I haven't done much reading of Discworld novels in some time and have only recently started a reread, so please forgive me if I get some facts wrong, or the characters seem off. Just about none of the characters in this story belong to me, but I do hope that I have done them justice.
Don't expect much by way of plot. I was really just having some fun with the worlds, characters, and writing style.
Please, enjoy.
Commander Vimes of the city watch was a very angry man.
This wasn't always the case for him, of course, with his default expression being one so stone-faced that people who didn't know him could often mistake him for a troll. Today was different. Today he was lost in a foreign city with an actual troll. And a werewolf, and a dwarf, and a human who was actually a dwarf, but who could tell because he was six feet tall anyway.
Earlier that day he had been having coffee with Sergeant Detritus the troll who, instead of coffee, was drinking something that was slowly eating through the mug. They were discussing the training methods required for new handlers in the K9 division, and Captain Angua was there because she had experience with the K9 division, being both the handler and the handled. Captain Carrot was there because, well, he was Carrot.
They were interrupted by Sergeant Cheri Littlebottom, who had been sauntering past the café when a man had broken through the second story window of a shop across the street with a bag full of money and a middle aged women shouting after him that she was fully paid up on her thieves guild fees. Cheri had quickly informed the watch members in the café of what had happened and soon the five of them were making quick pursuit.
It was probably overkill to send the commander of the city watch after an unlicensed thief with two captains and two sergeants in tow, but when one officer starts chasing down a crook there's a sort of pack mentality that takes hold (1). This pack mentality took them to the Unseen University, where they quickly scaled a wall and chased the thief into the grounds as noon began to ring across the city. The thief made a break for a group of students who appeared to be working on a project that consisted of a ring of spiky metal sticks that buzzed disconcertingly and poked out of the ground.
The thief was running right for it.
"...seems to come back after some time-" one of the students was saying, but Vimes didn't hear the next part of the sentence as the university's bell, Old Tom, started its strokes of silence.
He could no longer hear the sound of his feet hitting the ground, or what the wizard students were screaming at the group as they waved their hands frantically and tried to lunge out of the way. All he saw was the thief entering the ring of spikes.
Vimes didn't even think. He wasn't letting this one get away.
There was a bright light.
Patrolling the streets of Republic City was a task Penga had to admit she very much enjoyed doing. There was, of course, the notion that she was being trusted with her skills and had actual authority over people now that she was a police officer. More importantly though, she got to do an awful lot of window shopping.
Republic city had a budding shoe district.
And even though she had a task to ensure harmony between the many citizens of the four nations who were coming to call Republic City their home, that didn't mean she couldn't wander into a shop or two to ensure that there was harmony in there as well.
She had with her, today, another officer who had graduated from the Beifong Metalbending Academy who went by the name Lee (2). He was a head taller than she was, but that didn't bother her because she was ahead in the actual skill set required for the job. She was one of Chief Beifong's top students.
They were just heading into the shoe district to check its harmony levels when a man in black clothing came barrelling around the corner and made a break for it down Aang Avenue. Penga didn't get a good look at him and decided to shrug it off. After all, there was nothing illegal about running. What caught her off guard was the large yellow dog that went streaking after him.
Thinking the man was in danger of a mauling, the young police officer gestured to her partner to follow after them. They didn't make it far because after the dog came an entire assortment of unusual figures of different sizes and the sight stopped Penga and her partner in their tracks.
One of the men was very, very tall and had such bright red hair Penga could only assume she was hallucinating. There was also a short, hairy man she swore was wearing lipstick, but even that wasn't the most shocking thing about the group.
One of them was made entirely out of rock.
As she contemplated the running, rocky figure, coming to the conclusion that one of the group must be an eathbender and she was just too startled to figure out which one was controlling it just yet, she suddenly realised that the entire group was clanking loudly as they ran.
They were armed, and they were chasing, and they were in her streets, Avatar be damned! And they were all wearing large quantities of metal...
One thing Commander Vimes never wanted to experience again was the freedom of running under his own power being taken away by the sudden halting of his own armour. If there was one thing Vimes hated it was being stopped in the pursuit of his job.
But the confused young woman who had stopped them was apparently a member of this city's police force and she had apparently confused them for the villains in this whole mess and they were now being dragged, quite literally, towards a building Vimes could only assume was the police headquarters. There was a building next to them with a large sign over it that said "Beifong Metalbending Academy" and above the sign was another sign with an arrow pointing in between "Metalbending" and "Academy" that said "Police" (3).
They were pulled inside the main building by their armour, or in Angua's case, by the metal ropes tying all four of her paws together. She'd been foolish enough to come back for them, but trying to get Angua to not come to Carrot's aid was like trying to get a fish to stop swimming, or a dwarf to stop mining, or a troll to stop trolling (4).
Being dragged around an unfamiliar city by what appeared to be magic was not something to which Vimes was going to take kindly. He was already upset enough with the wizards for sending them here and this extra metal magic was something he was going to be having a word with the archchancellor about. He wasn't sure if the archchancellor would be able to do anything about it, since everyone around him had a distinctly foreign look to them, but he was going to complain all the same.
When they were pulled through the doors, Vimes suddenly found his group under the scrutiny of an entire room full of police officers. They had all stopped what they were doing and were now staring at the prisoners who were being deposited next to a desk by the door. There was a young man sitting behind the desk with his mouth hanging open.
"Watch them," the woman said to her partner, as she strolled further into the building.
It took Vimes a moment to realise that all the people in the room weren't staring at them specifically. In actuality, all eyes were focused on Detritus, including the eyes of a young blind woman who was leaning against the far wall (5).
To Vimes' surprise, the blind woman was exactly who their captor was heading for.
The woman was dressed just like all the other officers, which Vimes took to mean that she was, in fact, an officer as well. The only difference in their attire was that while the other officers were wearing hats, she was wearing a headband that seemed to be keeping a large mass of black hair in a round bun that covered most of her head. Their young captor was speaking to the woman in a hushed voiced. Eventually she stopped, and the woman remained silent for a moment. She then pushed off from the wall and started walking towards them with a confidence Vimes shouldn't have expected from a blind women, and yet somehow wasn't surprised to see.
"What's your name?" the woman asked, pointing to Carrot. Her eyes were pointing to the door behind him. Of course she picked Carrot to question first, the man had that look of authority to him. Vimes then reminded himself that the woman couldn't even see that look of authority, and yet she had chosen to point at Carrot anyway.
"Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson. Ankh-Morpork City Watch," Carrot responded. Vimes was sure the man would have saluted had he not been holding Angua's armour in his arms (6). "But I believe it's Commander Vimes you intended to address. He's our superior officer."
"Oh, good. And which one of you is Commander Vimes?" the woman asked. Vimes cleared his throat.
"That would be me," he said. She turned towards the sound of his voice and Vimes tried to get a better look at her eyes. They were definitely milky and she was definitely not looking at anything in particular. If those eyes worked, Vimes would eat his helmet.
"Alright Mister Vimes, my officer tells me that she found you chasing some guy down Aang Avenue. Care to explain yourself?"
"He was a crook," Vimes responded simply.
"Ah, yes," the woman said. "The thing is, Penga here says she didn't see him do anything wrong. What she did see was a bunch of people chasing after him with swords. Isn't that right Penga?"
"Yes Sifu To- uh, Chief Beifong."
Generally if someone was being chased by a bunch of people with swords, they did something wrong. Vimes, however, wisely kept this thought to himself. Besides, this woman couldn't be more than twenty years old. There were people here twice her age and the younger woman had just called her chief. There was something very dangerous about this situation and Vimes was finding himself very on edge.
"With all due respect," Vimes finally said. "The man was a thief."
Chief Beifong didn't move for a moment.
She then placed her hands on her hips and grinned widely. "Well, you're not lying, so that's good news for you. I guess I'll have to interrogate you properly now. That's what police officers do, right Penga?"
"Yes Sifu- Chief."
"I think I'm going to like this job."
Toph Beifong sat behind the desk in her new office while her assistant Guo read out a very long, boring report somebody along the line apparently expected her to sign. She was very new to this whole "policing" thing, but so far she was finding the job to be very satisfying. Yesterday she was given the opportunity to launch five firebending gang members into a brick wall and nobody had lectured her for it (7). The only problem was that Toph was expected to do paperwork. She didn't know who it was who kept expecting the paperwork, since she was the top dog in the police department and the council so far only consisted of Aang, Sokka, and a couple of representatives she hadn't bothered to learn the names of. What she did know was that she was now expected to know how to write, and being blind, it had taken far too long just to learn how to spell her own name. Now she had an assistant to help her with such things, but today she was finding it very hard to concentrate on what he was saying.
Toph had instantly fallen in love with Detritus the troll. She'd never heard of a troll before today, but the idea of living rock was one that made her giddy. Toph didn't get giddy. And then there was the wolfwoman. Toph knew about wolfbats, and just plain old wolves, but a wolfwoman? That was just weird. And to top everything off, there had been a short bearded woman in metal heels. Toph didn't like heels, but she liked metal and with her parents getting on her case about needing to actually wear shoes to formal events, an idea was starting to form in her mind.
The small group apparently came from another city that Toph had never heard of. She suspected that it was in a far away land and there was some suspicious spirit magic involved which she wouldn't be able to do anything about. She'd suggested to Commander Vimes that she introduce him to the Avatar, to which he'd responded, "What's that, some kind of porridge?"
In the end she had arranged for the entire group to have dinner at Air Temple Island, and Commander Vimes had offered to give her some advice on running the new police department since he apparently had a lot of experience in the matter. All in all, it was looking to be a good day.
Her reverie was interrupted by Guo clearing his throat very loudly. He had pushed a piece of paper in front of Toph and was holding out a pen for her. Toph tried to remember what he had said to her but determined that in the end it didn't matter. She was probably going to end up signing the paper either way and she decided to save herself some time and signed her name in the general vicinity of the line (8).
Guo gave her messy signature a disapproving glare, but Toph ignored it. He'd get used to it eventually. Her assistant shuffled some papers around and got ready to read out another report, but before he had a chance to start, a middle-aged officer opened the door unannounced.
"Chief, I was just on the telephone with Avatar Aang, and he wanted me to tell you that next time you plan dinner with guests at Air Temple Island, you should probably tell him first."
Toph had sent their new guests over to Air Temple Island with one of her officers after they had finished their interrogation. She'd told them that she would be right over, but her paperwork was taking longer than expected. Somewhere along the line she must have forgotten to actually give Aang and Katara a call to ask them if that was okay. In her defence, though, she was still getting used to the idea of a telephone and until they made one with numbers she could actually read, she was going to adamantly refuse to learn how to use one.
"Thank you Lee," Toph said. "I'll be sure to take the avatar's concerns to heart."
Over at Air Temple Island, Katara was annoyed. She'd already had plans that evening to have her brother and Toph over for dinner, but when she'd come home from her shift at the hospital she had found not just Sokka, but five very odd strangers in her living room. Sokka was regaling them with tales of the war as Katara shuffled over to her husband to ask him what was going on.
"Toph sent them over apparently," Aang said. "There was a police officer with them and she said something about spirit magic."
It was just like Toph to drop her problems on the Avatar and his wife. If she couldn't handle the situation it was spirit magic and it was Aang's job to fix it (9).
Katara got started on the now, much larger, dinner she needed to prepare. When she'd asked her new guest what they would eat, she'd gotten two orders of rat with ketchup, an order of bacon with the crispy bits still on, a plate of coal (10), and one order of "I don't mind really as long as it's vegetarian." Aang's eyes had lit up at that last bit and soon the poor yellow-haired woman got roped into a discussion about valuing all living things and the life of a spider fly being worth the same as that of an elephant koi. Katara rolled her eyes and tried to figure out how she was going to pull off this dinner. She wondered if fish was a good substitute for rat.
Vimes had to admit that their hosts had been very welcoming to the unexpected guests. He wasn't sure how the young woman, Katara, he remembered her being called, was going to pull off the tall order she'd received for dinner. Luckily for her it was about an hour later that Chief Beifong came barging through the door to save the day.
"Toph!" their new friend Sokka called. At least he called himself their friend. Vimes wasn't too keen on being friends with someone he'd only known for an hour. "I have a proposal for you."
"No thanks Sokka. I like being single," the chief responded. But she gave him a hug anyway. They clearly knew each other very well.
"So I was reading some maps and doing some calculations and stuff," Sokka said.
"Boring. Go on."
"And I think I might have a general idea of where boomerang and space sword fell!"
Toph rolled her eyes. "Not this again..."
"Space sword?" Vimes asked.
"Ten years ago Sokka made a sword out of meteorite," Aang said from the couch where he had previously been chatting with Angua. The captain had had this panicked look in her eyes as though she wanted desperately to get away from him but couldn't find the politest way to go about it.
"Sounds pretty impractical to me," Cheri said from the other side of the room.
"He threw the sword from an airship while saving Toph's life," Aang continued.
"I mean, the amount of time it would take to even find that much meteorite..."
"And Sokka's been harassing Toph ever since to help him find it."
"Who would even think of something like that?"
Toph grunted. "It's been ten year Snoozles. I think it's time to drop it."
"I did drop it. That's the problem!"
Before the argument could escalate any further, a somewhat frazzled Katara emerged from the kitchen. "Toph? Oh good, I need your help with dinner."
"I don't cook," the police chief responded.
"I know. But this is a special order." Katara pointed at Detritus, who didn't seem to notice.
Toph nodded and made her way towards the troll. Vimes lost track of the conversation that followed. "...like coal," Detritus was saying and Toph seemed to be gesturing to try and urge the troll outside. Vimes wasn't sure what he thought of this city's police chief. This was a woman who was capable of magically moving metal and rocks, and she seemed to be particularly interested in Detritus. Vimes found himself wondering if her magic could be applied to a troll and what kind of implications could be had there. The idea of somebody having the power to force another person to move against their will... it was frightening.
"Okay, I think I got everything," he heard Katara call from the kitchen. "I hope you don't mind that we don't actually have rats here. I mean, there's elephant rats, but we don't usually eat them..."
Later that evening found Vimes relaxing on the couch of the living room. Dinner had been pretty okay, if you ignored Cheri's complaints that fish was definitely not a substitute for rat. Vimes had still managed to fill himself up on some relatively tasty noodles, and with Toph's help, Detritus had managed to select the finest cut of limestone he'd had in ages. That woman could probably make herself a fortune in troll cuisine if she lived in Ankh-Morpork.
Vimes was starting to like it here. It barely bothered him that Aang had so far not been able to think of how they had managed to get here. "I've never heard of an Ankh-Morpork in the spirit realm," he'd said. At least they were being treated well.
He must have been starting to drift off to sleep because his eyes shot open at the sound of a shrill ringing.
"What was that?" Carrot asked.
"Just the telephone," said Katara. "I'll get it."
This world had some interesting machines in it as well. The telephone reminded him an awful lot of the clacks tower, only far more practical. He vaguely wondered how long it would be before someone in Ankh-Morpork invented a telephone. It could prove to be very useful for police work.
"Toph, it's for you," Katara called.
"Okay," Toph said. She made no move to get up and Katara had to come over and physically drag the police chief over to the telephone.
After a while Toph re-emerged in the living room. "Okay, so we found your guy. Apparently he was carrying a bag full of paper or something."
"That would be the money," Captain Carrot said. He seemed quite content that the culprit had been caught.
"Your money is made of paper?" The thought appeared physically repulsive to the blind woman. "Whatever. We should head over to the station so you can make sure it's actually him."
It was quite dark by the time they made it back to the police station. Vimes noted the looks of respect and awe that Chief Beifong's officers were directing at her and found himself wondering, not for the first time, what she had done to earn it. Given her age, it must have been something really impressive.
The man in the cell was definitely their thief. Vime's hadn't gotten a good look at the man's face while they had been chasing him, but he didn't have the same foreign look everyone else around here had (11).
"That's him," Angua said. "I recognise the smell."
Chief Beifong nodded and opened her mouth to respond but Vimes didn't get to hear what she had to say because he found himself suddenly surrounded by a blinding light before he noticed that he was once again standing in the grounds of the Unseen University (12). There were worried students all around them and the prisoner, who had previously been sitting on a bench, now found himself sitting on air and promptly fell to the ground. Vimes didn't allow himself to be shocked for too long and quickly apprehended the man before he could recover.
His visit to the strange world of Republic City was not one Vimes would be forgetting any time soon and he had to admit that it hadn't been all bad. But Vimes couldn't be seen going soft.
He turned to the nervous students standing around them and cleared his throat loudly. "Where's the archchancellor?" he said. "I believe I have a few complaints."
(1) A particularly strong one in the case of Captain Angua.
(2) One of many officers by this name, in fact.
(3) At least, this is what Vimes would have noticed if he could in fact actually read the strange squiggly, criss-crossing lines that passed for writing in this city. It was all Quirmian to him really.
(4) This was an activity taken up by the troll youngsters of Ankh-Morpork that involved harassing passers-by with an inter woven net made of rat hair fibre* by either tripping them, or trapping them, and most certainly angering them. It was, over all, a relatively harmless hobby and the watch tended not to get involved since it seemed to keep the youngsters away from more dangerous things, like slab.
* An "inter-net" as they were calling it.
(5) Her eyes weren't focused on Detritus, per say, but rather on a spot close to Detritus' left ear. Vimes still got the impression she was watching him carefully.
(6) Not to mention his hands were quite thoroughly tied at the moment.
(7) Even Katara had toned it down to a quick scolding for reckless behaviour. It was refreshing.
(8) This is actually the exact method by which it became illegal in Republic City to whistle and fold your laundry at the same time. Toph also later made it illegal for girls under the age of five to wear dresses, though Avatar Aang strongly suspected that she had done that one on purpose.
(9) This became particularly problematic when an older Toph would send her arguing daughters to the avatar for help. "They don't get along," she would say. "It must be spirit magic."
(10) She decided to leave that one for Toph to figure out.
(11) It didn't occur to Vimes that he was the one with the foreign look because he was the one who was foreign to Republic City.
(12) Toph, of course, didn't have the same experience. Instead she noticed that where there had once been a prisoner and five visiting police officers, there was now nobody. She'd confronted Aang about it thinking that he and his spirit magic were responsible, but Aang had no idea what had happened either. Toph never believed him.