chocolate chip mint and vanilla with malt, chopped nuts and milkshake
Story: Crossover: Timeless and Dragon World
Title: Spud Wars
Rating: G
Challenge: Chocolate Chip Mint #18: ancient, Vanilla #10: phobias
Toppings/Extras: malt, milkshake, chopped nuts
Wordcount: 4,625
Summary: Two teenagers are accosted by a criminal from the future. Potatoes get involved.
Notes: Crossover with Timeless and the wonderful Marina’s Dragon World. Malt credit for Snowflakes Milkshakes! Marina, I can only offer my sincerest apologies for what is to come.
“Do you think there’s any way of doing this while looking, you know, sane?” Bradley asked as the time machine finally whirred to a stop. They had arrived. On the other side of the metallic capsule, Robyn grimaced, head pressed against the ceiling. Victor was contentedly shutting off the controls and Taisy was, for her own bizarre reasons, putting make-up on.
“Our mark has lachanophobia, so...” Robyn shrugged. “No. Not really. Shall we get out of here?”
“Why did it have to be the year 2013, anyway?” Taisy sighed. “Most boring decade ever.”
Yeah, well, it’s about to get a lot more interesting, Robyn thought as she crossed over to the hatch and spun the wheel to open it. An instantly refreshing breeze coiled into the capsule and she took a deep breath. Things were almost definitely about to kick off, but one thing she had started to love about the past was the freshness of the air there.
“Let’s go.”
-----
Two teenagers sloped down a suburban road not so far away-a boy and a girl. The boy had a sheaf of papers held to his face and was reading aloud; next to him, the girl alternated between walking facing forwards and facing backwards, dark hair bouncing as she twirled from time to time. The boy was grinning as he read out in a mocking voice:
“...and oh, the horror, the horrible horror of the sparkling vampires of death, who smell of lavender and wear doilies on their heads...”
“Pretty sure you’re straying from the script, there, Chase,” Carrie snorted as she twisted again so that she was walking backwards, sneakers silent against the tarmac.
“I can’t believe they’re doing an adaptation of Twilight for the school show next year,” Chase said, clearly disappointed.
“You don’t even act, Chase.” Carrie arched an eyebrow, rather certain that Chase had only asked for a copy of the planned script so that he could ridicule it. She didn’t mind: it was a wonderfully sunny day, the sky bright and seeming ever so close to them, blushing a deep and vibrant blue. A gentle breeze corralled the tumbling clouds from one horizon to the other so slowly it was hard to notice. It was the kind of day that made it hard to take anything seriously, to rush or to worry.
“Well, I might have gone to see it if they were going to do Lion King like they said they were. But no, they had to change it...”
“Aw, quit whining,” Carrie said with a grin. “Will some ice-cream cheer you up? We’ve got some wonderful rocky road stuff in the freezer...”
“Hmm...” Chase pretended to think about it, rolling the adapted script up in his hands. “I suppose some ice-cream might help me to make the best of the unfortunate situation.”
-----
Trying to fit into the year 2013 wasn’t too difficult: clothing style had changed but thankfully not too dramatically. It wasn’t an outright difference in clothing, merely that the clothing of the teenies was seen as rather outdated. Taisy giggled as she stamped around in her fake Ugg boots and Victor was fastening a tie around his neck with some uncertainty.
“I’m not sure this is right...” he said, fingers twining the silky tie until it came to a perfect knot. “Did everyone wear ties?”
“No complaining!” Bradley sighed. “At least you didn’t get the tracksuit!”
“You look like you’re going to a funeral, Vic,” Taisy smirked at him, tugging at the back of his jacket. “I don’t think this was intended as casualwear...”
“It’s an antique,” Bradley said, mimicking Adam Kirby’s gushing voice: “From 2022! Isn’t that great?”
“I bet it isn’t even genuine,” Taisy said with affection. “Kirby’s the most gullible so-called genius I’ve ever met. Did I tell you about the time I managed to convince him I’m fifteen...?”
“Whoa, he must be blind,” Bradley replied, grinning. “You look much younger than that.”
“Do you two want to concentrate on the mission for once?” Robyn asked despairingly, having brought out a sleek back briefcase from the time machine. She opened it with a flourish. “We have a criminal to apprehend. Ladies and gentlemen... pick your weapon.”
“I’m definitely going for the carrot,” Taisy said, reaching in.
-----
When Carrie and Chase first strolled into her house, there was no sign of disturbance. Her mother was working; it was the summer holidays and the days were free and long for the children released from the confines of school. When Carrie opened the door into the living room, Sketches padded out, shooting her an unimpressed look before scooting off down the hallway.
“What’s up with the cat?” Chase asked, mock-gruff.
“Don’t know,” Carrie said. It became more apparent when they walked into the living room and found a stranger standing there. Carrie blinked and Chase suppressed a squeak of alarm.
The stranger was not... normal-looking. His hooded eyes were the colour of beryl, gleaming at the two teenagers from the centre of their living room-the curtains had been drawn, presumably by him. His hair was the colour of milky coffee and extremely curly, and his skin extremely pallid-contrasting wildly with the blinding violet suit that he wore. Or at least, Carrie thought it was a suit. The trousers seemed to be attached to the shirt, and the blazer attached to the tie. The thick, neatly trimmed moustache-as well as the features of his face-indicated that he was male, but he certainly had a feminine build with slim-slam hips and thighs taut under the shiny purple material of the trouser suit thing.
“What’re you doing here?” Carrie asked-she was instantly uneasy, but the man didn’t seem exactly threatening. Nonetheless, she found herself backing towards the door, nudging Chase along with her elbow. “Who are you?”
“Do you own this house?” he asked, tipping his head.
“Would you mind answering my question first?”
“My name is Astor Springhart,” the rather pantomimic man said, before bringing out what looked very much like a gun-made from metal a violent shade of purple-and pointing it towards the two teenagers. They both froze instantly. “And I would like it very much if you go into the next room and don’t leave. Is that OK?” He spoke with a heavy lisp.
Carrie scrutinised the strange man for a moment.
“Come on, Chase,” she said, shuffling into the corridor, keeping her eyes on the gun. It was a very weird looking weapon, almost toylike, but she daren’t ask him for a demonstration. Instead she and Chase trailed into the kitchen. They turned around and watched him standing in the doorway, twitching oddly.
“Stay,” he said, and then closed the door. It didn’t have a lock and there was nothing to prevent them from simply walking back through it-provided he didn’t spot them, of course. The two friends looked at each other.
“What a fruit-loop! Let’s get out of here and call the police,” Chase said, heading towards the back door. Putting his hand on the handle administered a short, sharp electric shock. “Oww!”
“You OK?” Carrie asked, moving through the kitchen to look down at his hand. A slight burn on his forefinger was all that showed. In the bottom corner of the door was a little device with a green LED light on the top. Carrie gazed at it for a long moment.
“Time to get the oven mitts out.”
-----
“Have you seen a girly man in a purple suit?”
It was about the best description they could think of for Astor Springhart. The black ops team tramped through the cosy neighbourhood with its neat lawns and sun-warmed porches, equal parts jealous of its prettiness and made uneasy by it. Where they came from, the world was full of skyscrapers. Here, there was just... sky.
Unsurprisingly, their description was recognised by quite a few people who had been wandering around or sat in their gardens. He was wearing a violet suit. They were pointed in the direction of a house-the names Eva and Carrie came up.
“I hope they’re not home,” Robyn said as they strolled towards the house. “If Springhart’s holed up in there, things are about to get weird.” They all knew about his skill when it came to improvising strange devices.
“Why do I get the sprout?” Victor sighed somewhere behind them, looking down at a single brussels sprout in the centre of his palm. He sounded so quietly indignant that all three of the others started laughing.
“Sprouts are the worst, kid,” Bradley said, twirling a stick of celery between his fingers. “He’ll be quaking in his high-heeled boots.”
“That’s the place,” Robyn said, interrupting their vegetable talk to nod at one of the houses. “Let’s take a look, shall we?”
“Are you sure he hasn’t booby-trapped the place?” Taisy asked as they stopped outside of the gate. The house looked perfectly normal, although the airy curtains were drawn. The four of them looked at the facade of the house for a few moments, each of them a little uncomfortable at how friendly and snug it looked in comparison to the glassy monstrosities of their time.
“Nope,” Robyn said, and pushed through the gate.
It soon became clear that the door was locked. Unable to think of anything else to do, Robyn pressed on the doorbell.
The resulting explosion threw her halfway across the garden, although she rolled expertly on the springy glass and launched herself back to her feet to survey the damage, cord of hair whipping behind her. The walls of the house still stood but the porch was scattered halfway across the yard and beyond. There was also a great ring of black scorch-marks around the doorframe.
“Excellent roll,” Bradley said. “Nine out of ten.”
Before she could bite something back at him, the curtains were nervously parted by the very man they were after-Astor Springhart. His eyes flashed as he ducked away a moment and then reappeared in the window. Brushing grass from her arm, Robyn moved forwards, waving her tomato threateningly.
“What the hell, Springhart?” she snapped. “A bomb in the doorbell? Really?”
“Please leave me alone,” he said anxiously.
“I can’t,” Robyn said, walking right up to the window. The topmost panel was open a crack, meaning that they could hear each other well enough-but Robyn was quite certain that attempting to open it further would result in yet more of Springhart’s little inventions going off. “This is my job.”
“Newson will kill me,” Springhart said, twisting the curtain nervously.
“Yes, well, you probably shouldn’t have stolen the prototype time-travel plate then,” Robyn said without much sympathy. Taisy, Bradley and Victor had by now also crossed the garden. Neighbours were starting to stare.
The time-travel plate had been the next of Kirby’s innovations after he had completed the time-travelling theory and created the capsule. A little metal dish that someone could stand on and use to travel in time-or at least that was how it was supposed to work. Unfortunately the design was not perfect and when it tore through the timestream it tended to leave utter havoc in its wake, including the transportation of stray barnyard animals through time and space. There was still a crater just down the road where Springhart had landed, as well as a few shell-shocked chickens.
“Come on, Springhart, we don’t have all day,” Bradley cooed. “Wherever you travel to, you know we can trace you easily. The mess you leave in the timestream is unbelievable. Do you realise how long it’s going to take to fix the number of wives Henry VIII had?”
“You can’t have turned this place into a total fortress,” Taisy said, tapping her carrot against the window. Springhart flinched with every hollow noise that it made.
“No,” Springhart said, eyes narrowing. “But I do have hostages.”
“Hostages?” Robyn snapped, light brown gaze turning serious.
“Yes. They’re in the, the k-... k-k-kitchen... a girl and a boy...”
“Vic? Is he lying?”
“No,” Victor said, who was used to being used as the team lie-detector but clearly was made slightly uncomfortable by it. “He’s telling the truth.”
Robyn sighed.
“Two hostages. Great. Well done, you just got promoted from insane-but-relatively-harmless to total psycho.”
“Can’t we make some sort of deal?” Springhart asked pathetically.
Robyn’s first response was to squash the tomato in her hand into the window, sending orangey liquid dribbling down the glassy pane and making Springhart shrink away into the half-darkness of the living room. Tomatoes aren’t even vegetables, she thought smugly before turning away.
“I’ll get back to you on that,” she said over her shoulder and then moved further up the garden, beckoning to the others.
“You’re not seriously going to cut a deal with him?” Taisy asked instantly in a low voice.
“Don’t be ridiculous. You guys just keep Springhart distracted. I’ll be back soon.”
“What’re you doing?” Bradley asked, looking alarmed. Robyn’s planning ability was erratic at best-it was usually better for her to go through her ideas with either Victor or Bradley, the allocated brains of the outfit. She just winked and disappeared around the side of the house.
-----
It was hopeless. Even with the oven gloves on, the device wouldn’t budge. Both Carrie and Chase had been working at the door device for the last few minutes when they heard a large explosion from the front of the house. Carrie started and Chase jumped so hard that he banged his head against one of the drawers.
“Ouch!”
“What the heck was that?” Carrie asked, springing to her feet. She moved towards the kitchen door and opened it a fraction. “Hey! Whoever you are, no blowing up my house!”
“Stay there,” Springhart said to her, waving a gun in her genera direction before disappearing into the lounge. Carrie closed the door softly and turned to Chase, who was rubbing his head. Carrie bit her lip.
“Mom’s going to kill me.”
“It’s not exactly your fault, is it?” Chase said, trying to be reassuring. “Some purple... thing comes raving into your living room waving a gun around. What else are you meant to do except from what he says?”
“Do you think he blew something important up?” Carrie worried.
“Probably not... hopefully not.”
There was a knock at the window and both of them spun to face it, Carrie’s dark hair splaying behind her. In the window was a tall woman with gold-blonde hair and a fed-up expression. She glanced at the window-again, slightly open at the top-and then back to the two of them.
“Can you hear me?” she asked. She spoke in a fairly neutral British accent, like Springhart.
“No,” Chase replied, who was already in a bad mood from hitting his head on the drawer. Apparently the woman was used to sarcasm because she took hardly any notice.
“That man in your living room’s nothing to be scared of,” she said instead.
“I’m not exactly scared of him,” Carrie said slowly. “But can I ask what that big bang was?”
“That was your porch,” the woman said, pulling a face. “Sorry.”
“Oh...”
“We can talk about that later. I’m Robyn,” the woman introduced herself.
“Carrie,” she replied, and then nodded to her friend. “And this is Chase.”
“Pleasure to meet you,” Robyn said briskly. “Now, onto business-you guys are going to have to break yourselves out of there.”
“He has a gun,” Chase sighed.
“He has a phobia,” Robyn said confidently. “Lachanophobia. It makes him irrational. He won’t even remember what a gun is.”
“What-o-phobia?”
“Lachanophobia,” Robyn repeated. “Intense fear of vegetables.”
Carrie and Chase exchanged a look. They had met enough crazy people for one day.
“I’m not lying!”
Carrie had no idea whether to trust Robyn or not. She seemed truthful but it wasn’t always easy to tell. Then again, at least the tall woman wasn’t wearing a bright purple suit...
“Do you promise?” Carrie asked after a heartbeat’s pause.
“I promise,” Robyn said, tucking a strand of hair behind one ear. “Look, I’m sincerely trying to help you guys out. My job is only to apprehend veggie-boy in there. My boss frankly wouldn’t care what happened to you, but I’m just nice like that.”
“Yeah, I can tell,” Chase muttered.
“Do you have some vegetables in there?”
“Er, yeah.” Carrie glanced around the kitchen and her eyes landed on a large sack of potatoes. Slowly but surely, a plan was starting to form in her mind. She turned back to Robyn with a grin starting to form around the edges of her lips. Despite the dire situations, she loved a good plan. “Are root vegetables OK?”
-----
Bradley and Taisy were discussing musical theatre when the door to the house suddenly burst open and Astor Springhart came sprinting out of it-screaming his head off. He was followed by two teenagers: one of them a girl with a mischievous gleam in her eye and the other a boy with light brown hair and a sack of potatoes dragging along the floor behind him. Springhart tripped over the trench where the porch used to be before getting to his feet and fleeing away across the garden and down the road.
“Look what you’ve done to my porch!” the girl shouted, hurling a potato after his retreating form for good measure.
Robyn came skidding around the side of the house a moment later.
“What are you guys waiting for?” she called to the black ops team, who were staring open-mouthed at the unfolding scene. “Go after him!”
And the four of then raced over the crest of a small dip in the road ahead of them. Carrie took a deep breath and looked at Chase. They both looked at the sack of potatoes at their feet. And then back to the destroyed porch of Carrie’s home.
“Bikes?”
“Definitely.”
It didn’t take them long to disentangle their bicycles from some of the wooden wreckage that had once been Carrie’s porch, and then the two of them leapt onto them-piling a healthy amount of potatoes into the baskets of each one.
Despite the rather odd happenings, Carrie couldn’t help but enjoy herself as they cycled up the slight hill in the road leading towards their home and then freewheeled down the other side, Springhart becoming a bright purple blot ahead of them. Her hair curled and snapped behind her like a banner as they rode and the breeze was cool and pleasant against her face. It didn’t take long for them to catch up with the running black ops team, especially Victor who was not a natural-born athlete.
To say the least.
Obligingly, the two teenagers slowed down.
“There’s an open-air market on today!” Carrie called over to Robyn, who was going the fastest out of all of them. It wasn’t important to go too fast, however: Springhart was not quick in particular.
“Huh?” she replied, out of breath.
“Open-air market!” Carrie called as Chase sped up next to her, careening down towards where Springhart was shambling along in the middle of the road. “Vegetables everywhere!”
Robyn’s eyebrows rose and then she grinned.
“We’ll make sure he gets there,” Carrie assured her and then sped up with her cycling, catching up with Chase within just a few moments. The two of them pumped hard at the pedals, a joint plan already formed in their minds, interlinked invisibly between them.
Well, they had also talked about it before they set off.
Careening down the hill with their bicycle spokes whirring and the tyres making a soft scoring noise against the tarmac, the two of them were right behind Springhart in an instant. A car suddenly pulled out of a turning and both Chase and Carrie rolled to the side of the road, bumping up onto the pavement over a lowered section. Springhart skidded to a halt and stared at the car in absolute horror.
The car managed to stop in time and Springhart took off again: there were no cars in 2983, besides which the plants were starting to make him feel sick. They were almost as bad as the vegetables...
“Oi! Springhart!” Carrie shouted as she and Chase bounced back onto the road. Trying not to feel too ridiculous, she reached into the basket of her bike and pulled out a fist-sized potato, bouncing it in her hand a moment to test its weight before hurling it towards him. The reaction was like magnetic repulsion: he pinged to the opposite side of the road and then turned down a side-road located there.
As planned.
Like two perfectly co-ordinated sheepdogs, Carrie and Chase wove to and fro, herding Springhart towards their planned destination. Carrie was starting to giggle, thoughts of her porch leaving her mind at their latest foray into the ridiculous, and Chase grinned as he expertly bounced his bike onto the curb again as they wheeled alongside Springhart.
The phobic man was too out of breath to say anything but his expression said it all: You horrible children.
Then he arrived in the market.
At first he was blithely unaware of the terrible threat looming before him. He streaked past the first few stalls with plastic awnings and rattling tables filled with bead-necklaces and straw hats and cheeses; he scarcely noticed the slabs of meat on the butcher’s counters and freshly-baked bread under temporary glass display cases.
And then there were sprouts.
He jerked to a halt so suddenly that he nearly fell. A deep-rooted shaking had started somewhere in his centre and eventually quivered its way to every extremity, sending him into near-convulsions of fear as beads of sweat appeared on his brow. Carrie and Chase leapt from their bikes and wheeled them through the crowds uncertainly. The black ops team were not far behind them.
All that Springhart could see at that moment were vegetables. They were everywhere. Racks and shelves of them, vegetables dangling on strings, hanging in baskets and nets. Carrots glinted dangerously at him from another stall in his vision and cucumbers (heinously green) gleamed in the light. Sickening. It was sickening. Now quite pale, Springhart simply stood and shook as the vegetable army glared at him from every side.
“Jeez, I feel kind of sorry for him,” Carrie said, tilting his head.
“He did threaten us with a gun,” Chase replied. “We only threatened him with potatoes.”
The black ops team arrived quite soon and took in the situation.
”Well,” Robyn said. “He seems to be pretty much neutralised.”
Robyn carefully picked her way towards the shivering form of Springhart and his gleaming purple suit. The rest of the black ops team closed in too, ready to cuff him and drag him back to his correct timeframe where he would stop destroying the timestream with his inane antics.
Unfortunately, Springhart wasn’t quite as incapacitated as they believed him to be: or rather, he was, but he had enough panic in his breast to make him reach to his belt and lash out with something clipped to the back of it.
It was the time-travel plate.
With a cymbal-like boom, the heavy disc rebounded from the centre of Victor’s forehead with rather a lot of force. Taisy instantly grabbed it, wrestling it from the sweating man’s grip, but not before Victor had keeled over backwards-out cold.
Carrie put her hand to her mouth and Chase wondered if he was a bad person for finding the scene ever so slightly funny. The one called Robyn sighed.
“It’s always Victor,” she said, squatting on the ground and waving a hand in front of his face. When nothing more happened, she scooped him up like a baby and stood again as though he weighed no more than a kitten.
“Is he going to be OK?” Carrie asked.
“Kid, seriously, I don’t know anyone who’s been injured more times than Victor here. These Blackledges are really quite durable.”
They all began trailing back out of the town square, ignoring the strange looks as much as they could. Carrie and Chase wheeled their bikes alongside them with a companionable ticking from the spokes as they made their way up towards their neighbourhood. There were still potatoes smashed into various signs and rolling down the curb.
“So, um, can I ask what all that was about now?” Chase asked-Springhart seemed to have decided to give up on life and was trailing limply after them, cuffed and bound. Taisy was trying to spin the time-travel plate on one finger and Bradley was dragging Springhart along. Robyn continued to walk with Victor’s head lolling back against her arm.
“It’s a long story,” she said carefully. “Needless to say, you will never see any of us again or any proof that any of this ever happened.”
“That always happens,” Chase sighed.
“What about my porch?” Carrie inquired-politely, but with determination.
“Well, that wasn’t exactly my fault,” Robyn said, at which point Bradley cleared his throat loudly. “I didn’t know it was booby-trapped!” She turned back to face Carrie. “What do you want me to do? Go back in time and steal Napoleon’s porch?”
“You’re time-travellers?”
“Mm. It’s not as glamorous as television makes it out t be, I’m telling you,” Robyn replied.
“Did Napoleon have a porch?” Bradley mused, mostly to himself.
They arrived in the neighbourhood soon and Robyn decided to allow the two teenagers a glimpse of the time machine. It wasn’t like anyone would believe them, right? She was surprised about how levelheaded they were both being about the whole thing, how unsurprised they seemed. Surely they should have been running for the hills by now?
Deciding that this only said good things about them, Robyn unceremoniously propped Victor against the gleaming metal of the pod and turned to face the two teenagers.
“I’ll see what I can do about the porch,” she promised.
-----
Carrie and Chase both watched as the time machine gave a slight quiver and then disappeared. There were no theatrics; the metal capsule was there one moment, gone the next with a zipping noise which Carrie wasn’t altogether sure was a noise. She felt it more on her tongue than anywhere else.
“That was pretty weird,” Chase said, leaning over to pick a piece of potato peel from Carrie’s hair.
“You’re telling me,” she said, looking at the untouched grass where the pod had been before swinging around back towards her house. “But what am I going to tell-... oh.”
The two of them stared at the front of her house. It looked just as it had done a few hours ago, although the paint was a little shinier. The two of them trotted forwards and walked up the creaky steps, glancing around. Carrie felt oddly disappointed that she wouldn’t get to see the look on people’s faces when they saw her exploded front garden. Time-travel had its advantages, she supposed.
Chase leaned down and picked something up from the centre of the wood.
“Hey,” he said. “Check it out.”
It was a potato. ‘Thanks’, followed by a smiling face, was written on its rough skin in black felt tip. On the back, in more cramped writing, was: ‘Victor woke up and is alive’.
The summer had a sound of its own which filled the silence between them: it wasn’t only the buzzing sound of insects and the rippling susurrus of the vivacious green leaves, there was something more to it, something about the sun. The warmth seemed to dim and merge the sounds pleasantly, and the whole area was in near perfect calm for a while.
Eventually, Carrie spoke-
“Well, I’ve had weirder days.”