Fight Club

JTTTLBTMI Crossover Part 3

Lady Darkling’s song rose above the deep rumble and roar of the mountain, the eerie music and the bubbling of the lava below us, a gentle soothing tone, ethereal and unworldly. The hot air felt a little cooler, the sparks and embers that floated through the air pirouetted around her and a strange peacefulness fell across the cavern.

“She’s singing the mountain a lullaby,” Fuschia laughed. “Putting the mountain and the burny rocks to sleep for us to get across the bridge. She's not daft, her.”

It looked like it was working; the lava boiled away slowly beneath us but sent forth no more burning balls of molten rock. The song grew louder and louder as Lady Darkling drifted across the bridge, carried by her music and that of the mountain and we all followed, carefully watching our step. I was halfway over when I suddenly realised we were all singing along, joining Lady Darkling’s song, keeping the mountain slumbering.

As the last of the penguin sherpas crossed the bridge, the mountain must have decided to turn over in its sleep as a huge gout of flame leapt up from the pit, spraying the bridge we had just crossed only moments before. We feverishly hurried onwards; there was no telling how long the mountain would stay rested.

More caverns, more tunnels, more twists and turns and finally a decision, a fork in the path. Without hesitating, Lady Darkling carried on down the left hand path and was followed by Baron Bardhaven, Miss Kelley and Mr Abel. Lady Eva, however, stopped just short of entering the cavern and cocked her head to one side. “Listen…”She said. So we did.

The strange melody had become part of the background noise, along with the rumbles and groans of the caverns, but it was much louder here – and much louder from the right-hand path. Lady Eva, Lady Gabrielle and Lady Amber were already drifting in that direction, their bodies swaying in time to the beat of the music and before I knew it, I was too. I shook my head, trying to clear it of the music, but here it really was becoming loud. We followed the Duchesses and Baronesses onwards with Oolon fractiously muttering about “hypnotic sub-harmonics in the lower frequencies”.

Almost without warning the passage we were following opened up into a huge chamber filled with native men and women in various states of undress, cavorting around bamboo poles and swigging from half coconuts with little umbrellas in them.

“Rudey people!” Fuschia exclaimed happily and Terry laughed, covering Oolon’s eyes as he began blushing furiously.

“Good Lord!” Lady Eva cried “It’s a Gentleman’s Club!”

I had to agree that’s exactly what it looked like.

The music here was pounding and deafening. The walls of the “club” were exquisitely carved organ pipes, formed by the looks of it from the living rock of the mountain itself. Opposite the entrance, on a raised dais of steps, a figure cloaked in shadow maniacally played the gargantuan organ.

Lady Gabrielle shouted out a warning and I turned to see a large group making their way through the dancers towards us. They didn’t look like a welcoming committee.

We didn’t stand a chance in the yawning maw of the cave opening; we had to make things more difficult for them.

“Into the crowd!” I shouted and set off at an angle into the throng of people, grabbing Fuschia’s hand and pulling her with me. Terry did the same with a befuddled looking Oolon, whisking him off into a group on the opposite side of the entrance. The last glimpse I caught of the Duchesses and the Baroness before the crowd closed in was of them standing back to back, each adopting a fighting poise and silhouetted by a fire ball leaping up from one of the open lava pits in the room. Somehow I got the feeling they could look after themselves.

I pushed on deeper into the crowd, trying to make my way to the dais and avoiding any of our unfriendly greeters. Our luck, however, didn’t hold for long. Thankfully, I’d spent some time when I was younger earning money at my Uncle’s circus by wrestling all comers and when the tribesman lunged for me from out of the crowd, I let go of Fuschia, grabbed his sleeve and collar and suplexed him up over my head and down onto a nearby table. Coconuts, rum, umbrellas and table splinters flew in all directions. With spilled drinks, the crowd around us was turning nasty; Fuschia had drawn her swiss army spork from her sock and was waving it menacingly at anyone who came near her. Things were about to get out of hand very quickly when suddenly four black and white shapes dropped onto the ground in front of us. Four penguins, each wearing a different coloured headband and each brandishing a different weapon (of far eastern origin I would guess), posed dramatically and then leapt into what had turned into an angry mob, buying us breathing space and time to escape. Mr Abel certainly trained his little assistants well.

We jostled our way quickly through the mass of people. At last, we reached the dais and began pushing our way up the steps when suddenly the music stopped, the room fell silent and all eyes turned to the raised platform.

The mysterious organist stood, leaving his glittering marble keyboard, and strode into a shaft of light, illuminating his features and at last revealing his identitiy to us all…

The Descent

JTTTLBTMI Crossover Part 2

Bunzilla’s roar split the air as a fearsome, carrot-crazed eye peered down at us. There was nowehere to go but into the cave, so that’s where we went - at great speed. From the mouth of the cave I watched it snuffling and grunting at the tangle of balloon, trees and tents. Behind me I could here discussions of where we should go next and what we should do.

From what I could gather, it appeared as if Fuschia and myself had indeed appeared just off the coast of Caledon. This new volcanic isle threatened the very safety of that great nation and this small group had been sent to solve the problem. I’m not entirely sure how they were going to achieve that, but any help we could give them, we would.

Most of the discussion seemed to centre around a tattered map that Mr Abel had discovered. Sadly the major problem seemed to lie in the fact that the cave system was represented on the map by a tangle of lines, almost as if they’d started drawing it all out nicely and then just decided it was too complicated and scribbled a pencil round and round for a bit.

Lady Amber stood in the corner surrounded by a gaggle of penguins swigging from a battered hip flask. The light from the cave entrance glittered off her cleavage…No, hang on, I don’t mean cleavage, I meant her…bosoms. Now that’s odd; everytime I looked at her my eyes slid away onto her ..er… attributes. Something at the back of my head was itching – trying to tell me something, trying to show me something… I caught Fuschia’s disapproving look; I think she’d caught me staring – so I hurriedly looked away and pretended I was studying the cave wall instead.

We decided to push on into the darkness. Baron Bardhaven believed that’s where the source of all this trouble was and that’s where we’d find answers. We pressed on because…well…he sounded like he knew what he was doing and we certainly weren’t going back out there with Bunzilla.

The tunnels wound on and round and round. I began to wonder if the strange scribbles on the map weren’t entirely incorrect; the passages seemed to twist onwards and downwards for such a long time. Baron Bardhaven and Lady Darkling took the lead. At times, Bardhaven peered at the map then indicated a particular direction; at others, Darkling drifted down a certain passage following a mysterious glowing orb as if in a trance. All the while, Oolon kept up a running commentary on the fascinating rock stratification and geological formations while Terry rolled her eyes. The Duchesses chatted excitedly about the grand adventure and the balls that would be held in all our honour when we returned home. Miss Kelley’s eyes darted around each cavern we passed through, gently mewing and watching every movement and shadow.

The strange music continued throughout our journey, echoing from the passage walls and fading in and out. The strange thing was, down here it seemed less alien, less unusual. Maybe we were getting closer to the source, or maybe the echoes and harmonics of the tunnels were just right, but I was sure I was beginning to recognise familiar phrases and bars. This was music I’d heard before, music I’d heard in Caledon when wandering through … was it Tanglewood? Or by the Governor’s mansion? Lady Amber slipped into my field of vision and again I found myself … distracted. Even more so as she appeared to be peeling off layers of clothing again - because of the heat she claimed.

And she was right; it was getting a lot warmer. We began passing through chambers filled with lava flows and sparkling embers dancing in the air. Soon we were all removing some of our more bulky clothing.

We finally came to halt in a large chamber. Our path took us across a narrow, crumbling bridge of rock and across a lava flow, all the while fireballs leaping up and exploding over us.

I’m sure this wasn’t marked on the map…

The Poison Belt

JTTTLBTMI Crossover Part 1

The butterfly tunnel swirled around us. It had been a good few weeks away; a nice, relaxing change of pace. Pixie had it’s peculiarities but was certainly a marvellous place to relax.

We were travelling to Caledon rather than the Colony, because Fuschia said that it was much easier to navigate back to somewhere like the Homelands, where the love of it’s people acted as a sort of beacon, making it much easier for Pixie magic to home in on.

I felt the balloon catch on an updraft of wind…we were definitely approaching something…something that smelled like sulphur and smoke… The twisting vortex before us darkened, filling with thick black clouds. This didn’t look good.

I gently shook Fuschia awake and she wrinkled her nose at the smell. “Are you burning breakfast, again?” She mumbled before sitting bolt upright and whispering “Something’s wrong!”

I nodded and was about to explain when the tunnel shattered around us and the balloon leapt violently.

Once onto our feet we could see that we were surrounded on all sides by thick smoke. The butterflies that had formed our passage to and from Pixie were lost in the darkness. It was searingly hot and proving very difficult to breathe.

Where were we? This certainly didn’t look like Caledon. The balloon was twirling and I could see no more than a few feet through the smoke and ash. Fuschia handed me a strip of cloth she’d torn from her petticoats to act as a face mask in order to keep out the choking air.

I tugged on the control ropes of the balloon, trying to gain height and get above whatever we were in. A deep rumble sounded below us and a fireball tore upwards through the sky, alarmingly close. I peered down over the side of the basket and could feel even more heat as well as perceiving a dull orange glow below us through the smoke. Were we above some enormous pyre? Had the alien invaders returned and reduced Caledon to nothing but fire and ash?

I attempted to regain some control over the balloon, but we were caught in an unpredictable updraft and the balloon's control vents were useless in the ash laden, turbulent air.

“Look!” Fuschia shouted. “A funny flying man!” I turned, not sure what to expect. The brief glimpse of him I got before impact was of a young man dressed in a pastel shirt, carrying a spear and wearing a helmet crudely fashioned out of a large coconut, propelled through the air by what appeared to be a battered brass and bamboo steam jet pack. A moment later he’d collided with the canvas above us, punching a hole clean through the balloon’s envelope and sending us on a very fast journey – sideways…

We careered wildy through the air, the balloon letting out a strange high pitched wail as the gas escaped.

The balloon described several crazy loops as we clung desperately to the sides of the basket. We eventually shot out of the bottom of the smoke cloud and I briefly caught a glimpse of a volcanic island (the smoke from which we had just left) surrounded by a huge expanse of water. On the downward swing of one of our circuits the basket skimmed the top of the water, scooping up a good proportion of it along with several penguins, a rather surprised looking Baroness (Lady Amber, to be more precise) and an even more surprised looking hammerhead shark.

The balloon curved upwards again, propelling us up over the island (as the penguins heaved the shark overboard) in what would be our final descent. We swung back down again, this time crashing through some tents that had been erected on the beach, and onwards into the deep jungle trees. Tribesmen scattered in all directions and I’m sure I caught sight of several people tangled in the canopy, rigging, tent, trees and, by the looks of it, cooking pot wreckage that we’d accumulated as we skidded through the undergrowth before sliding to a halt at the mouth of a dark and foreboding cave.

Fuschia helped a rather shaken Lady Amber up out of a pile of penguins and the now ruined basket, while I clambered out to help disengage our unexpected, and no doubt shocked, reluctant passengers from what was left of the rest of the balloon. And what a collection of nobles we’d entangled: A Baron (Bardhaven), A Duke (Greystoke), a Timelord (Sputnik), Sidhe (Lightfoot) and no less than two Duchesses (Carntaigh and Loch Avie) and two Marchionesses (East and West Speirling - or at least one Speirling and one cunning "copy-cat").

As I began hastily disengaging them from the rope, canvas and foliage, eerie music drifted from the cave entrance behind me…

Destination: Pixie

JTTTLBTMI Prologue

Fuschia was the one who suggested we should have a few weeks away. The militia and fund raising was winding down and the unusual invaders that had appeared on the shores had been driven off, many bits of clothing had been made, much tea drunk and many cakes eaten. We were both exhausted and in need of a break.

She suggested we go and visit some of her friends in Pixie (apparently a nice little corner of the otherworld near Faerie, where the pixies live). I’d never been there before, but she assured me it would be really nice and we could even take the balloon.

After an extensive few days of packing we pushed off from our little bay in Penan. We’d locked up the workshop and had employed a young urchin to keep and eye on the circus and feed the boilers of the steam elephants in our absence.

Waving goodbye to young Master Grut we drifted onwards from Penan, out by the nearby floating castle and over the sea, where I realised that what I had assumed was a flock of birds from a distance was actually a huge swarm of multicoloured butterflies gathering over the ocean. Fuschia giggled at my look of surprise and wiggled her nose. The butterflies swirled in the air, coming closer and closer until we were entirely surrounded. And then there was a subtle change; we were no longer in a small vortex of butterflies but in a huge twisting tunnel stretching on as far as the eye could see. This was to be our path to Pixie.

I’m not really sure how long we spent travelling. Not long after we entered the tunnel the hands on my pocket watch began to spin crazily around it’s face, randomly pointing at numbers and every so often even pointing at new numbers that weren’t even on the clock face when we’d set off.

We’d worked through a good number of wax cylinders and books when I felt a breeze. The tunnel we were travelling in was eerily quiet (aside from the soft, scratchy music of the wobbly recordings) and since we’d set off there had been no feeling of wind or motion despite the coloured / shifting walls of the tunnel. I looked down to where Fuschia had dozed off in the balloon’s basket and was about to nudge her awake when suddenly the tunnel around us scattered into a multitude of tiny wings.

The balloon lurched as it once again gained purchase on new air and our tiny escorts scattered into the forests that unfolded beneath us. We were floating in a deep purple sky, a blazing orange sun dipping below a great mountain range in the distance, and I suddenly had a strange feeling. It was almost like deja-vu…but not quite. For a moment it appeared as if the mountain ahead of me burned, as if the sun dipping behind it was actually some great gout of fire erupting from its maw. Strange music echoed in the distance and a peculiar feeling of foreboding began to creep across me…

Fuschia yawned and sprang up onto her feet beside me, peering out across the landscape of her home. Something had changed, the spell had been broken, and once again there was just a sun sinking below the horizon.

Putting the odd trick of the light aside, I pulled on the control ropes of the balloon and we began our descent into a clearing…

Air, Sea and Land

Dear Miss Tombola,

Just writing to thank you for the lovely afternoon of transportation related adventure, and for the very kind charitable donation that set us on this path in the first place.


I successfully retrieved the hot air balloon from the foot of Terry’s beanstalk in Tanglewood last night and am happy to report that apart from the odd branch trapped in the rigging it survived our rather bumpy descent down through the tree canopy.



I’ve also managed to straighten out the slight bend that appeared in my steam board after the unfortunate encounter with the sea bed in Lionsgate, and the hangar walls in Steam City.

Thankfully, I caught Admiral Wind at her shipyard this morning and with her assistance was able to lift the Caledonian Queen from the rocky coastline of the Moors, although I think the keel may need a bit of patching before she’s going to be seaworthy again.



Oh, and your stable boy should be on his way over to drop off your improvised monowheel. I gave him a bit of change to pick up our cycles from where we left them at the Victoria City train station, and he seems a trustworthy enough lad, if a little grubby.



Hope we get a chance to do it again sometime - although not too soon, as I think my legs need a bit of time to recover from chasing the train all the way through Carntaigh.

Yours,

Alfonso Avalanche

Lists Are Good

Checksheet for regeneration:

1. Old Timelord

Check

2. Cast of thousands

Check

3. White Lady

Check

4. Fireworks

Check

5. Nice Effects Shots

Check

6. New Timelord

Blimey. Check

7. Star Vampire

Er.......check?

8. Power Source

Power source? Oh bugger.........

9. Dancing

Check

10. Bananas

Oh yes. Bananas are good.

I love the smell of steam in the morning

From the journal of Alfonso Avalanche

What an evening last night turned out to be: regenerations, star vampires, stolen power sources, possessed Time Lords – I definitely needed time to get out of the circus workshop and clear my head. At least Oolon seems to have come through it all largely intact. Let’s just hope the gamble hasn’t caused more problems than it’s solved…

I decided to go take the air in Primverness and check that all was well at the Steampunk exhibition. It’s amazing the technological feats the engineers of Caledon can accomplish.

As I was passing, I thought I’d better check that my own pieces of engineering were still in good working order.

Thankfully, the alignment on the space gun appeared to be fine, and Miss Paris’ steam elephant still showed stable boiler pressure.

The strangely soothing sound of steam trains (thanks to Dr Burton Newall), steam engines (courtesy of Mr Denver Hax), hissing baked potatoes (provided by Captain Lapin Paris), ticking clockwork limbs (built by Sir Edward Pearse), the odd boing of the cavorite repulsion chamber (envisioned by Mr Greggan) and humming laser piggy eyes (by, who else, but Miss Virrginia Tombola), made a most unusual dawn chorus.