Yeah, yeah, I'm rubbish. Anyway, maybe some day I'll get round to finishing this. So… picking up where we left off with the last chapter (many, many moons ago...)

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Reclining on a lab bench, dressed only in a black basque, stockings, gloves and a string of fake pearls, was the scientist. There was a long drawn-out moment of silence before she spoke in a low, sexy drawl.

"Come up to the laaaaab, and see what's on the slaaaab..."

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Cassian eyed the slinky scientist with a mixture of suspicion, lust and disbelief. "Well, I begin to see why Bodhi put up with the cream/jam scenario."

The scientist swung her fishnet-covered legs over the edge of the bench and sashayed over to them. She ran a hand over Cassian's chin, then trailed her finger tips down his chest, picking out each individual rib through his shirt, then back up his arm, brushing his biceps.

"Bit skinny. Never mind..." She broke into song. "In just seven days, I can make you a man."

Jyn looked up from where she was kneeling next to Bodhi, administering smelling salts, and felt for the throwing knife she had concealed in her hair.

"Easy tiger," said Chirrut, crouching beside her and putting a hand on her arm.

"How does he do that?" Jyn asked.

"Well, he says it's the force," said Baze, "but in truth, fuck knows."

Jyn watched, guts twisting with jealousy, as the scientist continued her very, very thorough investigation of Cassian, gripping each bicep in turn, then grabbing a handful of ass to check that out too. All the time, Cassian stood impassive, eyes narrowed, assessing the situation. Round about the point at which she ran her hand down his quads, Bodhi gave a groan. His eyes flickered open.

He gazed woozily at the scientist. Then rubbed his eyes. Then spoke.

"Cream or jam first?"

The scientist wheeled round.

"Go on, 50-50 chance. That's better odds than Kay gives on most things."

The scientist opened her mouth. Then shut it. Then blinked several times. Then, weirdly, started blinking her eyes alternately – left, right, left, right. Finally she spoke.

"Jam… cream… jam… cream… on the slaaab… make-a-man, make-a-man, make-a-man, make-a-man." Her speech rose in pitch. Then suddenly her hands flipped down at the wrists to reveal the muzzles of twin blasters.

BANG!

Baze cradled the energy rifle he'd just discharged. The scientist folded at the waist, smoking wires and machinery poking out from her – its – mangled mid-section.

"How did you know?" Cassian asked Bodhi. "I mean, I knew of course, obviously, because I'm an intelligence officer, but I'm interested as to how you spotted it..." (Jyn rolled her eyes; as Kay might have put it, the odds on him not really knowing and in fact simply being full of bantha shit were "high, very high.")

Bodhi flushed. "She didn't check out the size of your… erm… well, you know. That's pretty much the first thing the real scientist would have done."

"Unless you shagged a droid," Jyn said, evilly.

Bodhi shook his head, sadly. "Hey, a shag's a shag after this long a dry patch. I'd take it. But no, that's not the jam-and-cream fetishist."

As if to underline his words, a muffled banging came from one of the cupboards at the back of the lab. Cassian turned heel and strode over to it, pulling the door open. Out tumbled the scientist, the real scientist, clutching a silver brief case.

"It's the external thumbs. And I put the cream on first. And it's 18.3cm long."

Jyn's eyebrows headed towards the planet's stratosphere. That was unexpected. And impressive. Had she been shagging the wrong member of Rogue One all this time? Bodhi looked simultaneously embarrassed and quite smug. It occurred to Jyn to wonder whether she could slice into the server the story was being published on and read the tags. Any mention of polyamory…

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of footsteps running down the corridor outside.

"I think we've got company," said Baze, entirely superfluously. The Writer was clearly never one to miss a good cliché when it was up for the taking. He unclipped a grenade from his bandolier, opened the door a crack and rolled it into the corridor beyond.

There was a flash and muffled explosion.

"Come on, let's go," Baze shouted, cradling his energy rifle. The Rogue One crew burst through the door and started to run for the exit, randomly firing. Almost casually, Jyn pointed her blaster over her left shoulder without even looking and bulls-eyed a couple of hostiles; Cassian, almost as if choreographed, did the same over his right shoulder, notching up another couple with a pleasing symmetry. It seemed that the Christmas TV schedules in the Writer's home world had shown Rogue One more than once over the holiday period, and she had made careful note of the egregious use of implausible combat techniques on the part of the fight director.

Just to put the icing on the combat cake, Chirrut got into a kendo-style fight with three security guards, gratuitously whirling in that way beloved of choreographers but which any serious swordsman (or swordswoman, or indeed swordsbeing) would tell you was a recipe for getting a slice across the back and finding your kidneys on the floor before you could say "steak and kidney pudding." However, true to 99% of film fight scenes, Chirrut accomplished this manoeuvre not once, but four times, without any of the three security guards he was fighting laying a blade on him. Needless to say, they died horribly.

Naturally, they made it out the building entirely intact, despite the fact that they had been outnumbered at least twenty to one. Chirrut leapt behind the wheel of a passing milk float, knocking the unfortunate milkman to the ground (scarred by his experience, the milkman went on to develop an inferiority complex which he dealt with by intensive martial arts training before undertaking a new career as a lethal assassin, but that lay a long time in his future, in another movie franchise far, far away). The others piled into the back of the float, casting crates liberally across the road.

The pursuing cars, a fleet of suspiciously sleek black cars with tinted windows, should have caught them easily, but conveniently it transpired that broken milk bottles are almost as effective as stingers in stopping cars, and the cars careened off the road, one exploding in a ball of flames against the wall of the science library, and the other colliding with a creepy sleazebag from Mansfield College the Writer had wanted revenge on for over three decades. He died hideously, his entrails obscuring the windscreen, thus causing the car to run head-on into an oil tanker, producing a fire-ball that could be seen the other side of Port Meadow.

The milk float, lighter now its milk had been dispensed with, scorched down the road at a heady ten miles an hour, slewing round the corner into Broad Street at a dangerous angle, before (inevitably) crashing into the railings outside the Sheldonian.

"What?" said Chirrut, defensively. "I can't help it, I'm blind."

The team piled out and ran, past All Souls, the Radcliffe Camera, and the University church. It occurred to Bodhi as they ran that, for all her many failings, at least the Writer had a better grasp on the geography of Oxford than the screenwriters for Morse.

The high street of course was chock-a-block with traffic. Baze sent an energy bolt into an oncoming bus, which skidded sideways, stopping centimetres short of the porch of the church, before toppling onto its side, thus blocking the traffic and allowing them time to cross the road.

A quick, weaving sprint through narrow lanes between ancient colleges and they made it back into Christ Church Meadow.

"Why are we still running?" Baze suddenly asked?

"I dunno, we lost the pursuit three quarters of a mile back," Jyn said.

The familiar flickering of the AU gate hoved into view, and the team headed for it.

Jyn was first through, closely followed by the scientist, still clutching the silver case with the parts. To her surprise, Kay was there, with the pilot, trussed and bound safely. (Well, either safely, or Kay had some kinks he hadn't told them about. Anything was possible in this sort of fic). Next, Baze and Chirrut appeared, the flickering energy field parting around them, then Bodhi. Then…

"Where's Cassian?" demanded Kay Tu.