Title: The scones strike back
Fandom: Discworld
Genre: Humour
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Nothing mine...
Summary: Magical accidents happen in the Unseen University every day. And sometimes they have interesting outcomes.
A/N: I wrote this story about a year ago as original fiction. But whatever I did I couldn't stop myself from making the world it was set in a bad copy of Discworld. So now I decided to rewrite it as a FanFiction. Sorry for any stupid expressions, faulty grammar etc, that always happens to me when a story is originally in German.
The scones strike back
The dough sticked to her hands. "Make scones." That was what Archchancellor Ridcully of the Unseen University had ordered. The order had eventually, after much passing down, ended with Emily, one of the kitchen maids, who only did it because she had no one to pass it down to.
The first time Emily had made scones, together with her mother, she had been told that once the dough was kneaded properly it would be easy to get it off the fingers. Since then she had made a lot of scones, but it had always been a struggle to get rid of the dough.
When she had finished kneading there was no dough left in the bowl. It was all on the poor girl's fingers. As she was making a triple portion scones, this meant about one kilo sticky dough. Emily spent almost quarter an hour trying to get it from her fingers to the working surface. Once she had managed that, the rest was easy.
When the scones finally were in the oven, Emily left the baking kitchen to help the others preparing dinner.
But it was not quiet for long in the abandoned room. Ten minutes later there were voices to be heard:
"Hey you there. Come over here and help. Together we can do this!"
"Heave ho!"
"C'mon, stem against it, everyone!"
"It moved!"
The door of the oven opened a bit.
"A bit more! We almost made it! Yes! Freedom!!"
One kilo of scones hopped out of the oven, tried to get small dough arms and legs into the right order and started to explore their surroundings. When they had all left the oven, the scone who seemed to be the leader of the strange freedom movement, called the others to him.
"Friends! We made it! We have left the Great Cuboid behind us! The world is ours!"
The other scones stared at him confused and tried to work out what he meant. After a while they started to cheer.
"Follow me!", called the leader.
The others obeyed
"Hey," one of the last ones asked his friend.
"what is a world? I mean, we should know that if it belongs to us."
"I don't know. Maybe something like the Great Cuboid, only bigger."
The first scone nodded. That sounded logical. A huge cuboid.
That the scone was wrong is easily proven by looking at the world from above. It's flat, a bit like a pizza, but without the artichokes, resting on the backs of four giant elephants. These elephants in turn are carried by the even bigger star turtle Great A'Tuin. The sun orbits this world which is, most likely because of its shape, called Discworld.
The biggest city on the Disc is called Ankh-Morpork and in Ankh-Morpork stands the Disc's magic university, the Unseen University.
And where thaumaturgic energy is as concentrated as in the Unseen University, magic accidents happen almost every day. As a result of one of them, the University's librarian turned into an orang-utan. What happened in the baking kitchen is only a minor event.
The scones had finished exploring the baking kitchen and were now trying to reach the doorknob by making a pyramid, but always lost their balance halfway up. After some tries they gave up and looked for a different escape and eventually found it: a mouse hole.
It was teatime, which was why nobody noticed the scones who left through another mouse hole somewhere in the building and wandered through the corridors. But someone did notice that they were missing: Emily, the kitchen maid, was horrified when she re-entered the baking kitchen and found the oven open and empty.
She immediately went to report it, but got assured that these things happened and that the only consequence would be that she had to bake again tomorrow if the fugitives didn't turn up again.
Ridcully, however, was not exactly happy when he heard what had happened. He wanted to serve them in the meeting with the other senior wizards. He had found out that having some food usually kept the other wizards in a fairly good humour and setting the time of the meetings for just after teatime made them hurry through everything as fast as possible. After all you could miss the beginning of dinner.
But there was no helping it. The scones were gone. Nobody blamed Emily. After all not even a wizard could have eaten a kilo of scones without clotted cream and jam in such a short time. No, the scones must have left by themselves and no non-wizard and especially no woman could be responsible for that.
The wizards had just closed the first subject without results when the scones reached the Archchancellor's office. They had returned to the mice corridors and those had eventually led to the office. On their way they had met three mice, defeated them in a quick combat and since then been left alone.
On seeing the "giants", one of the scones decided that they had to try and communicate with them, even though they seemed hardly more intelligent, if at all, than the long-teeth in the tunnels. The others tried to hold him back, but the scone ignored them and marched towards the wizards.
Having arrived in there, he started to wave and shout as lout as he could to get the wizards attention. Of course he was successful. It doesn't take much to make a wizard notice food. Also, their reaction was foreseeable. They almost battled for the poor little pastry. The Head of the Department for Magical Metamorphosis won and ate the scone in one bite. The other scones watched him horrified. When they realized that the giant had killed their mate, they ran back into the kitchen, where one of them had seen weapons.
When they reached the kitchen, after long walking through the corridors of the university mice, the maids were just serving dinner and so the room was empty. The scones climbed onto the working surface and armed themselves. Several armed with toothpicks, four carried a small kitchen knife and six a barbecue spit and the others made little bundles of kitchen paper and filled them with peppercorns. Then they went to take revenge on the evil murderers.
But they found the office empty, as the wizards had left for the dining room long ago. The scones conferred and decided that they should better wait here. Sooner or later the giants were bound to come back. And they were right.
After about two hours the Archchancellor and the Head of the Department for Magical Metamorphosis, with whom the Archchancellor still had to talk about something, entered the room. The scones, who had used those two hours to make a plan of action, got ready for the attack.
But scones are not exactly dangerous. They might make fat if eaten en masse, but even that would be more the fault of the clotted cream. And even armed with kitchen tools they are more annoying than dangerous.
"As a matter of fact this is not a bad idea." said the Head of the Department for Magical Metamorphosis while shaking off a scone that tried to climb up his sleeve. The attacker flew right across the room, hit the wall and lay there motionless.
"What do you mean?" asked the Archchancellor.
"Bewitched food serving itself."
"Only up to the morning when your porridge decides it would rather not be eaten and jumps into your face."
The scones were angry and brave, but the wizards were stronger and bigger. It is a narrative imperative that the inferior and brave are the heroes and therefore always win, but sometimes magic and common sense were just stronger. The scones stood no chance. And so it happened that the ghost of the leader of the scones had to watch Archchancellor Ridcully break his dead body in two, spread jam on it and eat it.
SCONE NUMBER 1?, asked the only voice in the multiverse speaking in capital letters.
"Yes?" asked the addressed scone and turned around.
IF YOU WOULD PLEASE FOLLOW ME. said Death.
The End
If there had been anybody to hear them.