Gamora waved at the camera "Gamora and Rocket here. Just a little heads up that the next and, hopefully, concluding part of this story should be up next weekend, opening the way for the now traditional stupid Christmas special."

Rocket sniffed the air. "Ugg, did something up and die in here? So why isn't it ready this week? Did the author catch another chest infection or something?"

"Not… not exactly." Said Gamora, pulling back the sickroom curtain that passed as the fourth wall in these parts. Rocket swore, and lept backwards, fur bristling, as he reached for the gun on his back. "Ahhhh! Quick Gamora, kill it before it can lay eggs! Where's that matter scrambler?"

"Rocket, that's the author!"

"Nuke the whole site from orbit, that the only way to… Huh?"

"That's the author. He went to a Christmas party on Saterday, in Belgium."

"This bein' an obscure use of the word Belgium that means the ship from Event Horizon? What happed to him?"

"He's hung over."

"Hung over people do not look or smell like that." Said Rocket, leaning in and poking with a stick. "I should know."

"Yes, well. He thought that the last year he did it, he stopped feeling the eight to ten per cent Belgian beers after a while, and so this year decided that rather than mooch of his hosts for beer, he'd bring them a present, to liven up the party."

"What was it? An angry bear?" Asked Rocket, wishing for a longer stick. Or maybe a full protective suit.

"Worse. A litre of Absinthe. If there is an angry bear at a party people don't rush to join in and get completive on who can do the most shots of angry bear."

"Wait, wasn't this party on Saturday?"

"Free Belgian ale, all you could drink, and then absinth? It's a miracle he's able to type this week. " said Gamora, pulling the curtain closed without sympathy.

"He has done some writing but his brain is still too scrabbled to edit into anything coherent, so it'll take a while." Said Gamora, winking.

"Merry Christmas, and do try not to overdo the celebrations." She heard a glug-ing sensation form next to her, and looked down.

"Rocket! Where did you get that?" she asked.

Rocket looked up from the bottle, his whiskers already dusted with green droplets. "What?" he snarled. "It's not like he'll miss it. The wuss didn't even finish the bottle! Besides, we're in an n-dimensional non-canonical extra-universal narrative space. The law of conservation of plot doesn't apply."

"So?" asked Gamora, glaring and tapping her foot.

"So, nothing we do in this space effects the us in the main canon of the fanfic." Said the Racoon, producing an absinth spoon and louche glass from no-where. Gamora didn't' even want to ask about the solid-silver ice-water absinth fountain.

She considered this. "No conservation of plot, no consequences. So no hangovers. At all?"

"Nope." Said Rocket, arranging sugar cube on spoon with the care of a gnostic pope preparing some dark Eucharist.

"Oh well in that case we may as well get shitfaced." Said Gamora, nudging Rocket out the way and grabbing the bottle. "I'll pour, you find and shoot whoever's playing that stereotypical Parisian café music. Put something good on."

Random interlude music: Alcohol Bearnaked Ladies.