"I mean, she's a werewolf! AND a she!" Colon sputtered. The last made Sam look up from her desk and at him.
"Fred, what exactly do you think I am?" Sam asked in a dangerously calm tone of voice. Fred heard the harmonics in this voice and edited the rest of his planned harangue accordingly. Sam usually used that voice on suspects and people who annoyed her before erupting like a volcano on them.
"Well, I mean, um… well, it's against…" Fred sputtered before Vimes interrupted him.
"The Watch has ALWAYS taken women; bigods man we need the man…person…we need more Watchmen! Hell, they were so hard up when you and I joined that they didn't even say anything about me being a girl! The only reason we don't have more women in the Watch now is because the Captain before me refused to take them and now people have the notion that we don't." A dangerous glint came into Vimes' eye. "If you thought that, what does that make me, a woman, your Captain, in the Watch?"
Colon was sweating buckets now. "Well, I mean…you're a woman, yeah, but…I mean, you're not a girl or a woman, you're just Sam, Sam!"
After a moment's thought, Vimes let it lie. Colon wasn't a bad sort, really, and she had known him since she first joined up; he was one of her oldest friends. She supposed some women would be offended that their femininity had been so thoroughly ignored, but honestly, she hadn't even thought of that until she met Saul. She was a Watchman, and everything else came second or third or last.
Though as Colon left the office, she did remember why she had joined the Watch; back in her day, it was either that or become a Seamstress. And young Samantha Vimes was too proud to do her work on her back, no offense to those ladies of the night.
A/N: Or, explaining Angua in "Men at Arms". I will go into at some point how Sam got into the Watch, when I can better figure it out in my head.