Riposte
a challenge response fic
Author's Note: This is in response (after a year and a half) to Val Evenstar's En Guarde, a crossover with basically all fandoms that we care to be fans of - and some of which we aren't. For the first chapter, please see .net/s/3966573/1/En_Garde (apparently I can't put links in stories).
Val: let's see if you can stick to the chapter titling scheme.
Interlude: Another Small Insertion
Elspeth stared at the screen, not so much in disbelief as in the hope that her brain could still interpret what her eyes saw. The sheer twistedness of her sister's latest fic had, in all probability, caused permanent neural damage. Swiveling her newly reclaimed office chair in what she hoped was a menacing manner, she faced the aforementioned sister and demanded, "You know this is a bad idea, right?"
Val, maintaining the nonchalance she'd possessed since eight and a half months prior to her birth, shrugged and took another sip of her beverage. "Tell me something I don't know."
"Ever typed 'why' in MATLAB?"
Val waved that one off, too. "Inconsequential. Irrelevant."
"You and Ben Barnes." This was a statement.
There was an infinitesimal second of absolute, knife-edged stillness ... and then Val growled. Growled, as in dog growl. "You even try and I'll rip your slimy head right off your ..."
Grinning a grin that would rival the Cheshire Cat's, Elspeth turned back to her keyboard, singsonging softly, "Hott hott hott hott..."
A chance draft wafted through the room, filling it with the scent of the rich hot chocolate in Val's mug. Elspeth turned abruptly as it reached her nostrils.
"Is that my hot chocolate -" and caught sight of the empty packet on the desk; all the proof she needed. Her voice was sharp now; any kind of chocolate was an extremely tender point with her. "What the bleep, pardon my French - what the deleted makes you think you can take the fabulous gourmet beep crossed out hot chocolate that Granny gave me last year? ... No," she raised a hand imperiously, as Val began to chide about language. "Don't answer. Just take the abuse."
Chapter Two: Catastrophe
Val Evenstar had thought about death before. Not really as something to be feared, but with a certain amount of detached curiosity. It would come when it came, she supposed, but she had entertained vague ideas of falling peacefully asleep on a tropical island beach with the waves singing in the distance. Or going out with a bang, in a high-intensity gunfight or spectacular martial arts display. Better still would be dying in defense of a friend - or possibly a stranger. "Greater love has no man than this," and all that.
She hadn't really considered getting crushed by a crashing starship. Which was what actually happened, seconds after the two sisters realized that they were in a very bad position. It came skidding over the ice field, metal shrieking as it was gouged by boulders, sparks fountaining off the sides as the sheer momentum of a thousand-tonne load carried it forward. Clearly out of control, it barreled straight towards them.
Technically, Val wasn't crushed. The razor-sharp shards of ice that the hull plowed up in front of it probably lent her a much quicker death, but an autopsy would have been ineffectual. There really wasn't much left, after the vapor cloud cleared.
Elspeth leaned back in her chair, chewing her lower lip thoughtfully. Was this really the best way to go about it? It was painful to admit it, but the possibility existed that the plot would become much less exciting with only one protagonist.
It took a little more consideration before she sat forward again and lifted her fingers to the keys for a rewrite.
Ah, very well. Val could live. But she owed Elspeth. Bigtime.
Very, very bad didn't even begin to describe the rolling horizon - and everything in front of it - that met their eyes. The doorway which they had burst out of was located in a noticeable absence of pine trees, snow, or lampposts. There were posts, all right, but they consisted of tarred wood, thick as tree trunks, from which ropes and canvas snapped and billowed in the energetic breeze.
More of the local attractions included wooden floors - decks, actually - various barrels and railings, an overabundance of moody, grey salt water, a complementary moody grey sky, and a motley assortment of dreadlocked, bandannaed, heavily made-up men. And women. Who hadn't noticed them yet, but very shortly would; and when they did, Val and Elspeth would have to think extremely fast.
Elspeth clearly recognized their location first. She indulged herself in another face-drop-into-hands, muttering, "Oh, hang."
Val took a little longer, but when the weasly man with the runaway eyeball and the mute with the parrot caught her attention, she was no more enthusiastic. "We're going to."
They took a few moments to observe a mutual stunned silence, before turning to the essential questions.
"Did you compensate for everything in your calculations?"
"You were the one who built it - did you follow my concept drawings?"
"Did you get your position correct? The speed of light has slowed, you know."
"Ha. Not enough in less than a century to be significant."
An unsteady step that fell just short of a swagger caught their attention, and they turned as one to face the semi-schizophrenic captain. "Well, well, 'ello, ladies." He doffed a weatherbeaten hat and swept into a flamboyant bow. "Cap'n Jack Sparrow, very much at your service."
Val took advantage of the bow to shift herself more upwind of him. This served the dual purpose of avoiding olfactory overload and placing herself in a better tactical position. Her vibrant older sister, thick auburn hair swinging in the wind, could garner the attention; that was fine with Val, as long as she got a piece of the action.
Sparrow was donning his hat again, with much aplomb. "This be th' pride o' me 'eart, me luvs, the Black Pearl. What be your business aboard 'er?"
"Ermm..." Els swallowed quite visibly, something that would never be shown in the movies. "Ah, yes. Lovely to make your acquaintaince, Captain Sparrow." She was attempting a British accent, and so far hadn't made a terrible botch of it. It still didn't sound quite right, though, but Val supposed that they could say she'd been out of the country for awhile. "My name is Elspeth Davidson, and this is my sister ... Valerie." Val shot her a loaded glance - it was *not* Valerie - but Els didn't bat an eye. "I suppose you might call us couriers - we have a private message for our cousin."
"Your cousin, is it? Who be this cousin?"
"Miss Elizabeth Swann," and Val barely suppressed a groan.
"And why d'ye think she be aboard this fine pirate vessel, lassie?"
"Oh, golly, I don't know - perhaps because she's a headstrong heroine with a penchant for pirate medallions? In the words of a ninja friend of mine, she's a more mannish version of Orlando Bloom."
"Arlando Bloom? An' just what man would be walking about with that name? Sounds like a bloomin' sissy to me." The mascaraed captain wobbled noticeably, putting too much mental focus into producing a very deliberate wink. "Bloomin' - it's a pun, savvy?"
"Right. Brilliant. Umm ..." Elspeth was clearly grasping at straws, ready to escape him and begin plotting in some nice, private area. "We'll just be finding Elizabeth. No-" she held up a hand to forestall any further comment from the unstable Sparrow. "We'll be quite alright." Grabbing Val's arm, she practically dragged her down into the hold. They arrived at the bottom of the ladder mostly unscathed by splinters, but - "Seven circles of hell!"
The hold was full of people. Women, to be exact. About nine thousand of them.
Val blinked, and blinked again. And, just for emphasis, she blinked a third time. The physical impossibilities of this situation were, simply put, mind-blowing. The hold was clearly full of women, but not uncomfortably so; it also quite clearly housed nine thousand or more occupants. Each of whom displayed extreme disinterest in the new arrivals.
Half of them were dressed in piratical garb, most of it shockingly clean, and the rest showcased breeches or elaborate colonial-era gowns. These very subtle clues set recognition patterns skittering in Val's brain, leading to one conclusion: "They're OCs."
A look of pure horror scrambled firmly onto Elspeth's face. "Bad."
"It's actually not terrible, you know - we blend in better."
"No. Bad." She grasped Val's elbow and propelled her into a corner already cramped by barrels, sinking into a tormented crouch. "Look. We need out. Now. I don't care what you have to do; I don't care what I have to do - well, mostly - but we need to leave. I can't deal with falsely glorified pirates; I can't work with ghosts; I can't do anything with a town's worth of eighteen-year-old women; I can't write in this universe and I'm having a lot of trouble varying my vocabulary right now. I don't care where we go; anywhere is better than here." She stopped abruptly and Val allowed herself a brief chuckle.
"You might regret saying that - I'm sure I can produce a situation worse than this."
"I dare you to."
Val made no verbal answer, but she was certain her eyes reflected a moment of wicked glee. "Okay," she said finally, as several OCs began a laboriously dramatic swordfight in the background, "it's time for MacGyver mode. Got any nail polish?"
After a horizontal rule to define the instantaneous passage of time, Wardrobe 2.1 was finally ready. Technically, it should be Barrel 2.1, but development cycle syntax dictated the older, more nostalgic title. Val, thoroughly detesting the marauding hordes of OCs now crying for either "Will" or "Jack, darling", engaged the makeshift battery. "It should warm up for a few minutes before we try it."
Els leaned her head back against a bulkhead, closing her eyes. "Wake me up when it's ready -" she stole a peek at the contraption, then suddenly jumped up and stamped out the small fire ignited by the circuitry. "It warmed up, all right." She took the battery offline. "There's too much resistance in these iron nails; we need more juice than's getting through - ouch!"
From the smell of burnt flesh, Val conjectured that the iron was also hot. "There's not much around here that's more conductive than iron, except ..." What was more conductive than iron? The idea hit them both simultaneously.
"No."
"Really bad."
"The one thing that everybody else in this story is after -"
"Assuming it's the first movie -"
"We are going to die."
"'Hell hath no fury' -"
"- like a woman robbed of a pirate medallion."
The hold fell utterly silent, eighteen thousand pairs of eyes skewering the two sisters with hostile stares. (That would be eight thousand eyes for Elspeth and ten thousand for Val. Val, being taller, naturally attracted more resentment.)
"Hey," Elspeth hissed.
"What?" Val whispered back from a fighting crouch, not turning to look at her.
"They're OC's. There's more than one medallion. Like the one that girl has around her neck. And that one. And that one."
"Point taken. Why am I in a fighting crouch? This is a wrestler's stance."
"It sounded good."
"Fine." Val shifted into a more mobile position. "I'll get a medallion. You keep the rest off my back."
Els abandoned her whisper. "What? No."
"You're higher ranked in TKD than me. And you've had Krav Maga. Therefore, you handle the crowd. Savvy?"
"You will pay for this."
Val didn't bother answering, closing with the nearest medallion-wearer. One scientific kick into the solar plexus, through a very weak guard, doubled the girl over. As she brought her elbow round to render the target unconscious, Val heard a shout beside her.
"It's the Kraken! All hands on deck!"
She wrenched the gold off the girl's neck, slamming it into place on Wardrobe 2.1, while most of the women in the hold fought to scramble up the ladder and prove their prowess as kraken bait.
Elspeth plugged in the battery, smirking. "No fighting skills required."
"I don't care - " and Val pushed her into the barrel, checked to make sure that she disappeared, and then wiggled in herself.
Author's Note: BAM! Your turn. Happy summer break. I will put in the address of your response here when you choose to write one.