Eek! I have not updated this fic since 2017! This is my last chance to post a chapter in 2018. So here it is, my new-year's eve update. I am a bad, bad writer, who may be in need of spanking (but I am also very very vanilla in real life, so maybe not). I am also a writer who has been more blocked than a very blocked drain in need of the urgent attention of Dynorod.
So… to recap. Our heroes came to on the beach at Scarif, mysteriously kept alive through the agency of Jyn's Kyber Crystal, in a manner never actually described (cough… plot-hole… cough). Then in the nick of time an Imperial Shuttle showed up and whisked our heroes off planet. They overpowered the pilot (how predictable) and installed K2's operating system in the pilot's droid. The pilot may or may not be a self-insert. Then, via a series of good old tropes (patching up wounds whilst indulging in a bit of hurt-comfort, pretending to be a couple for the sake of the mission while actually wanting to be a couple, Platonic bed-sharing, etc.) our heroes made their way to the Brick mines of Beeloond in the Dahn-eh-marck system where they rescued Bodhi, Chirrut and Baze. In the process they discovered that the plans to the Death Star might well be useless, because both sides could play at industrial sabotage, and the Rebellion's X-Wings were missing a crucial component, the "external thumb" needed to launch the missiles. They also picked up an additional member of their entourage, a scientist. Who may or may not be a self-insert. (Who knows, perhaps The Writer has a split personality and they're both self-inserts.) The scientist took them to the secret lab and revealed one of the Empire's cruellest weapons of psychological warfare, the "AU-Gate". After various AUs too numerous (and factually and historically inaccurate) to list, they have finally found themselves in a campus AU in Bodhi and Jyn's alma-mater and are searching for Dr. Furter to locate the missing external thumb. Oh, and Jyn and Cassian have finally shagged. Twice.
And now it's time for that good old R1 trope of "in the past, they fucked to get intel for the rebellion." And The Writer (the real one) makes hay with the minutiae of British scone-eating habits.
Confused? You won't be after this week's year's episode of … Blueprint 75159
They dressed quickly, and Jyn hastily rifled through the med kit for some more mifepristone.
"Next time can we use condoms?"
"Yeah, if nothing else, condoms in a sex scene pretty much guarantees it's us and not The Writer."
When they made it into the dining room, they found Bodhi was back from his own set of nocturnal adventures. He sat next to Chirrut and Baze, rocking slightly. His clothes were slightly rumpled, his shirt was buttoned up wrong, and he had big black rings round his eyes from lack of sleep. And the thousand yard stare was back.
"The cream… She insisted on putting the cream on first." He shuddered uncontrollably.
"Who did?" asked Jyn.
"The scientist," Bodhi gulped.
"Well, I guess that answers the question of which one of them is the self insert," Jyn concluded.
"Not necessarily," said Cassian. "It could be a double bluff. Depends on whether The Writer is from the Kernow system or the Devonia sector."
Jyn raised a puzzled eyebrow. Baze in turn wrinkled a confused forehead.
"Oh for force's sake, eyebrows and foreheads can't have mental states," Chirrut muttered grumpily. As usual, no-one was quite sure how he knew what their eyebrows and foreheads looked like. This led to more puzzlement and confusion among random facial features.
Cassian gave all of them one of his stern intelligence-interrogator looks, then continued with his monologue telling rather than showing where they were with the vexed question of identifying the self-insert. "The Writer. If she herself likes putting the cream on first, she's from Devonia. If she gets off on putting the jam on first, she's from Kernow. Separated only by the narrow spaceway known as the Tamar Bridge, they're right next to each other in hyperspace terms, but in terms of cream usage, they might as well be parsecs apart..."
"I thought parsecs were a measure of time," muttered Jyn, sotto voce in case Cassian got exasperated again. "Y'know, Kessel Run and all that."
"Only if you've got a really shit grasp of astrophysics," Bodhi whispered back. "Trust me on this one, I'm the pilot."
Jyn glanced back up at Cassian. "But how do you know all about their cream, erm, usage?"
Cassian's eyes took on a slightly glazed, lustful look – one she remembered from last night. She swallowed, and felt a sudden pang of jealousy.
"I did quite a lot of, uh, intelligence gathering and, uh, agent recruitment in the Devonia sector. And on Kernow III and IV." Jyn noted his pupils darken, and he absently ran the tip of his tongue along his lower lip. "Kernow IV… all those surfer babes… sun-bleached blonde hair, muscles toned from long days on the board fighting huge waves, some of them as big as 50cm high..." He caught Jyn's expression and hastily tried to dig himself out of the hole (he might as well have been trying to escape the event horizon of a black hole for all the good that did him).
"Dumb blondes, of course. For the rebellion..." Then he gave an embarrassed cough, and settled his features back into their usual bland impassiveness. "Anyway, the point is, the Scientist could be a self-insert because The Writer is from Devonia, but it's still possible the Pilot – the other pilot – is the self insert because she's actually from Kernow and just trying to mess with us."
"Either way," said Bodhi, brightening slightly for just a moment, "At least she realises that adding sultanas into the mix is just perverse and kinky."
Baze shouldered his energy rifle, leaned forwards and rested his hands on the dining table. "Anyway, that's enough about cream and sultanas. It's time we got the plot going again. Remember, we were promised a plot. None of this 'plot, what plot?' nonsense."
Jyn and Cassian shifted awkwardly, looking very embarrassed. Again, uncannily, Chirrut turned his milky eyes in their direction. Baze continued.
"So, Bodhi, Jyn, you're the ones know your way round this campus."
"Town," Bodhi corrected.
"Whatever. Where's our missing mad professor and the key x-wing part likely to be?"
"Hey, I read PPE..."
"PP what?" asked Cassian. "Oh, never mind. Jyn?"
"I read English. I don't know either." Jyn gave a shake of her head. "Could be physics, could be engineering."
Bodhi nodded. "Parks Road, or Banbury Road."
"We could ask the Scientist," said Baze. "In fact," (he gave a bit of a smirk) "We could ask Bodhi to ask the scientist." Bodhi rolled his eyes.
"But what if she's the self-insert?" Jyn enquired.
"Got it!" said Chirrut. "It's the old 'two guardians to the temple' riddle. One always lies, one always tells the truth. Bodhi, go find the scientist and ask her where the pilot would say the x-wing part was being made."
6.626068E-34
Really keen eyed readers may spot the fact that the "parsecs" blooper got tidied up in "Solo", in which it transpired that the reference really was to distance, and the danger element lay in the fact that the shorter route was an incredibly dangerous one - all I can say is that this particular chapter has been collecting dust on my hard drive for a very long time...