Written for the Discworld/YJ prompt on the YJAAM. Check out the meme, it's awesome!
Robin swam slowly into consciousness, cracking open one bleary eye. A large beard faded in and out of focus, looking down at him. Insofar as a beard could have an expression, it looked mildly concerned.
'... and you're sure he's not from the Dungeon Dimensions?' said a voice.
'Pretty sure,' said the beard, and it moved slightly. Robin blinked and groaned, and the world came into proper focus. The beard turned out to be a large, healthy looking bearded man, who was wearing a large, pointed hat. In fact, everything about the man was large- including his beard.
Then, his training kicked and Robin sprang lightly to his feet, one hand going to his utility belt in preparation. He took stock of his situation- surrounded by a group of men, varying from middle to extremely old age, none of whom looked like much of a threat.
The large one watched him curiously.
'Are you alright, young man?' he asked.
'What I don't understand,' grumbled another, 'is why he was in the Luggage in the first place!'
'Well, it wasn't anything to do with me!' argued another one, with a rather straggly beard and a depressed expression.
'It's your Luggage!'
'Actually, it's more correct to say that I'm its human.'
'Does it often spit out young boys?'
'You're right, Mr Cheesecake, it is a lovely day today.'
'It's run off!'
'What are we supposed to do with him?'
'I don't suppose we could put him back in?'
'Three for a dollar, and gosh how they shine in the sun!'
Robin scanned his surroundings. No sign of the others. And he'd been sure they'd all fallen through that portal together…
'There's no point standing around chin-wagging,' said the Beard firmly, effectively silencing the rest. He appeared to be the one in charge. He certainly had the biggest hat. 'Someone take the Bursar away and give him a couple of dried frog pills. I'll deal with this.'
The others grumbled and groaned, but began to trickle out of the large hall Robin found himself in.
'I'm Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully,' the man said, holding out a hand. Robin shook it cautiously.
'Archchancellor?' he asked.
'Of the University,' Ridcully explained. When Robin's face showed nothing but blank politeness, he tried again. 'The Unseen University.'
'Sorry, but… where am I?'
'Ankh-Morpork,' Ridcully explained. On still seeing Robin's confusion, he gave it another go. 'Near the Sto Plains. On the Discworld.'
Robin just stared.
'Oh no,' Ridcully groaned, 'another dimension-traveller. I thought we'd seen the last of them on Tuesday!'
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Wally hit the cobbles painfully hard, and rolled quickly onto his back.
'Ow,' he complained. His stomach complained as well, chiming in with a loud, rumbling gurgle.
He sprang to his feet, glancing around at his surroundings.
Unfamiliar sights greeted him. Huh. Must have been some portal. This place didn't look much like Earth. At least, not present-day Earth.
He was in the middle of a busy square, surrounded by carts and carriages (pulled by actual horses!) and busy people out doing their medieval shopping. He received a few strange looks due to his rather bright clothing, but other than that, the people there treated him as little more than a nuisance. As though strange teenage boys often fell from the sky around here.
Oh man, he really needed to find the others.
'Sausages inna bun! Come and get your sausages inna bun here! Two dollars for four, and I'm cutting me own throat!'
Wally's ears pricked up. Maybe the others could wait…
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Artemis was falling.
From very high up, in fact.
Quickly, and without panicking, she twisted in mid-air and pulled an arrow out of her quiver, firing it at the only building she seemed to be near. The arrow caught, and the line suddenly became taut. She used her momentum to swing herself through an open window of the tower and came to rest on a set of very rickety steps.
The panic she had managed to suppress up until that moment suddenly reared its unwelcome head and she had to sit down quietly for a bit before she could think clearly again.
When the adrenaline had worn off, she glanced out of the window. A city was sprawled out in front of her, smoke curling from a few chimneys. She was so high up she could see all the way to the city's harbour, and further, out across the sea and at the horizon…
Which looked amazingly like the edge of the world.
'Oh, no,' she groaned, resigning herself to the fact that the portal the Team had been pushed into had, in fact, been a dimension portal. She supposed she'd have to go and find the others, before trying to figure out a way back.
Artemis turned, and came face to fa… well, face to skull with an extremely tall man, shrouded in a black cloak and clutching a tall, curved blade. He looked decidedly malnourished. He was examining a small hourglass with an intrigued air. He had no expression- unless of course she counted the permanent grin of the skull.
She let out a little scream before managing to stifle it.
OH, SORRY, he said in a voice like tombstones smacking together. I MUST HAVE BEEN MISTAKEN. STRANGE…
He gave the hourglass a little shake.
'Err…' she wavered, shocked into silence.
HMM? He looked up, and Artemis stared into blue eyes. The burning brightness of them was something she would have imagined a far away supernova to possess.
'Umm…' she tried again.
YOUR FRIENDS ARE DOWN THERE, Death said helpfully, pointing with one long, bony finger down at the panorama of the city. Artemis followed his finger with her eyes and saw a busy square nestled amongst large buildings. It looked like the city centre.
'Thank y-' she began, but when she turned to face him, the strange man was gone.
Hang on a sec. Tall. Dark robes. A skeleton. Carries a scythe…
Artemis took a couple of deep, slow breaths and tried to tell herself she'd imagined it.
'Right,' she told herself. 'You need to find the others.' A quick glance at the busy square reminded her of the general direction she needed to head towards. But first, she needed to get down from the tower. She looked over the railings and down towards the stairs.
She groaned again.
It was a long way down.
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Kaldur knocked hesitantly on the door. It swung open abruptly, and he was greeted by a small woman – verging on medium - who looked… strangely… as though she had been expecting him.
'Ankh-Morpork,' she said briskly, just a millisecond before Kaldur said;
'I was wondering if you could tell me where I am?'
'Yes, I know,' she said.
'You just answered me before I asked my question!' he exclaimed.
'Yes, I always forget to turn my precognition off,' she said.
'You just did it again!'
She held out a hand; he stopped speaking for a moment and frowned, trying to reshuffle the conversation in his head.
'There,' she said finally, 'that's better. I leave it on so I know who's at the door and then I always forget to turn it off.'
'Oh,' said Kaldur, who was quite lost but too polite to say so.
'You'll want to go to Psuedopolis Yard to find your friends,' she said brusquely. 'I'll give you some directions.'
Honestly, thought Mrs Cake, Ankh-Morpork was a veritable thoroughfare for cross-dimensional travellers these days.
Still, she supposed it was good for business.
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M'gann wasn't panicking. Of course she wasn't. She was just… mildly perturbed. Yes, that was it. Perturbed. But only mildly. Because she was in a strange place and she didn't know where the others were and there was something in the air – something crackling and greasy and sort-of purple - limiting her telepathic range.
Ok, maybe she was panicking.
Perhaps if she asked someone? They can't have missed a load of teenagers dressed in tights falling out of a cross-dimensional portal, could they?
'Er, excuse me!' she called, flying over to a nice-looking man who was in a nice gold suit, who happened to be standing on the steps of the Bank. 'Have you seen my friends?'
He looked at her blankly, his eyes widening, and then M'gann realised that her green skin must have been scaring him.
'Sorry! Is it my skin? I always forget to change-'
'No, no,' said the man hastily, waving his hands in front of him. 'It's not that. The… flying… thing is slightly more confusing, actually.'
'Oh,' M'gann said, cocking her head in surprise. 'Really?'
'Mmhm,' he nodded vigorously. She lowered herself down until her feet touched smooth steps, and he seemed to relax.
'Sorry. What was it you wanted, again?' he asked.
'Have you seen my friends?'
'What do they look like?' he said.
'Oh… well, one's tall and has black hair and blue eyes, that's Conner, and he's actually only about a year old even though he looks like a teenager, and then there's Robin, and he has black hair but I don't know what his eyes look like because he wears a mask all the time, and then…' she trailed off at the man's confused expression.
'Hello Megan!' she cried suddenly, slapping a hand to her forehead and startling the man, who jumped slightly. 'I can show you what they look like!'
She hastily morphed into the forms of her friends, making sure to spend at least ten seconds on each one to make sure the man had time to get a good look, hoping to jog his memory. His eyes grew wider with each change.
'There!' she said, looking at him anxiously. 'Have you seen them?' He just stared at her. She wondered for a second if she'd really scared him that time.
A smile full of possibilities stretched across the man's face and he stared longingly at her.
'Can you teach me how to do that?' he asked.
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After attracting quite a lot of attention with his… rather heavy landing, Superboy found himself being escorted somewhere by a tall, red-headed man and a woman with an amazing amount of blonde hair. She also smelt strange- the musky scent that surrounded her reminded him slightly of Wolf.
They'd introduced themselves as 'Captain Carrot and Captain Angua of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch' but he hadn't taken much notice. He'd been too busy trying to search for M'gann's metal link.
Where were the others?
He wasn't so bothered about the whole crossing dimensions schtick, because that happened around every other week and it was getting seriously old. But he hated – really hated – being separated from the Team.
To be honest, there was nothing really stopping him from ditching his two armoured detainers and going off to find the others, but he would have felt bad punching them since they hadn't tried to hurt him yet. And wherever they were taking him couldn't be any worse than where he could have taken himself.
The Captains were having a whispered conversation as they walked beside him. Huh. They obviously didn't know about the super-hearing.
'…with those clothes? He's got to be one of those inter-dimensional travellers.'
The man sighed.
'And I really thought we'd seen the last of them,' he said wistfully.
'What do we do with him?'
'Keep him at the Watch house in Psuedopolis Yard until we can get the wizards to send him home?' Captain Carrot suggested. 'That's what we did with all the others.'
Conner followed them placidly, vaguely hoping that the others would also end up at this Psuedopolis Yard as well. It was worth a shot.
The Watch house turned out to be quite comfortable, and Conner was pleasantly surprised. But then, he generally quite liked it in other dimensions. No one knew about Superman, and in consequence no one knew about Superboy. He could be normal… apart from the strange looks his clothes drew. The red-headed man, Captain Carrot, brought him a cup of tea and a biscuit and he sat down to wait. It sounded as though these watchmen – apparently this world's version of policemen – were used to dealing with people like him and the Team.
You realised you were living in a weird world when a group of superhero teenagers could cross dimensions and no one batted an eyelid on either side.
Superboy's musings were interrupted when the doors to the watch house burst open to reveal a confident Robin, striding in front of a group of relatively old men in dresses and pointy hats. Also in the group, to Conner's great relief, were Artemis, M'gann, and Kaldur.
'Supey! You made it here too!' Robin said delightedly. 'Now we just need to collect Kid Idiot and then we've got the whole set!'
'Conner!' M'gann ran forward from the group to hug him, revealing a saggy heap of orange fur which had been behind her. Then, the mass shifted and a distinctly monkey-ish face stared at him with large brown eyes. He frowned, one arm still wrapped around M'gann.
'I hate monkeys,' he grumbled.
The room stilled.
'Oook?'
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'Look, he's very sorry,' Robin said as Conner clambered back onto his feet. The mon- ah, Orangutan, did look a bit sorry, but mostly he just looked annoyed at the fact he couldn't get through the Kryptonian's thick skin.
'I don't think he likes being called a mon-' M'gann was cut off abruptly by a large, leathery palm on her mouth. The Librarian looked at her in a friendly manner and said 'Oook,' before removing his hand and knuckling off to the room where the dartboard was kept.
'I think he likes you,' Robin commented, 'because he didn't seem to want to hold you upside-down and bang your head against the floor several times.'
Conner winced. The Orangutan was a lot stronger than it looked, apparently, and although it hadn't managed to hurt him it had still been humiliating.
'How do you know?' Kaldur asked Robin, looking interested. The Boy Wonder shrugged.
'It's just like reading a human… but a bit less complicated.'
At that very moment, a very complicated human was walking into the hall of the Watch house, hastily wiping any ink from his cheek in case people guessed that he had foregone actually completing the paperwork that littered his desk and used it instead as a pillow. The team looked up into a face like rather disgruntled thunder, a face which had been looking forward to a nice, simple day, and found himself instead with a group of wizards and a load of teenagers in tights.
He shuddered.
'What's this?' he asked. 'Some sort of lunatic convention? Should I dress up too?'
Artemis smirked slightly.
'No, sir,' Captain Carrot hurried forward. 'More of the inter-dimensional travellers, sir. The wizards said they can sort them out.'
'I know, Captain,' said the man, rolling his eyes. He gave each of the team a brief scrutiny, and from the look on his face they seemed to fulfil his worst nightmares. Conner was the last to be examined.
'No tights?' he asked in a dry tone. Conner shook his head.
'No tights, no capes.'
The man nodded, apparently approving of this statement.
'I'm Commander Vimes, and I'm the one in charge of this mad house,' he said, waving his hand at the bustling room. 'I suggest you make yourselves comfortable while you wait for your portal home- they haven't had their third lunch yet.' He gestured to the wizards, some of whom sent him rather dirty looks. Ridcully just grinned genially.
'Too true, Commander! And we all know what you're like in the morning before you've had your BACON, lettuce and tomato sandwich!'
Commander Vimes scowled.
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When the portal was finally ready Kaldur, who had been watching the process of creating the magic doorway and found it thoroughly confusing, went to fetch the others. Conner was easy – he and the Commander sat together under a shared cloud of silence and thought, both staring into the distance with slight frowns on their faces. M'gann was entertaining a large man and a smaller… humanoid… thing… with her shape-shifting, mimicking each of the men (if the smaller one could indeed be called a man, let alone a human) in turn, and their guffaws were ringing down the corridor. Artemis he found in a corner, swapping hair care tips with Captain Angua. Kaldur caught just a small snippet of conversation.
'… and I swear by Good Girl's Shampoo. Keeps it glossy and healthy…'
Robin was somewhere up in the eaves, swinging around with the Librarian in a contented sort of familiarity. Kaldur groaned inwardly, thinking that it would be difficult to get the Boy Wonder down.
Luckily, he didn't have to try. The situation sorted itself out.
Not exactly in the way he would have hoped for, however.
The huge oak double doors to the Watch house burst open with a dramatic boom as something not unlike a mountain strode into the building.
It turned to be Detritus… and the red and yellow streak in his arms turned out to be a very unwell Kid Flash.
'What happened to him?' Robin asked in an uncharacteristically panicked voice, his frame suddenly small and childlike as he bounded up to the troll watchman and tried, ineffectually, to wrest his friend from away from his rocky cradle.
Detritus didn't seem to notice Robin as he ploughed determinedly towards Vimes, much as an elephant would notice a small fly bouncing repeatedly off his hide. The other members of the team crowded round, also anxious to see Kid Flash.
'What happened, Sergeant?' Vimes asked, rolling his eyes at the bright costume of the prone figure. Not only tights, but bright RED tights. How could the kid stand it?
'Found him on der ground on Broad Way, sir,' Detritus said. 'And I finks he looks like one of dem inter-… inter-…'
'Dimensional travellers,' Vimes supplied helpfully, keen to hurry the conversation along so they could get rid of the troublesome visitors and get on with their lives.
'Yes, them things. So I brought him here.'
'What happened?' M'gann asked in horror, watching with wide eyes as Wally groaned and twitched in Detritus' arms.
'Weeeelll, they told me he ate ten of Dibbler's sausages,' Detritus said. 'But I fink that the people just stopped counting after ten.'
'Well,' said Vimes, looking at Wally with a strange sort of admiration on his face. 'It takes a stomach of iron to hold even one of Dibbler's 'sausages inna bun'. I remember old Steel Throat Jenkins… he ate seven before taken to the Sybil Free Hospital. Those buns have… strange side effects.'
'Like what?' Artemis asked gingerly.
'Oh, don't worry,' said Vimes absently. 'He's coming out of intensive care in the next few months.'
Everyone went pale, and Wally just moaned in agony, rolled over and was sick on the floor.
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'Don't worry, they're nearly done,' Robin said comfortingly, patting Wally's sweaty, fevered forehead as he lay shuddering in Superboy's iron grip. 'They're just opening the portal now.'
Wally cracked open one nauseous green eye before groaning again in dismay at the sight of octarine flames streaming from Ridcully's staff.
'Magic and malignant sausages,' he said. 'I never want to come here again.'
'Oh, I don't know,' said Artemis, waving goodbye to Angua who had turned out to be a real kindred spirit. It was about time someone understood how hard a mass of bushy blonde hair was to keep looking healthy.
'Still, it is about time we returned,' said Kaldur, not voicing his opinion but silently agreeing with Wally. 'The League will be missing us.'
'I don't think so,' M'gann said, much more cheerful now she was certain Wally wasn't going to die. 'This does happen very often.'
Vimes waved goodbye to the group as they disappeared into the swirling purple circle, glad to see the back of them. He'd got the gist of what they were supposed to be… and he didn't want crazy teenagers in tights running around his city and messing up his criminals, thank you very much.
And the only people allowed to have superpowers in his book should be too wise (or too lazy) to use them. Like the Wizards.
The portal closed up like a swirl of water down a plughole, and Vimes turned away from the strange winds of other worlds and back to the rather ripe air of Ankh Morpork, which was once again back to normal… or as normal as it could usually be, anyway.
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'I've come to learn, Mistress Weatherwax.'
'You have, have you?' the tall witch asked, circling Zatanna with a critical look in her eye. 'You wish to learn magic?'
'No; I want to learn how to be a witch. My father has taught me to be a magician-'
'Pfft,' said Granny Weatherwax said dismissively. 'Magicians are almost as bad as wizards. Male magic. Witching is for women.'
'Magic is for everyone!' Zatanna protested.
'Next you'll be telling me that women and men are the same.'
'They are! We're equal to men! I would've have thought you of all people-'
'People are not equal, child. We all work in different ways. Magic fits those that use it. But if you learn wrong… it can get all confused in the head.' She tapped her temple with a thin finger. 'I knows about Headology, see. That's part of witching.'
'Oh.' Zatanna fell silent for a moment. 'But I want to learn. I want to know how to be a witch.'
'Hmmm,' Granny said, her brow pursed. For a long while she stared at Zatanna, who forced herself to stare back, not balking from her powerful gaze. Piercing blue met piercing blue, and clashed like blades.
Zatanna was the first to break contact, but Granny looked… almost… impressed.
Then she strode over to her small kitchen and pulled a cup out of the cupboard, filling it with water and placing it gently on the table.
'Move that mug,' she commanded Zatanna.
Ah. A test. But Zatanna was confident that she could do what Granny asked. In fact, it was easy. A simple locomotive chant. One of the first spells she ever learnt.
Holding out her hand, she focussed on the old wooden mug and began to chant.
'evom ot eht thgir.'
The mug moved smoothly into the air and floated slightly to the right, before settling gently onto the table once more. Zatanna lowered her hand, feeling rather proud… but her smile shrank at the look on Granny's face.
'You have a lot to forget,' she said slowly, 'before you can start learning to be a witch.'
'What do you mean?' Zatanna asked. She didn't know what she'd done wrong. Granny sighed again.
'I said move the mug. I never said you have to use magic,' she said. 'Watch.' And Zatanna watched in an embarrassed silence as Granny walked forward with rather exaggerated solemnity, picked up the mug, and moved it back to its original position.
'But,' she acknowledged, just when Zatanna was sure she had it mucked up completely, 'you have potential. As long as you are willing to learn, I will teach you.'
Zatanna's smile was so big it felt like it would split her cheeks.
The smile fell when Garry produced a huge, dusty book.
'First,' she said, with rather a wicked glint in her eye, 'I wants you to learn all these herbs and their uses.'
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Vetinari drummed his fingers thoughtfully on the table.
'You appear to have me in rather a tight corner,' he commented, staring down at the Thud board with a slight crease to his forehead. There were noticeably more trolls than dwarves on the board.
His partner remained impassive.
'But,' he continued, a small upward quirk to his left eyebrow, 'I have you in an even tighter one.'
His long pale fingers flicked forward a dwarf and a rather satisfied smile slid across his face. 'I believe I have won.'
'That was a clever move,' said his opponent in a deep, gravelly voice.
'I always play with no plan,' Vetinari said, beginning to pack away the figures carefully. 'I believe it to be the best tactic.'
'That would be where we differ.' The figure stood up- illuminated from behind by the moonlight sliding through the half-open curtains Vetinari could see nothing but a cowled silhouette, with two pointed ears. 'We should do this again sometime.'
'We almost certainly will,' Vetinari said, looking down at the board. When he looked up again, the figure had vanished, and the window was now fully open. He saw the end of a cape swirl out of sight.
Drumknott glided in.
'Your guest has gone, sir?' he asked, shutting the window softly and padding over to Vetinari.
'Yes, Drumknott,' Vetinari said. 'But I believe he will be back. He hates to lose.'
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