Warning: smuttiness ahead. THIS TIME ROUND: A MOST TAXING EVENING by BKWillis It was a slow night at the Steel Maiden, which suited Izzy's mood more than just fine. The toddlers had been in rare form all day and even after a long bath, her hands still smelled of the incense, lye soap, depleted uranium soaked in holy water, and fresh tapioca pudding it had taken to get them all back under control -- needless to say, without help from the wonderful Mr. Supervisor. But that was over now and Izzy was refusing to think about the fact that it would all start again in twelve hours. No, this was chill-out time for Isabelle Sinclair, time for cool drinks and quiet company, so the absence of most of the 'Maiden's more rambunctious, rowdy, or clinically insane regulars was a gift from the heavens. As she made her way to the bar, she could see a reason for at least part of the quiet. It had to do with the worn old jukebox and the brand-new hole that had been smashed through the front of it. "Was it someone's head or their fists that did that?" Izzy asked as she parked herself on a stool next to the bar's bouncer. Bella might be taken, she might be a hired enforcer who could gut you with a finger, and she might have a taste for drinking sentient creatures' blood, but if you had to look at something all evening, it might as well be an achingly gorgeous brunette in a revealing dress who liked to flirt. "It was a posterior, actually," the vampire smirked back. "And a most unattractive set of hindquarters at that." Izzy motioned to Scarlett, the one-eyed barmaid, for her usual -- a frozen cherry-and-banana daiquiri, easy on the rum. "Someone smashed the jukebox with their _butt_?" she went on. "I'm having trouble visualizing that, and I think that's a good thing." "No, it was another person's... buttocks... they put through there. Lauryn Tiberia's buttocks, to be precise, while the deed was done by Ms. Emasculator, in a squabble over a game of berserker chess. Impressive distance on her toss, too, though I bested it handily when I ejected them both." Izzy sighed. "Great. Now I _am_ visualizing it and I was right... it's not good." But then she brightened considerably on the arrival of her drink. Ah, alcohol -- proof positive that God loves us. Izzy closed her eyes and let the cool sweetness of it soak through her. "Hmmph," someone rumbled. "Streaky-hair happy girl looking streaky-hair not-happy. Madeleine fix." Izzy opened her eyes, flinching just a little at the proximity of the burly Ogron cook, who was leaning across the bar. "Here," Madeleine growled, thumping a dish down in front of her. "Is new recipe. Streaky-hair happy girl try, tell Madeleine if good, yes?" What the Ogron had set in front of Izzy was, after a moment's observation, identifiable as a chocolate cake. But it took a bit to realize this, as the actual cake part of the cake was buried under layer upon layer of gooey fudge, frothy whipped cream, caramel, cherries, nuts, butterscotch, and various things Izzy couldn't readily identify but that smelled good enough to cause an olfactory orgasm. "My, that _does_ look good, my fine Ogron lass," said Scarlett, reaching over to pinch off a bit. "I'll have a OWWW!" The concluding yelp being the result of Madeleine smacking the back of her hand with a wooden spoon. "Back self off, boss lady," she warned. "Is only streaky-hair happy girl opinion wanted. All people _not_ streaky-hair happy girl keep ass-scratchers to selves." "You dare be insubordinate with your command-- er, employer, Madeleine?" Scarlett demanded, rubbing at her new bruise. "Is so. Go all way to 'mutinous', too, if boss lady and little sharp- teeth girl mess with Madeleine special dessert." Madeleine gave her slope-browed head a haughty, dismissive toss. "Streaky-hair happy girl is only person come around what have taste and no crazy in head, so Madeleine cook best just for such girl." "Did you just lump me in as tasteless and crazy, too?" Bella purred coldly, being the quickest at deciphering Ogron syntax. "How dreadfully rude of you, dear Maddie. Shall I be rude, too?" Her lips peeled back, exposing a pair of gleaming-white and unsettlingly pronounced canines. Scarlett had slipped a wheel-lock horseman's pistol out of her apron and was holding it by the barrel, ready to clout a skull with the butt of it. But as soon as she hefted it, she seemed to catch herself and, with a muttered scatological oath, tossed the weapon back under the bar. "Stop!" she commanded, sounding tired. "Everyone, at ease. We all are at dagger-edges right now, so settle back." Izzy had been watching all this with mounting trepidation and was only too happy to see the tension drain out of all three 'Maiden staff, especially Madeleine. "Sorry for smacking boss-lady," the Ogron grumbled. "And for bad-mouth little sharp-teeth girl. But new recipe is _much_ special." "And I'm sorry for taking offense at patently true statements," Bella chimed in. "Rest easy, lasses." Scarlett patted both her employees on the shoulder. "Our predicament does have us all biting our bucklers." "Predicament?" Izzy wondered aloud. "What kind of predicament are you guys in?" Scarlett sagged against the till, rubbing the scar on her forehead. "It would seem the foe has outmaneuvered me this time, the great walrus-faced knaveling." There was only one 'walrus-faced knaveling' in Izzy's mental Rolodex. "You mean the Proprietor?" She sliced off a bit of Madeleine's dessert; so gooey, it was a trick keeping it on the fork. "Guy that runs the 'Round? What's he done now? SWEET HOLY MOTHER OF--!" Izzy had casually forked a bite of cake into her mouth, but her expression was now anything but casual. She swallowed hard, clutching the bar with one hand for support and using the other to point with trembling fork at the confection before her. "What the... how did... that's not..." She turned bulging, shimmery eyes on her Ogron benefactor. "I swear," she husked, "it's like my taste buds are having a cocaine orgy!" "So, is good, yes?" Madeleine cocked her shaggy head and let out a panzer-at-idle rumble of laughter. "Madeleine assuming that streaky-hair happy girl shoving whole face in plate mean is so. Is all Madeleine needing know." With a nod she headed back into the kitchen, muttering under her breath about, "...try to be topping _this_, Cousin Charlotte, heh heh heh..." "So anyway," garbled Izzy around a mouthful of increased risk of diabetes, "predicament?" There was caramel on both her cheeks, but she'd deal with that when the main part of the food was gone. "Predicament, aye," Scarlett reconfirmed. "And a vexing one in that I must needs leave the countering of it to another. I never _did_ like delegating field commands. But the scurrilous pillock has struck us 'pon a flank I've no wit to cover." "He's sicced the tax people on us," explained Bella. "The blasted Department of Excise, Revenue, and Taxation. They claim there were 'errors' in Scarlett's last filing and now they're breathing down our collective yet metaphorical necks. They're talking jail, fines that look like phone numbers, deportation, public flogging, plagues of locusts..." "_Were_ there errors, or are they just harrassing you?" Izzy asked. Scarlett shrugged angrily. "How the flippin' hell should _I_ know?" She dragged a leather-bound tome from under the till and thumped it down on the bar, which perceptibly bowed under the weight; the thing was as thick as any three random Stephen King novels lumped together, though probably less predictable or anticlimactic. 'DERT Codes and Regulations' read the title, and flipping it open to a random page revealed near-microscopic print, incomprehensible charts, indecipherable graphs, and what may or may not have been cursed runes. "Wow," said Izzy. "It's like a Necronomicon for bureaucrats. Hell itself wouldn't need this big a tax code, much less Outside." "That's not the tax code," corrected Bella. "That's the _summary_ guide for the tax code. We tried to get a look at the full edition, but it takes up an entire restricted-access wing of the Nameless Library, with appendices engraved on a set of basalt obelisks beside the Lake of Hali, addenda stored in a trio of supercomputers in a secret bunker guarded by werewombats, and amendments encoded into microdots sewn into the hem of Ann Talbot's favorite camisole. We nearly got _those_, by the way." Scarlett had begun to pace -- not a habit of hers. "I can't answer an accusation when I can't even understand half the words of it! When a man tries to stab me, I parry and run him through. When a flank collapses under cavalry attack, I counter with the reserves. But I know not what defense to make against 'anciliary counter-non- depreciable pro-rated retroactive surcharges'." Izzy shook her head. "Spack, it sounds like you're screwed. Screwed like Varla on a payday. Speaking of which..." She looked around the common room, noting the total lack of anything Movellan. A glance at the basement door revealed a 'closed' sign taped to it -- quite unprecedented. "...where _is_ everybody's favorite omnisexual alien android prostitute? I'd have thought she'd be up and about on a slow night like this." This was generally true. When Varla wasn't 'plying her trade', she tended to hang out at the bar. 'Reconnoitering the biologicals', she called it, just one sign among many that her new 'friendly' programming hadn't _entirely_ overwritten her old 'conquer the organic races' programming. "I _did_ say I had to delegate command for this attack, did I not?" Scarlett replied. "Ah," Izzy nodded, mopping up the last puddles of her dessert. "Wait." She stopped in mid-praline-from-finger-lick as her brain processed this bit of input three times before deciding the result had to be real. "You mean... _Varla_ is dealing with the tax people? You sent Varla?" She pointed at the basement door. "_That_ Varla? Dreadlocked mechanical rental tail Varla?" Izzy stared around the room for a better answer and, finding none, swung back to Scarlett with a disbelieving, "Smegging _Varla_!?" "Aye, Varla." "Uh-huh. So... your strategy is to claim insanity?" Bella sighed. "She was the most logical choice. And, yes, I am quite aware how sad that is. Scarlett's from a pre-industrial society and -- while certainly progressive in her way -- still has trouble with modern concepts such as 'compound interest' and 'not burning witches'. Madeleine is perfect for any task as long as it involves preparing delicious food, beating something to death, or preferably both. And I..." Bella blushed and laid a hand to her chest. "...am easily flustered by dealing with authority figures. I tend to get all wobbly and a bit confused, you know." She looked the very picture of demure maidenhood, until she added, "And then I start biting throats. Things tend to go downhill from that point." "I, uh, get that," mumbled Izzy as she discretely put a little more space between herself and the vampire bouncer, "but why send a robotic hooker to do an accountant's job?" Bella laughed, drawing Izzy back those few inches she'd just moved and then some; bloodsucker or not, she had a voice like the Angel of Sultry. "Ah, but Varla _is_ an accountant, my dear!" "Since when?" "Since lunchtime. I had a friend of mine modify her programming with some tax-management software." "Uh-huh." A skeptical expression had just put down two months' rent and a security deposit on Izzy's face. "See, the thing is, since I agreed to work at the Nursery from Hell, I've learned to carefully parse what people tell me. You said you had Varla's programming _modified_. Not replaced. Not overwritten. You just tacked something else on to what was there, which was _already_ glitchy and screwed-up because of her _first_ modifications, when a 'friend' of yours downloaded _Sappho Jackson's Guide to Pleasuring Women_ into her behavior circuits. She went from just wanting to subjugate the universe to wanting to have her way with it first. And now you've done it again, making her what? A ruthlessly efficient slut who's good at math?" "Do you think I'm such a fool as to not know all this?" Scarlett countered. "Think you I'd be in such a state as this if the folly of it weren't plain to me?" "Then why do it?" Izzy thumped a finger on the bar for emphasis. "Hire a _real_ accountant and you'd at least have a chance. There are a few people in Outside who'd take the job. Donna, maybe. Or that nice Mr. Arisaka--" "People I do not know and cannot trust," Scarlett interrupted. "The Proprietor, git though he be, has a cursed long reach. If he has friends 'mongst the DERT-bags, who is to say he has not suborned such free-lancing clerks?" Her eye narrowed, glaring about suspiciously. "How far might his conspiracies have got? We may even now be ensnared by his cunning ways." Izzy had a slurp at her neglected daiquiri. It was good, but compared to Madeleine's dessert it was like liquid masking tape. "I think you're being a bit paranoid, Scarlett." The barmaid shrugged. "Paranoia is a worthwhile thing, if it is right only once. Varla is a questionable creature in many respects, but her loyalty is not among them. Demented, slutty, and a bit evil she might be, but she is _our_ demented, mildly evil slut." "There is a slut on the premises? Direct me to her at once." The trio looked to the doorway as the woman who'd spoken slinked her way in. Silvery dreadlocks framed a long, handsome face the color of dark honey. Heavy-lidded almond eyes flicked alertly, not blinking quite often enough. Her stride had a practiced 'pounce me' roll to it, very effective coupled with a tight white Movellan bodysuit. Just the bottom half, though. Her only top-covering was a tiny shirt that stopped just short of being a halter-top, emblazoned with the words, 'Not just anatomically correct, anatomically SUPERIOR!' "Oh, uh, hi Varla," Izzy chuckled nervously. "Good evening, Isabelle," the Movellan purred, sidling up beside her. Izzy jumped as the android's fingers slid lightly up her back. "Would you like to be bedded? I have added new techniques to my repertoire." "N-no thanks." Izzy tried to ease away, but the bar blocked her in. "I... haven't got any money." Varla intruded further into Izzy's personal space. Movellans simulated organic humanoids pretty closely, down to breathing and maintaining a warm body temperature, but there was still a subtle sense of unreality about them, a sort of aura of mechanical sterility. Their movements were too purposeful, too calculated. Izzy didn't hold Varla's robotic nature against her -- quite the contrary. But on the other hand, that vague creepiness didn't help matters when Izzy was already skittish about such intimacy, not to mention the distastefulness of being propositioned so baldly. "Seriously, I'm flat broke," she tried again. Varla pressed against her, proving that the statement on her shirt was no lie. Anatomically correct and then some. "Money is no object, Isabelle. I will write the endeavor off on my end-of-fiscal- year return as a charitable donation." About the only thing Izzy wanted even less than meaningless, unromantic robot girl-sex just then was _charity_ meaningless, unromantic robot girl-sex. She had just started trying to push Varla off her when something whirred through the air and a gruff voice called, "Heads up!" from back near the cooker. With digital precision, Varla's hand shot out and caught the incoming meat cleaver by the handle, mere inches away from her realistically-simulated, anatomically correct nose. "Oops," growled the Ogron cook as she lumbered out of the kitchen. "Madeleine not know _how_ managing to lose hold of cleaver like that. How clumsy." Her voice, always harsh, bore not the least trace of apology, nor did the flint-hard eyes she kept locked on Varla's as she took the cleaver back from her. Izzy, silently grateful, took the opportunity to slip away from the Movellan doxy's grasp. Bella and Scarlett, observing this, shared a knowing look that neither Izzy nor Madeleine saw. The barmaid cleared her throat. "Anyway, Varla, how went your sojourn at the DERT office? May I take from your demeanor that victory is ours?" "Negative," Varla reported without inflection. "I was unsuccessful at the task assigned me, as the extent of my programming proved insufficient to deal with the complexity and irrationality of the data involved." Scarlett snarled something blasphemous-sounding that Izzy didn't catch, but was bad enough to make a vampire and an Ogron blush with shame. Still, Scarlett was an old soldier and like any good officer knew that the first thing to do in a defeat was to try and understand the scope of it. "Tell me what went wrong first," she sighed, grabbing a wine bottle at random from the rack behind her. "I'll deal with 'how bad is it?' once I'm properly crocked." She deftly smashed the bottle against the edge of the bar, breaking off the neck, and poured a long gulp of it down her throat. "The situation unfolded well at first," Varla explained. "The receipts and transaction data you provided were sufficient to answer the initial charges against the Steel Maiden. Success, however, seemed to increase the hostility of the DERT personnel and their challenges became more detailed, obscure, and on occasion contradictory. This placed considerable load upon my processor core, which in turn resulted in overheating and the decompartmentalization of program functions, causing acute errors in query-response routines. This reached a critical point during questioning regarding inverse- depreciation of retro-amortized assets claimed under Title 376, Volume 708, Section 24.87.3-C, Subsection CXXII, Paragraph Rho..." "Speak to me facts, not incantations," Scarlett demanded. Varla didn't quite get that and looked to Bella for clarification. "Summarize it for her without using technical terms," the vampire translated. Varla nodded and continued. "The upshot was that my various programs -- military, sexual, and accounting -- interfered with one another, causing me to reply to the auditors' charges in highly inappropriate ways." Scarlett groaned. "How inappropriate?" "For instance, rather than producing the relevant receipts for cookware purchases and justifying their full deductibility, I instead stripped nude, forcibly restrained the auditors by tying them up with their own undergarments, and spanked them all with Volume 14 of the _DERT Fines and Penalties Handbook_ while insisting that they acknowledge my absolute authority. Deviations became even more extreme from that point, until my processors had cooled enough to reset." Izzy turned to Madeleine and calmly asked, "Do you have some bleach I could borrow? Along with something to inject it into my brain?" The Ogron shook her head, wide-eyed. "Madeleine not having enough to spare after using on self first. Yeuuccch!" Scarlett held up a hand. "Enough, Varla. I see now what you mean -- and, hell take me, I'll never be able to _unsee_ it. Just tell me of their final judgement." She took another swig, bracing herself. "After discussion, the audit staff arrived at a figure of 500 pounds per week, to be paid indefinitely." Scarlett winced. "A perpetual fine? That'll hurt. A lot. 'Tis an improvement over jail or exile, though not by much." "Ah," said Varla. "I have not explained the situation sufficiently. There were no penalties assessed against the Steel Maiden. All charges were annulled by the DERT Auditors' Board and stricken from the record." Scarlett could only blink -- or _wink_, in her case -- at this abrupt shift in her favor, not entirely getting it yet. Bella, though, was a bit quicker. "First you say there's a 500 pound fine," she demanded, "then you say there's _no_ fine. Are your circuits still addled?" "My functionality has entirely recovered," Varla replied, sounding the least bit defensive. "I never stated that there was a fine, Bella. The 500 pounds is what the DERT auditors will pay _me_ to come around on Thursdays and stick ball-point pens up their--" With a cry of, "Bleach!" Izzy and Madeleine bolted for the janitor's closet together. Now it was Varla's turn to blink uncomprehendingly at activity she couldn't understand. However, she had other priorities than studying the nuances of organic creatures' erratic behavior. She turned her attention back to her boss. "So, Scarlett..." She licked her lips, one of the first mannerisms she'd picked up after her reprogramming. "Regarding that slut you mentioned earlier..." --BKWillis 'Doctor Who' is property of the BBC. 'This Time Round' created by Tyler Dion. Archivist's Note: Type(s): Steel Maiden Blurb: The Proprietor's latest plot against the competition results in a tense night at the Steel Maiden.