In hindsight, perhaps, it had been in poor choice to mix her abilities that allowed for class field trips with the volatile properties of L-space. Or perhaps, introducing naturally inquisitive children to the volatile books of the Unseen University library is where she had gone wrong.
Whichever the case, one of the books had reacted in an unpleasant manner in which a subtle pull could be felt. However, this was a library in a magical university and was currently containing the Librarian, an orangutan, of said library and the granddaughter of Death. Both were experts in feeling things slightly-off, subtly changing or being suspiciously strange. In Miss Susan's case, it helped to detect middle-aged men who were unhealthily interested in little children.
Miss Susan, only friends and family were allowed to call her Susan, had dealt with the problem in her usual calm and logical manner. First, she took a calm and orderly roll call to ensure that all children were present and unharmed by the books.
Next, she ordered them back to her seats, while giving an apology to the Librarian for the disturbance.
Lastly, she moved everyone back into the classroom with a snap. Or, at least, that was how it was supposed to turn out. Instead of earning full marks on the enactment of her plan, Susan experienced a terminal failure to return to class with the rest of her class. Well, 2/3 ain't bad. A passing grade by most standards. Not her's though. Miss Susan expected nothing less then perfection from her students and, usually, she got it.
When the class vanished with a *pop,* somehow, Miss Susan had remained rooted in place. The Librarian looked at her with a questioning 'Ook?'
"How peculiar," said Miss Susan, who snapped again. She remained rooted in place. "What on the Disc is going on?"
Before she could say more, the book swallowed her in the most anticlimactic way as possible, because gale-force winds and miscellaneous objects flying into massive portals were for fantasy stories, in which the young protagonist was inducted into a magical world of fantastic talking creatures and, well, magic. However, Miss Susan was not one of those protagonists, she was a teacher and she had no time for such fanfare.
The Librarian looked at the space that Miss Susan had previously occupied for a while. Then he cautiously shuffled over to the book that had pulled her in. Across the title bore the name: Egges Wyrd and Terrible Fanfiktion Ideas. He shrugged. Then, reaching into a drawer, he pulled out a banana, peeled and ate it.
.
On the other side, Miss Susan popped out of a bookshelf in another library. The book had transported her elsewhere via L-space, she observed. L-space was a fickle thing, connecting one library to another across time, and in Miss Susan's case, space.
Fortunately for her, she had exited the Discworld dimension and into one of this dimension's libraries. This would prevent laughably simple misunderstandings that occurred to every first time trans-dimensional traveler, or at least the ones who are doing it without any proper instruction.
Observing that she was in another library whose style and technology was vastly different to any library in Ankh-Morpork, Miss Susan quickly and logically came to the conclusion that she had traveled a great amount of unknown distance and would require detailed knowledge of the local area before she could start planning her return to Ankh-Morpork.
Ignoring the glowing square thynges lined up on tables, Miss Susan selected the traditional object of storing information, one that was universal to almost all human cultures across the space-time continuum, the book. Picking up a lengthy encyclopedia, she sat down onto a nearby chair and began to read.
Several hours later, Miss Susan was considerably more well-versed in the knowledge of her current world. It appeared that she was on a roundworld called "Remanent," and there were a considerable amount new concepts she had learned. Aura, semblance, faunus, scrolls, internet, electricity, hunters and huntresses, Grimm, too many to be named. Perhaps some other person would have spent several first-person paragraphs explaining these new concepts with broken grammar and spelling, but Miss Susan was a teacher. She didn't repeat things she had already said or read. And if you missed it, well, tough luck kid. That one's going on your report card.
One of the first things Miss Susan did, was to ensure she had retained her inherited abilities. Miss Susan never called them powers, because that's what heroes call them, and she found the notion of 'hero-ing' extremely distasteful because heroes usually have as much a grasp on the realities of the psychical universe as an oyster has of mountaineering.
She looked at a bookshelf. She took a step forward. Very confidently, mind you, because Miss Susan is type of person who can do anything and make it look normal in a 'walking into bookshelves? Perfectly normal. What, you don't go walking into solid bookshelves? What a strange person you are. Yes, of course you're going to collide with it. What else would you expect to happen?' sort of way that would make other people assume that it was perfectly normal to go walking into bookshelves.
Her foot went through the shelf. She took another step and her entire body went through it.
She looked around. No one noticed. Time to test the Voice, then. Looking around the library, she searched for a suitable volunteer. There. A group of teenagers causing a racket.
THIS IS A LIBRARY.
They shut up instantly. None of them pointed out the irony that she had used an eldritch voice with a volume of commanding proportions to tell them to be quiet.
The last thing she needed to test was her ability to change locations at whim, otherwise known as teleportation, or simply moving your body, if you insisted on being a smartass.
Somehow, Miss Susan had the feeling that transporting herself back to the Disc would not be possible, but she tried regardless. Her hunch was correct. She also had the feeling that while teleportation to the Disc would not be possible, teleportation around this world would. Her hunch was proven correct again. How convenient for the plot that Miss Susan simply couldn't just leave and and skip out on the events of the story.
Fully confident in the retaining of her inheritance in this new world, Miss Susan set off to plan her next action. The most logical course being, to wait for Grandfather to go on vacation or get into another one of his 'moods.' Binky would naturally seek her out and she would be able to leave. In the meantime, she needed to fill the time in between.
Now what could she do in this new world?
And why was she asking herself rhetorical questions?
The only logical choice being to find employment at a school or some other educational institution. Good lord, it was almost like she was internally monologuing for the sake of unseen readers, like those halfwit heroes that sometimes appeared in the books Gawain used to read.*
So the question fell upon Miss Susan of which school to apply to.
And then by a miraculous gust of wind, one that reeked of destiny like Fate had just imbibed the waters of the River Ankh and broke wind from the ensuing intestinal troubles, a flyer flew onto the table in front of her, ignoring the fact that she was inside a building that lacked the air circulation force that allowed gusts of air to be able to move paper.
It was destiny that had brought the flyer to her, the kind of destiny that seeks you out and forces itself upon you. Running away would do no good,** it usually led to a parental or companion figure being needlessly killed. The only possible choice in situations like these was to seize it and ride out the ensuing adventure.
Sighing, Miss Susan inspected the flyer.
Do you have an exceptional or unique semblance? Do you want to protect innocents and defeat the evil? If so, Beacon is the school for you!
The rest of the flyer contained the usual spiel that Miss Susan would expect from a possibly fictional academy created to be marketed towards the female teen demographic.
Well, here was the school, now what was the class? Miss Susan searched her head for how she could incorporate her unique abilities to a classroom setting for teenagers training to be warriors.
Taking her class of elementary school children on field trips was entirely different from teaching highschoolers. Although, she reflected, if they were to be warriors they would need an understanding of terrain. An idea blossomed in her mind. There was that one Wizzard, Rincewind, he was called, who was a professor at the Unseen University. Ah yes, The Egregious Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography. That was one of his titles. The ideas were coming together now, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
Miss Susan would apply for a job as a teacher at Beacon Academy. Her job title would be The Egregious Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography, her students would simply call her Miss Susan, and daily class activities would involve taking the class on field trips to explore and familiarize them with the idea of changing battlefields and adapting to different types of terrain and wildlife. Now she was all set to survive until Grandfather came to pick her up.
Although, there was one thing she had left to do. Acquire a weapon. Remanent was a dangerous world, and she couldn't guarantee safe field trips every class, so she needed her own form of self-defense. There were many different varieties of weapons that could be purchased. These included several attractive looking scythes, but they cost more than could exactly be afforded on a teacher's salary.
But those weapons wouldn't do very well because there were monsters in this world, and Miss Susan could remember very well what Grandfather said about monsters.
LET THEM REMEMBER THERE'S ALWAYS THE POKER.
And this was convenient, because Miss Susan had seen an antiques shop outside a library window. With the invention of electrical heating, if she were to find a good old fashioned fireplace poker, she'd find one in an antiques shop. Although, she still needed money, so perhaps she could convince the storekeeper with an IOU?
Pushing aside that for later, Miss Susan decided that she at least had to check if the store even had a poker for sale. She got up from the table and exited the library. Outside the library, she crossed the street walked to the entrance of the store. From the store window she could see some sort of commotion going on inside. Were those the same rowdy teenagers from before? Miss Susan entered the store.
The leader of the group was harassing the elderly shopkeeper while his cronies went around knocked over stands, breaking old vases and performing other such behavior usually reserved for those born with certain disadvantages in life, such as a lack of brain cells, or an adverse encounter with Miss Susan.
"Ahem."
The group collectively turned their heads to look at her.
"What are you looking at?" Said the leader.
"Erm, boss..." One his cronies said, gently nudging him.
"Shut up," He replied, punching the crony in the face. Something in his mind screamed danger, figure of authority, teacher, but he hadn't failed school by listening to his brain, so he forged on. "Get out of here, Granny."
Very creative, this lot.
"A regular bag of laughs, aren't you? I'm going to give you one warning. Leave."
"Or what? You'll beat us with your handbag?"
His lackeys laughed, minus the guy who was punched.
Miss Susan sighed, "Very well then. Have it your way." LEAVE.
The leader turned white and gave a girly shriek and ran out of the store, his underlings trailing not far behind.
She heard one of them say, "That's what I was trying to tell you, boss."
The elderly shopkeep popped up from under the counter like he had heard Death herself. Which was true on a part time basis.
"Oh, thank you, young lady."
"No need to thank me. Now, do you have any fireplace pokers in stock?"
"Let me check." Folding up one side of the counter, the old man hobbled out from behind the cashier. He limped with a cane. Everything about the man seemed old to Miss Susan. His skin was wrinkly and leathery, his clothes were ancient and moth-bitten, out of fashion even by Ankh-Morporkian standards. Even his cane seemed to be made from wood at least a century old.
The old man hobbled around the aisles, slowly inspecting the contents of shelf. Miss Susan stood by the cashier and waited.
"Ah! Here it is," the shopkeep called, his voice coming from somewhere behind the rows and rows of dusty shelves.
Miss Susan walked over to him to see what he had found. Upon seeing her, the shopkeeper held out the item in his hands for her inspection. It was indeed a fireplace poker, brass and adorned with patterns of flowers and the like. It in fact, almost looked exactly like the old poker she had used during her term as a governess for the Gaiters. Miss Susan knew better than to question the similarities between the two pokers. They were probably one and the same. That's how stories worked.
"I'll take it. How much?"
"Oh, no, miss. This one is on the house. It's a thank-you for dealing with those troublemakers." Also possibly due to the fact that he was rather attached to living and didn't want to stop at any possible moment.
"Ah. Very well then." She took the poker from his hands. "Thank you very much."
"No problem." He almost added 'come again,' but realized what that would entail. "See you later," he chose, and realized it wasn't much better.
"Not for a while, I should think." At that the shopkeep let out the breath he didn't know he was holding.
Susan exited the store and turned in the direction of Beacon Academy, poker in hand and ready to change the world of Remanent.
She also turned towards my computer monitor and said, "Alright, you can stop calling me 'Miss Susan' now. At the beginning it was fine, but now it simply sounds awkward. 'Susan' will do."
Roman Torwick, in his own opinion, was a handsome man. He dressed dapper and acted like a true gentleman. When not robbing the various citizens of Remanent of their hard earned moolah, of course. His dark orange hair brought in ladies by droves and left them considerably lighter in net worth, his eyes were permanently green with envy, not just at what other people might have owned, but at everything in the world that wasn't his.
You see, Roman had a condition that could be called kleptomania, one that psychiatrists and psychologists and other hard-to-spell professions that begin with 'psy' would diagnose as at a level so advanced that even if he were locked up in a straight jacket and confined in a door-less, inescapable room, he'd still somehow have your wallet in his pocket. If it were a person, it would be one diagnosed with ADHD, spending most of its time hopped up on more adderall than a vault is full of gold.
Though Roman drew in women like an old lady at the park draws in ducks with bread, he'd never been struck by any particular person of the feminine persuasion. He might spend the night with a pretty lady who would later wake up the next morning to find her house pretty bare of anything of value, but he never met anyone that could make him metaphorically fall head over heels as a gesture of romantic feelings for her. This was about to change, you see.
Roman strolled down the street, strutting like he owned it while secretly concealing his inner mood. The botched Dust heist soured his mood considerably, because if there's one thing on the universal list of items that criminal masterminds hate, it's those meddling kids.
So here he was, walking along the streets of Vale, looking for something to entertain him. Suddenly, Boom.
There she was. A single beam of heaven shone down upon her, basking her in the radiance of angels. Holy choirs could be heard singing in the background. This was one sizzlin' hot mama. Roman stood with his one visible eye wide upon, his jaws, pardon the cliché term, stuck on the floor. Then, she rounded a corner and walked out from view.
Roman bolted; this was a once in a lifetime encounter.*** He rounded the corner with breakneck speeds, except he didn't break his neck from the high velocities that he was traveling at, which makes the expression somewhat paradoxical. Once she was in sight he slowed. Calming himself, he began to plan how he would introduce himself. This had to be handled with care. From her appearance alone, he could discern her as a classy lady, one for whom the usual suaveness and handsome looks would not do.
In his mind, a plan formed. He would approach her, relaxed and confidently, and ask for her name. Then he would compliment her in the classiest way possible, leading to a blush forming on her perfect cheeks. From there he could initiate a conversation and ask for her personal information. After that his plan would be complete. They would begin dating, he would take her to the most romantic places in all of Remanent, wooing her and winning her heart. At the most pivotal point in their relationship she would discover his criminal activities, and be torn apart by the decision to leave him or stay. Ultimately she would decide that for her own good she should leave. This would obviously crush both of them and she would spend weeks crying and longing for him, only to remember that he was gone. Then, she would begin to notice certain symptoms, one that could only mean that an unborn life was growing within her, and she would finally realize that she loved him and needed him. They would tearfully and romantically reunite and spend the rest of their lives together in a happy bliss.
At least, that's what he saw happening. Here's how it really went.
. . .
Susan was only a few blocks out from the store and she had already attracted attention. This was annoying, because she didn't want attention at the current moment and usually a lack of attention is what she got when she didn't want any.
"Hello there!"
Oh lord, he had caught up to her already. She mentally sighed and turned to acknowledge him.
"Yes?"
Oh my, she thought.
Roman watched as she turned and took in his visage in all its glory. He watched as her face changed expressions, and being the master of reading women he was, it was evident to him that she was awestruck by him. Perfect. This would be even easier then he thought.
Oh my. What on the Disc is wrong with his face? He looked like a teenage girl drew an imaginary character for the purposes of attaching affection to. His eye had visible lashes and his hair covering his over eye made him appear more effeminate. Susan could tell that he was the sort of man who was popular with the ladies and as such treated them like dirt. Susan loathed this type of man.
"Well, m'lady," he said while tipping his honorary fedora, "I was strolling down this street with no particular intention whenl I espied your loveliness out from the corner of my eye."
Get on with it.
"I could not help but to be struck by your beauty and I felt that I sincerely must introduce myself. Would you allow me the honor?"
She realized he wanted to kiss her hand.
"Oh, no. I don't think so. I'm not in the habit of letting strangers kiss my hand."
He pulled back with melodramatic flair.
"Oh! My sincerest apologies my good lady. I am Roman Torwick."
Wait. Why did he tell her his real name? Shit, he might have just blown it. His name was synonymous with thievery around this part of Remanent. Hold on a moment... Yes! Her face lacked a reaction, giving him a lucky break. Given the personification of opportunity knocks on your door but once, Roman reached out and took it.
"And you, my dear?"
"You may call me Miss Susan. Now, if you would excuse me, I have places to be."
"But surely you could spare a moment to humor this poor man, could you not?"
"I rather think I couldn't. Goodbye now."
"But wai-"
STOP.
Time obeyed.
Susan sighed and rubbed her temple. Not even a day in and already the local roaches were flinging themselves at her.
She turned and made sure to walk a distance that was about equivalent to that of a restraining order. Once she passed out of his immediate radius, she let the flow of time resume.
Thankfully, Beacon was only two blocks away. She strode forth with palpable purpose, an aura that moved people in her path away. At least, she hoped it was an aura of metaphysical energy, and not one of smell. Working in Ankh-Morpork tended to adhere the smell of the city to one's clothing, which would act as a Max Repel, only to kept other people away and not wild pocket monsters in tall grass.
A minute later, Susan stood staring down the main avenue of Beacon. The sight of the clock tower greeted her, looming above like a Wizard's tower. Students milled about, wandering aimlessly through the campus.
She sighed and stepped forward, resigned to whatever new adventure Destiny threw her way this time.
*Under Miss Susan's watchful eye, her charges had learned to read quite prodigiously. Although Miss Susan had started Gawain off with General Tacticus' Campaigns, somewhere along the line he had stumbled upon the less cultured world of fantasy fiction, highly illogical books involving prepubescent boys somehow managing to save the world through means of hitting things, usually whoever was deemed the evil man, with a very old thing, usually some kind of sword. Of course, Miss Susan despised these kinds of books. They were illogical and more riddled with plotholes than a lifetimer has sand. They were also written to appeal to the fantasies of dull witted children who wanted an escape from reality yet were too lazy to create their own fantasy and piggybacked off of the ideas of others. Truly, disgusting.
**To which a certain Wizzard could very well attest.
***He had no idea how right he was.