Sweet As You Are - Part Four

**SWEET AS YOU ARE**

A Sequence of Alternate Actualities, Taking Place in _Some Other Time
Round_, the Darkside Bar Outside Continuity.

*Episode 4: The Bad Ass of Lost C'mell, C'mell!*

"Suck it harder, Nina you stupid bitch!" the Fourth Doctor was gasping
abandonedly, from the low wall upon which he sat. Cold-Lips whirled
on him with her voice already climbing into attack soprano.

"Leave her alone and show respect," the dark-skinned and herself
markedly Nina-esque Muse demanded of the dark-side Doctor, ignoring
Candie's frantic tuggings on her arm and hissed suggestions that they
mind their own business, "or I shiver your brain-pan into a thousand
shards of bone... Oh!"

"Wait your ****-of-Rassilon turn, woman! I'm a little bit busy!"

"Negative, Master," came K-Nina's voice from the floor. "Blood
filtration rate already at maximum. Jadis thorn toxin potency still
above maximum nanite tol---"

THUNK!

"---erance. Osmotic filtration aborted. Goodbye, Doctor Master!" K-
Nina expelled a high-pressure spray of plasma aerosol against the wheel
of a nearby car, beeped and twitched, and went smugly about her robotic
business.

"Goodness," said Cold-Lips, in a tone less terrifyingly detached than
she had hitherto been employing. "Is the turnover usually this high, or
have I just dropped by on a bad night?"

"Lyps," Candie returned, mangling the vowel peculiarly, "it really is.
You don't wanna get involved, all right?"

"I can't truly Muse without doing that, Candy." 'Lyps' looked
thoughtful. "I may have to spend some of our time-out rethinking my
plans. If I run around getting killed on *this* assignment, we might
draw unwanted attention."

"So where's our pickup?"

"I think the doggy element scared her away." Lyps looked faintly
concerned. "We may have to wait a bit."

"Wimp. So what's a C'mell?"

"Our latest sister. You'll know her when you see her."

Candy spat some gum that she had not, any too evidently, been chewing.
"Whatever. Hiding from K-Nina and her amazing syringe fangs? Jeez
Louise, we don't improve, do we?"

"Do we?"

"Screw it, Lyps! What are you, my social worker or something? Hey: me,
*big* sister, right? Big, bustin' out with creativity and mature
content all over, sister? News flash: if you're on some do-gooding
kick, count me out! Go embody yourself and get laid already,
whatever...!"

"No. We really need you. *Carrie* needs you." Candy snorted
disbelievingly. Lyps took her by her leather-clad shoulders and smiled
-- really smiled, this time, in a way that somehow conveyed infinite
merriment without losing a whit of its underlying sadness. "And Candy
-- *are* you happy, here?"

"Happy? I'm high on it. Best deal going." Candy's voice was a little
too hushed and vehement for best credibility. "Find your own Author,
sugar-babe!"

"All in good time. Candy, you jumped on this break, all right. You
need a holiday lightside, for sure -- and your 'Bray...!"

"What about him!"

"*I* think he could do with a short sharp course of Miss Cold-Lips.
Don't you?"

Candy snickered unwillingly. "Okay, that was funny. -- See, you just
don't get how different it is here. It's just nature. Bray's got his
problems, ain't we all?" Her tone sharpened, and she pushed her sister
away. The hologrammatic hard-light lady co-operated, so evenly as
not to break eye contact for a moment. Candy span around, defiantly not
looking. "Hey, you know what, forget this job. Carrie's the meddler,
I'm just the survivor here. You talk like Bray and I need some kind of
detox off each other, and what I say is, like f*** we do; and I *do*
like to -- "

A large tortoiseshell cat leapt up onto a car in front of Candy, and
interrupted her rant by lifting up its tail and presenting its rear in a
manner which could only be described as 'meaningful'. Candy clapped her
hands and went off into raucous, helpless laughter. It went on for
rather too long. When it had passed through the stage of being
indistinguishable from hacking tears, and down on again into wet
silence, only then did Lyps make the gesture of helping her big sister
up.

"Huh," said Candy, with a militant imitation of good cheer. "Is
Carrie's life as spammed-up as mine, then, you reckon?"

"She doesn't think so."

"She wouldn't."

"I have it on good authority that it pretty well was last summer."

"No, what?"

"Fact."

"This I have to check out." Candy hitched up her hotpants, gave her
bicycle-chain a hooliganly whirl, and stuck her tongue out at the cat,
which was still regarding her sneeringly over its shoulder, tail high.
"Okay, bring on this C'mell broad then, if she's crawled out from under
the cars yet. At worst there's gotta be guys flipside I haven't had
yet..."

"Maybe. C'mell's already here, by the way. Just say your name and
follow her through."

The cat pounced on something that wasn't there.

"A *cat*?"

"Our kit sister, you might call her..."

C'mell rose slowly up onto all four paws, and then began slinking
forwards into a direction that wasn't there either, disappearing like a
Cheshire Cat in reverse. Lyps guided her enfleshed sister's hand to
stroke the tortoiseshell's tail, a motion the latter delivered with the
grace of infinite practice at something presumably more or less
comparable.

"Candy," she said, "of the City of Dreams... and the Muses. Here goes
nothing!" And she followed the mog by the expedient of climbing
provocatively up onto the car bonnet (which she also accomplished with
reflexive, if rather strainedly photogenic, ease) and crawling through
the invisible catflap. As the lethal-weapon shoes withdrew from
the other side, C'mell eeled back around without ever quite closing the
portal, and promptly offered a similar backwards courtesy to her other
'sister', Lyps.

"Hey!" came a couple of almost hostile voices from the direction of
SOTR. "We want a word with you...!"

Stroke.

"Calypso, of the City of Dreams," the once and future Cold-Lips stated
quietly. She clambered swiftly onto the bonnet, and crawled through
with such unfussy elegance that she seemed merely to stoop, ladylike,
before arising in some new and more respectable environment which...

...we are here unable to describe in detail, since C'mell had followed
hard on her heels and the portal had closed behind them.

Saia turned suspiciously to Selkie. "What do you suppose *she*
wanted?"

"I was hoping you'd be able to tell us all something about that, Miss
*Light* Muse. This does stink of a *certain other realm*, you must
*admit*..."

"Poor Selkie. Every one of the million million things you don't
understand every day just has to be a conspiracy against your sorry
overripe person, doesn't it? By the way, I notice that your only
serious competitor for 'Miss Semi-Pro Freestyle Bar Slut of the Decade'
has just conveniently disappeared, with a visitor of an almost *dark*
persuasion..."

"Traitor!"

"Trollop!"

"Take this!"

"Take that!"

[TOGETHER:] "DIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!"

And lo, there was carnage in the car-park, and evil chaos spirits in the
Stewite's uranic (though in no way Uranian) corpus, and all was Some
Other kind of right with the world once again...

===

Copyright Notes:

'Doctor Who' is property of the BBC.

This Time Round created by Tyler Dion.

Some Other Time Round concept created by K. Michael Wilcox, further
developed by Imran Inayat.

Ellia and her father belong to Imran Inayat.

Saia, Selkie, and the Spamverse concept belong to BK Willis, from
whom parts of this copyright notice have also been lifted.

'See Lime Woman' belongs, with somewhat different lyrics, to someone
who could not be arsed to include copyright info on the relevant album,
so the heck with it. In a Higher and more Artistic sense, however, it
belongs to Ms Nina Simone and to the world.

Boskone, Eddore, the Black Lens, DeLameters, and all related matters are
taken from E E 'Doc' Smith's _Lensman_ books, and in no way from any
manga series that may co-incidentally happen to share one or two names
and accidents with same. They belong to Dr Smith's estate.

C'mell's name is taken from _The Ballad of Lost C'mell_, by Cordwainer
Smith (no relation). Any further connection remains unclear at this
point.

The _Gang-Bang Gold-Digger Follies A-Go-Go_ series of Fine Art Films is,
to the best of my knowledge and belief, entirely fictional.

The Grey Stewite, Carrie, Candy/ie, Calypso, C'mell the Tortoiseshell
Cat, and the City of Dreams are mine.

Spam belongs to the Devil.

Archivist Notes:

Doctors: Fourth.
Companions: Leela, K-9(a), Turlough.
Monsters: Hey, this is SOTR we're talking about!
Other Recurring Characters: Ellia (Imran Insaneyat's Muse) and her
father; Selkie and Saia (BK Heartless's Muses); Franz the Ogron
Bartender.
Also Introducing: The Grey Stewite and Candie Harddd his Muse; Calypso;
C'mell Tortoiseshell.
Category: TTR/SOTR; Humour.

Part One - Part Two - Part Three

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