From the amount of grumbling which accompanied this, as well as the way her teeth were gritted, she was clearly not enjoying herself. There was also a quiet, high-pitched hiss, as of a very small kettle on the boil, but it did not seem to be coming from Teek.
After a few moments more, the mystery was resolved, as the teenager hurried back with her hands clamped tightly around something, grinning with a savage sort of triumph. "Got the sparkly little qoH!" The hissing was noticeably louder now, and mingled with other noises that, though extremely muffled, did not sound polite.
"Whoops. Sorry, didn't see you go." Kayla leaned closer for a better look, and began rummaging in her pack on recognising the mini-Sue 'Phelinna'. "What d'you want to do with it? Dump it somewhere to get eaten, or finish it ourselves?"
Opening her hands just a fraction, Teek peered in at her irate little captive. "Do you think Ares might want it?"
"Good point." The older Assassin produced her RA and hunched over to hide what she was doing from anyone who might have been looking their way, before opening a very small portal. "There. Shove her through. Hey, Ares, snacktime!" she added, through the portal.
Without any further ado, Teek dropped the mini-Sue in and sat back, making a bit of a show of dusting off her hands. "Problem solved. Ooh," she added suddenly, turning back to look at the genuine article, "if she's charging the wizard, it'd be pretty funny if we went and charged her now, right?" Because I really don't want to see you end up like Crebaina...
"Maybe, but..." The charge list was taken off her and examined briefly. "We ain't got enough yet, and there's a couple of doozies coming up. We can wait. Lucky for us this fic's nice and short." Kayla settled down to watching as Vetinari was led off to recover from the love potion he'd been somehow slipped, and Vimes and the Sue arrested the unnamed "wizard". Fortunately for the Agents, or at least for Teek's nerves, Kayla's temper seemed to have been improved somewhat by the mini-Sue incident.
Teek sighed, and tried not to hope for the best in case the Narrative Laws were watching. "How much you want to bet the real Vetinari's at the bottom of a plothole?" she offered instead.
"...Nah. He's just been possessed, that's all. A quick exorcism and neuralysation'll sort him out once we're done with the Sue. Which is good, 'cause I don't wanna have to try tanglin' with him."
Teek nodded fervently. "Good. Because even after we got rid of a replacement, I might still associate his face with the need to punch it." She shook her head. "I think it was the stammering what did me i- ugh!"
Once again, the scene degraded to a blur of motion, light and darkness as events shifted to the following day; the word 'phantasmagoria' might have come to mind, if either Agent's brain could have found it under the circumstances. After a mercifully short time, things settled back - and then did it again, only faster.
"Goddamnit!" was the first coherent contribution made once the scene finally settled properly, after a set of Author's Notes and yet another chapter change. This, along with other complaints, was quickly stifled once the Agents realised exactly where they were: the Oblong Office. They scrambled into a corner out of sight very quickly as Phellinna entered the room, which caused Vetinari to raise one eyebrow in what the author chose to call an "awesome display of skill". Unable to do anything without drawing attention to themselves, Kayla and Teek made themselves as comfortable as possible and watched the scene.
“You summoned me, my lord?” she asked. She knew what he wanted to talk about, of course.
“I did. Please sit.” Phellinna sat.
“I’m assuming you wish to discuss last week’s… ah, incident.” It didn’t show, but Phellinna was nervous. Causing Lord Vetinari any sort of embarrassment, even unintentionally, was often fatal.
Teek dearly wished she'd had a beverage in hand; there was no way to do justice to that without a spit-take. "Don't you mean always fatal?" she snapped, regardless of this misfortune, and then immediately slapped a hand across her face. "If Vetinari still had his head on straight right now, you'd bloody well think twice about accepting tea from him... or, no, you probably wouldn't." Having been about to work herself up into quite a good fury, Teek deflated a bit and sat back. Sheer Sueish obliviousness made a difficult obstacle. Kayla patted her sympathetically on the shoulder.
"It's painful to watch, but at least we haven't got much more t'go," she said in as cheerful a tone as she could muster up. In truth, however, she was finding it difficult not to thump her head against the nearest wall as Phellinna made baseless speculations about the cause of the banquet scene.
"He or she is probably a political rival trying to embarrass you. I think the eyes have something to do with it.”
Vetinari, predictably, raised his eyebrow.
"What the hell? Does she think his eyebrows are on springs or something? The way they've been goin' up and down... Wait, I'll shut up before the Word World takes me literally."
"Maybe he thinks he's Spock."
"How'd I know you were gonna mention that?" Kayla chuckled.
Teek gave her the most wide-eyed, winning expression she could manage. "You've got used to me." She happened to glance back at the Sue, and the winning expression contorted into something that wouldn't have won much except a call for an ambulance. "You remember when I said the whole cat thing didn't bother me unless she started drinking like one? I think the Ironic Overpower heard me. Eurgh," she moaned, "that tongue's bloody creepy..."
"We can always remove it before we take her out, if it bothers you that much."
Teek tensed perceptibly. "No, thanks. I've gone right off inventive Sue surgery."
"Ah, okay. Just a thought." Kayla glanced back at the scene, only to find they'd missed the rest of the conversation and Phellinna was now being dismissed for the "pressing matter" of a bath.
"Let's catch up with her at the Watch House," Teek decided, perusing the following Words and pulling her Remote Activator from her bag. "She goes to talk to Angua - pfft," she snorted, "what a little copycat! She wants to get a collar with a Watch badge too. Oh," this upon seeing the face her partner made at her, "pun not intended, I swear."
"I know, I know... I've gotta admit, though," Kayla said reluctantly as she stepped through the portal, "that the idea makes sense in context. Probably the first thing we've seen about her that does."
"Yeah," Teek conceded, once she'd followed suit, "I just don't feel like giving her any points at all right now. My eyes still hurt." She glared at the door now before them as though it was personally responsible, which, since Disc canon still dictated the scenery, was rather unfair. "Flip to see who neuralyses Angua?" she asked, digging through the pockets of her uniform and then her bag to find a coin or anything comparable.
"Nah, you get to handle her. I get the kill this time, remember?" Kayla pulled out her sunglasses and slipped them on neatly, tapping her fingers on the hilt of one knife. "Soon as she comes outta the room, go for it. Then we can nip in and handle Miss Werecat."
"Right, right." There was no way Teek was going to argue this one. Holding the neuralyser ready, she waited until the door opened and the sergeant walked out; her eyes had a touch of the same glassiness which had afflicted Vimes, but to nowhere near the same extent. Upon a sudden, bright flash of light, of course, this changed.
"Sergeant Angua von Überwald," Teek announced, being formal more or less for the hell of it, "you did not just give advice to a werecat constable named Phellinna, reason being that she doesn't actually exist. You can go back to your regularly scheduled duties."
Angua nodded and headed off, taking no further notice of the unruly-haired Lance-Constable in the dark glasses, nor of the Sergeant who stood a few paces behind, fairly bristling with knives. "Nice job," Kayla murmured, patting her partner on the shoulder. "Got your charge list ready?"
Teek fairly brandished the notepad. "Do I ever."
"Let's do this, then." Whipping off the sunglasses and tucking them into a pocket, Kayla entered the room quickly. "'Scuse me, Constable... Vineet? Me an' my colleague here need a quick word."
The werecat Sue heaved a long sigh, and walked forward to meet them, idly running her fingernails up and down the wood of the doorjamb. "Make it fast, I'm starving and have important things to do."
"I hope you were talking to me," the young Lance-Constable snapped, glaring bloody murder. "'Cause unless you can't see those stripes on her, I'm gonna have to add insubordination to this."
Phellinna blinked, narrowing her eyes. Cats did not like being caught by surprise, and something about these two just stroked her fur the wrong way. "To what?" she hissed, and did so rather more literally than a human would.
"Close the door, please, Kayla?" the junior officer asked, then cleared her throat and held up a small pad of lined paper. "Ahem. Phellinna Vineet -"
"That's Constable Vineet to you!"
"In that case, Constable, I'm tellin' you to sit down an' shut up," Kayla snapped; her patience had just been worn too far.
Teek gave her a brief nod of thanks, and resumed her speech to the thunderstruck Phellinna. "Like I was saying, you are hereby charged with being a Mary Sue, being a werecat in a continuum where no such thing is known to exist, being the only one of said species as the result of a mating which is not only biologically impossible but bloody ridiculous, messing with the laws of Disc werewolf physiology, having naturally tabby-striped hair, implying that cutting your hair short is a sign of being a female werewolf, retaining animal characteristics while still in human form, messing with Ankh-Morpork logic in respect to street cats, making Sir Samuel Vimes nervous for no good reason and having him perform duties unsuited to his current station, messing with Vimes in general, providing illogical reasons for promotion, causing really eye-searing time distortions, willingly eating a rat-onna-stick, making specific note of your spectacular figure, disrupting the character of Vetinari by causing him to offer toasts, grin, allow a love potion to be slipped into his drink and nearly give PPC Agents heart attacks as a result of such, and stammer, in that order."
She paused for breath, and to make sure that the Sue wasn't going to risk Kayla's wrath too soon by trying to protest. "You are further charged with using cheap and implausible plot devices, making a wizard out of character, briefly creating a mini-Sue, causing even worse time distortions, attempting and failing to create a plausible and interesting mystery, having the Watch choose not to investigate a murder for no specified reason, causing Vetinari to raise his eyebrow far too often, causing Vetinari to make pathetic attempts at his usual sarcasm, infuriating PPC Agents to the extent of probably giving them ulcers, worrying the partners of said Agents, annoying PPC Agents, and just plain being annoying. For all these crimes, you are sentenced to death. And that's my bit. Have fun trying to chase Death of Rats, kitty." Okay, as witty last one-liners went, that kind of sounded better in my head... oh well.
The gentle sound of the notepad's cover being flipped down didn't make a very good death knell, but at least it wasn't likely to attract attention. Kayla gave her partner a bemused look. "Ulcers? Come on, I ain't that far gone yet."
"...I did say 'probably'?" Teek offered meekly, not wanting to risk offending the senior Agent. This earned her a quick grin.
"I know, I know, I'm kiddin' with you - Oi! I didn't say you could go anywhere!" This last was to Phellinna, who had finally twigged that her number was up and was making a run for it. "Damnit!" Kayla pulled her silver knife and dived after the Sue, managing to get one arm around her waist just as they reached the nearest window. There was a brief struggle, but Phellinna's much-touted catlike abilities allowed her to haul them both through the open window and into the street below. Luckily, it was on the ground floor.
"Goddamnit! Will you stay still?" echoed back through to Teek. There were a lot of muffled struggling sounds, a soft organic noise, a shout of, "Oh no you don't - Ow! Bitch!" and finally, a rather heartrending yowl that most definitely did not come from a human throat.
What'd Kayla do, step on her tail? "Is victory ours?" Teek called, leaning cautiously out of the window and looking around. The Agent in question looked up at her from the gutter she and the Sue had landed in, looking very disgruntled. In one hand was the knife, now smeared with the glittery red substance that passed for Sue blood (which, incidentally, was also smeared rather liberally across Kayla's current uniform), and in the other was the now very definitely dead Sue, in cat form. A set of liberally-bleeding scratches was clearly visible on Kayla's arm.
"Yeah, we're just goddamn peachy," was the snippy reply as she stood up and dropped the Sue unceremonially. "Smartass Sue draggin' me outta the window..."
"Well, we can think of a hundred and one things to do with her later, or see if there's enough room to swing her." Teek paused, but she had exhausted her repertoire of dead cat jokes for the moment. "In the meantime, let's hurry up so we can get you to Medical. Cat-scratch fever's supposed to be bad enough without the cat being a Sue." Wondering exactly how in hell she felt so calm, the teenager looked back towards the door, then shrugged and vaulted out of the window herself.
She didn't land quite as gracefully on the cobbles as she'd hoped, and her right ankle quickly let her know it hadn't been overly thrilled with the idea, but Teek shrugged this off. They still had quite a few neuralysations to go, and she hadn't sprained or twisted anything. "Want me to see if I can find a bandage for that?" she asked, trying to see how deep the scratches were.
"Should be a couple in my pack, if you wanna dig one out." Kayla was dabbing at the injury with the cleanest part of her shirt she could find - not an easy task, after falling into an Ankh-Morpork gutter and rolling around in it with a Sue. "Lucky these ain't too deep. She was panickin' too much." There was a thoughtful pause. "Gotta hand it to her, Changing was a good move."
"Might've worked better if she'd actually been a werewolf like everyone else. Then again, I'm not complaining." Eventually, Teek found a roll of gauze in a side pocket, and motioned for Kayla to hold out her arm so that she could bind it. "Where do you think Vimes has got to?" she mused as she worked. "Vetinari's probably still in his office practising his eyebrow raises, or wondering where his brain's gone, or something."
"Good question. We can try his office first, but you know what he's like; he's more likely to be out on patrol if he thinks he can get away with it. So that just means searchin' the whole city - owowow, not so tight!"
"Sorry!" Teek yelped, and frantically unwound the gauze a little, loosening it, though she herself remained rigid with panic. "It's just - I just remembered, sod cat-scratch fever, werewolves pass on their condition by biting you! Clawing's pretty much the same damn thing, right, and she drew blood, and -"
Kayla swore rather comprehensively, her face going rather pale as she processed this. "She - hell with this, you figure Medical can block it or somethin'? This ain't good..."
"Medical can do practically anything." Teek's assertion sounded just a little too fervent.
"Yeah - yeah, you're right." Kayla closed her eyes for a moment and took a few deep breaths, trying to calm the frantic thumping of her heart. Keep it together in front of your partner, don't worry her by freaking out, at least it's a Disc werething even if it was a Sue... "I'll be okay. Maybe I should - do you think you can handle the neuralysations if I head back to Medical and just... get it checked out to make sure? Sooner the better, and all. If you want I'll stay and help you get them done, though. Get 'em done faster."
Teek's tenuous ponytail flew wildly as she shook her head. "Neuralysing I can handle, I've done a bunch of 'em alone before. Besides, you're right, it'll take close to forever to track down Vimes, and I really don't want you staggering along being sick, or slowly transmogrifying, or whatever the hell happens..."
"Okay, if you're sure. I mean, it's probably nothin', I'm sure Angua's bitten a few people before now in fights and whatnot," Kayla replied, managing a quick smile as she fumbled for her RA. "But better safe than sorry, huh? Just be careful with Vetinari, and I'll see you back at the RC in a bit, I should think."
"Right. Yeah. Sure." Teek tried to smile back, and found that the muscles required did not like working under these conditions. She'll be fine, she's got to be, I can't lose another partner I just started to like, not again, even if she starts chasing yarn balls at full moon and scratching up the furniture they'll still let her stay with me... She watched as the portal unfurled and Kayla stepped through, and stood there for some moments after it had vanished, looking at the place where it had been.
The problem of how to find Vimes eventually sidled back and presented itself, and Teek scuffed one boot against the cobbles of the street for a while, thinking hard. Epiphany struck, and she dug out the CAD from her bag, hoping it might have some kind of character locating system.
Several fruitless minutes of button-pushing later, epiphany stormed off in a huff. "Great. Just Glaurunging wonderful. I should just start walking, but how am I supposed to find Vimes before my legs give out?" Teek asked of nothing in particular.
"I might be able to give you some wossname, assistance there, miss," came a voice from behind her.
Having by no means expected to receive an answer, Teek turned around, very slowly... and saw no one. Then she looked down, and the hand which had already been drawing her sword fell limp, as did the other one, with shock. "It's Gaspode the bloody Wonder Dog," she said, to what was presumably a different nonexistent audience from the first one.
"Shoulda known your type'd reckernise me," he commented, scratching absently at one ear. "I seen your lot around plenty o' times before, every time one o' these weird 'uns turns up makin' things go wrong and all the other big 'uns go funny in the head." He sniffed at the remains of Phellinna. "This'n's not as messy as the last, though."
"...My lot?" Teek repeated, staring blankly at the dead werecat as though the answer was hidden in its stripes. Then understanding dawned, and she only barely managed to hold back the yelp of The PPC?! that leapt to her lips. "What did the last, er, weird one do?" she asked weakly instead. "And who was chasing it?"
"You prob'ly don't want to know what happened, miss." He paused. "And I couldn't tell you 'oo it was chasin' it, on account of as they never told me what their names was. Anyway, you want me to lend a paw with this problem of yours or not?"
"Uh, sure," Teek managed, rubbing her temples with her fingertips to nudge her brain back into working. "Okay, I need to get Vimes, Sybil, and Vetinari... Sybil's probably at home," she said, thinking aloud, "and I don't think Vetinari could figure out how to leave the Palace right now even if he wanted to, so I just need help with finding Vimes..."
"Lady Ramkin? Nah, she's down at the Sunshine Sanctuary. That place where she looks after all them swamp dragons," Gaspode added helpfully. "Dangerous little buggers, they are, explodin' if you so much as sneezes near 'em. I ain't going near there. But I'll help you find Vimes. Saw him heading off towards the Brass Bridge not half an hour ago."
Teek nodded knowledgeably, privately wishing she did know her way around Ankh-Morpork, even if it wouldn't be half as well as Gaspode did... "I'm good with that," she told him, and then glanced back at the body of Phellinna. "Guess I'd better get rid of that first, before we get going... I bet I can just throw her in the Ankh. Or, well, on it," she amended. For obvious reasons, she didn't particularly want to carry the small corpse until they passed by the river, and a moment's thought found an equally obvious solution.
One small portal and absolutely no splash later, this had been accomplished. "You said he's at the Brass Bridge?"
He sniffed the air. "Yeah, mebbe half an hour ago now. Dunno where he's got to, but don't you worry. Gaspode'll set you straight." He trotted off cheerily, leaving her to catch up.
Even though her guide clearly knew what she was doing in his city, and had offered to help entirely of his own free will, Teek couldn't help wondering if this was strictly legal; innumerable tellings-off by the Flowers had finally made her wary of the rules. After a long and tricky bout of trying to rationalise things, she eventually concluded that all the time she would have spent trying to find Vimes herself was time in which she might have found something worse to muck about with.
Unfortunately, considering the very wide variety of things that might entail on the Disc, this wasn't entirely reassuring. Dammit, she grumbled to herself, I'm an Assassin, not a psychologist... Her brain chose that moment to remind her that real Assassins were one of the many things she probably ought to be watching out for, now that the canon had nearly made a full recovery from Phellinna, and she heaved a rather weary sigh as she walked.
Whatever the dangers of her current locale, though, Teek was still captivated enough to try to look at everything they passed by, despite the sadly limited rotation of which the human neck was capable. It took all her concentration not to lose sight of Gaspode.
Several minutes later, they had reached the Brass Bridge, and searched the full length of it. This produced a noticeable lack of Commander Vimes - "You didn't really expect him to hang around this long, did you?" - and they proceeded to follow Gaspode's nose rather further into the city.
Oh no, more sightseeing, Teek thought, grinning a little as she continued after the swiftly trotting dog. Wish Kayla could see this, it'd cheer her up... okay, okay, mind on the job. As Ankh-Morpork continued to be chock-full of distractions, however, this proved to be quite difficult. In the end, with a bit more perseverance, they finally found Vimes having a quiet smoke on the Street of Cunning Artificers.
Teek headed forward, pulling a neuralyser and sunglasses from her bag, trying her utmost not to look like she had violence in mind. Hopefully the uniform would free her from most suspicion. "'Scuse me, Commander?" she called, trying to keep her voice relatively low to avoid any other attention.
He looked round, frowning slightly. "Do I know you? I don't recall seeing you at the Watch House before..."
"Er, I just..." Why am I trying to make up an excuse? He's only... well, he's Vimes... "Um, if you'd just look at this light for a moment I'll explain everything, so -"
FLASH.
Whew. "Commander Sir Samuel Vimes," Teek recited, "you are the Commander of the City Watch of Ankh-Morpork, you're not nervous, you don't promote people without good reason, and you've got much more personality than you probably think... oh, and you never allowed a werecat named Phellinna Vineet into the Watch, because werecats don't exist. And you'd probably better get back to work, come to think of it." Still a little dazed from the neuralysing, he nodded and made his way out of the street.
"He seemed to be coming out of it all right," Teek mused, pushing her own sunglasses up to rest on top of her hair. "I wonder how long it takes for all the Suefluence to fade. Oh well. Now it's off to the Sanctuary..." She paused and looked back at Gaspode, who had sat down nearby and was idly scratching again, then at the neuralyser still in her hand, then back at Gaspode. Repeating the steps brought her no closer to any kind of decision; did she need to wipe his memory or not?
He finished scratching and looked up at her. "What you standin' there like that for? You ain't got me with yer little flashy-memory-changer stick. I ain't that daft. Seen 'em before, ain't I? I knows to look the other way. If yer really worried about me talkin', though... pound of steak does wonders for my memory."
Stuffing the neuralyser back in her pocket, Teek retrieved the Remote Activator instead. "Got a favourite butcher?" she asked, fingers poised over the keys.
"Butcher's Guild's usually good," he noted airily. "If you can get in an' out o' there without any of the wily buggers spotting you. They even spot me, whenever I tries gettin' in."
"I'll just be a second," Teek confidently assured him; the Somebody Else's Problem field, she figured, would be more than enough, but there was no way she was going to explain that. "Besides, if they ask, I can come up with some kinda Watch excuse." Unless they bring it up with Vimes later... well, that's what the neuralyser's for. I can't go back on this now, anyway, or he might not help any other Agents.
Removing the incongruous sunglasses at last, she opened yet another portal, this one large enough to walk through. Mere moments later, she returned, trying to keep hold of an extremely large steak as she stepped back onto the street. Placing it down in front of Gaspode (who suddenly looked even smaller), she wiped her hands on her uniform pants and closed the portal. "How's that?"
"Nice one, miss. Now iffen you don't mind, I'll just nip off and have me lunch nice and peaceful while you goes and does your mystical flashy juju or whatever it is. Pleasure doin' business with you."
"Same to you. You've been a really great help." Teek almost reached down to give him a pat, then thought better of it. Much as she wanted to make sure Kayla was all right, she couldn't afford to have to run back to Medical herself.
Once Gaspode had left, steak in tow, Teek entered another set of co-ordinates and hopped through the next portal, only to find herself immediately regretting this as the smell of swamp dragon gastrointestinal issues hit her nose. Her brief wish to have a swamp dragon as a pet, she silently swore to every Discworld god she could name who might be listening (up to and including, perhaps somewhat unwisely, Bel-Shamharoth), was completely bloody stupid.
"Nngh," she added aloud, suddenly swaying a little as her head spun one way and her stomach another. Clamping one hand over her nose and mouth didn't seem like it would do much but stave off the inevitable, and Teek was beginning to wonder if she ought to run for it and find the nearest gutter when she remembered a better solution.
At long last, and after much frantic one-handed scrabbling in her bag, the nose plugs Kayla had given her were discovered. Once they were installed, Teek realised it hadn't been the Cafeteria food she'd wolfed down earlier that had been causing so much internal trouble, nor even the organ-lurching temporal distortions. Her persistent nausea had been caused by nothing more nor less than good old Ankh-Morpork stench; it had only reached crisis levels now because of the swamp dragons.
They were, she had to admit as she set off, passably cute if seen - though certainly not smelled - from a certain angle, but she desperately hoped she wouldn't accidentally trip over one, or things would really get messy. Speaking of which, her own stomach seemed to have calmed down a little, but it didn't seem wise to hang around. Best to find Sybil and then hightail it to the Palace... where being sick all over the floor would get her in infinitely more trouble. She'd just have to hope for the best, albeit while the Narrative Laws of Comedy weren't looking.
Thanks to the SEP field, all the Sanctuary workers she passed paid absolutely no attention at all to a young member of the Watch with nose plugs and glitter-stained boots; then again, this being Ankh-Morpork, they probably wouldn't have noticed anyway.
Lady Sybil, having escaped all but a few minor mentions, seemed to be doing quite well when Teek found her; the same, unfortunately, could not be said for the dragon she was currently attending to, which was lying on its side, stomach worryingly distended, and staring quite pathetically at one of the very thick walls.
When Teek tentatively called the duchess's name, the look in her eyes as she straightened up to meet the interruption was more than enough proof that Phellinna's effects were waning. Nonetheless, despite how freakishly clement the Flowers had been lately, Teek didn't want to risk it. Quickly raising the neuralyser, she smiled encouragingly and adjusted her sunglasses -
FLASH.
"Lady Sybil, you never met a newly recruited werecat officer named Phellinna Vineet. There are no werecats like that on the Disc. Oh, and your husband's not all soppy and nervous, just for the record, and even if he wanted to be I don't think you'd let him. That'd be it. You can go back to your patient now... oh, oops." The dragon's eyes, she saw, were even glassier than usual. "Er, dragon, you didn't see anything odd happen either, got it?"
She got a nod from the dazed woman and an unpleasant bodily noise from the dragon, both of which she supposed were as good as she was going to get. And, with that, she hurried off to a remote corner by the back wall of the main building, which was as good a spot as any to quietly open a portal.
With her hands still smelling vaguely of steak, and most of the rest of her smelling much less vaguely of the Sanctuary, Teek headed off to the Oblong Office, hoping fervently that Vetinari hadn't recovered his senses yet. She'd rather lost the element of surprise.
Luckily, the final neuralysation went off as smoothly as the others had, and soon Teek was stepping through the final portal into her RC.
Kayla was already there, sitting on her bed and stroking Temujin absently, her face rather wan as she stared into space. At the sound of Teek's arrival, she looked over, managing a slight smile. "Oh, hey. Take it everything went smoothly, then?"
"Gaspode found Vimes all right, I was at the Sanctuary for practically five minutes and none of the dragons exploded, so if anything did hit the fan, it waited till after I left. Oh, and Lady Sybil's in her right mind again, and so's the Patrician - you should've seen how fast that worked, I never jumped back through a portal so fast in my life." Teek stopped there for breath, finally remembering to take off her sunglasses and revealing worried eyes. "I should probably ask you the same thing... am I gonna have to start putting out saucers of milk at night, or what?" She tried to grin, wondering if the tone of her voice had ruined the attempt at a joke.
She received a weak smile in return. "They said - well, they don't think there's a risk, not after disinfectin' it an' all, but... they ain't certain. Said we'll hafta see what happens." Kayla buried her face in her hands.
Something about that little act - seeing the tough, determinedly cheery Raider, the partner she had thought unshakable, so upset - tugged hard at Teek. Almost before she knew it, she was sitting on the bed beside Kayla and putting an arm around her shoulders, hoping to provide comfort as the older woman had so recently done for her. "Hey," she said, cursing her years of failure at motivational speeches, "don't worry. That doesn't sound to me like you should abandon hope..." She debated trying to lighten things up again, but didn't think it would do much good.
"I know." There was silence for a moment. Then Kayla took a deep breath, shook her head slightly, and straightened up a bit, returning the hug. "Just bein' silly. I'll be okay, it's not like Disc werewolves are even that dangerous if they're not nuts." She sat back, smiling properly. "Honestly. I'm gonna be fine. If we need to check, we can always go somewhere with a full moon an' see what happens."
"Whenever you want," Teek said firmly. "Besides, there've been were-Agents before - wait, that sounds like they turn into Agents, but you get what I mean, right? And besides," she added, nudging Kayla very lightly in the ribs, "this'll make up for the time when I was six and really wanted a cat..."
The older Agent couldn't help but laugh. "So now I'm the potential substitute? Cheeky. Besides, I already said I'll be okay. Just as long as we check before our next mission, there'll be nothin' to worry about." A rather large weight had lifted off her shoulders already; knowing Teek wasn't going to be acting any differently around her was a relief, and as long as they made certain of just what her condition was, it'd be manageable.
Now she was thinking properly again rather than just sitting and worrying, however, another solution made itself known. She winced at the idea, but even if it did give bad news it'd only burn a bit. "Teek," she said slowly, "could you maybe pass me that knife of mine?" She nodded to the space by the console, where her things had been put neatly.
"Which one?" The words had barely left Teek's mouth, though, when she cottoned on. The silver knife had been cleaned since she'd seen it last, and now gleamed brightly from among the others. Unconsciously, she put her hand back to the hilt of the sword she still wore. "This didn't bother you just now," she ventured, "unless it's a proximity thing... or this just isn't silver." She scratched dolefully at it with her fingernail, and sighed when this produced, as expected, absolutely nothing. "Knife it is."
Getting up off the bed, she retrieved the weapon in question and handed it to Kayla hilt-first, then stood back a pace and waited, eyes never leaving her partner.
"As far as I know," Kayla pointed out, holding the knife calmly and revealing none of her nervousness, "it only causes damage if it actually touches the skin..." She held out her other hand, and after a moment's hesitation, pressed the flat of the blade firmly to her palm. After a few seconds of silence, she pulled it away and put the knife down, flexing the hand carefully.
"Okay," Teek said after a moment. "No burning, no screaming, no hissing, and no crazed meowing. How's the hand?"
"It's... fine," Kayla replied quietly, running her fingers over the completely unmarked palm. "Nothing's happening." She sounded almost surprised, but then a broad grin took over as she stood up. "I'm gonna be okay!"
Teek answered with a joyful whoop that quite startled Temujin, who had remained by Kayla's bed in case either of the Agents needed reassurance or decided to feed him. "All right! But there's still one other way we can be really sure. Better safe than sorry, right?" Very slowly, Teek raised her hand, reached over... and scratched Kayla behind the ears.
She'd had to do some very quick darting around, and then hide behind the already perplexed ypur; but, Teek decided, it had completely been worth it.
~~~
Author's Notes (Cassie): That was a surprisingly fun mission, even if we did have to go back and rewrite the second half. The decision on which way things would end for Kayla was rather a late one; thanks go to the very helpful people on the PPC Board who offered their suggestions and opinions on the issue. I decided, however, that there really wasn't any extra mileage to be gained from giving her that extra issue to deal with. (Chalk up another success for Medical!) In any case, I absolutely adore this pair of Agents, and look forwards to more missions for them.
Author's Notes (Lycaenion): I don't think I could've asked for a better first Discworld mission (much as the existence of Disc badfic grieves me). It had a kind of light-hearted - well, initially so, anyway - grassroots feel to it. In both versions, it was great to watch the relationship between Teek and Kayla strengthen; the editing was time-consuming, but I feel better for it, and I did get the opportunity for more internal monologuing. Including Gaspode was Cassie's idea, and I just sort of delightedly ran with it. I think Teek might actually have picked up the beginnings of a sense of duty. Must've been by accident; we'll have to see where this leads. Here's to further adventures!