Disclaimer: Nothing in this fic belongs to me. Everything from Discworld belongs to Terry Pratchett and the Pixie Stix belong to PIXIES!!!!!!!! Or whoever owns them. Kay, now that that's covered and I'm not about to be sued, have fun!!! =)
~* *magic faerie noise (pretty!)*
Where does all this paper come from? Commander Vimes wondered to himself when he sat down at his desk Tuesday morning. Stacks and stacks of paper littered his desk and his in-tray. Defeated, he pulled a stack of paper down in front of himself and lifted the first victim...
... A small green stick of paper fell out of the middle. Where did this come from? he wondered, picking up the small stick. And what the hell is it? He turned it round in his fingers and stared at it. The wrapper read 'Pixie Stix'. He pondered over this for quite awhile when a small voice from his pocket interrupted his thoughts.
"Bingely-bingely-beep! Ten Of the Clock Ay-Emme! Good morning,
"Thrill me," Vimes said nastily, addressing the box in his pocket.
"Twelve O'Clock: lunch with Lady Sybill, One O'Clock: Meeting with the Patrician, Three O'Clock: Meeting with Captain Carrot about the new recruits..."
"Thanks, that's all I need to know!" said Vimes with false cheerfulness, immediately shutting the imp up. Curiously, he ripped the top of the mysterious stick open. It was filled with green powder. Vimes' stomach clenched; could it be arsenic? The recent incident with the Patrician was still fresh in his mind. True, it had been in a candle, but still...
"Cheri! Can you come in here a moment?" He called, listening for footsteps. They came, small, light, and eventual, but they came. At this point Vimes was holding the stick at arms length.
"Yes, Command...er, um?" She asked, eyeing the stick in Vimes' hand. "You wanted me for, er, something?"
"Could you please take this um, thing, down to your laboratory and analyze it for arsenic?" He thought for a bit. "Or any other type of poison."
"Yes, sir!" she said, saluting and taking the stick. Vimes watched her go and sat back down at his desk, pulling his paper work toward him and resigning himself to two hours of boredom.
*** (New scene =))
Sir Samuel sat in the Patrician's waiting room (sounds like a dentist office. Perhaps salon is better? But that makes you think Vetinari wears pink and frets about split ends... let's stick with the dentist motif), listening to the off-beat ticking of the clock. He cursed Vetinari, the man was more twisted than a snake in a meat grinder, probably a lot smarter though. He sighed, removed his helmet, walked over to the door and knocked.
"Enter." Vimes obeyed, keeping his eye on any quick escape routes. "Commander," the Patrician said formally. "You wished to see me today?"
"Yes, sir." Vimes stared straight ahead, somewhere to the left of Vetinari's head.
"What's in your pocket, Vimes?" Vetinari asked, looking up curiously from his papers at the small and strangely suspicious sticks in Vimes' pocket.
"Sir?"
"I have very little patience today, Vimes, so I recommend you tell me what those things in your pocket are." Vetinari looked serious, so Vimes removed his eyes from the fly on the wall and directed them to the sticks in his pocket.
"Oh gods..." he whispered as he realized what they actually were. There were about twenty of them. Worse, Vimes didn't know how they got there. "They're, um, Pixie Stix. Any further than that, I don't know, sir."
"Let me see one," Vetinari said, obviously curious. Vimes gave him an orange one. He took it, turned it over several times, and ripped the top open.
"We don't know if it's poisonous sir. As you can probably see, it's filled with powdery green stuff, I have Corporal Littlebottom testing one right now to see if it's poisonous..."
"It's orange, Vimes."
"What?"
"You said they were filled with a powdery green substance, this one's full of a powdery orange substance."
"What?" Vimes removed a blue Pixie stick from his pocket and ripped it open. The stuff inside it was, indeed, blue. The poison must come in it's package's respective colors. He looked up to see Vetinari pour some into his hand and sniff it. He tensed, if it was arsenic, now would be the time he'd find out.
"It's sugar, Vimes."
"Sugar, sir?"
"A slightly tangier version," Vetinari said, pouring some onto his tongue. "But without a doubt it's sugar."
"Really sir?" Vimes poured the whole stick into his mouth. He sucked on it a little, choked on a few stray particles, and swallowed the majority of it. It was sugar, and it tasted good. The heavens (ceiling) opened up and thousands of pixie stix rained down upon them. The world wobbled.
~*
A'Tuin watched, confused, the screaming thirteen-year old girl that zoomed in front of his nose and landed on his back somewhere. He ignored her and went on swimming.
~*
Vetinari and Vimes glanced up in alarm toward the ceiling, where someone was screaming quite loudly. Seconds later, someone crashed through the office roof and landed in the middle of the pile of Pixie Stix which was now as high as Vetinari's knees.
"What the hell?" Vimes exclaimed, diving into the pile and dragging the person up by the collar of their shirt. It was a young girl, tall, thin, and confused. However, she looked quite happy at the fact she had landed in the middle of a pile of Pixie Stix, despite the enraged Watchman and the possibly deadly Patrician standing near her. "Who are you?" Vimes demanded.
"If I tell you, will you let me have a Pixie Stick?" she asked.
Vimes regarded her suspiciously. She wasn't that old, and didn't look like the type of person who took much seriously. She had curly, dirty blonde hair pulled back in to a ponytail, a tight red shirt with short sleeves that had 'EGGS' written on it in white letters, backwards. Her jeans were long, baggy, and ripped at the knees. She had a beat-up pair of shoes on with a check mark on them. The shoelaces were bright blue. Oh, and she was wearing an orange baseball hat backwards.
"You can have a Pixie Stick ... thing ... if you tell us your name," Vetinari said calmly.
"Cool!" She exclaimed. "Well, since I don't know you guys and have no idea where I am though I'm beginning to get some vibes-" she flashed a grin at the Commander, "-I'll just tell y'all my name is Twist, kay?"
Vetinari nodded. "Alright, you can have your sugary product now." The girl-Twist, she had said her name was-pulled a Pixie Stick out of her ponytail and downed it in one swallow. She gave the Patrician a look, almost as if asking if she could have another.
"So..." she started conversationally, trying to break the uncomfortable silence that always drops in at times like these. "What're your alls names?"
"Sir Samuel Vimes, Commander of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch," Vimes said, marveling at the amount of capitalized letters there were in that sentence.
"Lord Havelock Vetinari," Vetinari said, "Patrician of Ankh-Morpork."
She grinned triumphantly. "I thought so! I mean, honestly, what two people in the WHOLE universe are suspicious and smart enough not to eat a whole room full of Pixie Stix! I mean, even Voldie has a hard time doing it! S'all right if I call you Joe, dude? I can't think of any good nicknames for Havelock."
Vetinari gave her a strange look. He wasn't used to people falling in through his roof and being perfectly relaxed in his presence. It was a new and interesting experience.
She caught the look on his face. "It'll sound all right when I work my art. Anyway, you don't seem like a Havelock. You seem like a guy that would beat the crap outta anyone who got in your way. Were you dropped on your head as a child or something?"
"Not to my knowledge," Vetinari growled testily. "What art are you talking about?"
"Oh," she said happily. "Nothing at all dangerous, just some funny little thing. You're lucky, They got a whole lot more than this at the Unseen University a couple of months ago, 'course, space travel is hard when you have that much magic to deal with. Could I interest either of you in a Pixie Stick?" She held two Pixie Stix out and they both took one without a second thought.
Strange, Vimes thought as he ate his second Pixie Stick, She talks a lot and still manages to be very mysterious. What's with the 'Eggs' thing? And she acts stupid and has a strange accent but she speaks the language and somehow gives me the impression that she's very smart...
"'Nother Pixie Stick, sirs?" Twist held out a third to the two men. The both took them.
"What's this art you were talking about?" Vetinari asked, already losing a bit of his cool from the inevitable sugar overdose. "You speak very little of it, and yet I get the impression it is very complicated."
"Complicated!" She exclaimed. "C'mon, I can't handle anything harder then fourth-grade math! I'm only offering a couple of my favorite people another Pixie Stick." They both took one. "So how d'ya like them? They have amazing problem solving results."
Vimes was unconsciously noticing this. Suddenly the world seemed a whole lot brighter and more cheerful. The boring, dark, foreboding and gothic blue wallpaper (did I mention ancient?) on the walls seemed to suddenly brighten up to the color of Twist's shoelaces. What had he been thinking? This girl was perfectly harmless... She was offering him another Pixie Stick, better take it.
Vetinari was already beyond the limit Vimes had reached. He was getting to the point of euphoria, Twist had noticed this and was ready to suggest her wonderful game, Fall Off Random Things Insanely. Nah, these guys were old, they might break a hip or something. Vetinari was picking Pixie Stix out of the pile now, Twist was getting a sapphire blue light in her eyes that couldn't be good...
"Commander!" Nobby's voice was just outside the doors. Vimes wasn't bothered, he ate another Pixie Stick. Vetinari fell over laughing for no particular reason and Twist was singing some song about hills being alive with music at the top of her voice.
"Command..." Nobby's voice died away in his throat. This was partially because he wasn't used to there being laughter in the Patrician's office, much less and insane adolescent and a hysterical Vetinari. Vimes was scarfing those things he'd given Littlebottom earlier that day at a surprising rate. It was also because Vetinari had thrown a handful of these things at him and told him to eat them. The girl was worrying about how to solve a problem about a girl named Maria. She noticed him.
"Hey, Nobby!" She exclaimed. "Have some Pixie Stix, they're great!" She then began to sing about being 'bootylicious'.
Nobbs bent down to retrieve a Pixie Stick. Remembering that he should probably tell Vimes the message before he wound up like the rest of them. "Um, sir, er, Commander, I just came to tell you that you're expected home in a half an hour for dinner with Lady Sybill."
"Crikey!" exclaimed the girl, leaping to her feet. "I have to be home now! Well, I'll see y'all later! Don't worry Joe, I'll send some more along for Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler! And for you too!"
"Kay!" Vetinari said, still laughing. "Send 'em inna bun!" He laughed harder.
"Kayzies!" She exclaimed. Then she vanished with a pop. Nobbs looked around, shrugged, and downed his first step into hyperdom.
THE END
A/n: Hee hee! That was pointless! INNA BUN! Sorry. Buggrit! Millenium hand and shrimp! I LOVE HAVELOCK!!!! Kay, I'll go now, please read and review!!! =)