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It was the best of times -- it was the worst of times -- it was 7.09 pm in TTR on the night of the 2005 Adrics awards, and the booze was running wild and free, and the patience was running sort of out. The pains-, or at least mickey, -takingly constructed stage, had now been destroyed and rebuilt three several times by assorted Toonside interlopers, who were running if anything even wilder and freer than the booze aforementioned. After the last destructive incident, sparked by a clash between a cat in a hat and a terminally depressed-looking mutt of which few of the unfortunate witnesses will willingly speak even today, the reconstruction schedule had been further disrupted by a mysterious and unambiguously 3-D superheroine in a highly exiguous costume consisting chiefly of iridescent mirror shades and a strategically-placed sash bearing the legend 'Extremely Visible Girl'. This enigmatic vision, who bore some superficial resemblances to Candy and on certain present evidences boasted the unspeakable or at least slightly unprintable superpower of instant male lignification, had collared the entire repairs crew for an urgent backstage discussion, the unseemly and mostly non-verbal racket of which had long since replaced the wholesome strains of _Whistle While You Work_. Apropos of rackets, 'Marchie' Marchant-Ivory, Sabalom Glitz, and a small mouse with a big hammer had been press-ganged by an impromptu committee of scary regulars into some instant DIY. The results weren't pretty, but the stage was just about ready again. For all the bloody presenters seemed to care, as Ms Tegan Jovanka (Bright-Wing, Bel-Phoenix, Qantido 5th Dan) has so aptly phrased it! As the mouse drove his hammer down on the very last nail, which happened to belong to a big grey cat who expressed his displeasure in rather a marked manner, the saloon-bar door crashed open. A gleaming-eyed Northern type who was no doubt the Ninth Doctor, and a buxom blonde English Rose who was definitely quite a lot of the regulars' type, burst in upon this sorry scene. "Sorry we're a bit late," the Doctor called to all and sundry in not remotely apologetic tones, "plague of Nora Battys in the subspace interface, don't mind us, you can carry on with the show now..." "Doctor..." "Ee, you'll like this," he ignored Rose cheerfully as he turned to her. "It's got Lauren Bacall in it, and this amazing intergalactic pop star-cluster; but what you really have to see is the continuity abuse. Play on, maestro!" he hollered at the new-repaired stage, over which forlornly hung a mismatched set of out-of-sync flashing neon signs which appeared to have fallen off the back of various major Las Vegas hotels, and which too prematurely blazed out the legend 'ADWC ADRIcS AW4RDS 20O5' over a background of a supercolossal blue star-shaped fly-exterminator freshly painted around the edges with Airfix gold enamel. After a long-tailed previous sentence, the Doctor committed a sudden double-take. "And I think it's gonna be a long long time!" the Magical Mechanical Musical Box in the corner crooned with open sarcasm, its festoons of fibreoptic tinsel glinting derisively. "So what," gibed Rose, "evil aliens have murdered the presenter before we *got* here? That's pretty good even for us!" "Nooo." The Doctor scowled dismissively. "I took a peek ahead, didn't I? She's probably just having a quicky in the bogs with her gorgeous assistant, from what I hear." "Ewww!" Rose noted. "There's some cartoon animals at the bar, let's buy them a drink and get the gen. What's yours?" "I think," said Rose, shaking her head, "it'd better be a big stiff -- " The bar fell suddenly silent, causing our plucky heroine to break off in bewilderment followed swiftly by disgust; but not even that mighty invocation to Our Lady of Nothing Entendres sufficed to summon the spam-eyed Naiad of the Datastreams to grace our little ceremony by, for instance, in the time-hallowed expression, getting on with it -- she being, according to abundant aural evidence from backstage, far too consumed with the urgent business of getting it on with, &c, &c. Who now shall save our little jollification from ignominious and indecent failure, O Gentle Reader? Many appealing and no few downright ugly expressions are turned to elephantine Marchie and his elegant partner-in-dodginess Kyra at this crisis; but 'Crisis? What crisis?' is what their serene expressions are radiating, as a chipper grey trunk genially beckons Ninth and Rose over to share a bevvy or two with their goodselves and a somewhat raddled 1970s caricature of famed Brit leader Sunny Jim Callaghan. But be of good cheer! For 'twas ever in such moments of ultimate peril that the good Doctor was ever wont to show us the true quality of his mettle. We can trust him to sort this sad situation out in a jiffy, *right*, CAN'T WE, MUSH!?!?!?!! --- "You don't suppose, do you?..." the First and Third Doctors began to opine simultaneously. They sat at a corner table in the TTR. The pub had just barely survived being a Toon construction site. The pair were watching the exuberant goings on as a final few nails were bashed in, and a last few lights were adjusted to complete the set. It had been amusing, though tiring to watch. The whole thing had been accomplished in accordance with Toon Convention. Everything had been over-energetic, with the pauses in the right place, and of the right length, to get the best belly laughs... Only neither of the Doctors was laughing. They shared a worried glance. "After you, Old Chap," the Third said. "After all, you are the Elder." "Quite right, my boy..." The First acknowledged, breaking off to take a sip from a steaming mug of cocoa. "But you don't really want me to say it out loud, now do you?" "Quite right, Old Chap. There's no point in tempting fate. We're probably in enough trouble as it is with all that lot." The Third nodded at the milling Toon-siders crowding into the main room of the TTR. The First Doctor eyed them askance. "Are the whole of Toon-side coming here tonight?" he inquired. "Possibly," the Third answered. "You do know what this will mean?" "Of course I do," snapped the elderly fellow. "The Toon-side Magic will be drawn through with them. The more Toon-siders come to Outside, the more Toon Magic there will be. If the build up reaches critical mass... Just like it did after that Disney fellow started messing around." Both Doctors shuddered at the memory. The Third said, "Mickey Mouse as President... Luckily, the President was at Camp David that day, so it wasn't as bad as it might have been." "Quite," agreed the First; "but I was thinking more of the Daffy Duck incident." The Third Doctor grimaced. "Do you think that we should contact THEM?" "We may have no choice," said the First, "if things get out of hand; but I'd rather not if it could be avoided. You remember the trouble it caused last time?" "You're right, of course," the Third conceded. He took a good long pull at his pint of bitter. The beverage was got in specially from the generic pub to which he was wont to adjourn with the chaps from UNIT after some successful outing to thwart the Master. "But THEY were crucial in resolving the Roger Rabbit debacle." "Granted," the First acknowledge the point. "But do we really want our Toon- side Doppelgangers coming here?" "They'll probably turn up anyway, whether we contact them or not." The First harumphed. "Undoubtedly. I thick we should wait and see what develops. If things begin to get..." The Fourth and Seventh Doctors, who were threading their way through the press of Toon-siders, heading for the table, when a Toon mouse popped into being just behind the Fourth. Jerry Mouse was going at a dead run. He raced up the Fourth Doctor's trailing scarf, skipped from shoulder to head, and used that as a springboard to reach the corner table in a single bound. He landed with a plop in the remains of the Third's pint. Jerry scrambled madly out, and dived for a mouse hole which had just conveniently appeared in the skirting. The pursuing cat had no chance. The Doctor went down with arms flailing. His drink went shooting out of his grasp. Tom bounded off the Doctor's back, and shot under the table in hot pursuit. The Fourth started to push himself up; but a huge bulldog with a spiked collar ran him down again. Its legs got tangled in the scarf. The snarling mass of Toon energy somersaulted into the table at which sat the First and Second Doctors. In accordance with Toon Convention, the table promptly disintegrated into a shower of broken wood. Debris, drinks, and two somewhat startled Doctors, flew in all directions. The Third's pint described a parabola, paused in the air for effect, before landing open end down on his head. "...Get out of hand," finished the First, from where he sat among the wreckage of the corner table. Through some temporal sleight-of-hand, the wily old fellow was still clutching his cup of hot chocolate, quite un-spilt. He took a sip, and went on urbanely. "Spontaneous Toon Manifestations are only the start. You know what comes next?" The Third nodded grimly. They helped each other up, and adjourned to an undamaged table, where they were joined by the Fourth and Seventh. "The next thing to go will be the Conservation of Reality Law," The First continued after he was comfortably ensconced. "And we all know where that will lead." The Fourth nodded. "Yes, it would be dangerous to even mention that there was this great... MMMMMPPPPHHHH!!!!????" The Fourth Doctor's explanation was cut-short as the other three Doctors all slapped hands over his mouth, whilst glancing nervously at the huge Toon weight, cheerily labelled in ominous black lettering with the legend: "1000 tonnes", which was in the process of manifesting itself in the air over their heads. The Toon weight faded, but slowly, and with a great show of reluctance. After a moment, the Doctors hesitantly removed their muffling hands. "Mark my words," put in the First portentously, "it'll be the Roger Rabbit fiasco all over again. Then we will HAVE to call them in to help. Outside will need all the help it can get at that stage." An amused grin broke out on the Fourth doctor's face. "What are you grinning at?" demanded the Seventh. "It'll be no laughing matter if that happens." He looked a little uneasy. "I was just thinking," the Fourth began, "not so much a question, more an outright statement of fact..." "It was a desperate situation," the Seventh put in too quickly. He sounded more than a little defensive. "Desperate measures were called for. Besides, I only suggested the vat of acetone, I didn't actually... Besides which, you can't really exorcise the Toon-side Magic like that. That bit at least was made up... And anyway... Ah, I see they're about to do the drabble presentation." He sounded more than a little relieved at the timely distraction. The intro music faded down to be replaced by an enthusiastic whooping and hubbub. A distinctly nervous looking Adric shuffled into the spotlight to make the presentation. He stood blinking bemusedly as a pair of Mickey Mouse ears sprouted unnoticed on his head. The first indicated the aberration with a nod of his white haired head. Conservation of Reality Law's on the blink already," he observed smugly. The Western Onion Indian puttered onto the set on his scooter. He dismounted, and went through his surreal little dance before handing Adric the golden envelope. The messenger then thinned away in his time-honoured manner to thunderous applause from the Toon-siders in the audience. Adric took the card from the golden envelope and began scanning the names. The envelope, clutched forgotten in his hand, began to wriggle. Adric dropped it in alarm. The envelope turned bright pink, and metamorphosed into a huge butterfly. The gorgeous creature fluttered around the amazed boy's head, before dipping down to plant a gentle kiss upon the tip of his nose. Adric jerked back, more embarrassed than alarmed. The butterfly split in two. Suddenly, there were two dancing in the air. Then there were four; then there were eight. They continued to divide until the whole set was a cloud of fluttering pink. The chaotic whirl soon settled into the shape of a grinning skull. Still holding formation, the cloud zoomed straight for the table where the four Doctors sat. For a stunned moment, Adric just stared after the macabre manifestation, then he calmly introduced the nominated drabbles... Well, actually, it seemed the most appropriate thing to do at that moment. A six foot tall Sooper-Dooper Professional Animators Pencil in bright red drew itself into being at Adric's side. The Pencil acknowledged the crowds with a little bob. As Adric announced the name of the first nominee, the pencil zoomed about creating an instant animation in a cheeky pastiche of an Old Master's style. A Past Master of the Art by Paul Andinach "That was close," the Doctor said, slamming the TARDIS doors shut behind him and leaning on them. Alison, who'd stayed in the TARDIS, looked to the scanner screen: outside, in Toledo, a bearded man in black stood glaring venomously at the TARDIS. "Doctor," she said worriedly, glancing at their other companion, "tell me that isn't - " "It is," said the Doctor, "Domenikos Theotocopoulos, called 'El Greco'. I bumped into him as he was coming out of his studio, and he got - " He shrugged off his overcoat, revealing an enormous smear of paint on one sleeve. " - terribly offended, I don't know why." The pencil reversed, and whizzed about re-absorbing the Toon before starting on a Manga style rendering of the next drabble. The battle against entropy by Indefatigable The Doctor stalked through the ruined place, the dust of countless centuries set into turmoil in the wake of his footsteps. The air was stale and still until disturbed by his breath. It had been far too long. He approached the ancient machine and pushed the button. With a click and a roar, everything began to change. Ace snatched her earphones from their roundeled shelf, jammed them into her ears, and clamped her pillow over her head to muffle the noise from the next room. 'Why can't he do his bloody vacuuming while I'm awake?' The pencil sketches in a vacuum cleaner. The hose snakes about sucking up the Toon. Then the pencil takes pity on Adric. It zooms around erasing Adric's Mickey Mouse ears; and then, after a thoughtful pause replaces them with a fair approximation of Bugs Bunny's ears. A double barrelled shotgun an walrus moustache sticks out from the wings stage right. "Wabbit!" exclaimed Yosemite Sam. There was the ominous sound of hammers being cocked. The Pencil dashed back and removed the ears. The shotgun was withdrawn. In florescent colours, the pencil set about animating the next drabble. The Choice by Daibhid Ceannaideach "All right, Beep," the Doctor muttered, "You win. I'll do whatever you say." The Most High meeped excitedly. "Excellent, Doctor. There are two tasks with which your expertese may be useful." "What do you want me to do?" "While I am not foolish enough to tell you my entire plan, I can tell you it requires my fur to be a vivid orange. I also need a wooden replica of your TARDIS. I know that, in your quiet moments between adventures, you have practiced both hairdressing and carpentry. He leant closer. "Your choice is simple, Doctor. "Dye me, or join!" After erasing the animated drabble, the Pencil quickly draws in a chin, against which it taps thoughtfully for a few moments while mulling over the style for the next drabble. At length, the Pencil decides to go with a flowery pastel style, rather than the New Age Gothic which suggests itself, but was sooo predictable. Vampire from Space by K. Michael Wilcox Giles considered the Doctor's announcement. "There have been cases of vampirism being transferred to animals, of course," he said. "This, though, is unfathomable." "Not so much as you might think. Sadly, it's happened before to other members of my race," the Doctor explained. Buffy tapped her foot impatiently. "How do I kill it?" "The usual methods, I should think," Giles suggested. "Perfect," Buffy said, twirling her lucky stake in her hand. "I'm afraid that won't be enough," the Doctor said. "Wonderful. What'll I need, some Gallifreyan death ray?" The Doctor grinned naughtily. "No, but you will need a second stake." The Toon was erased and the Pencil went into Looney Toons style for the last nominated Drabble. Warning by Molly Schlemmer When the old soothsayer Galen had grabbed his coattails as he walked by, the Doctor had been annoyed. "Beware the woman with the emerald gaze," old Galen had said, her own cloudy eyes staring blindly into another dimension. "Angel of destruction..." When his companions asked who he had been talking to, the Doctor brushed off their questions. "Just the incoherent ramblings of a mad old woman," he said, puttering around the TARDIS console, initiating takeoff. When the Doctor bumps into a woman as he enters a saloon on Nishino Prime, he innocently notes the beautiful green color of her eyes. The pencil races around erasing the last Toon drabble. Darting behind Adric, it quickly draws a great heart shape and colours it is with a pair of portraits. One is Adric, and the other is a pretty young woman with wavy brown hair. They lean towards one another; but before their lips meet, the heart becomes a huge eye, which winks suggestively. The Pencil takes a bow before sketching in a sporty looking pencil case, slipping inside, and zooming off the set. And the Winner of the Adrics 2004 Drabble award is... Umm?... A tie between... The Choice by Daibhid Ceannaideach... and... Warning by Molly Schlemmer. --- The general chaos induced by the ever-swelling flood of uninvited toons was, superficially, still still absent or at least in abeyance at the noble oasis called Bar. Kyra and Marchie were giving Nellie the Elephant some comradely advice anent her upcoming constructive dismissal suit against the Circus. Kinki, in a rare contemplative moment, had disappeared with Woody Woodpecker behind the most thoroughly potted palm in Nameless -- for an earnest theological discussion, if we are to be guided by the frequent and unprecedented exclamations of "Wha-ha-ha-ha-ha! God bless my soul!" emanating from it. And Tony the Bumptious Breakfast Cereal Tiger was busy making a complete Blackburn of himself in a doomed attempt to tempt Kimiko back to his lair for purposes of putting some 'grr-r-r-reat!' sugar-frosted cornflakes in her bowl, which exhibition the object of his affections was so far tolerating with the air of a fascinated ailurology student on a field-trip. (Ailurology is essentially like anthropology, but there is a higher incidence of the subjects' sneaking up and planting their bum immovably on the student's notes.) For Ben, however, the situation was a bittersweet one, intricately balanced between a myriad joys and sorrows. Con, he had no particular penchant for cartoons, and on the influx's becoming excessive had contented himself with knocking down Bluto and making his way towards that beacon of light and hope that was the management's witty sign, "I'm the bar -- fly me!" Pro, this left him able to appreciate in (hitherto) relative peace, the glories of a long dark rum. Con, it was Lamb's Navy, and Ben really had no idea what he was missing in the Captain Morgan stakes. Sad, no? Pro, Polly had retired from her normal duties to serve behind the bar for the night, having noticed (i) that the median height of the toon invaders was approximately that of a healthy hobbit; and that (ii) this sat, and even stood, rather ill with her 1960's hemlines. Thus, she was on hand and available for banter, which was nice for both of them. Con, con, con, con, con, con, con, con, this banter had been disrupted shortly after the sounds of stage-repair had abruptly ceased, by a masked and faintly porcine Bar Bore of Mystery who had glommed onto Ben like an out-of-work singing lamprey. Now Ben, as a sailor-man of considerable experience and cheerfully conventional tastes, was not normally at a loss for a response when accosted in bars by overweight middle-aged men in leather dominos and black lycra. In this instance, however, several factors had induced in him a fatal hesitation. Not wishing to use language like that in front of Polly was a part of it. Man of Mystery's powerful build and scarcely veiled air of universal truculence was another matter carefully to be weighed, suggesting as it did that that his preferred conversation might swiftly degenerate into one apt to attract the attentions of François before (and, indeed if) Ben could successfully conclude it. Ben was a generous-hearted soul, and by no means cared to add to the heavy load already on the back of the overworked Ogron. But the supreme consideration, topping all the others by a nautical mile, lay in the black-enamelled bicycle lamp that hung like a camera around his persecutor's corded neck. As a veteran companion from the classic era of _Dr Who_, Ben knew the BBC's idea of a terror weapon of ultimate doom when he saw one, and further was well aware that attempts to confiscate it without the good Doctor's participation bore but little chance of success, and even then not until the final episode. Therefore, a strategy of noncommittal grunting seemed the ticket, until Bar Bore Boy should either get the message, or collapse from a fatal overdose of the gin-and-tincture-of-iodine that he was currently putting away like a bastard, or else abruptly retire _hors de combat_ after having met a nasty and inexplicable accident with a recorder. Alas, Nemesis was so far showing a very understandable inclination to stand this lad up. And judging by the tenor of his repetitious and increasingly aggravating conversation, she was by no means the only one. "I mean," Bar Bore Boy explained, dunking a spam scratching in his tincture in order to bring out the subtler points of its flavour, "take the women, hah? *As* I'm sure you do. Do I have anything against them? I do not." He waved the scratching generously in Polly's direction. "Do I pluck them screaming from luxury space-cruisers and force them to dress up in skimpy cabin-bggggirl uniforms whilst feeding me olives and reciting actinide decay series before stranding them at Surbiton-sub-Stella spaceport when I find their trust funds have no intention of paying the ransom? I do not. At least not often. Hardly ever! And *do* I support their career choices, when they can justify them over my no doubt old-fashioned Golden Agey preferences using force, eloquence and reason that wouldn't shame a male man? And fragging big chainsaws?! I daresay I probably do! And what thanks do I get for it?" "None," said Polly through a fixed smile. BBB ignored her completely. A vein in Ben's temple began gently to pulsate. "I will tell you, because you don't know. They throw it all away on stupid common career tracks like dwarf-tossing, trash-collecting, snow-ploughing, and medical assisting. I tell them I can't bear to watch. I tell them they will come to a sticky end. Is my wisdom heeded? Does it indeed ever reach their sweet little auditory canals over all the background noise? Will Hieronymus Merkin ever forgive Mercy Humppe and find, I ask you, true happiness???" Ben could bear it no longer. "Honestly, chum, I couldn't give a toss." BBB began a violent recoil, but then alas laughed a great bass villain's laugh and slapped Ben with painful familiarity on the shoulder. "Well, of *course* you couldn't. No more than could I, and so is tragedy bred. For we be manly men who sail the black abysses of infinity, our hairy chests bare to the wind that blows between the worlds, revelling in the clean, wossname, revelry of rum bumming cigarettes and the lash; and we know nor reck little of the unspeakable joys of the dwarf-tossers and their ilk. That is under*stood*." Ben's fists were doing a lot of autonomous twitching. Bar Bore Boy gestured offhandedly at Polly, and said to Ben out the side of his mouth in a tone of hatefully confiding speculation, "I don't suppose *she* could? There's gold-pressed lutonium in -- " Ben stepped back and threw a mighty roundhouse punch at his scummy interlocutor. Polly, in the same instant, was bringing down a bottle of Bell's smartly upon BBB's bonce, remarking "Afore ye go!" with positively Emma Peelesque panache. And so it was justice was very nearly served. Unfortunately, the Joyless Roger had chosen that very moment to trip his shuffling feet over a thoroughly unexpected obstacle. Down he went like a ton of lead feathers. "Whack! Smash!" said the whiskey bottle to Ben's head. "Splat! Crunch!" said Ben's fist to Polly's nose. The two companions exchanged one horrified look of blood-dripping remorse and embarrassment, and passed out as one stooge. Rising from the unprepossessing layer of random bar detritus favoured by our Green and thrifty Proprietor as an eminently natural alternative to sawdust, the Mysterious Bore snarled, scowled, spat, swore, stifled a vilely mucous sob, and kicked Ben in one direction and a dazed Bashful the Dwarf in the other. Even through the now thoroughly excessive mill of uninvited Toons, there was something that drew notice and comment about the sight of three brawny Wombles, Snow White blushing Rose Red, the other six Dwarves, and the DWM Seventh all variously attempting to crawl, sidle, whistle innocently, or construct selective invisibility machines from two beer mats and a squashed packet of jelly babies as they made their stumbling, hollow-eyed, and rag-clad ways away from their evidently all-too-strenuous labours backstage. A howl of appalling loss, or at least of losing it pretty damn appallingly, boyo, wrenched itself from the black-leotarded one's wide throat. He held up his bicycle-lamp like a talisman, and in a voice trembling with rage, cosmic angst, and ham or worse meats he declaimed the following awful incantation: _"By dark of dive or disco's light, I hold the Door of Doom, awright? Let those inclined to give me shite Beware my power -- *Black Bouncer's Light!*_ And from his magic lamp there poured an appalling flood of swirling, seething, evilly sparkling sheerly actinic black light, whose obligatory space-operatically adjectivality was in *no way* impaired by the admitted fact of its total invisibility to non-UV-sensitive eyes, but has been intuitively deduced from two circumstances. The first circumstance was the ghostly glow of multiple voting-security stamps upon the hands of all too many of the regulars, but let *that* pass. The second circumstance was the mad terrified rush for the door of every Toon upon whom the evil irradiance fell, as it inked the maddening quavers of Avril Lavigne & the Azathothettes' l8test hit across the all-too-blank paper of their innermost psyches. (Luckily for the rest of us, inking m.q.'s of anything all over a *three-dimensional* psychic surface is manifestly impossible, as you can easily see for yourself with the aid of a pen and a closed artist's notepad.) The three-D contingent's main role in this stampede, somewhat inevitably, was to be stampeded into the ground in humorously cartoon fashion. "What the hell???" demanded an annoyed Kinki, emerging hot and bothered from behind the potted palm, her claws sliding meaningfully out. "God bless my soul!" squawked a voice behind her. "Replace it! Put it back!!!" The supervillain blasted her, palm and voice and all, at point-blank range. A woodpecker joined the panic instanter, leaving the palm all on its ownsome but rejoicing in a richly nitrogenous parting gift. Nellie and Tony, though untouched at the bar, followed suit by sheer power of suggestion, which was kind of hard on the clean-up crew afterwards. But fast as black light is, sometimes sound can be quicker. Kimiko, her face suddenly cold as the fabled White Tiger of Death, emitted a single soaring blue note that shattered the black light millimeters short of her sister, and crashed on through to shatter the lamp's Black Lens just as thoroughly. Now, thoroughly, ahem, roused by the indescribable racket in the barroom, Extremely Visible Girl emerged from backstage and boldly did sally forth. Or at least swung her over a brawny shoulder in a fireman's lift and carried her off for Coffee, after Sally pointed out with her trademark dry ersatz humour that US-wide syndication rights hung on this brief assumption of the fig-leaf of decency. So don't go looking in your _Cleveland Plain Dealer_ funnies for the pics tomorrow morning, 'cause you'll be stone out of luck, laddie! The cartoon horde were putting on the brakes and kicking up clouds of the sordid local equivalent of sawdust. But there was to be no escape for the gatecrashers this time. For Ca'at now cantered in from the car- park, or whatever the Camel for 'canter' is, and proceeded to hump continuity right there in the doorway. And a PLOT hole yawned before the unhappy interlopers' feet. At the rear of the doomed mob, a Nyssa-esque anime character known as Ultimate Alien Schoolgirl had a brief psycho moment, lobbing a veritable firestorm of shuriken, firecrackers, and poison darts over her shoulder at her persecutor. Ha! All struck Kimiko's triumphant Note and burst into harmless spark showers! All except a harmless Cockney teacake, included in the barrage by mistake, which duly zinged off Black Bouncer's bonce and knocked him stone cold. "Ay-ay-ay!" lamented Extremely Visible Girl. "His fatal weakness! An object with a *visible colour*! Ah, faugh me -- my only love!" Sally Forth wagged a finger waggishly in the general direction of EVG's painted toenails, no other salient directions being available in her present posish. "I've told you, wait until you get me home! For Coffee," she added, as she felt that special lawyer-sense which is a _sine qua non_ for survival in her harsh and exotic habitat start tingling like a splash of tabasco where no tabasco should go. Extremely Visible Girl did not deign to reply, merely tucking the fallen villain under her free arm in a sudden surge of devotion-fuelled adrenaline, and carrying off both her prizes back backstage to a fate better than Toonside. Probably. As for those intruders not carried off by our mysterious spam-pink Valkyrie, an annoying fate was theirs: Toon physics mandated that they would variously, hilariously, and at rank-dependent lengths *just about fail* to brake themselves short of the fatal threshold. And so it proved. And no Toon now remained in the bar save for Marchie Marchant-Ivory and his feline ladies. And the cartoon-stomped regulars now began to rise groggily to their feet. And François began to clear his throat; and a faint, almost indefinable aura of ugliness began to arise along with the patrons. Kyra called cheerfully across the scene of utter wreckage, carnage, and woe, "Is there a Doctor in the house?" "What am I," Seventh demanded pawkily, "Scotch mist?" And, likewise albeit with a spelling variation in the relevant adverb, Sixth was fain to back him up. "This'll just take a moment," Marchie assured everyone. Kyra went over and spoke quietly to the Doctors at some length. Then Kyra had no longer spoken to the Doctors at all, as a massive volunteer clean-up crew had issued forth from every TARDIS in the parking lot at the very moment the PLOT hole closed after the late gatecrashers, thus obviating the need for her ever to have dropped so much as a hint in the first place. Now, *that's* what we call discretion! "Shall we get on with it?" Tegan suggested, relaxing her frazzled nerves with a Long Bad Pommie Joke Up Against The Wall When The Revolution Comes, With One Of Those Little Umbrellas In It. The stage remained resolutely bare. "Never mind, never mind!" trumpeted Marchie buoyantly, bounding onto the bar and requisitioning the public attention. "The chaos, violence, and gratuitously cheap humour are banished; order and method are restored; world peace, joy, and harmony are assured. Up next and presenting the Best Round-Robin Chapter award is... *is*... ha-ha, an elephant, as you know, never forgets, I had you all worried there, I'll warrant...*IS...?!?" Kyra deftly whipped an autocue out of the astonished air. "...*are*, my goodness, BK Willis's _Spring Surprise_ crew. Well, my word, with big hitters like that, there's certainly nothing that can -- " "Great love of my life," said Kyra crisply, "come down from there this very second, before something wholly bad happens to you!" Which, after some milliseconds' consideration, the Nabob of Nice Little Earners did. Prelude - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7 - Part 8 - Epilogue - Summary
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