Escapade 25Th Anniversary Fanzine a Multi-Media Anthology Copyright © March 2015 by Escapade
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Blake’s Penguins Escapade 25th Anniversary Fanzine a multi-media anthology copyright © March 2015 by Escapade. Copyright not intended to infringe on any legally existing copyrights or trademarks held by any person or corporation. This publication is printed under 17 U.S. Code section 107 citing Fair Use. These works are transformative, adding new meaning and messages to the original; they are limited, not copying the entirety of the original [work(s)]; and they do not substitute for the original work(s). Table of Contents Drifting by Astolat [Person of Interest x] ............................. 1 The Plan by Natasha Solten [Wiseguy] .................................................. 18 Pseudacris Crucifer by Franzeska [Veritas] .......................................... 22 One Night in LA by Raine Wynd [Highlander] ..................................... 26 As the Years Multiply by PFL [The Professionals] ................................ 31 Comet by Devo [Highlander] .................................................................. 41 An Offer in the Form by Charlotte C. Hill [Almost Human] ................ 44 The 12 (and more) years of Escapade by Anonymous ........................... 72 Under The Stairs by Dovya Blacque [Sentinel] ..................................... 75 Brazen it Out by Megan Kent [MCU] .................................................... 84 Intervention by Glacis [Multi] ................................................................ 94 Moving Up by KatBear [Star Trek] ...................................................... 125 Breaking and Making Up by KatBear [The Phantom Menace] .......... 130 Small Packages by Rhi [Multi] ............................................................. 136 Will You Let Your Cities Crumble by Mead [The Professionals] ........ 143 by Sandy Herrold [Imagine You & Me] ..................... 167 Silver by Jane Mailander [Sherlock] .................................................... 175 About the Contributors ......................................................................... 179 This fanzine contains over 111,000 words. Atlantean Penguins Foreword It has been a long, long time since we considered publishing a fanzine, but celebrating 25 years of Escapade necessitated one. All of the authors, you’ll meet on the pages. Gattagrigia, Killa, and Stranger shared their editing expertise on certain stories, under heroic deadlines. Most authors put their betas to work before they even submitted their stories. Dail kept emails from falling through the cracks, read Highlander lists, and remained a staunch barrier against which And Naked Bee… poor, sweet Naked Bee said, “So when am I going to get the parts of the zine to lay out?” (We are not fools. No one asked, “Who said you could lay out the zine?” Charlotte just said, “Uh… yeah. When they get done?”) Little did Naked Bee know how late some things get done. In addition to creating all of the mascot-themed art to represent the fandoms, she did a beautiful job executing the layout of the zine. This, as all things Escapade, is a product of many hands and many hearts. Charlotte & Megan Drifting by Astolat Editor’s Notes Can you envision a story wherein characters and the universe of Person of Interest ? We could not. Then Astolat sent us the following, and now it’s as if this was the natural result of PoI, and anything else would just be silly. 1 Drifting by Astolat The shoes made an irregular tapping noise worst of human misery and devastation. If this crossing the bare concrete from the shelter door, make him another, John was half tempted to put him and his two bodyguards down hard, invite pattern of perforations mimicking the curve of a everyone else to pick them clean, and throw them toe cap, consciously stylish and not heavily worn. out naked. John was pretty sure, with the part of his brain that still automatically catalogued these kinds of “I believe we can help each other,” the man said. things, that they were new enough they had to “You see, Mr. Reese, I have a purpose. And you need one.” attack. Probably since the second one. “Getting you another pair of those shoes?” John When they stayed right by his head, John rolled said. onto his side and squinted up at the owner without warmth. Large watery blue eyes looked down at bite entered his voice. “I don’t feel the need to put him through wire-rim glasses, a compact body in a my tailor and shoemaker out of business in order three-piece suit that matched the shoes: expensive, to demonstrate my recognition of the danger the tailored, elaborate in green and grey. The man world is presently facing, Mr. Reese, nor have I considered it appropriate to drink myself to death ordinary plain black suits, the three of them and save the kaiju the trouble. If that’s really standing out like neon lights among the crowded the best thing you can imagine doing, I’ll leave dark of the shelter: everyone else on their cots and you to it; if on the other hand you’d be interested bedrolls was eyeing them, some hungrily, others in contributing more productively to the defense warily, backing away from the potential for some effort, I can offer you a chance to do so.” ~ ~ ~ “If I owe you money, I’m fresh out,” John said, and didn’t bother to make it anything other John went with him. It wasn’t the money Finch than a sneer. He also didn’t bother to put a hand dangled for his time, although after a couple over his mouth while he belched up some of the months in a refugee shelter, John wouldn’t have minded a night in a hotel. It wasn’t the promise two days ago out of the corner of a mostly crushed of something to do, something that would matter liquor store in the condemned zone. Most people in the face of monsters. That was just a fairy tale. didn’t want to risk going into the worse-damaged John was still about ninety percent sure that buildings. He reached under his pillow to dig out what was left of the bottle. scam, or maybe something personal — a guy who was still spending money on shoes at the end of the “You don’t owe me anything, Mr. Reese,” the man world would probably spend it having somebody said, and John stiffened. “But I was hoping you killed, too. “I don’t feel the need to put my hitman would be willing to listen to a proposition.” out of business, either,” he imagined Finch saying, “Like what?” John said, bitterly. He brought out pursed and prissy, and snorted to himself. the bottle and took a swig. He’d had a few offers Finch glanced over from the other seat but said since quitting. From the kinds of people who nothing. Inside the closed car, he had to be getting wanted the services of an ex-assassin these days, a good strong whiff of John’s two solid months of the kinds of people who would exploit even the stink by now, but he hadn’t so much as wrinkled 2 his nose. He had a stillness, something hard about valley. A chain-link fence enclosed a big industrial him, not brittle but steel. Maybe that was why property: a private airstrip and an airplane John had gone along even this far. He thought hangar, some kind of processing plant, some Finch could maybe tell a good fairy tale. The kind trucks and stacked shipping containers. John watched the hangar grow bigger as they drove across the lot. “So what are you building here?” he’d had since he’d stood in front of a television in Morocco and watched the third kaiju come boiling “We call it the Jaeger Project,” Finch said. The car pulled up to the hangar and he climbed out. house. A helicopter camera had stayed in tight and John followed him inside. The hangar was hollow close as the crushing feet smashed his high school and empty, except for a large round enclosed room and marched onward to Tacoma and Seattle, against the far wall with big glass windows: he could see a few people working inside it. “The kaiju in its wake, cars crushed, corpses in the street. are obviously not invulnerable to conventional He had just killed somebody that morning: some weaponry,” Finch said, as they walked towards kind of arms dealer, Mark had said. There had been a photograph in the man’s wallet of a dark- “The problem is their sheer size and density: the eyed smiling woman with four young kids around vital organs are extremely well protected, and her. John watched the kaiju go casually and as a result, killing them becomes a long battle of murderously blundering through his own life, attrition. Am I boring you?” he added, waspishly: John wasn’t paying him a lot of attention. “I’ve had free time lately,” John said. Only a blotting everything out. He’d quit that night and handful of people and equipment around, and caught one plane after another to Spokane, as though the buildings outside were old, solid, the close as anyone would take him, and from there hangar itself was too clean, too undamaged. It he’d stolen a motorcycle. was made of light metal: there were gears along The kaiju had been brought down outside Portland the edges of the roof that made him think it was by the time he got to his neighborhood, but it retractable. It had the air of something new and didn’t feel anything like victory when John walked through the blasted streets. He dug the corpses signs of serious construction. “Assume I know as of his sister and her children out of their half- much as a newspaper article.” crushed basement. He’d never met the younger “I hope not,” Finch said. “They’re nearly all badly one, the little girl, and he didn’t recognize the misinformed. At heart, this is a logistics problem. boy, the baby he’d held for half an hour that last Thanksgiving after 9/11, just before he’d told the recruiter yes and gone into Delta.