Cousins: Round & Round & Round She Goes (1/1)
by McLisa

For months after the war, McLisa had nightmares about the things
she saw during her enforced dance through alternate fanfic time
and space in the wake of the congaing list hamsters. The
crossover between FK and Crocodile Hunter was the worst. (This
would be against the rules in our reality. Don't try it at home,
boys and girls.)

Finally dawn broke just as the rampaging rodents plunked McLis
down in the middle of the University of Toronto campus, where a
bullwhip-wielding Mistress Tamara was chasing Commissioner
Vetter across the main quadrangle. The commissioner appeared to
have mislaid all his clothes, a fact which drew negative
comments from the policeman who placed him under arrest. McLisa
pulled free of the vanishing hamsters just as Vetter harrumphed,
"when I said we, officer, I was referring to myself, the four
young ladies, and of course the goat." (This is stolen from a
button made by the Pegasus Company. I have always wanted to use
it in a fanfic which did not have to be rated X.)

The hamsters dissolved completely on the last word, taking the
alternate reality fanfic with them. McLisa leaned against the
nearest tree, wondering whether she could simply sleep until the
Engineering library opened. A good friend of McLisa's worked
there. Perhaps she would hide McLisa for the rest of the war.

The exhausted listowner was just beginning to doze off when the
theme from The Great Escape jarred her awake. At least, she
thought it was The Great Escape. She hadn't heard anything quite
so cheerfully awful since Karaoke Night in the Regal
Constellation Hotel's bar some wars back. McLisa's eyes flew
upen and she jumped to her feet.

"No! I only had one drink!! This can't be happening!!!"

But it was. A motley collection of instrumentalists, all garbed
in purple boiler suits and weirdly decorated hats, in perfect
step if the pace happened to be set by an an elephant dancing
the cancan, tramped by. They crashed into a different song --
segue would be too organized a word -- and McLisa thought she
heard a cannon in the background.

With a choked scream, McLisa fled. Having spent the previous war
under the profound misimpression that she was a Ratpacker,
McLisa knew a number of secret entrances into Toronto buildings.
Running on instinct, she headed straight for the place she most
wanted to be -- the World's Biggest Bookstore."

<a number of hours later>

Cousins Mary Williams and Kezia, identically clad in black
trousers and sweaters, emerged from the Dundas subway station
and marched determinedly north toward the store.  Theirs was a
dangerous mission, but a woman's gotta do what a woman's gotta
do, even if Cerberus had insisted that there was no time for
Bonnie the Cousinly Receptionist to order sufficiently large
butterfly nets.  Somebody had to retrieve McLisa; LaCroix had
made that clear with one slight rise of an eyebrow. Since Mary
W. and Kezia had displayed what the Society for Creative
Anachronism calls "insufficient reluctance" (that is, they were
out of the room at the time), they got the job.



The listownerly bookaholic was slumped on one of the WBB's
benches next to the mystery section. So intent was she on Death
in the Age of Steam (real thriller, set in Canada in the 1850s,
by Mel Bradshaw. McLisa highly recommends it) that she never
heard her would-be keepers approaching.

Cousin Kezia tiptoed up behind McLisa, snatched the book and
took off at warp factor one. Oh, sorry, wrong show. At vampiric
speed. Shouting for Mary W. to head McLisa off, Kezia zigzagged
through the maze of bookshelves. World Biggest Bookstore
security staff joined in a some point, but they kept getting
confused. All three cousins were short, plump, and wore glasses.
All three wore their dark hair short to just below the ears and
with bangs across the forehead. Since McLisa had stopped off at
Eaton Centre on her way to sanctuary for the plainest clothes
she could find, she too wore black pants and a black sweater.
In short, security and the two cousinly hunters were soon as
mixed up as dialogue in broad Screed-speak.

McLisa might have gotten away if Cousin Mary hadn't stopped dead
in the midst of the Canadiana section, in front of the dollar
table. There lay a tome entitled "Native Rock Carvings of
Southern Ontario - a Photographic Guide."

Mary snatched up the book just before McLisa, who had somehow
gotten _behind_ her pursuers, cannoned into her.  Cousin Kezia
made a frantic save to catch the book in midair.  The two Ms had
picked themselves up off the floor, recriminating. Then Kezia
began squealing and bouncing and brandishing the book over her
head.

McLisa frowned. "Hey, I'm the one with Ratpacker delusions."

"Kez?" asked Mary, cautiously joining her colleague.

As a librarian, of course McLisa had to join them in reading.
"... this stone in a field ... Niagara ... Missisauga
petroglyphs ..."

A looney at the WBB cash register (no, no, a looney is Canadian
slang for a one-dollar coin, not McLisa) and a cab ride later
during which Mary dismissed McLisa's wails about the d.t.s with
"you saw the University of Toronto Engineering Lady Godiva
Marching Band, that's all,"  the trio of of book-bearing Cousins
strode triumphantly into CERK.


<end>

McLisa, with book title and how to take a book away from a
biblioholic by Cousin Kezia. The University of Toronto
Engineering Lady Godiva Marching Band is for real, and much as
described. Their complete routine does involve firing a cannon.


cecily1349@yahoo.com