And now, a word from the host of this challenge, Tuttle.

Hi everyone! A few weeks ago, GrrraceUnderfire and I came up with a fun little event: The Guess Who Challenge. The premise was simple- we invite authors within the fandom to write a stoy based on the same prompt, then we try to guess who wrote which story.

And this, my friends, is the result.

The prompt we used was Heat Wave. Participating authors sent their stories to me, and now I am publishing them under one banner. Each chapter is written by a different author. Can you guess who wrote which one?

At first I thought we should try to mask our usual writing style to throw people off, but then I realized this really ought to be a celebration of what makes each author unique! So while we may have tempered our usual quirks a little, I think our individuality still shines through. If you're an avid reader in the fandom, it might not be too difficult to make your guesses based on each author's style, characterizations, or reoccuring head canons.

Participating authors are:

Abracadebra

bleeze brew

Deepbluethinking

GrrraceUnderfire

Khebidecia

Signy1

Snooky-9093

Tuttle4077

Stories are posted based on the alphabetical order of the first word. They may or may not have individual titles, but the chapter headings I will give them will simply be Story 1, Story 2, etc.

If you think you know who wrote which story, send me a PM with your guesses (and, if you want, your reasonings). No cheating- if you already know who wrote which one because you helped the author in some way, let me know when you send your answers.

The winner gets... to gloat?

Anyway, on with the show!

Story 1

Mad Blood Stirring

"For now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring."

William Shakespeare

August in Stalag 13 was its own special sort of unbearable. This wasn't to say that September through July were what anyone would call pleasant, but none of the delightful little aspects of camp life were improved by temperatures that rarely dipped below ninety degrees in the shade. And that was before factoring in the humidity.

If, as Edison insisted, genius is ninety-nine percent perspiration, the camp was getting smarter by the day. It was just a pity that all that brilliance was, by necessity, being aimed at the problem of dealing with the baking heat. Jackets and sweaters, of course, had long since been relegated to footlockers. Stripping down to tee-shirts had, grudgingly, been deemed acceptable, although the privilege was in danger for a day or two when several men took the next logical step and showed up at roll call in boxer shorts.

There was a brief run on the tea kettles when several of the men suddenly remembered their grandmothers insisting that hot drinks cooled a body down more thoroughly than cold ones. One thoroughly unhelpful cup of tea later, muttering balefully about old wives' tales, the kettles went back on the shelf, and they all went back to drinking a great deal of the coldish water from the taps. Which not only didn't help all that much, but, by the unavoidable laws of physiology, all that water had to go somewhere, and the latrines smelled bad enough in winter.

After a week of the sort of weather that made the Russian Front sound tempting, Carter slept late, missing roll call. He was promptly remanded to the cooler for a week for a lesson in punctuality.

LeBeau, after several years of sullen endurance, inexplicably took exception to their usual breakfast gruel. Very loud exception. The rest of the camp could hear him shouting in rapid French for some time. All the way to the cooler, in fact.

After lunch, Newkirk's vaunted talent for irritation showed to its best advantage, and Kinch's famously even temper finally snapped. It took three guards to break up what looked like a remarkably vicious fistfight. Both were summarily taken to the cooler. While Kinch had unquestionably been the aggressor, presumably Newkirk had probably done something to deserve it, and punishing both seemed easier than sorting out the facts of the case.

Hogan, righteously indignant, stormed into Klink's office, and aggressively demanded that his men be released. A little too aggressively; perhaps the heat was getting to him, too. Anyway, it all ended with Klink sending him to cool his own heels for a week.

The day before, they were all lounging in what little shade the barracks had to offer. "If this heat does not kill me, l'ennui will," LeBeau grumbled. "It would not be so bad if we at least had a mission to think about."

"Well, we don't," said Kinch. "Not a peep out of London. I think the entire war has been put on hold until after Labor Day."

"Ugh. That would be about the worst 'What I did on my summer vacation' composition ever," Carter said.

That got a wry chuckle out of Kinch. "I'd get an 'F' for penmanship, that's for sure. I'm on that radio so much I've started writing in Morse code."

"The radio? Did something come in for us to do?" Newkirk had come over in time to catch that last.

"No, worse luck," Kinch repeated. "Barring emergencies, we've got a clear calendar."

Newkirk started to say something, then stopped, looking thoughtful. "…Nothing at all to do, then?"

Kinch lifted an eyebrow. He knew that look. It usually meant trouble. Interesting trouble, sometimes, but trouble nonetheless. "Where are you going with this?"

"It depends," said Newkirk, grinning. "What would you say is about the chilliest spot in camp?"

"Klink's office," said LeBeau, with some understandable bitterness. "He has two electric fans."

"I know. He practically lost his monocle in the high winds. But leaving that aside…?" Newkirk prompted. "Oh, come on. It's right there in the name!"

"The cooler?" LeBeau laughed aloud. "You are suggesting we get ourselves sent to the cooler?"

"Whyever not?" Newkirk said. "You heard Kinch; there's nothing for us to do out here but sit and sweat. In my not-inconsiderable experience, the cells are always at least fifteen degrees colder than the barracks. In January, that's a drawback. Right about now, it sounds pretty bloody good to me."

Carter frowned, looking for a flaw in the logic. "Yeah, but what if there's some sort of sudden emergency and we're all in the cooler?"

"What do we usually do in that sort of situation? We find a stand-in, swap places, and get on with it," said Newkirk. "If it's as cold in there as I hope it is, the hard part might be getting the stand-in to swap back."

LeBeau and Kinch traded a look. "He has a point," Kinch conceded.

"True. But do you think le Colonel will agree to this?"

"I don't see why not," said Carter. "I don't think he's enjoying the weather any more than the rest of us are. Maybe he'd even like to get himself tossed in there for a few days."

"The more the merrier, I guess," said Kinch. "God knows there's room to spare."

"We've all done our fair share of cooler time, and a lot of it was in the interests of one mission or another," said Newkirk, the undisputed king of the cooler. "For once, maybe our own interests can take precedence. Just for a day or two, is all. Is that really so much to ask?"

"It cannot hurt to ask," LeBeau said. "The worst he can say is no."

It took five days for Klink to figure out that sending unruly prisoners to the one place in the camp that wouldn't need a stove to fry an egg was somewhat less than punitive, but issuing a mass amnesty seemed too much like admitting that he'd been tricked.