Well, despite the fact that I feel this is starting to crash and burn a bit I thought I'd do at least one more chapter to gauge reaction. Several people have noted in reviews (and thank you, by the way) that I tend to the overly verbose in places, and yea, verily, I must plead guilty as charged; of course I am having fun bending the language into odd shapes so I hope you'll humour me… please?

As for this chapter: couple of jokes in here that I am really proud of; that is, they are actually funny rather than simply piquing my sense of the perverse; all in all, I hope you, the reader likes what is contained and sees fit to write a review….

Harvard Law:
Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure,
temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables, the organism will
do as it damn well pleases.

I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone
has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top."
-- English Professor, Ohio University

Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror,
and you would not have been informed.

"House? Where you going?" Allison Cameron's voice rather forcefully followed Doctor Gregory House as he slowly backed out of the examination room with a look of horror replacing his usual, and to some people's mind, perpetually jaded expression. In short order, Doctors' Chase, Foreman and an irate Doctor Cameron pursued House out of the examination room. "House, answer the damn question, where the hell are you going!" Cameron's usual deference appeared to have gone AWOL.

"Anywhere but back in there" was House's somewhat perturbed reply, "have you seen that woman, she's in danger of being refloated by Project Jonah. Frankly, if she makes a wrong move I could be embedded in the wall and further, I have no wish to be turned into pate de la maison; remember, I'm a cripple, I don't move very fast…"

"…Unless you're chasing Doctor Wilson to refresh your Vicodin prescription."

"Don't pick on the cripple…"

"…But it's okay for you to pick on the fat woman?"

"What do you want, Foreman? Consistency? I can't help being a cripple whereas she should stop accumulating frequent flyer miles at the Scottish restaurant."

Cameron sighed, "I thought we'd solved the fat person discrimination thing with that little girl that Chase had so much fun picking on."

"Hey, don't bring me into it."

"C'mon, Chase," wheedled House, "don't you find that grotesque tub of lard even moderately revolting."

"I'm so not going there," replied the Australian "I really, really…really, don't want another group of lectures on how insensitive I am."

"What do you mean by 'group' of lectures?" inquired Cameron.

"Let's see. I got one from you on insensitivity and one from Foreman on being an arsehole, and then there was one from House."

"House gave you a lecture on sensitivity?"

"No, I gave him a lecture on being an idiot and accepting things at face value when the evidence points to the contrary."

"So what makes the woman in the examination room any different?" asked Cameron,

"That would be the melted cheese on her clothes and the mass of discount vouchers in her purse."

"You looked in her purse?" Cameron tried, but failed to hide her disgust.

"I was just making sure Foreman hadn't taken anything and I saw them there." House said as he reached into his back pocket and proffered the minions a choice of several vouchers, "anyone for a thickshake?"

"Surely you didn't take them from her purse? I mean, seriously, you didn't rob the fat woman?" inquired Chase, earning a sharp glance from Cameron for his, to her mind, faux pas.

"Not at all, I was smiling at the time," responded House, deliberately misinterpreting the question, "Anyway, it's not like she needs them as it looks like she's about ready to go into hibernation."

"House, it's the middle of summer."

"Then I hate to think how much larger she's gonna get; maybe we could conduct a study into the elastic properties of skin, or, we could start up a betting pool on whether she explodes or survives until winter."

Even Chase blanched at this last comment, "Isn't that a little harsh…even by your standards."

House regarded Chase as if, at best, the young doctor had suddenly developed an learning disability; although it was more likely that his long-held suspicion that the Australian was in fact, retarded, had been confirmed. "Do you actually have a point, Chase, or, were you planning to sit there and witter at me in your best Cameron impression?"

"House! That's not fair!"

House turned to regard his sole female minion with a gaze filled world-weary cynicism; "What has fair got to do with it, Cameron? What has fair got to do with anything?" the last was said in the bitter, self-mocking tone that long experience had shown the minions was far better to ignore; although, more often than not, Cameron, heartily entangled in the ropes of compassion, tried to reach out and usually got her fingers burnt or, on those occasions when House was feeling especially acerbic, amputated. There were times, however, when House appeared to regret the harshness of his rejoinders: this was not one of those times. "You want fair, go to the better business bureau, I'm sure that after a few years of meaningless wrangling over the completely irrelevant you'll come to whatever's left of your alleged senses."

Cameron regarded her mentor with an expression that hovered midway between bursting into tears and removing his testicles with an apple peeler, fortunately, however – spectators notwithstanding – Foreman chose that moment to heroically intervene in a manner akin to a particularly devoted kamikaze pilot, that is, confident in the moral rightness of his actions but eternally wondering why it was him who had to do it.

"Do you want to do this later; we have patients waiting."

"Patients?" intoned House in a wondering tone, "Oh, you mean those pesky sick people Cuddy keeps inflicting on me. Anybody sick?" He inquired at large as he cast a withering glance about the waiting room, which, to a virally infected person, avoided his gaze with resolute denial, "don't see any sick people around here."

"It's because they're all terrified," remarked Chase.

"Terrified? Of me? You must be joking, I'm not the least bit terrifying." House marched over to a young woman who watched his approach in much the same way a male black widow spider looks forward to his wife coming home from work. "You. Sick person. Am I terrifying?"

It probably didn't help that he was waving his cane in her face.

"Sick person, I asked you a question. Am I, Doctor House, terrifying?"

"Mfffgh," said the woman as she attempted to dissolve into her chair.

"See," House declaimed triumphantly, "I am not terrifying."

A quick, wordless conversation between the three minions established that it was probably safer in the short-term to humour House, because they feared that if one of them challenged him, the man might suffer a psychotic break and do something drastic, such as invading Poland, for example; thus, as usual, they decided to humour him…from a distance.

"Fine House, whatever, next patient?" inquired Foreman.

"Okay. Cameron, select a victim, or," he said, consulting his watch, "maybe not. Sorry minions, I have to be somewhere else."

"What do you mean you have to be somewhere else? Cuddy will crucify you if you don't do your hours."

"No she won't, she's the one I have to be somewhere else for."

"House, you wouldn't voluntarily do anything for Cuddy, even if she threatened to set your cane on fire."

"Two words, minion; clinic hours."

"I'm not stupid enough to ask who's going to cover your hours," noted Foreman resignedly, "but can I ask what was on the table to move Cuddy into relieving you of your time in the clinic."

"I'm to give an encore for that rabble posing as students."

The minions appeared confused at this pronouncement until a little light went off above Chase's head. "Do you mean to say that you are giving another lecture to the medical students who study here."

"Yes, that's right the rabble posing as students."

"Don't you mean posing as medical students?"

"Judging by their display the last time I talked to them I would hazard that some of them are barely competent posing as humans. Anyway, in the interests of courtesy, I am extending to them the assumption, on my part, that they are, ostensibly, students; frankly the thought that they might be proto-doctors is too terrifying to contemplate."

"Alright then," interrupted Foreman, "why are you," he took the time to stress the word to its fullest implication "talking to them again? Observation would clearly denote your opinion of them and, commonsense would imply that they wouldn't want a bar of…"

"They asked for me."

"They what?"

"They. Asked. For. Me. You're not going deaf are you, Foreman; or is it simply that your comprehension skills are more lacklustre than usual?"

"Leave him alone, House, I think he's going into shock," noted Chase, although he appeared more amused than concerned at this pronouncement, and indeed it appeared that the black man was undergoing the kind of rapid change to his worldview that renders a person insensate for a short time.

"Come now, Foreman, I'm not that bad." House's voice held a carrion smile, the sort one might expect to find on a vulture turning up early to the new, all-you-can-eat buffalo.

"No, of course not, House; how could I possibly think otherwise?"

"I find your lack of faith disturbing, Foreman."

"That's alright, I just find you disturbing."

Cameron, ever the mediator, decided to intervene. "What are you going to lecture on, House, I mean. It's not like you have any time to prepare something."

"You imply I had something prepared last time, Cameron."

"Well I'm not too sure how many fables from the 'Life of House' you can wheel out for the edification of the students" noted Foreman, somewhat snarkily, "without scarring them for life, I might add."

"Would you prefer I let you lecture them on the fundamentals of petty larceny, Foreman? Anyway, don't worry your pretty little head about it; I have an idea or two that should scare the majority of them into the hills. Now, who wants to stay here and torture innocent civilians while I'm converting the natives? Foreman? Excellent. Come along Cameron, Chase, Forman has work to do."