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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rgiyq7rqWhg

And if anyone is in the NYC area, who's planning on going to see the greatest fireworks show in the nation?

*runs to the airport screaming "TAKE ME WITH YOU!"*

Really, though, I'm very much looking forward to returning to your Empire. People have been shooting off fireworks in my neighborhood all week long and it's getting annoying.

Also: PFFFFFFFTHAAHAHAHAHA. You'd get minor style points if you pronounced it 'auspice', but you don't, do you? No. I bet you say it 'you-ess-pee-ess', which sounds like you named your country and then remembered a bit you wanted to tack onto the end.

And anyway, what do your postboxes (oh, I'm sorry, 'male boxes', because that's not sexist at all...) look like? Blue dustbins on stilts. They are nothing - nothing, I say - besides the glory of the Royal Mail pillarbox, that marvel of cast iron and regal red-and-gold, which can stand up to bombs that devastate city centres.

hS, &c &c

(Also we have the USPS which sounds much cooler. So there.)

... I'm sending a fully-armed battalion to put you straight to bed without any civil liberties.

hS, &c &c

I mean, think about it. Yes, you could make up your own adorable little laws, with your fancy 'declaration' and your 'constitution' (shame you didn't put some of those points into charisma, what?), but why bother? All it'll get you is a 'president' and a 'congress' and a 'senate', which frankly makes you sound like a bunch of academics engaging in erotic cosplay as ancient Greeks.

Wouldn't you rather have a queen (or, if you're feeling politically correct, a king)? Doesn't that just sound better? A country is so much more majestic-seeming if it has its own royalty. Why would you give up the Royal Mail, the Royal Navy, and, er... Burger King I suppose, in favour of... I don't even know what, but I'm certain it sounds worse.

Think about all your favourite books and movies for a second. Lord of the Rings? Aragorn becomes king. Discworld? Lord Vetinari is an absolute ruler. Harry Potter? Set in Britain, under the Queen. Star Wars, Percy Jackson, Black Panther... all the best fiction starts with a monarch.

So come on. Give up this frankly ridiculous pretense that doing anything other than returning to the Empire on which the sun still never sets is somehow 'better'. We know it isn't, you know it isn't, everyone knows it isn't, you're just embarrassing yourselves.

We ask for so little. Just let us rule you, and you can have everything that you want. Just fear us, love us, do as we say and we will be your slave.

Isn't that generous?

hS, on behalf of Her Prospective Imperial Majesty Elizabeth II, Potentially of America

I like the use of the (I assume) flat pattern for the shirt - with the shading, it really works.

In fact, shading is something I want to particularly highlight - particularly on the first and last D&D images, you've managed to convey the lighting of the scene (the priest's eyes, the worgen lit from in front and below) very effectively. :)

hS

Though the Healers are expecting Rose to bounce back--she's asleep because of potions right now. So presumably she'll wake up once they wear off and she's rested long enough.

(Bah. Every bit. Thanks.)

Also, they could use many, many hugs. That's for sure.

For the rest--wait and see!

~Z

I want to hug them. .-.

Will any of the three wake up?

(Also: "Every big of visible skin"?)

I mean, it's not bad...but remember, this is a Hogwarts AU, not a straight crossover. So no TARDISes, no aliens, no giant leaps of time travel (only Time Turners available)...which means Weevils are pretty unlikely at this point.

No clue when the next part will come, but it will show up!

~Z

Now I'm theorizing what on earth could have possibly hurt them. Is it bad my first thought was Weevils? Because my first thought was Weevils.

Hope you write a new part soon!

The fourth floor of St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries was for spell damage. First was creature injuries, fifth held a tearoom and shop that Ianto had no intention of visiting. Third--ground, second, and third didn't matter, but the information catalogued its way into Ianto's mind anyway: artifact incidents on the ground floor, magical bugs on the second, potion and plant poisoning on the third.

Jacques was paler than Ianto had ever seen him, almost paler than the crisp hospital bedding he was lying on. His eyes were closed. He was breathing, just unevenly enough to be noticeable; when he'd been brought in--when someone had left him in the lobby--he'd been unconscious and had bruises on his back. The rest of the damage had been invisible.

He hadn't woken up. Nearly a day, and he hadn't woken up.

Ianto had hardly ever seen Grey before, and he barely saw him now. Jacques' younger brother spent most of his time in the tearoom that Ianto was avoiding; when he did show up, after Ianto had sat helplessly for an hour, he stood looking at Jacques for ten minutes, looking nearly as pale, and then left again.

Franklin was there, though, and Amélie; Amélie even hugged him, clinging for long moments before she smoothed his hair and let him go. It was Franklin who caught him up in short, pained sentences, who told him that the Healers seemed worried that Jacques wasn't waking up, who pointed him to Rose, lying pale and still and scratched just below her neck nearby. Who explained that the scratches were from some sort of animal, but the Healers had been far more concerned with the spell damage, and had given her sleeping potions so that she could heal faster.

Because Rose was expected to heal, and soon. She was young, and healthy, and looked worse off than she was. She would be fine.

Ianto sat with her anyway, when he felt he'd start screaming at Jacques to move if he looked at his friend any longer. Her breathing was smooth, even; pale and still as she was, he could believe she would bounce back.

Jacques was still motionless in an hour, and in another hour, and another. The sad little bag of Jacques' belongings that Ianto had brought sat nearby, out of the way. It seemed now incredibly, stupidly optimistic that he'd believed Jacques might be in any condition to appreciate the thought, much less actually use anything he'd packed. Stupid, idiotic--

Medical. What if Medical could heal him? What if Medical could heal him where St. Mungo's couldn't, and sitting here waiting was going to--

But if Jacques was supposed to die--well, Ianto wouldn't let him, and that was that. But if the author of their AU decided to kill him off--

No. No, they couldn't. That couldn't happen. No. Because--because they were an AU, and Jack Harkness was immortal. He'd found so many parallels when he made his way through the story: Jon, Johnny, and Rose, Martha's interest in healing, Johnny's traveling, hell, even the rivalry between Johnny and young Harold Saxon. The Doctors were all relatives, Owen Harper in Ravenclaw was dating someone named Katie, Jacques had even dated a girl called Lucia--surely, with details that small in place, the author wouldn't write in Jacques' death? It wouldn't make sense. The change would be too large.

Franklin shifted in the chair next to him, sending Ianto's thoughts back into turmoil. Franklin was alive; that was already a change. But Jacques was also French, not from a nonexistent colony planet, so--

Round and round. He had to--

Jacques was unchanged. Grey was back, sending desperately awkward glances at Ianto as his mother hugged him. Ianto decided it was time to go see Jon.

"First floor," Franklin had told him earlier. He'd added that it didn't look good, but Jacques...Ianto hadn't been able to shake the hope that he would wake up any minute, the fear that it would happen the second he stepped away.

Now he took the risk, walking out the door and taking the lift down. It took nearly ten guilty minutes to find Jon, which he finally managed after catching a Healer who was willing to spare a minute to talk.

He wished he hadn't. He really did. He'd never seen anyone injured like this, outside of that one awful badfic he refused to think about, and he'd never wanted to, either.

Jon wasn't the familiar shade of pale he'd seen on Jacques and Rose: he was chalk white. Every big of visible skin was broken, deep slashes that made Rose's scratches look like they hadn't broken the skin. There was--there was a bite mark at his neck. Ianto thought wildly of sparklepires when he realized it looked human--but no, this wasn't that kind of crossover. He knew it wasn't.

The bite at Jon's neck was uncovered, angry and red but not bleeding; the healer who gave him a very quick run-down of Jon's injuries mentioned a second one under the bandage on his arm, and slashes...slashes everywhere.

Ianto swallowed again and again after the Healer left. Finally, he went into the next room and threw up.

When he came back, Jon was unchanged. Ianto dragged over a chair and sat, forcing himself to look at the other wizard. He felt ill, still--but what was that compared to this?

What had even done this? The Healer seemed to have assumed he knew what had happened, if not the specific injuries, which left him to play detective at just about the last time he'd ever want to. Slashes, so deep--human bite marks, of all things--and the Healers couldn't just close it all up, said his chances were bad--

He froze as it came to him, staring down at Jon's limp hand against the blanket. No. No.

He got to his feet, feeling like he was floating. Tucked the blankets in around Jon, made for the door, went back up to the fourth floor. Jacques was unchanged; Rose was still asleep. He told the Bonnefoys that he had somewhere to be, but would be back, tomorrow if not tonight; they wished him well, thanked him for coming at all--and then he was back in the lift, out in the street, ducking into the alley, Apparating home. Closing the blinds, taking out the remote activator--

His hands didn't shake as they punched in coordinates. He hesitated a moment before stepping through the bright blue portal--what if--?

He had to know. He had to try...and he couldn't do that from home.

He stepped through. The portal closed behind him.

--

((More to come! ~Z))

The imprisonment had more to do with the hellish lunacy Finch and Bingle inexplicably end up getting into, while off duty (or just over their general course of existence.)

Probably could've tried finding a way to maybe expound the context more, just a little, ay?
Of course, the lack of context, too, was rather important. Who knows!

Goofs and gaffs and spoofs and spaffs and gadzookery.

For real, though, I was considering expounding more on why they were there and so on (more of Bingle's rubbish magic experiments he does to pass the time while they're skipping duties or such), but I couldn't really find a way to fit it in without kind of mucking up the punchline.

Anne is, in fact, the token human of Shift Twentieth! Bingle is sorta-human (he's a dead wizard) and Finch and Ninetwo are respectively a sapient vending machine and a dandelion. Anne's cat, who isn't in this one, is a cat.
I suppose I do kind of characterise her as being very much the most inhuman out of them, so that's good, innit?

And Finch and Bingle basically live in a constant unending state of trouble.
Those darn hooligans.

The Canadian stereotypes!PPC (and American stereotypes!PPC) were neat places, and I liked the humorous snippet we got of them.

Who won the game, by the way?

Also, minor note (aside from the thing doc mentioned below), in the line about the Doctor's TARDIS, "at least" echoes - y'all might want to reword that a bit.

- Tomash

Especially the bit with Pariya (who I'm assuming from context is a Jedi) crying.

- Tomash

New Tales of Hieronymus – The Stubborn Knight
or Let an Image Replace a Thousand Words.

HG

Very fun! I love the sheer silliness of both AUs, even in the fact that they exist at all. I love that you guys incorporated Redwall-style animal agents to represent the wildlife of both countries. The goose was fun—I especially like that you state so matter-of-factly that it beat up the human agent without describing the fight. Speaking as someone who has had to work with geese, its behavior is . . . FAMILIAR. I would hate for Agent Canada Goose to meet up with Agent Cape Barren Goose from the Australian HQ.

Out of curiosity, what's the meaning of the joke about the DoSAT technicians' names? (At least, it felt like a joke/reference, disregard if I'm wrong.)

The only technical thing my OCD whined about was the phrase, "or some strange place that was some sort of off-AU-HQ." The double "some" plus the vagueness of the phrase "sort of" is making it feel a little washed-out to me. Though I'll admit I can't really come up with a way to rephrase it that doesn't sound clunky, soooo . . . maybe English just isn't equipped to express a phrase like that. *shrug*

—doctorlit, wondering if the CPC only has access to Canadian-made continua . . .

That was very silly and I loved it. It was a nice, goofy bit of crackfic that made me grin.

(I particularly liked the Shakespear reference—that one made me guffaw.)

Happy Canada Day!

...I actually have a bit of art floating around for this. If I can figure out a good way to put it up, I will.

Apart from that, glad you enjoyed!

~Z