All usual disclaimers apply, I don't own the rights, I don't get money and this is for entertainment only. Please excuse any errors, they are entirely mine. This one is for Shanie and Oni – so, if you don't like it, it's all their fault!!! Just kidding ladies! Tee Hee!
Imagination is more important then knowledge. –Albert Einstein
The Reader
By Starsky's Strut
As Starsky and Hutch were driving full tilt away from the Fan fiction convention a woman popped, literally POPPED in between them.
Starsky stomped on the breaks and the Torino slid to a rapid halt. "WHO THE HELL ARE YOU!" He snapped at the lady and exchanged a look with Hutch who shrugged back. This was not their day. First they confronted a writer, now some strange chick had somehow gotten into the Torino.
"Wahoo! I did it! Yippy!" The lady wiggled around in the front seat doing some kind of dance. She pushed up the palms of her hands in a 'raise the roof' gesture. "Wow! You guys are bigger then you look on TV!" She looked each of them up and down and smiled brightly at each in turn.
"OUT!" Hutch growled as he got out and held the door open for her to exit.
She moved over closer to Starsky "Hot Damn! I have been wanting to do this for years!" she reached up and caressed the dash board.
"Do you MIND?!" Starsky grabbed at her hand and pushed it away from the dash.
"No, not at all!" With that the lady closed her eyes, scrunched her eye lids down tightly, a look of concentration on her face and...
Starsky was now somehow standing on the curb next to Hutch in front on the hotel where the FanFic convention was being held. The woman waved at them and drove off in the Torino.
Starsky pelted down the road after his beloved car. "Hey! Come back here!" He gave up after a few hundred yards. He stomped back to his waiting friend. "DAMMIT!" He kicked a trash can. "OUCH!"
"Feel better?"
"NO! That Bitch stole my car!" He looked down the street as he heard the motor of his car rev up and the tires screeched loudly around a corner.
"This is all that damn writer's fault!"
"How'd ya figure that Hutch?"
"She's a writer! She started this crap! She's gonna end it!"
They made their way into the hotel being careful to avoid all the other fiction writers. They did not need anymore trouble then they already had.
"So, how are we gonna find her in this crush?" Starsky said as he hid behind a coat rack as some writers strolled by on their way to some seminar or other.
"We look were all women go, eventually" Hutch pretended to rummage through a trash can as some more writers walked by.
"Yeah? Where's that?" Starsky peeked about "all clear"
"Ladies room, dummy!" Hutch stood up and they walked to the nearest ladies room.
"I feel like a pervert" Starsky said once they got there.
"You are a pervert" Hutch smirked.
"Yeah, well, so are you-" Starsky stopped as female voices could be heard issuing from the restroom.
"You are pandering to the least common denominator!"
"No way! Written humor is a legitimate art form! Readers seem to like my stuff" Came an unfortunately now familiar voice.
"Lady, what your doin' ain't art! It's an atrocity!"
"Explain yourself!" Their writer snapped.
Starsky chuckled "Whew! The natives are restless today!"
"Cat fight!" Hutch grinned.
"Starsky and Hutch don't always have to have hurt/comfort/angst scenes to be good! Now, I'm not saying that I don't like that type of story, I do, a lot, but some humor is just as good, and the Guys don't have to suffer, well, not much anyway"
"Our hero" Hutch rolled his eyes.
The women pushed out the restroom door. There were four of them. The writer they knew and three they did not.
The writers all gasped and dug furiously into their bags. One pulled out a camera and franticly began taking pictures of Starsky and Hutch. The two others pulled out photos – presumably for them to sign and their writer brought out a pen and notebook and began to write rapidly.
The two writers with the photos collapsed in a gentle faint. The third stopped and stared at her fallen comrades for a second then resumed taking flash photos.
"Hey! Dammit! Stop that!" Starsky put his hand over his now watering eyes.
Then the photographer slumped down in a heap.
"Whew! I wasn't sure that would work!" The last writer standing said.
The guys exchanged a look. Starsky grabbed her pen away and at the same time, Hutch grabbed her notebook.
Hutch read out what she had written "'the two with photos fainted... the photographer slumps in a heap on the floor' ..." Hutch looked her hard in the eyes "You are a dangerous woman"
"Hey! Gimme back my stuff!" The writer reached up for her notebook. Hutch simply lifted his arm up. The short woman had no chance of reaching it, though she did try. "Aw, come on! I haven't written anything about you... in the last hour or so..." She finished lamely. "Now what did I do?"
Starsky and Hutch grabbed her by the elbows and lifted her up and carried her outside the hotel.
"I CAN WALK you know!"
"We know"
"And we don't care" Starsky snapped. "What we do care about is getting my CAR back!"
"Someone stole the Torino! OH MY GOD! How?!"
"That's what I would like to know! We were leaving this MAD HOUSE and some chick just went 'poof' and appeared in the car! The next thing, we are on the curb, watching her drive off! SO, you explain to us why you did it!" Starsky stood over her, glowering and nearly shaking with anger.
Then the sound of the shrieking tire came as Torino roared around the block. The car did a 180 in front on them and sped back around the block the other way. "Weeeeeeeee!" The woman behind the wheel screamed.
"COOL!"
"Shut up! That ain't COOL! Listen to that engine! I'm gonna need to do some serious tuning up when I get it back! And it's gonna cost ya!" He glared at the now cowering writer.
"Me?" She squeaked "I didn't steal your car. I'm not responsible for this!"
"I'm thinkin' you are"
"Hey, I never saw that woman before in my life! Honest!"
Hutch had been flipping through the notebook "Hey, Starsk, I don't see anything in here about the Tomato gettin' ripped off in here, not that I can read all of this stuff, your penmanship sucks, lady"
"Umm, I'm sorry, I think... Ya know, that book is for my eyes only, no one else needs to look at my poor penmanship"
"I WANT MY CAR BACK!" Starsky shouted in her face. "GET IT BACK HERE NOW!"
"Say it, don't spray it!" She wiped her face off. "I don't know how... wait a minute, I wonder if that is a reader..." The writer stared off into space.
"Hey! HEY!" Hutch snapped his fingers in her face to get her attention.
"What?" She blinked at him.
"Well? What about the reader?"
"Oh, this happens sometimes. A reader will read something, usually something that they like; they will then have... well... a... a 'flight of fantasy'"
"What's that?"
"That reader's imagination just took off with MY story! She just hijacked MY story!" The writer glared at the skid marks in the road. Her foot tapped rapidly on the sidewalk. "On the bright side... someone read my story.... HEY! Someone read my story!"
"I just knew YA had something to do with it!" Starsky huffed.
"Kill joy!"
The Torino roared back around the block and then, out of nowhere, a jump ramp appeared in front of them. The Torino changed from red to orange and from a Ford to a Dodge Changer with a big zero and one on the side the car, the horn went off and played "Dixie" as the reader jumped the car over the ramp. "YEEE HAAAWWW!"
Beside Starsky and Hutch were now two other men, one blond and one brunette with curly hair. The blond was the taller then the dark haired man.
The four men eyeballed each other silently.
"Ahem, Bo, Luke, I would like you to meet Starsky and Hutch. Starsky, Hutch, meet the Duke boys, they're from Hazard County" The writer introduced them.
The men exchanged nervous and confused pleasantries then shook hands.
Hutch turned to the writer "WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?"
"The reader just mixed her genres!"
"More then her genres are mixed!" Hutch shook his head.
"I'll say! This is wrong on just so many levels!" She put her hands on her hips and tisked. "Though, the dichotomy of the pairing of the light and the dark and the taller and shorter partner is quite interesting." She turned and looked at the four men and rubbed her chin in consideration.
"The General!" Bo and Luke shouted, "Somebody call a cop! Someone's stolen The General!"
"We're cops" Hutch said weakly
"Right!" Luke rolled his eyes at the blond guy claiming to be a cop.
After an amazing amount of air time, the General came crashing back to the pavement and was, once again the Torino. Bo and Luke disappeared.
"Hey, where did those guys go?" Starsky looked about the sidewalk.
"Back to Hazard County, I suppose" She sighed, a smile on her face. The dreamy look in her eyes made the detectives nervous. "They kinda remind me of a country version on you two..." Her voice trailed off.
"SNAP OUT OF IT!" Starsky was beginning to recognize that look and what it meant. It meant she was thinking and plotting. It was bad new for them.
"Huh? What? Oh, the reader! What do you need me to do?"
"Duh! How do we get the Torino back?!"
"Just give the reader what she wants."
"Which is..."
"Well, obviously to steal the Torino!"
"Yeah, she did that!"
"Now she probably wants to meet you guys"
"Well, she had her chance! We were in the car when she stole it!"
"Okay, please give me back my notebook and pen" She held her hands out.
Starsky and Hutch exchanged a long, speaking look, then handed her stuff back.
She wrote something down and the Torino came to a screeching halt next to them.
The reader jumped out of the car. "Yessiree BOB! That's what I'm talkin' about! Thanks guys! This meant so much to me!" She shook their hands and skipped off into the hotel.
Starsky looked at his now banged up and steaming car. He looked like he was about to cry.
The writer wrote in her notebook and the Torino was back in mint condition. "There! All better!" She grinned at the curly haired detective.
Hutch looked at her "You're pretty powerful"
She rolled her eyes "'The pen is mightier then the sword' But, no, I'm not." She smiled warmly at him "It's just my story and I can do whatever I want, but only in my story. I guess you could think of us writers as 'guardian angels'. We, for the most part, help you get though your troubles. Most of us like to see you get though stuff together. And for those that don't – and its okay if they don't – well there are those of us that will bring which ever one of you dies, back to life or fix whatever went wrong. It seems to be the nature of this genre."
"You're not going to stop this?" Hutch asked her quietly.
"I can't and even if I did stop writing, someone else will" She shrugged "You guys have a big following and as long as people write and others read what we write, well, it gives you a kind of immortality. Did you know that there are now second generation writers? You guys will be young and good looking long after I no longer am. And that's ok." She looked at her watch "Oh no! I'm gonna be late for the Mary Sue Symposium!" She trotted off to the building, once there, she turned and waved.
They politely waved back.
Once inside, she sat down to write.
"Well, I for one... am NOT going to miss her!"
"Me either!" Starsky grinned his Cheshire grin.
xxxxxxxxx
They found themselves at The Pits with no clear memory of how they got there. They looked at each other, shrugged, ordered a beer and sat down.
"Hey! Hey! What it is? My friends! The Bear can not believe what has just occurred!"
"Yeah, Hug? And what would that be?" Starsky took a drink of his beer.
"You finally paid you tab, my white brothers! The Bear is in shock!"
"Paid our tab?" Hutch was confused, but fast with his wit, 'no sense in looking a gift horse in the mouth!' "Sure! Yep! Was there ever any doubt?"
"Yes! Lots, but you came through! The Bear is pleased!" He clapped each man on the shoulder. "What would you gentlemen like to eat? The food is on the house on this special occasion!" Huggy left to get the food after they ordered.
Starsky turned to Hutch "You remember anything about the Torino getting stolen today?
"Nope"
"Me neither!"
They both gulped down their beer and ordered another.
The end