Er, I wrote the first part of this on a rock in the middle of a river, before reading Phobos' plug down-page. And now I'm looking at the whole thing twice, but anyway. If you haven't read it yet, you should.

---

The sink gurgled as the drain swallowed the last of the suds. Mohan watched them disappear, ran the tap one more time to clear it, and glanced up quickly as the door closed. Lyn clicked the latch home and shook her head. He sighed and turned back to the counter, where several cubic metres of turnip stood.

"I keep saying we should get some kind of a partition set up," Lyn said, behind him. He heard the clunk as she pulled the case down from the cabinet.

"It wouldn't do any good," he told her, retrieving his own knife from the block.

He hefted the long blade once, swing it straight across for the whistle, and brought it down hard on the massive root vegetable. The counter shook slightly with the noise. He grinned nastily at the slice, pulled the knife out, and reached back up to swing again. The knives they used for these were long, and kept sharp. They'd learned to be a bit more careful while chopping vegetables, these days.

Behind him, the chainsaw revved to life, and there was no conversation for a while as Lyn worked on the other half of the recipe.

"I know," she said, as she killed the engine. "But we've got to do something! He won't wear gloves, and I don't blame him - Cafeteria bylaws have a lot of words about that."

"I still think somebody should have told them why gloves were such an important part of World One foodhandling tradition," Mohan said, bringing the knife down to take another two-inch slice of the turnip. "You never know, it might not be the worst idea."

"No, the worst idea was importing ice wraiths for the walk-in freezers."

Mohan shook his head. "What, and not that time someone decided what we really needed was a Durian Casserole?"

"Okay, that was--"

"--or when someone thought the best place to get carrots was in the middle of a Looney Tunes firefight?"

"Whoa, but that--"

"--or that time with the Wreck-it Ralph badfic--"

"--Okay! I get it!" His partner glared at him from the other side of the kitchen. He did not bother to grant the glare the dignity of turning around; Lyn could glare holes in asbestos.

"If we changed the bylaws specifically to allow gloves for hazards to workers, what would that do?"

"Probably nothing," Lyn said, pushing the bowl of sawdust up on the counter. "He wouldn't wear them anyway, and he'd be upset if we tried to change the rules for him. Watch out, that's got to go here."

He stepped out of the way as she slid the stack of sliced turnips into the mixing bowl, and carried it over to the sink to blend.

"How many batches are we making, anyway?"

She shrugged. "I figure we might as well use all of it. He should be back pretty soon. We've just got to talk to DoSAT, or maybe Medical, about a way to fix all this."

Mohan nodded, and returned to cleaving the turnips. He'd nearly finished the row when there was a knock on the door; he and Lyn nearly knocked each other over opening it.

Igor raised an eyebrow at them. "He ith yourth, yeth?"

Behind him was the tall, slightly sheepish figure of an Enderman in Cafeteria uniform. He disappeared from view immediately, leaving only a trail of purple sparks past the Igor and into the kitchen. Lyn followed him; Mohan sighed.

"Yes, he is. Thank you, Igor. Is he alright?"

"He ith fine. The burnth will heal in a few dayth. He theemth quite eager to return, tho Doctor Fitthgerald athked me to ethcort him here."

The short medic reached into his lab pocket and pulled out a small box. "He altho athked me to return thith to your Department."

Mohan frowned. "Oh - thank you. He didn't say what it was...?"

But the Igor had already disappeared. Mohan sighed, closed the door, and opened the box.

"...Oh, damn it." He followed the trail of purple sparks through the kitchen, to where Lyn and Jof were lounging outside of the freezers, eating sandwiches. "Jof, Igor brought this back, too." He handed the little device to his partner, who frowned.

"Ah," he said, after a moment. "That would explain it."

Mohan and Lyn waited a few minutes. Mohan sighed.

"That would explain...?"

The Enderman looked up. "The hydrophobic device. I left it behind while visiting last week." He slid the thing into the front pocket of his uniform and took another bite out of his sandwich.

Lyn shrugged, took another bite out of her own sandwich, and grinned happily. Mohan thought of saying something like "...and you didn't mention this?" or "...and you still decided to make chicken soup?" or "can we weld that to your neck?" sighed, thought better of it, and sat down, snagging the remains of sandwich-making-supplies for himself.

It wasn't until that night at about two o'clock in the morning (the Ironic Overpower Approved time for sudden revelations) when the image of an Igor and a hydrophobic device clicked in his head. He sat bolt upright.

"Lyn?"

"nghwha?"

"How toxic to an Enderman do you think the waters of the Ankh would be?"

"I was asleep, you--" she stopped. "I don't know, let's find out."

"Tomorrow."

---

(I only realized partway that the whole "stretching mashed turnips by mixing in sawdust" thing might not be universal, in which case this probably looks random as hell. But yes, that is what they are doing, and no, I probably could not tell you exactly why, besides that my grandpa had some very interesting stories about his childhood.)

(And yes, I think I'm going to say this is canon, and now I think there needs to be a story about what happens when the Cafeteria decides that they are now doing all their prep and cooking with either Ankh "water" or at least a mixture involving Ankh "water" in some ratio..)

Note: The opinions expressed here are the opinions of the characters, not necessarily of the author. Also, I have no idea if this is any good.

Tish dropped the Lord of the Rings trilogy (plus The Hobbit) on Sebak's bunk. They bounced, and the top book skittered off the stack and bumped into Sebak's leg. "I'm done!" she said. "Finally."

Sebak looked up and carefully restacked The Fellowship of the Ring. "Did you enjoy them?"

Tish nodded. "Yeah. I liked The Hobbit the best because Bilbo's character development is cool. I think the riddles were a really creative way to deal with something scary. And I liked trying to guess the answers. It's so funny, too, Bilbo being all like 'I want my hobbit-hole'!"

The Vulcan tilted his head. "I found that one the least enjoyable."

Tish nodded. "You probably like The Silmarillion the best," she guessed.

"Did you read it?" Sebak asked, looking almost hopeful.

Tish snorted. "I tried. But you didn't say it was required, and it's really boring! I'd read it if it was told like a story, but ugh."

"Tolkien's prose is considered quite beautiful," Sebak said.

"Yeah, it is," Tish said. "And that's the problem. It's like 'hey look I'm a linguistics professor!' rather than 'hey I'm going to tell you a cool story'!"

"I thought you said you liked the series."

She sighed. "First of all, they’re not as bad as The Silmarillion. And there's still a cool story there. But I kept stopping and starting because I kept losing interest. If I hadn't promised you, I probably wouldn't have finished them."

Sebak raised his eyebrows. "Why did you read them for me? When you worked in the Lord of the Rings division you would have likely had a partner that would have tried to make you read them."

"Yeah, but she kept trying to convince me to like them and well, you won't. You're just like 'it's logical to read them because there is a lot of badfic for them'. I like things to make sense."

"Really."

"Yeah," Tish said.

"Hm. Considering what I have learned about you, that is most - "

"Fascinating, I know," Tish said, sighing. "Could you not be stereotypical? Anyhow, I read them for you. Happy? Right, stupid question," she added as Sebak arched an eyebrow.

"I am disappointed that you did not enjoy them," he replied. "However, as you said, they are necessary."

"Well, we can agree to disagree on that. Most fic is movieverse. And I didn't say I didn't like them!"

"You explained your problems with them quite thoroughly," Sebak pointed out.

She shrugged. "It's just kind of overrated, that's all."

"That is your opinion."

"Right," she said.

Sebak nodded.

Tish grinned. "So, will you read Percy Jackson?"

(This may be a cursed thread... I meant to post this yesterday, but have been too busy/ill to do so until now...)

---

Tango Dioxide (né Dioxide - her culture didn't go in for changing surnames when you got married) jumped into the elevator as soon as it arrived. The doors slammed shut in flagrant disregard of health and safety regs, not to mention the Laws of Narrative Comedy - no-one should ever be able to easily escape a rampaging mob just by getting in a lift. Someone at Legal's going to get in trouble for that one, Tango thought, making the sign of the Legal Chao with one hand.

The ride up was accompanied by tinny music by a band that wouldn't have been allowed to exist if the Wrecked Music Department were anything more than a rumour, and then as the doors sprung apart Tango discovered exactly why Legal had been so lax:

Mobius lifts.

The one upside of her spatial loop of a journey was that the mob weren't expecting her to return. As they stared at her in confusion, Tango took the opportunity to bolt sideways - jumping over one particularly diminuative mobster... or mobette... or whatever the word was - and was off down a corridor. She hastily began to recite Treebeard's song in the original Entish, hoping that her 'unless you hadn't noticed' would trump the mob's 'catch the blasphemer'.

It didn't really work out. Gasping for breath, Tango threw a glance back over her shoulder to find her pursuers closer than ever. I haven't kept in shape, she lamented. Eight years ago they wouldn't stand a cha-OOF!

The 'oof' was the natural consequence of running headlong into a potted artificial plant, one of the hideous things Building Maintenance had decided to decorate the lobby with. Except this one wasn't in the lobby, it was in the middle of a corridor - and had a hand reaching out of it.

"Come on," snapped a woman's voice. "Do you want to be dismembered?"

"I'm sure they wouldn't-" Tango began, and then heard the distinctive snap-hiss of a dozen lightsabers igniting. "Uh, never mind." She grabbed the hand and let it drag her through the branches, into-

-a sleek metallic room far larger than the pot plant, or even the corridor. She looked around in wonder, and then turned to the owner of the hand: a short woman with cropped black hair, waiting with her other hand on her hip.

"A TARDIS," Tango breathed. "I've never actually been in one before."

"That's always nice to hear," the woman replied. "Nowadays I usually get 'Oh, did you pick one up during the Macrovirus infection too?'. Amateurs." She sniffed, then leant back and tapped something on the console. "There, we're in flight. You're welcome, by the way."

"Um, thank you," Tango said hurriedly. "But I don't understand. You're PPC - okay, DMS, I see the flashpatch, and it explains the shelf of potted cacti - but who are you? And, not that I'm complaining, why did you help me?"

The woman frowned at her. "I'm returning the favour," she pointed out. "Remember? When my pack got stolen by goblins in that Labyrinth 'fic, you and Nyx came and rescued me. Well, I saw you were in trouble, and-"

"Wait, wait." Tango held up a hand. "I've never even set foot in Labyrinth 'fic. I'm sure I'd remember."

"Hmm." The woman turned and tapped a dial on her console, then shrugged. "Must be on the blink again. So I guess I'm returning the favour in advance. That would explain a few of the things you said..."

Tango rubbed the bridge of her nose and leant on the nearest piece of furniture, which turned out to be a hatstand. "So you're from the future?"

"Or you're from the past," the woman offered. "Morgan. Nice to meet you - again."

"Uh, likewise." Tango shook her head slowly. "So what happens now?"

Morgan grinned and pulled a lever. A familiar rising and falling whine started up - the sound of a TARDIS dematerialising, made famous by the Doctor Who TV series. "Now I drop you off at your RC, and you do your level best to avoid... what was it you did to get them after you, anyway?"

"Nothing, really," Tango shrugged. "I just mentioned that I thought The Phantom Menace was the best Star Wars film... what?"

Morgan's grin had morphed into a frozen rictus, and she leant back against the console and closed her eyes. "I wonder," she said to the room at large, "if it's too late to put her back...?"

There was a very hesitant knock at the door to RC #583. No sound came from within, but the door opened anyway, revealing a darkened room lit only by a projection lamp that was currently displaying a pattern of stars. The person who had been knocking entered; it was a small, young woman with a mass of curly red hair and a very anxious expression.

"Kelvin?"

"I'm busy, Lyra."

She sighed, peering at the tall figure sprawled on his bed at the far side of the room. "No, you're not. I can see you, even with the light off."

"I'm thinking, and not in the mood for an argument." The dark-haired elf's tone was brittle with anger and unhappiness.

Lyra Mackenzie rolled her eyes and switched the light on, giving her partner a stern look. "At least try to be nice? I'm not looking for an argument either, you know."

The only response was something that sounded like Sindarin, but the tone made it clear that the actual comment was rather vulgar; she knew bits of the language after four years of working with him, but she'd never heard that phrase before, and her translator had clearly decided it wasn't about to help.

"Sod you too," she said mildly. She knew why he was upset, after all, so she was doing her best not to be offended, even if it did mean controlling her temper much more tightly than usual. "Look, I found -"

He sat up and fixed her with a glare. "I really do not want to talk right now."

"Well, tough, because I do." She pulled a little jewellery box out of her bag and offered it to him. "Like I was saying, I found this at one of the jewellery shops."

"...What is it?" Now Kelvin was giving her a dubious look. It was wholly out of character for her to give him anything.

The small girl couldn't help a rather self-satisfied grin. "Take a look and find out."

Rather hesitantly, he did as bidden... and for once, she had the satisfaction of seeing him look truly stunned as he held up the box's contents. "Where did you find this? We thought it was lost for good!"

"At one of the jewellery shops, like I said. Someone came in and sold it to them, I don't think they knew what it was really worth -"

She was cut off as Kelvin unexpectedly hugged her tightly, laughing with relief. "Stars above, Lyra, thank you," he managed hoarsely after a moment. "I never thought we'd see it again, Cassie's going to be so glad..."

She hugged back, a bit awkwardly, before escaping and smoothing down her trousers. It felt rather nice, she noted absently, to see him looking that happy. "Well, just tell her to keep a better eye on it in future," she said, nodding to the necklace - an oval-cut blue-tinged diamond pendant set in truesilver - and shrugging a little. "If she's going to keep a wedding present that valuable..."

"I know." He smiled broadly, his former mood quite vanished. "I'll see if Mazarun has any ideas - a spell or something. But I'd best go and give this to her now."

"...Okay." Lyra's smile dropped a little at the mention of the drow who'd become Kelvin's closest friend; Mazarun had always creeped her out. "See you later. Get cracking before the console goes off."

He chuckled, tucked the box into his tunic, and slipped out with another murmured thanks.