crossover_chick | The Great Zombie Beatdown

Victor and Elizabeth have defeated the zombie! All rejoice! :D
-TTV: *looks conflicted*-
Definitely evil zombie, Tie-Twister.
-TTV: Oh, all right.-
-VuM: Is it pathetic we have to specify that, these days?-
Nah. Also, Alice and John are chatting about mental issues, poor guys. And I think once I'm done here I'm gonna tag Doc in somewhere. Plus I'm planning on a "second-stringers" post in the Inkwell soon -- a post dedicated to just Simon, Lucy, Dee, and Steve & Gary. They deserve one to themselves.
-RPD: Technically, I'd classify them as third-stringers.-
Pardon?
-RPD: Well, look at the facts. The ones you play the most are Clockwork and Rift!Victor. Museical and Alice come out rather less often -- they're the second-stringers. Then Simon, Lucy, Dee, and Steve & Gary barely come out at all, hence third-string.-
Hmmm, true. But they're still getting a post.
-RPD: I didn't say they shouldn't get one. It's all more work for me, even if you're just indulging in a little 'talking to yourself' play.-
-DW: Steve & Gary have visited the Nexus from time to time, at least. And she's been thinking about putting Simon there.-
Yeah, just to see what would happen. Hell, maybe someday I'll throw Lucy and Dee in there too. Everybody goes to the Nexus!
-MF: Dare you to put everybody into one post in there.-
Hey, that's hard enough to manage at the Inkwell!
Anyway, fairly typical Saturday -- hung out, tooled around on the computer, that sort of thing. Spymaster is annoying me a little these days -- I've been the target of a lot of assassinations lately. And energy and health recovery is SLOOOOW. Not to mention this weird little quirk I seem to have where I succeed more at assassinations when the odds are AGAINST me. 45% nets me the most wins, but I've been wounded twice now in assassination attempts with the odds of winning at around 60%.
-TD: Interesting! You have some sort of opposite luck in effect.-
I must! Though it is getting annoying. I want to succeed, damn it!
-HD: Then try a high-risk assassination where the odds are really against you!-
. . . Point.
Before we do that, though, it's time for some more Victor/Alice fic. Not much more to go, though once I'm finished with these, perhaps I'll try the Thirty Dances prompt table.
-D: You're getting obsessed with them.-
I know. How the hell did this even happen? Well, anyway:

14. Radio/Cassette Player – Looney Tunes And Merry Melodies
The gramophone had been an anniversary present from the Hatter. Victor and Alice had been very pleasantly surprised when he’d given it to them – they’d been wanting one ever since they first came out. Victor had asked where on earth he’d gotten it, and the Hatter had proudly replied he’d made it.
That had been their first warning.
It wasn’t that the Hatter was bad at what he did. Quite the opposite, really – he was an excellent inventor and a fine hat-maker. It was just that he was Wonderlandian. Which meant everything he created had certain – quirks.
The gramophone ran off tea, for one. Earl Grey, to be precise. Other blends tended to make it sputter and die unexpectedly. It had a special, custom-built arm to automatically load the records, but it ended up flinging them across the room as often as it actually placed them on the machine. (Alice had joked once or twice about using it for skeet shooting with the Blunderbuss.) The large brass horn tended to emit steam at random intervals, fogging up the house. And, for no discernible reason either Victor or Alice could think of, it also made toast.
Still, on the rare gloomy days in Wonderland, where the rain poured down outside the windows, it was nice to have around. Victor would pour a cup of tea into the spout, load up a record before the arm could get to it, and then offer his hand to Alice as the music started. And they would dance to the strains of Mozart and Beethoven. Just swaying together in the drawing room, lips occasionally meeting in a warm kiss. They were willing to put up with any number of quirks for those moments.
Besides, the toast it made was better than any they’d ever managed over the fire.

-M2: Gramophone? I guess that's what you guys call phonographs over on your side of the world?-
-TTV: I'm assuming so -- like I said, they weren't properly invented yet in 1875.-
Yup, that was the name for them in England -- I'd originally written it with the term "phonograph," but changed it after a little Wikipedia research. This idea for this prompt didn't take too long to make itself known -- I knew I would be doing something about a phonograph, and the idea of Hatter making his own weird-ass one for Victor and Alice was just too good to pass up. It took me a while to properly come up with how weird it would be, though -- I always knew it would run off tea and make toast, but the thing with the loading arm and the horn emitting steam I had to puzzle out. I think it all came together in the end, though.
-TD: *grin* Seems mad-sciency enough to me.-
-HD: Me too!-
:D The story itself came together pretty quickly after I came up with the quirks. The title, though, was yet another one that gave me trouble. It was Rift!Victor's interest in cartoons that saved me. Thinking about his love of Looney Tunes made me remember that, originally, there were both Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. A quick spelling change, and we were off.
-D: Ironic -- the one story that could USE a "jukebox title," as you call them. . . .-
It's just how my mind works.

And now, I shall be off to do more stuff with my characters.