Caribu Crossing

(Started life as the crossover thread CAPOW and GRIT on raam, started 12-Apr-1997)

Featuring: Chika Johnson and Madoka Donguri, Anne Packrat, Susano Orbitas, DamienRoc, Berk Watkins, Weapon X, Emiko's Agent
Guest featuring from GRIT: Jussi Nikandar, Scott Schimmel, Steven Scougall, Aaron Peori
with a small contribution from Stu Dent.

Compilation by Chika, with Madoka's help.
(Yes, I know it is a tenuous story at best, but hfil, I enjoyed being in it! Some of it might sound a little odd where I have converted it from script to prose.)
(P.S. That cookie passage, excuse the pun, was a bugger to get in!)

 The retreat had been invaded by a number of GRIT regulars who were arguing
about GRIT and CAPOW crossovers.
  "There already -have- been a few GRIT/CAPOW crossovers, though for the most
part, not in the serious CAPOW threads."
  " -What- serious CAPOW threads?" came the incredulous response, the GRITer
not able to believe his ears.
  "Well, ok, then, the CAPOW threads with a plot and a side order of angst."
  "Hmm.. these GRITers are comedians..." mused Weapon X.
  "This conclusion took you -how- long?" laughed RL Steve, whose sig had just
stopped to pick up rotten fruit.
  "It's the Global Ranma insanity thread!" chortled Susano. "What did you
expect?"
  "I expect... MML!"
  RL Jussi sighed. "O-okay, if you really want that...Aaron! You are needed
here!"
  "Not in here you don't!" Madoka protested. "Jussi, Susan, take it outside if
you want a fight!"
  "STOP CALLING ME THAT!!!" Susano retorted.
  "So make me go, then!" RJ Jussi challenged the barkeep.
  Not one to refuse a challenge, Madoka reached into Hammerspace and...
  "I shall thwart you with..." Madoka stopped and facefaulted. "Oh bloody hfil!
Not again! This running rubber chicken gag was supposed to have finished!"
  RL Jussi smiled evilly. "So then, bitbrain, what's your next move?"
  "Oh, never mind..." Madoka sighed, opening another bottle. Susano blinked.
  "Hey, Mads," he said, "you ARE going to do something, aren't you?"
  "Yes."
  "What?"
  "Watch." and with that she slumped to the floor beneath the now famous wall.
  "For the sake of our sanity, don't start that again!" called a GRITer, wittily.
  "Oh, thanks a bunch!!!" cried Susano.
  "Just try not to bleed on the carpet." Madoka warned.
  "So wait until the next time you ask for my tab to be settled!"
  "Shall we begin?" laughed RL Jussi, maniacally.

  Some time later Madoka, Susano, Jussi and Aaron, who had turned up in answer
to Jussi's cries, were to be found by the now almost-nearly-famous wall, the sake
now getting rather low.
  "23 bottlesh of shake ont' wall, 23 bottlesh of shake..."
  "Hey, you know shomething, Shushan?" Jussi drawled out drunkenly,
"you really aren't sho bad. Have another?"
  "I'm underage!" Susano protested, vainly. "Jusht a shmall one, then..."
  "If you stop to drink about it" Aaron said in his best lecture tone 
as he removed the bottle deftly from her hand, "The conspicious 
consumption of Alcohol serves no purpose but to dull the wits and the 
senses to the point that our body is no-longer able to figure out that 
life stinks. Really you shouldn't have that privelege until you have at 
least had some life expeierence to drink to forget about."
  The entire group stared at Aaron, who obviously wasn't drinking, 
and was instead using a number of the bottles in a game involving seeing 
which rolled down a hill the fastest, in utter incomprehension.
  "Never mind," Aaron said with a exasperated sigh.
  "Had enough then?" Jussi asked.
  "Get your own!" Aaron snapped as Jussi groped for the bottle that he
was hugging. "There, there, nasty person didn't dishturb you?"
  
  Anne shook her head sadly from the bar where she was nursing a root
beer.  "Those guys need to get over the death of the test threads..."
  "No kidding..." Remus muttered, doing his best to ignore a medium heighted
man in a rumpled trenchcoat doing his best to get his attemtion.
 "GET BACK TO WORK!" the average guy howled.
 "In my own time..." Remus replied, pulling the SATURN FIVE out of
hammerspace and KA-THWAMM-ing the man.
  Jussi turned to face Anne. "Mind you <hic> I never wash a part of <hic>
thoshe tesht thea...trhea...threash!" 
  "Yeah," Anne countered, grimacing at the stink of alcohol, "but I bet you
read every stinkin one of them!
  "Whaaaat! I <hic> have better thingsh to do than to read shome <hic> totally
usheresshh meshagesh!" Jussi said and took a long swing from his bottle. 
"Are you shure you don't want any?"
  "No thanks," Anne responded, "I want to be sober for when the caribu
come through."
  After a few tries, RL-Jussi managed to scratch his head, "Whens the
*hic* whats comes too?"
  "Caribu," Anne responded nonchalantly.  Then a sound of thundering
hoofbeats could be heard from outside the Retreat.  Madoka sighed and
opened the door.  Ace opened the back door.  A herd of a hundred caribu
rushed through the doors trampling RL-Jussi and the rest of the drunks
who were in the way.  Anne glanced at her watch, "Hmmm, they're a little
late today..."
  Jussi quickly stood up and dusted his jacket. "That wasn't nice, you know. You
could have warned me a little earlier."
  Most of the other people stared in confusion at the now-sober Jussi.
  "You are sober?" Somebody said. Jussi went SD and into uberkawaii mode
  "Yup! It's one of my way-cool superpowers!"
  A small caribu, trailing the herd, stops briefly and nuzzles RL-Jussi
before scampering out the back door.

  "Susano, Madoka wants you..." Aaron said.
  "Really?" Susano espused with a romantic burp. "I never knew she
felt that way..."
  "I'll get you for that." Madoka said coldly.
  She glanced over in Susano's direction, but he had already flung himself
through the window...
  Damien Roc (in his first attempt at CAPOWing walks into the bar.
"What have I gotten myself into now?" he wonders. 
  Anne spotted Damien and waved to him.  "You new here?  Don't mind the
boys.  They do this all the time.  You know how to play Magic? 
Ani-Mayhem?  Animadness?" Damien passed her over for a grey figure lurking in
the shadows of the room, and asked his question again.
  "What else?" remarked the grey-shrouded Ghost enigmatically.
  (For all cloaked figures were required by contract to act
enigmatically until their identities were discovered, and perhaps even
thereafter.  The Ghost wasn't certain just why this was, but it did
know that there was a certain Authority (or two) behind the contract
whose laws were most certainly not to be broken, and whose decisions
were never to be questioned.  Being a rather sane, well-balanced
individual (especially for a dead man), the Ghost obviously did its
best to hold to the contract, and it had picked up a fair 'enygmatic'
in the years since its death, though the 'ominous' still gave it
trouble.  But that is another matter entirely.)
  Sensing that the rather lengthy multiple parentheticals had
drawn to a close, the Ghost continued its explanation with the single
brief, elegant word:  "Trouble."
  Damien was silent for a moment as he pondered this new bit of
information.  Then he intelligently replied, "Oh."
  "It's fun to watch, actually.  Here, have a drink.  There's an
infinite number of bottles of sake on the wall, you know."
  "But the wall is finite," Damien observed.
  "Indeed.  It's rather a mystery.  Where they all come from, I
mean."
  "What I want to know," Madoka interjected, "Is where they all
go, or more precisely, who's going to pay for them."
  The Ghost shifted uneasily on its stool.  As much as something
without a definite physical form could be said to shift, or to be on a
stool for that matter, that is.  "Look at the time... I've got to go,
I was supposed to meet Charon at the Styx five minutes ago..."
  "Oh no you don't..." Mads began.  It was no use.  The
grey-swathed form was gone.  She sighed.  "I don't think the Commander
will cover this one..."  She trailed off, looking speculatively at
Damien.
  "Wait a minute," said unfortunate stuttered.  "You don't
mean..."
  "Just put it on Susano's tab," said the disembodied voice of
the Ghost.  A moment passed in total silence, followed by the same
voice murmuring, "Oops."
  Madoka folded her arms and looked flatly at the
recently-vacated stool.  Slowly, wisps of grey mist began to appear,
weaving together until the form of the Ghost was revealed.
Sheepishly, he said, "I suppose invisibility works better when you
keep your mouth shut."
  "I suppose," the Retreat's owner replied sardonically, as she
laid down a long, narrow strip of paper.  The Ghost glanced at it
apprehensively.  It was a column of numbers.
  "This isn't..."
  In a calm voice, perfectly devoid of emotion, Madoka spoke the
two words that inspired abject fear in the hearts of even the
strongest men.  "The bill."
  The Ghost sighed, appearing to deflate as it did so.
"Um... how much is that in obols?" it asked, resigned.

  Anne, with a sly look on her face, was offering the GRITers some cookies,
though the innocent things knew not what lay in store for them.
  "...here you can have these cookies instead."  She
handed a plate full of chocolate (possibly?) chip cookies to Chibi
Jussi.  
  Chibi Jussi's eyes go wide and he yells "SUGOI!!!!!".  He
immediately begins wolfing down the cookies.
  Madoka approaches Anne, cleaning a glass.  "Hey, Anne!  Did you get rid
of those cookies Akane and C-ko sent over yet?"  Anne glanced over at
the scarfing Chibi-Jussi.  She called back to Madoka.  "Yep!"
  Chibi-Jussi runs to the toilet and for several minutes some quite horrible 
sounds are heard. Then he comes back weilding a really big mallet and 
seemingly really pissed off. He de-chibies before adressing Anne.
"That....wasn't...nice."
  Jussi then proceeds to pound Anne flat before going back to GRIT with a
final comment "If people are like that here, I'd rather GRIT. At least I know 
who to avoid there."
  Anne got up and grabbed RL-Jussi by the collar.  "NO ONE," she screamed,
"NO ONE MATCHES MALLETS WITH ME!!!!!!!!!!"  She demonstrated by pulling
a four foot wide mallet out of HammerSpace.  "GET IT?!"  She flourished
with the hammer.
  RL-Jussi nodded and gulped.  Anne let him down.  "Now
get back to GRIT if you want to stay there."  RL-Jussi nodded and
scurried off to GRIT, where he played with Turnips, Blades and Egyptian
Pyramids.

  Emiko and Mai sat at the corner table, minding their own business and
staying quiet. 
  "<piku> What was that all about?"  Mai asked, clamping on
two her strawberry milkshake with two mittened hands while her legs
swayed about, unable to reach the floor. 
  "Who knows..." Emiko shurgged, disinterested. At the other side Susano and
Remus were in a armwrestling battle, while Anne pleaded with Madoka to give her
a hand.  There was a brawl fight in the other corner, while an ewok and a jawa
were dancing in the middle.  Emiko and Mai glanced in that direction and then
continued drinking.  "Madoka's bar has gotten so weird lately that I choose not
to pay attention." 
  "I see....mmm hmm, mmm hmmm"  Mai imitated her sensei's relaxed expression
and continued sucking on her straw. Silence once again reclaimed the air around
their table.  The day was too early to get involved.