Title: Jack and the Beansprouts
Rating: CSI-1 / K+
Summary: It's panto time...
Disclaimer: Nope, not mine. The songs used in future chapters are not mine either, I've just played with them for my purposes.
A/N: I'm about to post a whole bunch of stories that, for some reason, I never posted here. This is a Christmas fic, originally posted in December 2006.
Chapter One
It's December 23rd in the Nevada city of Las Vegas and in just two hours time the curtain will rise on the first performance of the fourth annual Las Vegas Police Department Charity Pantomime.
… … …
The tradition started those few years ago when Detective Carol Kringle transferred from Juneau, Alaska to Las Vegas.
No doubt due to the Christmassy nature of her name, Carol had always found Christmas to be the most magical time of the year; showing great enthusiasm for all traditions surrounding it – particularly those involving singing and dancing.
And so, at the age of fourteen, Carol had begun writing and directing pantomimes in her hometown. She and her friends would perform for the local children, and it would warm her heart to see them smiling and laughing and filled with the joy of the season.
When Carol joined the police force several years later, she found that there were kindred spirits out there also keen on spreading Christmas cheer. Getting together with two such spirits, the group realised the money making potential behind pantomime performances.
In its first year, the "Kringle and Co. Charity Christmas Concert" raised over one thousand dollars for a Juneau children's charity, and it grew from there.
Four years ago, Carol left the more wintery surroundings of Alaska for the desert landscape of Las Vegas, to marry the love of her life, Chris Holly. With a name like that, she had known immediately that he was the man for her.
Her first November in Vegas, Carol felt rather lost without the preparations for the panto, until one night she realised you could take the woman out of Juneau, but you couldn't take Christmas out of Carol Kringle-Holly. She sat right down and wrote a pantomime, and the next day she began the recruitment of her actors.
The response was a little slow at first, but with a little persuasion she soon had a full cast ready to make themselves look a little silly for a good cause.
It wasn't a show to rival Cirque de Soleil; it wasn't filled with glamour and glitz and special effects; it was held in a nearby hall, one performance to one hundred and eighty people; but it sold out and it put smiles on the faces of eighty-one children who attended, and thousands of others through the money it raised.
There had been one every year since then.
Each year there were more and more police officers signing up to be part of the show, which helped Carol increase performances to two last year, raising even more money.
This year had been no exception with volunteers, and there had even been a sudden interest from the Las Vegas Crime Lab. Carol had never expressly said, nor even considered, whether or not the Crime Lab could be involved, so she simply welcomed them with the same smile she did everyone else and got underway with assigning the roles.
Which brings us to this story of how Catherine Willows came to be playing the lead role; how Jim Brass won the role of the Dame; and how Gil Grissom came to star as King Evilhead the Third.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is the making of "Jack and the Beansprouts"…