Alternatives

A/N: I’m surprised at you all. In the last chapter I gave a nod to the brilliant Douglas Adams and it seems nobody even noticed that I forgot the disclaimer. “Mostly Harmless” was the description that “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” gives on the topic of humans as well as the title of one of his other books. So, just to clarify since I skipped it in the last one, I am not Douglas, I make no money from his work, and may he be having one hell of a good time in the afterlife.

This chapter contains 2 intentional cartoon references, one is American, and one is Japanese. I will not tell you witch cartoons in this chapter because there will be warm yummy Veronica brownies for anyone who can guess both correctly, and maybe a chapter dedication if I feel froggy. But I will tell you that I am definitely not the owner of either and certainly make no money from them either.


Veronica was board. This has been known to cause terrible things to happen in the past. When Veronica gets board, she has been known to get quite creative to entertain herself. Given the dark origins of Veronica, this tends to mean pain for someone in her general vicinity.

This time, when the boredom set in, she decided it would be a wonderful time to pass the idle days away by training as a potions apprentice. Though she had been a very good girl and stayed up most of a week to read all the relevant books on the subject, she was still considered by the Techs in the potions lab to be under qualified. So she stayed up the better part of another week reading even more advanced books, but was told again that she was under qualified.

Veronica was told no. This is also a dangerous sort of thing know to lead others to pain. She was told in no uncertain terms to take her ruffled dresses and her pretty ringlets and bother someone else with them. She had done all that reading and still had nothing to DO with her time. So Veronica got creative.

This is how the potions lab in the Tech Department got to learn of the new game ‘Beaker Go BOOM’, much to their displeasure. In all the research she had done, Veronica had loads of ways to make the beaker explode, with flashing light and poisonous gas and flesh altering splatters and screaming and everything. She was very good at this game.

Sebastian Campbell found this to be incredibly distressing. For close to a month, the diminutive little girl had come charging through any ward they could put up against her, grab seemingly random items from the work tables, through them in a cauldron with heat, load a beaker, smash the beaker on a wall or just run before it blew, and predictably leave contamination in the lab so deadly that it had to be cleaned immediately, and so stubborn the process would take all day. The worst part though, was the maniacal giggling that accompanied the doll like girl as she bounced through creating general havoc. Sebastian really hated ‘Beaker Go BOOM’.

Sebastian had a plan though. If he could convince some poor jerk to partner with her for field work, like she was trained for, that would get her out of Tech’s hair. Ok, so she would probably come back eventually, but it was better then nothing. And, ok, he may have to offer to poison the staff coffee supply to get the partner, but some sacrificed were in order for his comrades safety.

So when he heard that poor Hunter ‘god, I can’t stand that guy’ Nelson had his potion savvy partner hospitalized and cases that needed attention immediately from someone in the know, he grabbed the opportunity with both hands, literally. “Look jack ass, you will take the little hell spawn with you or I WILL slip something in you cornflakes that will leave you impotent for life.”

“Ok, I get it, leggo.” the sandy haired man in the disco reject clothing replied in a panic.

“Perfect, her she comes.” Sebastian called out the door hoping to head her off before another lab crisis “Veronica, sweetie, I found you a partner.” he called cajolingly.

Now the badly dressed man was really in a panic “Hey, hey you didn’t say it was the crazy bitch. I thought it was the dike with the mullet and the saggy ass you wanted me with.”

‘This is why nobody likes you.’ mused Sebastian, but said “Impotence. IMPOTENCE!” looking quite deranged and just a bit obsessive.

“Damn you.” and Nelson said no more as a small wad of ringlets and ruffles slammed into his ribcage at a frightening speed.

“Ooh my very own partner. Its just what I always wanted.” the wad squeaked excitedly as she started petting Nelson’s head. “I promise to feed him and wash him and walk him every day.” she sing-songed like a young child reciting lines “And I’m gonna call him George.” she added with an adoring grin.

Sebastian’s right eye began twitching as he noticed nelson now was quite red in the face and didn’t seem to be breathing. He may have just condemned the hunter to a painful death in the near future. It could DEFINITELY happen to a nicer guy, but if he dies before getting the girl out of H.Q. then there was no point to this insanity. “Veronica, dear, I think you’ve been a bit too rough. You should maybe let go now.”

Surprisingly, she listened. Then she saw the tacky gold chain on her new partner and all hope was lost. “Look, shiny. Hey, you got me the kind that come with his own leash. How thoughtful.” she said with a big grin and eye as wide as a kid on Christmas day. Sebastian couldn’t help but note that she really was kind of cute when she stopped actively trying to kill everyone. Or maybe it was just all the toxic potions fumes she had unleashed on him recently.

After harassed potions Tech went back to his (now peaceful and quiet) lab, Nelson thought he could get out of the deal. It was only a little bit with ruffles, right? What harm could the crazy bitch really do? “Ok, see here you crazy little shit-mwffpbtsss.” and so he came to learn of an important fact concerning the girl.

When Veronica was called Slut, among other names that were not hers and not at all nice in The House, she was not allowed proper baths with soap like her Owner was, but was crudely sprayed down with a cold hose to keep her from smelling to strongly. In the years she was kept in the basement, visions of warm bubbly water with scents like flowers and candy and spices did a great deal to sustain her until she could find a way to leave. Now, she was never without soap, and kept a squirt gun full of soapy water incase she got dirty when there was no bathroom to wash up in. It also came in handy for curbing uncalled for potty-mouth.

“Partner has a dirty mouth. We’ll just have to wash it up till it gets clean again.” she scolded. “Now, is this paper mess on the floor the cases we have? We better get to work Mr. Potty-Mouth. ‘Idle hands are the devils playground’, you know.” She bent down to the floor, taking Nelson with her by the chain she had yet to let go of, and started picking the loose papers up that had fallen out of the leather file folder the had been stored in, only yo be stopped by a vision when she reached the last of the sheets.

A common misconception about seers in the world for magic is that it is a wonderful gift to always be cherished and celebrated. The truth is that anyone who thinks it to be lucky that someone is a true seer has never experienced the pain that comes with the bad visions. It just so happens that the case in question came with that sort of vision.

As she screamed in the full body pain ripping through her veins, she saw a red haired boy of about ten years old on a hospital type bed twisting and jerking in the throws of the same pain as he shifted between the boy body and a vaguely humanoid canine body and back again. A woman and a man, who looked quite like the boy, parents perhaps, were being held back from him by a woman in white and were crying as they watched helplessly. A man in white told them that it was a botched Wolf’s Chains potion that was too week to stop the transformation fully, but had been cut in such a way that the silver nitrate content in it was far too concentrated and was slowly killing the child. Worse, since he was caught between forms, they couldn’t begin his treatment till morning, by witch time he would be dead.

The vision cleared and veronica saw through tear blurred eyes that the sheet she held was for a case involving an elfin potions master who was suspected of diluting Wolf’s Chains potion and selling it on the black market. Many a werewolf had been seeking sellers for the controversial potion that did not require reporting their condition to the Ministry of Magic, witch could currently cost them any chance of a home or a job by their laws. The potion would have to be bought within days of the moon as it had a short shelf life, and was a master level, limiting the options one had to get it in the first place since few had the skill to brew it.

“When is the next full moon?” she demanded, all playfulness gone from her violet eyes, replaced by cold determination.

“Uhm, a week from Tuesday, I think, why?”

“We take this case now.” she commanded, straitening her powder blue Lolita dress as she stood.

“We nothing. I’m going to wait the two weeks for my regular partner and YOU will find someone else to play cops and robbers with beca-“ SMACK! The Hunter put a hand to his burning jaw to find five neatly spaced gouges where Veronica’s nails tore his skin in the strike.

“Idiot. Did you not hear me screaming? If we do not move today, a little boy will die in that pain, only he will suffer it from sunset till dawn. We WILL handle this case now if I have to knock you unconscious and drag you to the address of the lab. No child deserves to die in such a cruel manner.”

Looking at the doll like creature before him who was now snarling, he quickly came to the conclusion that she wasn’t bluffing. But there was still a major problem with giving in to her demand. “Look, honey, this is an elf we’re talking about. A dark elf at that. They have-“

“Yes, yes, I remember the training. They have powerful elemental magic and are extremely dangerous when fighting.” she snapped with a glare.

“Good, then you know this guy requires no less then four highly trained snipers and the department won’t have them to spare for another three days.”

“Irrelevant. We don’t need snipers. I can take him.” she retaliated with absolute certainty.

“What part of crazy strong in combat did you fail to understand, kid?” ‘This girl had to be a little dense’ he thought.

“I understand perfectly well thank you very much. However, raw power is useless against toxic gas. It’s a potions lab, so a few good rounds of ‘Beaker Go BOOM’ and he’s down, if not dead. I happen to be excellent at that game, so he doesn’t stand a chance.” she said with a frightful grin.

The Hunter looked at her incredulously. “That sounds a bit suicidal if you ask me.”

“Playing in Tech’s lab hasn’t killed me yet, and at worst I die but his lab dies with me and I still win. You just stand back and supervise, ok? We go now.” she said, dragging him off by the chain to the location of impending doom.

On arrival, the pair saw an innocent enough house. It was a battered gingerbread style with chipping pastel paint and cracked or missing embellishments in places, an over grown front garden that had once been quite charming, and a bent and rusting cast iron fence. The only thing to really set it apart from the other houses on the block had been the faint shimmer of powerful wards around it.

“Ok, partner, you wait here while I go in and make a glorious mess of things inside and grab him when he tries to run away.” Veronica told the fashion impaired Hunter as she pushed her lace filled bell shape cuffs to her elbows. It would do her no good to drag them through things or get caught up on something.

Nelson watched in awe as her channel poured out of her hand like molten silver and form into a filigreed fan with jeweled butterflies in soothing nocturnal shades and her form began to glow silvery white. She stepped lightly as a dancer up to the edged of the wards and smacked them with the open fan like a bug. The ward dome flashed bright royal blue before it crackled into pale blue spider web fractures like a hot glass ball doused in ice water and fell away.

After the little slip of a thing shattered the elfin wards, some of the strongest known to beings, like they were nothing to write home about she zipped in the front door screaming “Now you will face my maidenly wrath”. The air was soon full of odd flashes of light and booms and tinkling laughter like the sound of broken glass falling from inside the quaint house. Then again, that last bit may have actually been the sound of broken glass falling, but with the explosions it was hard to tell.

Almost as fast as it had begun, it was over as a man with deep tan skin and gratingly bright candy red hair came running out of the house like the grim was on his tail. It may have been, because close on his potion stained tail was the little terror herself, a beaker of smoking mystery fluid in each hand, and laughing cheerfully. The man threw himself at Nelsons feet and began pleading between pained coughs.

“I (hack) surrender. (sputter hack) Call her off. (gag) I’ll go (hack) quietly (gag) I swear (sputter).” he begged pathetically from the ground.

“That’s enough, honey; we’re done with uhm, ‘Beaker Go BOOM’ for now, ok? It’s time to take him in for questioning.” Nelson told her. She pouted, but stopped her mad charge and set the beakers down on the lawn and nodded. The suspect looked like he was in bad shape so they used P.J.s to return to H.Q. and get him treated so he didn’t die from toxic fumes before the questioning was finished.