A A A Boarding School
Authoresses' Note: We have decided it is pointless to apologise. It will happen again, anyway.
Reicheru: Javert is from Les Misérables. Lydia has forgotten the number of times she has tried to tell you that.
Asha Ice: Killed Legolas? Killed Legolas? He wasn't actually killed, but you have given us a lovely idea…….
Lee: We've seen PoTo: The Movie – and Gerard Butler cannot sing. He cannot hit the high notes in Music of the Night, and he makes up for it by yelling roughly. He isn't even ugly enough. But Emmy Rossum was a good Christine, though. The Hulk gets more cameos later.
G.CPE and LXR: So you were related! Lydia suspected that, when you enrolled in OFUT within seconds of each other. The David Wenham thing is rather obvious, but we're not doing anything about it – mainly because Carl and Faramir wouldn't get along very interestingly anyway. Have you seen David Wenham as Audrey in Moulin Rouge?
BlueDove: You don't know what you're saying when you say it wouldn't hurt. Snow does nothing whatsoever to cushion your fall, just makes large Lydia-shaped holes where the body punched through. And it hurts.
Akwyn: Congratulations on your new teenage status. Velma Kelly is from the absolutely gorgeous movie of Chicago. And it is PG-13.
Sapphire Dragon: Not that we agree with your opinion on hated villains. There was Dracula. The Brides. And Anck-su-namun. And Deathstrike. Actually Lydia has a fetish for evil women villains (particularly with long black hair). But sometimes it is very satisfying to stick a very hateful villain (eg. Percy from Thunder in the Sky) and leave him floating in a river. Very satisfying indeed.
Elenhin: The name Chub-chub is from a friend who names everything that – from peppercorns to art knife blades. We borrowed it, since it is rather adorable. It was originally the name for her racing frog, and then she expanded its usage.
Blu-white-red: Why do you say that? Are you referring 'food-in-the-mail' to the Moro Bar?
Kasey Rider: Actually we couldn't have more than three other revolutionaries (not counting the four we definitely wanted: Enjolras, Marius, Gavroche and Grantaire) so we had to pick the first three that fitted and dump the rest. We are now regretting putting Joly in. We feel we'd rather have Jehan instead, but it's too late now.
We have both been newly converted to Amelia P. Emerson fanism – and Lydia is ranting night and day about Sethos this, Sethos that. Rukuelle, to give her credit, has been listening very patiently to all of this. But Sethos really rocks. He smashes people in the face with nectarines. That's so cool. Anybody want to sign up to be nectarine-smashing-experimental-guinea-pigs?
Sethos rocks. A pity they don't have Amelia P. Emerson as a fandom.
They should make it into a movie. And Johnny Depp should play Sethos. SETHOS ROCKS!
Shut up, dear.
18. Scrollsaws and Sharp Acrylic
There are a myriad of dangerous, deadly places in the world – places where anything can happen, and where anything is usually something akin to mass destruction. Nuclear weapon plants are an example of these places. So are the eyes of cyclones, the insides of most active and erupting volcanoes, cesium-and-mad-scientists-filled chemistry labs – and the AAA Design and Technology Workshop.
The first thing the class noticed when they entered it, was that there were a lot of sharp things lying around.
The second thing was that there was a loud, snazzing, slicing sound coming from the curtained-off back partition that sounded very much like messy decapitation.
Then the Lady Galadriel emerged from the back partition, and immediately put flight to this latter observation. If Galadriel had wanted to decapitate anybody, it would have been clean, quick, not at all noisy and definitely not at all messy.
Galadriel was, in contrast to the dust-pyramids on the various workshop tables and machines, immaculately white. In the glare of the worklights overhead, her golden tresses shone faintly like a river of light. Her hands were pure and spotless, and all in all she looked like she had never touched a thing in the workshop.
"How do you like it, dears?" she asked kindly.
No one answered. Most people were still struck dumb. The rest were too wary to answer Galadriel's questions lightly.
"It's very nice, thank you," answered Arwen non-committedly.
"Glad you think so," smiled Galadriel. "I'm sure you will all love DT and your time here."
The less lion-hearted among them eyed the sharp objects scattered around and felt quite negatively affected.
"I know they look dangerous," agreed Galadriel, "but really, DT is quite safe, so long you keep out of the back partition. It is solely my area, and there are things in there that might make you lose an arm, if you're careful, or a head, if you're not. In the rest of the workshop, at most you'll just lose a finger or two."
A finger or two? Just? Several of them were getting bad feelings about this.
"Now," went on Galadriel, "since this is your first day here, I'll allow you to play with the machines and get used to working them. In DT here we mostly use acrylic plastic – sometimes wood – and we make those structures and sculptures using these lovely tools." She cast her shapely hand in the direction of the elegant and artistic creations adorning the shelves in the corner. Statues, spray-painted scenes, clocks, swords, milk cartons……certainly very artistic.
"Make anything you like today," she continued. "Use the scrap plastics in the boxes there, or the wooden blocks. And just to avoid losing those fingers, I suggest you listen and obey."
"One." She pointed at some machines that resembled large wheels coated with some rough substance. "Do not stick your fingers down into the sandpapering machines. Someone did that once. She lost all her fingernails on the left hand – sucked off, you know. Spent three weeks in hospital. She still refuses to expose her hand in public."
There was a general intake of horrified breath. Cosette and Grub looked nauseous. Even Achilles blinked.
"Two." She pointed at the long row of drilling towers, the tips of the drills glinting ominously in the bright light. "Do not touch the drill tips, and when you're drilling anything, please hold on to it. The last time someone didn't, the drill spun it off the platform and it landed in his eye. He was making a lance. Sharp acrylic is very painful."
Everyone shuddered at the mental image.
"Three." She pointed at the enormous orange contraption dominating one wall and emanating heat waves. "Do not stick your head in the oven. It is two hundred and seventy-three degrees in there currently – enough to melt a whole block of acrylic. I believe that is self-explanatory."
Of course. Enough to melt acrylic, let alone brain tissue.
"Four." She pointed at another set of strange wheels – but these came in pairs and were covered in what resembled the material one finds on carpeted flooring. They looked particularly innocent – or so the students thought. "The buffer wheels are possibly one of the most dangerous things here. The carpeting covers hot wax strips – normally for polishing plastic. The wheels spin very fast, too. So hold on tight to your plastics and keep a good distance away. I always say this," she muttered under her breath, "yet they are always falling over it onto the wax strips. Young people."
"Five." She pointed at the machines with long serrated chain saws passing through their platforms. She pressed a button on one of them, and the machine immediately jerked into life. With the same jittering, slicing sound they had heard from the back partition, the saw blade turned into a frenzy of up-and-down motion, frantically sawing at mid-air, a blur of jagged teeth. "This is a scrollsaw. You push the plastic onto the saw so that it cuts straight through. You do not push your fingers onto it. That is clear? Very well, you may start. Have fun, my dears."
It really was rather fun – once they could summon up the courage to go near the dreadful things, of course. DT can take hold of one, if one is concentrating hard enough. The machines have a way of drawing you in, till nothing in the world exists but the machine and the blade and the piece of plastic you are navigating through the complicated process of scrollsawing. You are under the impression you are creating the world's greatest masterpiece, and you forget everything else. That is mostly why so many accidents happen.
There was a loud wail as Grub accidentally lost hold of his plastic, which he was buffing on the wax strips. The wheel spun the piece seven feet into the air. Whirling like a Tojo blade, it hurtled upwards, and then dropped down suddenly, sharp point first, and impaled Grub's shoe. Grub yelled.
Trouble was there in a breath, yanking the perpetrator out of his brother's shoe. "It just stuck your shoecap, that's all," he said, the relief apparent in his shaking voice. "Went nowhere near your toes. Stop blubbering, will you?"
Tears streamed down Grub's cheeks. Galadriel, who was omnipresent and had observed all, patted him kindly on the back. "There now, it's over," she said in a very motherly tone. "If you're feeling sick or anything, just sit down for a moment, it'll be all right."
Trouble accompanied him to the bench the Lady produced for Grub. His eyes met Galadriel's for a moment. She smiled.
I know. I had brothers too.
Trouble reckoned that the situation at that time was probably different. Galadriel would certainly have had no trouble with her brothers. She was, after all, Galadriel.
It might have been this first accident that frazzled their teacher a bit – if it could be called frazzling. She was, after all, Galadriel. As it was, she suddenly announced: "Oh, would any of you like to learn how to spray paint your plastics?"
Cosette, who liked painting, said politely that she would like to, and Marius decided to go with her, so naturally Eponine had to follow, scowling. Artemis, who did not like the workshop (because of the dust and noise and the general effect it had on his cultured senses) also volunteered. Hermione showed interest, so Harry and Ron joined her. For some reason, so did Malfoy.
"Excellent, dears." Galadriel beamed at all of them. "Follow me around to the back, will you?"
She led them out of the workshop and round the back, where the spray painting wall was, and began to instruct them in the complicated procedure of spray paint.
This was a terrible mistake. Perhaps one of the most terrible Galadriel had made for a very long time. No one was sure why she had made it (she was, after all, Galadriel) but it had been made, and the results were there and very dire.
She had left the rest of them alone, in the DT workshop, alone in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
And then things started happening.
The first thing that happened was Jack Sparrow's fault – although it had been Will who had suggested it. In itself it wasn't really very serious, but it was certainly a good start.
"I need a file," complained Will, who had been trying his luck and his plastic strip on the sandpapering machine, which was doing a pretty rough job of both. "A handheld file. The sandpaper's destroying the edge."
"Hmm," pointed out Jack, who was attacking his plastic with a chisel and a ferociously indomitable expression on his face. Acrylic dust flew from the frenzied blows with the air of an imminent sandstorm.
Will went over to the shelf where he had seen some files. The larger sizes, he figured, would be more appropriate, and hence he headed for those. He was about to withdraw a file from the rack, when something landed on his hand.
It was a wasp. An enormous, black, dangly-legged wasp with a formidable buzz and a large sting.
Will yelled, shook it off frantically and ran out of stinging range as the whole plethora of wasps zoomed out of their various holes amid the file racks and flew into offensive position. With them barricading admission to the racks with their loud buzzing, Will had no choice but to retreat.
"Jack," pointed out Will, "there are wasps. I need a little help."
The original plan was that Jack would distract the wasps (distraction was something he excelled at) while Will retrieved his file. Unfortunately, the wasp family extended to such numbers that half of them could harass Jack while the other half fended Will off.
"How the blazes did they get in there?" panted Jack, as he whacked a wasp away with the chisel. On seeing their fallen comrade, the others renewed the attack vigorously. "Can we give it up? I don't wanta be stung, mate."
The two of them retreated. The wasps once more formed a buzzing barrier.
"I need a file," indicated Will plaintively.
Jack mulled it over. "Then this calls for drastic measures," he declared, and pulled out his wand.
Will's eyes opened wide. He had seen at close quarters what Jack could do with a wand. He was leaping forward for the outstretched wand hand, when Jack pointed it at the wasps and cried: "Immobilius!"
The charm, to give him credit, worked marvellously. The wasps all froze instantly. So did Will, caught in mid-leap. The chatter of students ceased. So did the whirring of the machines. The DT workshop turned into a replica of Madame Tussaud's.
Jack turned around slowly. He took in the tableau of unmoving classmates. Mulch had been in the act of taking his melted acrylic out of the oven, which was now losing heat piteously. The French Revolution had their mouths open, and their hands in the air waving their new batch of plastic Republic flags. Even the scrollsaws had stopped mid-cut.
"That's interesting," thought Jack aloud.
Since the rest of the class was in this interesting state, he made the best use of his time. He found a dustpan and a brush and swept all of the wasps out of the air, dumping them in one large black mass into the sandpaper vacuum balloon. That should take care of them. Then he picked a large file out and arranged Will's fingers around it. This took some time, since Will kept dropping it on his foot. When all was in order, he took out his wand again.
"Move," he snapped. Then, on second thoughts: "Please."
Everyone jerked back into motion. The workshop filled with noise and dust once more. Mulch began juggling the hot acrylic from hand to hand, howling with scalded agony.
Will looked from the file in his hand to Jack, who was back at his table chiselling whistling a drinking tune nonchalantly. "What just happened? Where did the wasps go? And why does my foot hurt so much?"
"I dealt with 'em," replied Jack enigmatically. He chose to ignore the last question. Most likely Will wouldn't have appreciated the answer anyway.
"Grapes of Wrath," said Artemis.
"John Steinbeck," answered Hermione promptly. "War and Peace."
"Tolstoy. Kim?"
"Rudyard Kipling."
Harry wasn't sure who had started it. It could have been Artemis, who had gotten tired of spray painting (especially after he got paint on his fingers accidentally) although it could equally well have been Hermione. At any rate, now the two of them were engaged in a deadly sparring battle of wits: Author Trivia.
"Appointment with Death," suggested Hermione.
"Agatha Christie. Hound of the Baskervilles?"
"Arthur Conan Doyle. Call of the Wild?"
"Jack London. Titus Andronicus?"
"Pathetically easy. Shakespeare."
It had been going on for a very long time. Both seemed to be extremely good at this guessing game – only to be expected from such well-read individuals. They had even ventured into other languages: Artemis had asked about Hong Lou Meng and Hermione La Princesse de Cleves. Harry and Ron knew better than to interrupt; Hermione would punish them by throwing them a novel which they definitely would not be able to answer and they would suffer embarrassment. So they watched in barely concealed irritation.
"Wuthering Heights?"
"Emily Brontë. Jane Eyre?"
"Charlotte Brontë. Agnes Grey?"
"Anne Brontë. Shirley?"
"Charlotte. Can we please get off the topic of the Brontë Sisters, mademoiselle?"
"You started it."
"You encouraged it."
"But you started it. King Solomon's Mines?"
"Thinking to catch me unawares? H. Rider Haggard."
Harry sighed. They were at it again. Deadly competitors, those two were.
Anna reached out to pick up a transparent black piece of acrylic. Pretty, she thought. There were a whole lot of transparent pieces underneath that. She put the first one down and began to gather the rest into her hands.
She stopped. There were two other hands holding on to the pile. They weren't letting go.
"Surely you don't intend to take all of them for yourself," remarked Van Helsing caustically.
Anna glared at him and gave the pile a hard tug. Van Helsing's fingers refused to give. "That's very selfish of you," he went on.
"Shut up and give over," muttered Anna between clenched teeth.
"I don't think so."
Holly was observing them from her position perched beside the drills. She tapped Elizabeth on the shoulder and pointed. "They're at it again."
"So I see," muttered Elizabeth.
Not so far away, Merry and Pippin were inspecting a new discovery. "It's a gun, Pip!" exclaimed Merry in delight.
"What sort of gun?"
"Would I know? There's a tube sticking out of the end, though."
"Oooh! Must be loaded."
"We could test it."
"Yeah. We could."
Back to our odd couple.
Anna and Van Helsing were now standing. Both had refused to give in.
"If you don't let go," cautioned Van Helsing, "I shall be forced to result to certain measures I would normally never take on a girl."
"Oh, I'm honoured," spat Anna. "What is it with you and never taking anything out on girls? Chauvinist, are you?"
"Well, actually…"
"Yes, then. Oh, I should have known. No wonder you're always so condescending to me."
"Condescending? I treat you differently from other females. You're the first girl I have ever really wanted and tried to strangle."
"Oh, really? You seem to have had a lot of practice on strangling girls."
"Well, you were asking for it."
"Can we return to the goddamn point? Let go of the plastic."
"Flat no."
"Ack!"
Pippin waved the gun about vaguely. "I think you pull this lever here, and whatever-it-is-loaded-with comes out."
"Don't point it at me, moron," corrected Merry hastily. "Point it away from us. Yes, like that. Now, pull the trigger……"
"Let go now," said Anna. Her voice had gone slow and dangerous. "Or else."
"I could say the same to you."
"I think they need a mediator of sorts," suggested Éowyn. "Let's go over. Anna does things impulsively."
Anna and Van Helsing engaged in a rather childish tugging match.
At the same time, Pippin fired the glue gun.
Hot glue shot out at a terrifying velocity, a silver snake spurting through the dusty air. It compacted into a large viscous blob and splatted unceremoniously on the pile of fought-over acrylic and the two pairs of hands clinging onto them.
Anna and Van Helsing both screamed as the hot glue engulfed their hands. The Company of Heroines stopped short at the shocking sight: the two of them, their hands scalding in a ball of burning glue, Merry and Pippin standing nearby, looking guilty.
Éowyn rather lost it, then. She picked Pippin up and shook him violently. "What did you DO!"
" I don't know!" squeaked the unfortunate hobbit. "We didn't know…and it's too late, anyway…"
It was. Hot glue is a messy but effective way of sticking things together. It cools quite fast, but leaves the bonds as strong as ever.
Anna slowly opened her eyes as the burning pain died away. Her hands seemed still to be intact – although they hurt like hell. However, they seemed to be covered with a thick, translucent, blobbish film.
Anna blinked, to make sure it wasn't a pain-induced hallucination. She tried to release the pile of plastic, so she could inspect her poor hands better. Somehow she couldn't seem to. Then it hit her.
She had been glued to the pile of plastic, which was now a large blob of adhesive. So was Van Helsing. In effect, they had been glued together.
"D'Arvit!" swore Holly, and ran to get Galadriel.
"The Enchanted Castle?"
"E. Nesbit. The Count of Monte Cristo?"
"Alexander Dumas. That was simple. The Jewel of the Seven Stars?"
"Hm. Bram Stoker."
Artemis was impressed, though he did not show it. Not many people knew that Bram Stoker had written anything else beside Dracula, let alone an Egyptian horror fiction. He quickly parried her question, and added a cunning thrust.
"H. G. Wells. The Phantom of the Opera?"
Hermione hesitated for a moment, and Artemis felt a wicked surge of triumph. "Erm…Andrew Lloyd Webber? You're not supposed to use musicals, you know…"
"I was referring to the original novel," returned Artemis smugly, "by Gaston Leroux. Andrew Lloyd Webber only wrote the musical version." His expression could be described by one word – if he had had that word in his un-colloquial vocabulary. That word was Gotcha.
Her face fell for a moment, defeated. But Hermione Granger was not a girl to back down easily. It was only a couple of seconds before she came up with a return blow – and this one surreptitiously below the belt.
"Cinderella."
Artemis opened his mouth to answer, expecting the brain to emit the reply mechanically – and paused. It was a very simple question. Everyone knew Cinderella. Surely he knew the author too?
He had never bothered to remember.
Hermione smirked. Gotcha.
Harry supposed he should be feeling happy for Hermione's victory over Fowl. Somehow he was viewing it with a sinking feeling. Artemis would take revenge for this. He suspected that deeply.
"So Little Miss Smartypants thinks she's won again."
He knew that voice. He hated it. The revenge of Artemis was going to take back seat for trouble-of-the-moment.
Hermione had become the epitome of glaring indignity. Eyes blazing, she faced Malfoy off. "Just because you don't have the brains to do the same."
"Yeah," agreed Ron. "You're just jealous, Mr. Slimeball."
Malfoy's face contracted. Without another word he raised his spray can, aimed and fired.
Hermione and Artemis ducked. Glancing around shielding arms, Harry saw Ron, splattered head-to-toe with lime green paint.
Ron was staring in disbelief at his new coating. He happened to be holding an orange sienna paint can. Ron let out a war cry and joined battle.
"Green and orange make a very tasteless combination," observed Artemis as both adversaries sprayed wildly at each other.
"Oh shut up," muttered Harry, grabbed vermillion and chrome yellow and went to Ron's aid.
Hermione covered her face with her hands. "Not again!" She grabbed Harry and Ron by their collars and attempted to drag them away, only to be covered in the worst combination of paint colours for her effort.
Someone cleared his – her – throat behind them.
All four froze.
"Were you fighting?" asked the Lady Galadriel with deceptive calm.
Holly came back with Eponine, both in great distress. Eponine was wringing her hands. Holly was pounding her fist into the other hand.
"Galadriel isn't there," stated Holly bluntly.
"She left," explained Eponine. "Harry and Ron…er…sprayed Malfoy with paint. Galadriel took the three of them – and Hermione, she got caught in the crossfire – to find some turpentine. And maybe give them detention."
Anna's normal reaction would have been to run distracted fingers through her hair. However, her fingers weren't available. "What are we going to do?"
"We can't sit here stuck to each other for the rest of the period," groaned Van Helsing.
"Do you think I like being stuck to you?"
"Of course not. I like it even less."
"Please," intervened Carl hastily, "now is not the time to argue. You'll only make the sticking-together thing more unbearable. Surely there must be a way."
Holly was running her fingers distractedly through her short auburn hair – a freedom of limb for which Anna greatly envied her. "This workshop is filled with machines for cutting plastic with. We can try them."
"Scrollsaw?" suggested Pippin, who was trying his best to make amends.
They accordingly tried. The plastic heap was too big for the slender scrollsaw.
"How about the oven?" thought Carl aloud. "It melts acrylic. Perhaps if you put your hands in, the glue and the plastic might melt, and then you could……."
"No!" exclaimed Anna and Van Helsing simultaneously. Both had had enough of burnt hands for today.
The next five minutes saw the Company of Heroines, Merry, Pippin and Carl hacking in turn at the plastic pile with files, chisels, scissors and any metal tool in the vicinity. By now, an interested crowd had gathered. Various people yelled suggestions, which ranged from the dubious to the downright outrageous.
Eventually the hackers gave it up. They regarded the pile of dented, chipped but unyielding plastic, and the many slashes on both pairs of hands where the tool in question had missed and cut skin instead. "It's no use," sighed Éowyn dejectedly.
Holly wiped perspiration from her brow, her forehead creasing in thought. Then something seemed to strike her. Her eyes filled with a new glint – a rather, the others noted in alarm – devilish glint.
"Would you like to see what's in the back partition?" she said carefully.
Van Helsing began to object, but Anna, always the more impulsive, jumped off the table and followed her friend. Van Helsing was promptly yanked off with her.
Holly brushed aside the curtain cautiously – Galadriel would not have warned so without reason. The room, however, seemed fairly harmless. The machines did not have long protruding blades with wickedly jagged teeth, and looked rather unprepossessing.
"Get down, Holly," advised Anna from behind her.
Holly immediately dropped into a crouch. She risked a glance upwards. There was a huge iron wheel with spikes adorning its sides hanging from the ceiling – and half a second ago, right above her head.
They entered one by one, all taking care to avoid the large metal wheel. Careful not to touch anything, they began to search for some large saw that would cut the glued plastic apart.
Carl accidentally brushed against a lever. With a loud roar, a rounded shining blade leapt out of a previously bare table and sped spinning across the surface. It dropped out of sight at the end.
"Carl, you shouldn't…" began Van Helsing, and then bit it off. "Hey. Wait a minute."
Half a minute later, Carl had arranged Anna on one side of the table, Van Helsing on the other, arms outstretched, and the ball of plastic in the middle – right across the cutting line.
"Are you sure about this?" protested Anna. "That thing could cut off my arm. Through the bone."
"You scared?" said Van Helsing softly. There was a mocking twinkle in his eye.
Anna's face instantly lost all traces of apprehension. "Carl, just get on with it."
Carl nodded nervously. "Okay," he said, "someone should hold both of them steady – if the blade knocks them off their feet, it might…erm, remember what Anna said about arm bones. So…Elizabeth, is it? Could you hold Anna? Éowyn, please help anchor Van Helsing."
Elizabeth took hold of Anna's shoulders in a firm grip. Éowyn's mouth set in a thin line (not unlike Professor McGonagall's) but she crossed to the other side and held Van Helsing in the same tight grip.
Carl had his finger on the lever. "Ready," he squeaked, "one, two, three…"
Anna looked Van Helsing in the eye. For a moment his face mirrored the fear in her heart, and then it was replaced by the customary impassiveness. Then she saw the clean, shining blade come wheeling out of the table, and she shut her eyes……
The impact knocked her so hard that even with Elizabeth clinging on, she staggered and nearly fell sideways. She expected pain, blood, screaming……
Anna opened her eyes. She was lying with her cheek against the table. Her hands, with their half of glued plastic, had been flung to one side. The blade that had severed her from Van Helsing was nowhere in sight.
Anna got to her feet, trying to brush a curl out of her eyes with one exposed finger. "Thanks," she said, though she was not sure to who – to Carl, whose finger was still on the lever – to Elizabeth, who was behind her, face white and drawn – to the other white and drawn faces assembled around her –
To Van Helsing?
Van Helsing was on his feet too, casually affixing his hat back where it belonged. Anna turned halfway to him. "Sorry," she muttered.
"What?" Van Helsing was rather unsure of this new development. When someone who had been hating him for the past three days was suddenly contrite, it seriously alarmed him.
"Sorry," repeated Anna. "Sorry that we had to go through this whole thing. Sorry I had to waste so much time being stuck to you. In future I shall never touch anything that you touch."
She glared at him. "Ah," replied Van Helsing non-committedly. He was too relieved that normal enmity was back in place to reply sarcastically.
"What are you doing in here?"
Everyone spun around guiltily. Carl snatched his hand away from the lever.
The Lady Galadriel was framed in the doorway. Her features were impassioned as far as impassioned would go for them: nostrils flaring, eyes with living green fire, hair blowing about her. It could have been the wind from the ceiling fans. It could have been inner psychic rage.
Then she suddenly broke into a brilliant smile. Her face relaxed. To them, it felt even worse.
Galadriel stepped aside, revealing two forms that had earlier been concealed by her height and billowing garments. "Commander Root – Inspector Javert? These are the girls you wanted, no?"
D'Arvit, thought Holly. D'Arvit, D'Arvit, D'ARVIT!
"Yes," said Javert with a shark-like grin. "Oh yes."
"We'll take them from here, Your Ladyship," said Root. There was an unpleasant glint in his eye. "I believe your lesson with them is over?"
"Indeed, Commander." Galadriel's innocently lovely smile put the cherry on the cake.
"Follow me," Javert addressed the Company of Heroines, who were sweating profuesly. "You are under arrest for beating up a fellow classmate, eluding capture and entering sacred domain. Your punishment awaits you."
Root broke into a yellow-toothed grin. He lit a cigar and clamped it between his teeth. The smoke wreathed his red countenance like that of the Devil himself.
"I'm sure you will enjoy it," said the Commander, and blew another cloud of smoke.
End of ChapterNext chapter coming…Châtiment et Conjugaison