Story [Multi-Fandom] The Count's Drabbles (12/30: "Ancillary Intervention Services" (Community))

Title: A Moment Too Soon
Fandom: Doctor Who
Doctor: Sixth


"Peri, there's something I've been meaning to tell you for some time."

She glanced up and watched him try to have a conversation while messing with the TARDIS controls. "What is it, Doctor?"

He became more and more fidgety as he spoke. "That's just the trouble," he admitted. "I'm not the Doctor, and I never was. I was hired for what I'd expected to be a brief assignment, but then the Doctor died, and I was stuck."

But I saw you regenerate!" snapped Peri. "I watched you- I mean watched him become you!"

He laughed. "Simple visual trickery!"

 

Title: Tough Enough
Fandom: Doctor Who
Doctor: Eleventh


"I get it!" the Doctor screamed. "You're tough! You're a big tough guy, a shining example of toughness! You're Toughy McToughington! You're-"

Across the table, Clara slammed down her silverware. "Doctor, if you don't like my cooking, just say so."

He looked up from his plate. "No, you're cooking is fine. Who told you it wasn't? Was it Artie?"

"You've been berating your pasta for the last fifteen minutes," she explained.

"That doesn't mean I don't like it!" he shot back. "You know I quite like you, right? But I berate you all the time, don't I?

"Sometimes I wonder."

 

Title: The Fourth's Coming
Fandom: World of Warcraft


The three figures, two night elves and a human, cautiously entered the remote clearing. The first among them nodded. "Greetings, brother, sister," the tall elf said. "Our time is at hand."

The human added, "Soon, Azeroth will be cleansed of the blight that is technology."

"Excuse me," the other night elf asked, "but what of our fourth member?"

"Late again. Sometimes I doubt our brother's heart is in our cause," proclaimed the first.

A loud whirr from above drowned out any further conversation. A helicopter lowered toward them, and a gnome leapt out. "Hey, guys, have I missed anything good?"

 

Title: Switchcraft
Fandom: Doctor Who
Doctor: First


Barbara and Susan entered the console room to find the Doctor rushing around the console, while Ian sat off to the side, reading.

"Chuggington," the Doctor asked, "could you reach over and flip that switch, please?"

Ian reached for it, then paused and looked toward Susan. "Is it safe?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "It should be." Just as Ian was about to touch it, Susan saw the gleam in her grandfather's eye. "Mr. Chesterton, don't!"

She was too late. He flipped the switch, and a stream of water shot from the console's edge, hitting him just below the belt.

 

This was inspired by a bit from the behind-the-scenes extras of one of the Big Finish "Season 27" Lost Stories CDs (which said that the Doctor had an extensive DVD collection).

Title: Digital Versatile Discovery
Fandom: Doctor Who


Ace enthusiastically guided Raine through the Doctor's DVD collection, some of the movies from twenty years after their time. "Nothing later, I'm afraid," Ace explained. "The Doctor said something about spoilers."

"What are spoilers?" Raine asked.

Ace shrugged. "But the best bits are the movies from alternate timelines. You want to see over a dozen different actors playing Batman? Some are well weird!"

"Weirder than Michael Keaton?"

"Much." Ace grabbed another disc. "This one's a classic, but there's a version here that's a Spice Girls movie called Get Sporty."

"None of that last part meant anything to me," admitted Raine.

 

Title: Joy Ridin'
Fandom: Saint's Row
Rating: PG


The tall, naked man stepped out into the intersection right in front of the decelerating Kaneda. "I need your pants and your motorcycle." He grabbed the handlebars, stopping it immediately.

The woman on the bike smirked. "I don't think my pants would fit you."

"That's not why I’m asking."

* * *

Moments later, the motorcycle was racing toward downtown Steelport, far too fast for anyone to notice what its two riders were doing. "Say," the woman wondered, "aren't you the leader of the Saints?"

"Does it matter?"

She shrugged. "Not really. Makes for a cooler story, though. I’m Joy, by the way."

 

Title: A Grandfather's Secret
Fandom: Modern Family


Jay leaned forward on the sofa. "My grandfather didn't stop doing it until the day he died, and nothing like this ever happened to him."

* * *

Jay glanced around to make sure the other adults were out of earshot, then beckoned Lily over. "Pull my finger," he whispered. Seconds later, Lily was running from the room, screaming.

* * *

"I dropped a load in my shorts," Jay explained. "It was oozing out through the leg holes."

* * *

Days later, Jay sat back down. "Turns out, it happened to my grandfather all the time. He just thought it was part of the joke. Who knew?"

 

Title: Overheated
Fandom: Law & Order


Lieutenant Van Buren shrugged. "You can always go out on patrol."

"It's twenty degrees out there!" Detective Curtis objected.

"Until they get the heating fixed, which might not be for days, it's over ninety in here. We've had to transfer the prisoners to other precincts because this building currently counts as cruel and unusual punishment."

Detective Briscoe laughed. "But it's okay for us." He tapped his partner on the arm. "Look on the bright side, Rey. Out in the cold, we're less likely to see something like that."

Van Buren saw where he was looking. "Profaci, put your shirt on!"

 

Title: The Left Coast
Fandom: Die Hard
Setting: Right after Die Hard with a Vengeance


Zeus finished off his third doughnut. He hadn't been sure what to expect from a Canadian truck stop at four in the morning, but these were pretty good. "What's the real reason you left Los Angeles, McClane?" he asked.

"You know all those movies about crazy LAPD officers?" John explained. "The ones starring Mel Gibson or Sylvester Stallone? 'He's a lone wolf who doesn't play by anybody's rules but his own'?"

"Yeah?"

John said, "They're all completely accurate." He sipped at his coffee. "Might as well be documentaries."

"And you missed being the only one?"

John chuckled. "Something like that."

 

Title: Out of the Ashes
Fandom: Babylon 5


Emperor Vir Cotto stared out from the palace and smiled. The rebuilding of Centauri Prime was coming along slowly but surely. A few days earlier, he'd joked that it was more like the rerebuilding. Or should that be rererebuilding? As he remembered more and more times that this city, this world, this people, had fought its way back from the brink of extinction, the prefixes had piled up until he stumbled over them.

"What are you thinking about?" a young girl asked. Several adults rushed to pull her away, but Vir waved them back.

"Re," he answered.

She frowned. "Huh?"

 

Title: Not a Word Was Spoken
Fandom: Doctor Who
Doctor: Eleventh


"That's not a word!" the man in the patchwork coat shouted. Other conversations in the pub died away as people turned to stare.

"Really?" the Doctor snapped, ignoring the audience. "What part of the definition of 'word' does it fail to meet? Does it not have a meaning? Was I not able to use it to convey that meaning?"

"Fine. It's not a proper word."

"Who gets to decide what makes words proper, eh?" He turned to River. "Can you believe I was this pedantic in my adolescence? Good thing I grew out of that."

"Yes," she agreed. "Good thing."

 

Title: Home for the Holiday
Fandom: Dark Shadows


Julia looked at the calendar and grinned. Holidays always seemed to slip by unnoticed in Collinwood. Everyone was too busy battling ghosts or demons or lawyers to notice Christmas or Easter. This was neither of those, wasn't one she'd heard of, but then she was relying on a calendar from thirty-nine years in the future. Perhaps Talk Like a Pirate Day just didn't exist yet.

* * *

"Arr, Barnabas," she called. "What ye be doin' skulkin' about?"

He glared at her. "Are you drunk?"

She tried explaining, but he cut her off. "I've known real pirates. They never talked like that."

"Spoilsport."

 

Title: Coming Up Short
Fandom: Doctor Who
Doctor: Eighth


"What do you mean," Grace demanded, "I get shortlisted? I don't win, do I?"

"I never said that!" the Doctor replied, eyes on the road. "But I did say that nobody should know too much about their own future!"

She groused, "But I don't, do I?"

"It's never been about the recognition, though, has it? Grace, I know you. You became a doctor to save lives, to hold back death, remember? Not to win some tiny, trivial medal."

She slapped him on the shoulder. "Trivial? Oh really?" she snapped. "And how many Nobel Prizes have you lost, Mister Alien, huh?"

 

Title: Uneasy Riders
Fandom: House, M.D.
Setting: After "Everybody Dies"


The cop banged on the bars of the cell, and yelled, "Hey, Easy Riders, you two docs of some kind?"

House took another cookie from the plate they'd been given. "I'm not, but he is." He nodded toward Wilson.

"What's the trouble, officer?" Wilson asked.

"The Captain's not breathing so good!"

"Take us to him at once," Wilson said, stepping out of the cell. He glanced back to see House hadn't moved. "You coming?"

"No need. It's just anaphylactic shock caused by a peanut allergy."

"How do you know it's peanuts?" asked Wilson.

House grinned and bit into his cookie.

 

Dangit. I hadn't watched Futurama in a couple years, but I watched the finale Wednesday and wrote this. I figured the show'd probably done something of the kind before, but I didn't find out until a few minutes ago that it did it two weeks earlier. Dangit. Well, I'm posting anyway. [I haven't watched the episode, so I don't know how close it is in execution.]

Title: Count Me Out
Fandom: Futurama


Professor Farnsworth grinned. "Good news, everybody! I've narrowed the list of suspects to just seventy-four names!" He dropped a heavy stack of research notes onto the table.

"But Professor," Leela said, "we already knew that the murderer has to be one of the six of us in this room!"

He pondered this for a moment and threw his notes away. "Better news everybody! I have successfully eliminated sixty-eight additional suspects!" A moment later, he added, "Correction, make that sixty-nine."

"Who did you rule out?" Amy asked eagerly.

"Me." The Professor toppled forward, a quantum pickaxe buried deep in his back.

 

I had two ideas for how this one would play out. I opted for this one because I could make a certain reference and because the other was more "inside" (though I might still use it at some point).


Title: Caan, Artist
Fandom: Doctor Who


"Emergency Temporal Shift!" announced Caan. Seconds later, he was whisked away through time. But not space. He found himself in the same theatre, only a few decades later. His energy was too depleted to try another shift; he was stuck. What, he wondered, was he supposed to do now?

* * *

Caan overheard a woman in the audience ask, "Is he related to the guy from The Godfather?" She wasn't the first.

"Somehow," her boyfriend said, "I don't think so."

Moments later, the curtain rose, and Caan rolled out onto the stage. "Wilkommen," he sang, voice echoing in the rafters, "bienvenue, welcome!"

 

Title: Troubled Pink
Fandom: The Monster Cereals


Steam escaped from the tiny smokestack at the big guy's temple, and he sighed.

"Vhat's got your marshmallows all soggy this morning, Franken?" the vampire sitting across from him asked.

"I don't know, Count Chocula," he admitted. "I just... I may be pink, but lately I've been feeling blue."

"Actually," a high, raspy voice interjected, "you've been feeling Boo." A ghostly form rose up, through Franken Berry's lap and the tabletop. "And I'd appreciate it if you didn't do that ever again."

"Sorry, I hadn't realized you were sitting there."

"I know." Boo Berry nodded sadly. "Story of my afterlife."

 

Poor Boo Berry.

Liked your Futurama drabble (I could totally hear the Professor saying "Better news everybody!"), and I really liked your House drabble. That would happen to them.

 

Thanks, AC. It's nice knowing that these are being enjoyed.

I wrote this one right before the new patch came out last week. There aren't any real spoilers here.

Title: The Warchief Must Die!
Fandom: World of Warcraft


The Warchief, almost everyone agreed, had become a danger that needed to be eliminated. Even those who'd championed the ascension in the wake of Garrosh's downfall now abandoned their leader.

Around the Valley of Strength, hundreds of frost mages stood ready, their elementals hovering before them. Death knights - like the mages, all were frost - moved amongst them, as did shamans carrying their water totems. The other classes were there as well, but these would be the leaders of the assault.

Everyone knew what was at stake: Abesik Kampfire threatened to consume the Horde and Azeroth and had to be extinguished.

 

Title: In Darkness Total
Fandom: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine


Quark wasn't sure at first whether consciousness had returned or not. And then he inhaled, and his entire body convulsed from the stench. He could still be blind, though; the darkness was so thick, it almost felt solid.

Unsurprisingly, his hearing was just fine. "Maybe," his brother was whining, "if someone used his shapeshifting powers to become a lamp, we could see where the exit is."

"My abilities don't work like that and you know it," Odo countered.

Quark grunted involuntarily, and the conversation stopped. "No, go on," he said. "Anyone within five levels should be able to hear you."

 

Title: Thrall in the Family
Fandom: World of Warcraft


Aggra paused in the doorway and chuckled. "Go'el, leader of the Horde, are you actually nervous?" she asked.

"What if your parents don't like me?"

"My mother might." Without another word, she pulled him into the hut.

An older orc male looked up from a roaring fire. "Hon, come see what our daughter just brought home!" he yelled. "It's one of them greenies!"

"Dad," Aggra said, "this is Go'el."

"So this isn't that Thrall guy you were seeing?"

"Thrall is a name I was given on Azeroth," he explained. "It's a human word."

The older orc laughed. "For what, Meathead?"

 

Title: The Zygotic Refutation
Fandom: The Big Bang Theory


Sheldon checked to make sure the curb wasn't too dirty before he sat down beside Katie. He handed her one ice cream cone and took a lick from his own. "You know I'm not really your dad, right?"

"Yeah," she admitted. "Mom told me. I wish you were, though."

"Are you saying that because you want to play with my toys?" he asked, switching from licks to bites.

She avoided his gaze, staring intently at something on the ground. "Maybe?"

"I wouldn't get my hopes up about that one. I'm not good at sharing."

She finished her cone. "Me, either."

 

Title: About Lost Night
Fandom: Star Trek


"Scotty," Bones said, but his friend didn't react. "Scotty?" he repeated, but still he got no response. Exasperated, he yelled, "Lieutenant Montgomery Scott!"

Scotty slowly turned to face him, his face slack, only the barest hint of recognition in his eyes. "Aye?"

"What in the Sam Hill happened to you?" asked Bones. He had found Scotty lying in this alleyway, wide awake yet dead to the world.

"I cannae remember." Scotty shook his head slowly.

Bones tried a different tack. "What's the last thing you do remember?"

Scotty looked him in the eye and grinned. He replied, "She... was blue."

 

For now it's time for tonight's final drabble, Beyond Belief.

Title: No Country for Drunk Men
Fandom: Beyond Belief


Sadie's mount whinnied menacingly. "Don't you take that tone with me, horsie!" she snapped back. "Frank, darling, he is right, you know. What are we doing out here so far from a liquor store? And how far are we from the nearest liquor store?"

"It's eighty-two miles in that direction, Sadie, love," Frank answered, pointing northwest.

"I love how you know that." They clinked glasses.

"It's like a sixth sense! Except I already have that," he added, "so this is more like a seventh or possibly an eighth sense."

She replied, "It should rank higher. Knock smell down to eighth!"

 

Title: Surprise Fighters
Fandom: The Avengers crossover


Loki grinned as he sensed the human woman in the black catsuit sneaking up behind him. He slowly turned, asking, "Did you really think you could surprise me, Miss- You're not the Russian."

"I'm English," the woman said. "And it's Mrs., by the way. Mrs. Emma Peel."

He bowed politely. "Loki."

"Like the Norse god?" she wondered.

"Very like."

She nodded. "I see. So an umbrella to the head wouldn't hurt you at all?"

He caught her looking past him and spun around just in time to catch a man hiding his umbrella behind his back. "Hello, I'm John Steed."