Before you read this, I'd better warn you, it's strange, confusing, strange, almsot entirely plotless, uhm, strange again, and, well, a little bit off the wall. Oh yeah, and it's my first-ish fic, so be kind and review.
So, here we go then.
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In a dark and gloomy room a man lay asleep. The room wasn't simply messy, it had long since gone throguh the stage of being messy, and come through the other side. It looked worse than if it had been hit by a bomb. In fact, it couldn't have looked worse if it had been singed by a dragon, drastically altered by several strange spells gone haywire, and then left empty for a period of not less than five years before having a large quantity of spare luggage and baggage thrown carelessly into the corner, which was in fact what had happened to it. In one corner there was a massive ancient warderobe, of the sort which young children often explore hopefully, having read somewhere that old warderobes are the doorways to strange new worlds where animals talk and so on. On top of the warderobe was a large metal bound box, like a treasure chest. It was snoring, making a sound like a log being sawn, or possibly that was the guy in the bed, it was difficult to tell.
There was a noise. It sounded rather like someone was knocking heavily on the door, which was less than amazing, as that was what it was. The sleeping man woke up and screamed, or possibly the other way around, and sat up blinking blearily. There was a voice from the other side of the door. "Rincewind! Rincewind! Wake up!". The man, presumably called Rincewind, snapped awake imeadiately and glared apprehensively at the door. "Why?" he queried. "You're wanted in the archancellor's office right now! You'd better run!" Rincewind looked puzzeled and shouted back, "That's exactly what I was thinking!" before quickly pulling clothes on and opening the door to reveal a very scared looking student wizard. The student squeaked and stepped back, looking nervously around behind Rincewind, who nodded. "Thanks, I was forgetting." Rincewind whistled and the large snoring trunk jumped down from the top of the warderobe and stretched on hundreds of little pink feet, before running after the wizards as they followed winding corridors down to the Archanellor's office.
Rincewind grinned at the student. "So, you got any idea what this is about then?"
The student shook his head mutely, then opened the door, motioning for him to enter. Rincewind then did a very stupid thing. As Rincewind's bad decisions go it ranked about seventeenth, just above eating salty beer soup in a hot desert, but below comparing a gigantic red dragon with a rampaging flying elephant*.
He went into the archancellor's office.
It had changed somewhat since he'd last been in it. For one thing it had decidedly less paperwork.
For another thing it had a large gaping hole in the wall, which was burned around the edges. Currently occupying all of the room inside the hole, and much of the room outside of it also, was a, a, a big shiny metalish thingy with burn marks on it. Rincewind gaped at it. It was very shiny, and sort of streamlined, with what looked like a big window in the front. Peering into the window Rincewind was surprised to see what looked like a small chair inside, just about big enough for one person, or two if they really squashed. On the side of the, the thing, he could just about make out a sort of coat arms kind of thingy. It was a sort of loop with stars in it, and slightly scorched words which read "Space Corps". Rincewind stared at it for a moment longer before a movement behind him made him spin around, hair triggered and poised at any momnet to run like hell.
The archancellor was standing by the pool table that he preffered to use as a desk, so that he could keep things in the pockets. Next to him was stood . . .
Rincewind stared at the new person in abject shock. The person smiled at him in a freindly way and reached out to shake hands. Mesmerised Rincewind shook hands with the person, and then surreptisiously tried to massage some feeling back into his fingers. The archancellor smiled at him in a rather jovial way. "So, Racewind, you finally decided to drag yourself down here, hmm?" The archancellor nodded at the new hole in his wall. "I see you've noticed the new wallpaper I had the students put up? Of course," he added, seeing Rincewind's look of bewildered disbelief, "I suspect that I may have to have it re-done, what with the, er hole in the wall and everything. Of course, I may not bother, it is after all extermely healthy. Almost as healthy as living outdoors, not that you people would know anything about that, hah, indeed, catch any of the, uhm, faculty outside the grounds. Anyway, " he nodded meaningfully at the mystery person, " I'll just, I'll just leave you chaps to get aquainted, shall I?" he nodded again at Rincewind and left hurriedly.
The mystery person smiled at Rincewind. "The name's Ace, and I realise that this may come as a bit of a shock, but I'm-"
"You're me, aren't you." Rincewind was staring at "Ace" like all his nightmares were coming true at once, even the one about the scissors, and, you know, the syrupy rabbits, and "Ace" looked a little put out by that, like he wasn't used to it.
To an outsider it would have presented a very peculiar picture, Rincewind realised. After all, how often do you get to see a wizard come face to face with what looked like his more attaractive, perhaps, and certainly more irritating twin brother, and not look totally gobsmackingly surprised? Not very often, I can tell you.
In fact, Rincewind was surprised, he just wasn't that surprised that he was going to go around looking gormless when he could practice his best evil withering glares. He'd often thought that there must be, somewhere, a sort of anti-Rincewind, someone who got all the breaks that he'd been denied, who was good at magic, or whatever the local equivalent was, someone who didn't remind other people of an intelligent rodent, someone in fact who was the opposite of him, who proved that Rincewind could have done really well if he'd only had the breaks. Which just proved how basically wrong he was, but never mind, he'll find out soon enough.
"Ace", a.k.a. Arnold Rimmer, stared at the new, er, specimin. He was having serious doubts about his mision now, even though it had made so much sense before he left. After an anonimous tip from a, what was it the other Ace had said, a very reliable source, that something really big and nasty was going to happen and that Ace would need all of the help that he could get, he'd recruited Rimmer early, and told him to go out to this little pathetic dimensional backwater and search out his double. After all, Ace had said, science is all very well, but magic, well, magic would be so useful in one of those difficult situations, and imagine what another Ace would be able to do if he could do magic, so why don't you see what you can pick up, my old tangerine. And Rimmer had gone, because regardless of how much he disliked Ace, no matter how much the guy was an irritating smeghead, and no matter how much just listening to the guy's smug, "Smoke me a kipper" smeg set his teeth on edge, he knew that the universe apparently needed someone like him. And now it needed more than one, a whole load of someones like him. Like him being the operative word, of course. The original Ace Rimmer, or possibly Rimmers, no-one knew exactly how many Rimmers had piloted the trans-dimensional craft Wildfire in all of the many different dimensions, had died long ago, and been replaced by his hologram, who had in turn been replaced by another hologram, this one of a different Rimmer, who had been replaced by another Rimmer, who had been replaced by, well you get the idea.
But this one looked different. He was very skinny, and looked permanently poised to run away. Not that that was much different from the other Rimmers he'd met, of course, but this one looked as if he could probably put on a fair turn of speed. And he had scars. A man, if he was anything like the other Rimmers he'd met, a man who was terrified of his own shadow should not be so heavily scarred as this one, although from the archancellor's rather vague descriptions of the man's life he had already saveed the world a few times over. What was the old man had said? "Trouble follows him behind, or at least that was what Dean said, or was it the one about the little pink legs, oh bloody hell, I can't be expected to remember all this." Rimmer frowned as he spotted movement, just in the corner of his eye. He turned to look, but all he could see was a large metal bound treasure chest, which he was certain hadn't seen before.
Rincewind fixed the man with his most withering glare. Whilst he had devoted some time to the thought of what he would do if he ever met his double, his thoughts had mostly been quite detailed involving large planks of wood with nails in, and perhaps even a hammer. How could anyone be so incredibly irritating and not realise it? The man had barely spoken to him, and he'd already gotten to the stressed-Eric state of mind where the little vein in his forehead was threatening to start visibly throbbing. Oh gods, now he was going to speak to him. Rincewind gritted his teeth.
"So, you like curry? Lager? Vindaloo sandwiches? Electric guitar music?" Rincewind shook his head. "Thank god for that, I was begining to wonder if you were the right bloke. You people have pubs round here? Beer? You drink, yes?" Rincewind nodded silently. "Thank god." The man sighed with releif. "So, what's you're name? As if I didn't already know, it's Rimmer, right?"
"No, actually it's not."
"What? So what is it then?"
Rincewind grinned unpleasantly at the other man's surprise. "Actually," he said, carefully drawing out each sylabul with painstaking precision, "it's Rincewind."
"Rincewind? Oh well, I guess it was bound to happen sometime. Is that a first name or last name?"
"Both."
Rimmer quirked an eyebrow at him. "So you're called Rincewind Rincewind? You must've had especially evil parents. My real name's Arnold, Arnold Rimmer."
"What happened to "Ace"?" Rincewind smirked at "Arnold's discomfort.
"Well, um, oh hell, I'll level with you. Ace was this guy, like an alternate version of me, and you of course, and he was a hero type, you know, always saving the world and stuff. Well, he figured out this way to travel between dimensions, and he went aroung saving universe and stuff. And so on, untill one day he got sick, really bad, and he had to find a replacement, because the universe needs a hero. So he found another Rimmer, cos he was a Rimmer too, and he taught this Rimmer, the new one, he taught him how to save the universe and stuff. So it started, and of course when the new Ace got injured he found a replacement, and everything was hunky-dory. Until one day, about two months ago, and Ace finds me. And explains, he's recruited me early, because this guy he knew, some dimension travelling guy, told him that there was going to be something really bad happening soon. SO Ace decided he needed more than just one Rimmer, so he sent me out to recruit some more. That's why I'm not so good at this, you see. And you're the next one."
Rincewind stared at him. "No." He said. "No, you can't make me, I don't see why you'd want to try anyway, it's bad enough having to save this world without going looking for more trouble, no way, I'm not doing it. No, not now, not ever, not again, goodbye and no thank you for the offer." Rincewind said this all in one long garbled breath, then ran. He ran in the sure and certain knowledge that staying behind would mean being roped into another blasted adventure, and because of this he ran possibly faster than he'd ever run before. In fact, he ran so fast that because of the strange distorting and slowing effects of magic on light, Rimmer felt the inrush of air before he saw Rincewind even move. Then he swore, graphically cursing Ace Rimmer and his amazing blasted smegging plans, the smeghead that he was, and ran after him.
Behind them the luggage sat down on it's little legs. As far as it's possible to tell with a peice of luggage, it looked quite smug and pleased with itself.
*I don't know exactly what should be first on Rincewind's list of stupid things he has done, but I'd hazard a guess and say that it's probably something along the lines of, "decided to become a native guide for a small smiling man in glasses from the Agatian Empire", or possibly even, "decided to become a wizard". If he did ever decide about the wizard thing, I'm not so sure about that one.
P.S. Sorry about the elephant, I just couldn't help myself. At least it wasn't purple.
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Well, there you go! Oh yeah, and by the way, in case you didn't know, I own nothing except for the plot, such as it is, and a few original characters which will almost certainly pop in later, hah, yes indeed, try and keep them out. Or rather, don't.