The Club

<center>Chronicles of the League and the Intrepid Sorority
Vol VIII No. 6


Soundtrack:
Feeder - Pushing the Senses (Japanese Edition)</center>

What ho! Good afternoon Chronicles fans! Fret not, oh noble reader, at the initial appearance of this episode as short and incomplete. There is far more to come in Number 6 of Volume 8. The first posting of this is an experiment in Chronicles writing . This is merely a taster. The rest of the episode will follow shortly, in this very post. After some coffee and another box of tissues.

For the previous installments in this volume, see Quantum Coyote.



Logan sniffs the air. There is a tangle of scents, almost like there is more than one person approaching, but they are wound too closely together and he could never imagine the people to whom those scents belonged being together like that. Being together and coming for him. One of the braided strands gives him a partial answer: he has never known her able to weave other people's scents before, and if she can do that then he is going to have to be even more on his guard.

He tenses, a growl starting deep in his chest as the six adamantium razors slide near-silently out of the sheathes that run along the bones of his forearms.

"Logan, no!" Ravenbait sees the glint of metal in the shifting light of A-Time. "It's me."

"Learned how to change your scent, have ya Mystique? I ain't so easily fooled. Speshly not when ya can't get it right. The bird don't smell like X23, bub. Never has."

Without further warning he turns and springs, pinning RB to the ground with a fistful of knives digging into the blue soil either side of her head.

"Don't," she whispers, breathing hard. "You know you'll only give Chuffy more ammunition for distracting me of an afternoon."

Logan leans close, his hot breath moist on her face, and sniffs.

"Raven? What the hell is goin' on? Ya smell like ya been in some hot girl on girl action wi' Mystique an' X23." He sits up, frowning, puzzled and realising that he would not put it past her to have been doing just that.

"Oh be still my beating heart," she murmurs, momentarily distracted by the prospect. "We've got major trouble, Wolvie. I need to speak to Professor Xavier."

"How come you didn't invite me?"

"Because it didn't happen, you lech." She pauses for a moment, contemplating. "Although it's certainly an idea. I will make a note of it and mention it to Charlotte later. Now can you find Charles for me or not?"

"Sure, toots. I can find Chuck. Assuming he ain't dead right now, or doin' the horizontal tango with that woman from the Shi'ar empire. What you want him for anyway?"

"So he can help me piece together how come I can suddenly do this."

With an all-too familiar sound a pair of adamantium blades shoot out from RB's right hand. She wishes she had a camera with her to record the expression on Wolverine's face for posterity.

"Look. At least there are only two of them," she says. "If there had been three then I'd be guilty of having the hots for my own father. At least this way I only have the hots for the guy I was cloned from."

Logan is still speechless.

"Cat got your tongue, Logan? It's really not going to help if I tell you I can do the Mystique thing as well, is it?"

"No. No it ain't. Get off yer ass, girl. Ye're freakin' me out wi' that malarkey. You got no idea how this has happened?"

"Some. I've got some idea. The Hierophant has just bought a contract, and the entire world has gone screwy - like trying to run a Campag Record ten speed block on a Shimano Acera seven speed transmission. It's just wrong." She climbs to her feet and brushes blue dust from her lycra. "I need to see Professor Xavier."

"Well, t' be honest I've bin kinda avoiding Chuck recently after all that fuss wi' S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra. Came out here to get some peace an' quiet."

"Logan, if this carries on," Ravenbait says and there is a cold steel in her black eyes that glints like a newly polished chainset, "there won't be any peace and quiet anywhere for anyone. Grab the Gimp and let's go already."

She turns her head and gives a sharp whistle. Thought and Memory glide over from their hiding place in a jub-jub tree. Even RB had not been sure she would be able to avoid a scrap and she had not wanted her feathered friends getting hurt. She retrieves Blackbird from a bush and favours Wolverine with an impatient stare.

"Sorry, darlin', " he says, shaking himself. "It's just your scent... It's freakin' me out."

"Wait until I tell you what else has been going on," she says, watching him mount Chuckles. "This is minor."

Wolverine glances at her dubiously, entirely unconvinced that anything could get stranger, then sniffs the air. Across the tangerine skies a thread of information comes dancing like a Chinese river dragon, wriggling and writhing in a tiny silver skein that speaks of a different world from the one in which all things are changing. The world that Wolverine calls home. The world where they can find Professor Charles Xavier, founder and mentor to the X-Men.

It is a world known to the Watchers - and Alan Moore fans - as Earth-616, and as Ravenbait and Wolverine spin off along the dusty purple trails, scattering hoopybirds and cutting tyre marks through sandworm casts, a single solitary Watcher stands on his no longer quite so objective viewpoint and observes.

He smiles.

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The exquisitely beautiful figure of Mrs Pike stands and looks up at the facade of the new building. It is not quite to her exacting standards, but will have to do. A slight frown creases her perfect brow as some little part of her protests that this is another change too soon after the last; that too much is happening in too short a time. Yet most of her is perfectly content in the idea that this is exactly as it should be — other than the drapes and that utterly dreadful shade of carpet in the upper hallway of the East Wing. Both will have to go.

"I quite like it," says Redshift, gazing out across the lawns. The grounds are extensive, stretching away to where there is the faintest glimmer of the metal links in the security fence. A fountain gushes melodiously on the main platform below the entrance steps, and the bike sheds are as well appointed as the main building, set around the back with a direct passageway to the rear of the North Wing, where the saunas and gym are located below the servant's quarters. There is plenty of room for her to practise her swordplay.

IT IS NOT BAD. SPESH TELLS ME THERE IS A CYCLOCROSS TRACK BEHIND THE WEST WING. WHOSE IDEA WAS THAT?

"I don't know, Kathy. I think Ravenbait and Charlotte did most of the planning with the architects, but it all seems so hazy now. The last month or so seems a complete blur. I think I've been working too many late shifts."

I AGREE. IT ALL DOES SEEM MOST PECULIAR. SO MUCH CHANGE IN SO LITTLE TIME. STILL, THERE IS MORE TO MAKE. I REALLY MUST DO SOMETHING ABOUT THOSE CURTAINS. THEY ARE QUITE, QUITE UNSUITABLE.

Mrs Pike purses her lips, wondering where she can get some decent curtains at this time of the day and who she can persuade to put them up for her. Of course: Jarvis will know.

"Kathy, are you..." Redshift pauses, frowning. "Are you talking telepathically? Only I noticed that your lips weren't moving just now."

A TOUCH OF LARYNGITIS, REDSHIFT. THERE'S SOME SORT OF BUG GOING AROUND.

"You might want to try covering up a bit more. You'll catch your death dressed like that in this weather."

HILARIOUS.

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Inside the new Clubhouse Zipperhead is showing Hummers around the basement. It is dark down there, but dry - and warm, except in those rooms set up for those whose particular predilections require cold.

"Oh my stars and garters," Hummers says, inspecting one of the rooms. "Are those chains? And a fire extinguisher?"

"You know what this lot are like," Zipperhead says, the expression on his face indicating that he might just know better than most. "We have already had to open an account with various suppliers to get elbow grease and other sundries in wholesale quantities. Besides, some of Madame Vice Chairman's clients have very particular tastes - as you well know, Henry. We do have Fat Ron on the client list now."

"Did you just call me Henry, Wade?"

"No. Did you just call me Wade?"

"I most certainly did not, but I'm sure you did." Hummers scratches his head and then shrugs. "Oh well. Never mind. It's all the same to a flaming arsehole, isn't it dear boy? Shall we see what Madame Vice Chairman has done with the Museum? It is down here, I think. I can't wait to see how she has displayed her collection of Malaysian Fanny Dolls."

<center>* * *</center>

Back where the League began the survivors who chose not to leave, and those who chose to divide their time between their original haunt and the recent competitor, have brought the place back into some semblance of order. The Cakestop is but a shadow of its former self, but the spit and sawdust bar at the back known as "Soapbox" has taken on a life of its own.

Here, then, is where the first glimmers of the coming war are breaking out. Back where it began, in the never-ending clash of human-powered hero against the oil-guzzling might of the petrolhead trolls and their apologist friends. The Cakestop has gone, but the fight continues. And while the League busies itself with its new premises, unaware or uncaring of the way their forces have been split and weakened, ignorant or indifferent to the effects of the old adage "divide and conquer", back on their old stomping grounds the battle rages. Here there is still some protection offered by the remnants of the Triple Goddess's influence. Here the Human Powered Brethren still hold sway, bolstered by the wealth of knowledge and the influx of new, inexperienced but keen cyclists swelling their ranks. Here the warrior heart and soul that once beat strong in the League still pounds against the oppression of car culture. Never giving in. Never surrendering.

Even so, things have changed here. The old debates about Campag and Shimano rumble on like a fire in a Chinese coal field; Beginner's corner is buried under the eternal queries about saddles; and the fixed fraternity find themselves trapped in a never-ending mobius loop of questions about chainlines and Pompino set-up. Yet the old stalwarts are being dragged into inconsequential arguments about ridiculous topics that serve only as an arena for the motorist trolls to capture their attention before turning the discussion into a near cut-and-paste re-hash of the same old complaints and rants about how cyclists are not perfect. As if anyone ever said that they were.

The same old names say the same old things and the same old arguments find their same old way into every single thread. There is an air of stagnation about the place; a musty smell. This is the home of the Cake Stop Bar and Grill, once the finest establishment this side of A-Time. At one time the very earth of this place was hallowed ground, unreachable by anything that was not powered by muscle and cake. Now it seems, although the might of the ABD was not enough to destroy it outright, the paper that covers the cracks has started festering.

Even the impassioned leader of the Brethren himself can see the cracks re-appearing and is consoling himself by offering prosaic support to commuters disheartened by the change in weather and the darkening evenings.

It had been good once. There had been good times. They say that the only constant in life is change: as Cuddy watches the man with more names and faces than a bendy bus has passengers go toe to toe with Linfordlunchbox once more, he reflects that the only change that has happened since the Cake Stop was demolished is that there is no more change. The old place is being stifled by those who will not let it move on. This is not the way to fight the good fight. No battles will be won this way.

He thinks of his last conversation with Ravenbait, the erstwhile High Priestess of the Triple Goddess of Cycling. The Temple lies smashed and ruined now, and the forces of the automobile, led by their Viceroy Jeremy Clarkson and Arch-Chancellor Linfordlunchbox have made this cyclist's haven as much their home as the petrol-fuelled demonic pit that is Pistonheads. How many times now have they induced Clare to ban the multiple man? He might be as much of an annoyance as they are, but he does not try to excuse the killers and the speeders and the selfish.

Ravenbait could not see it, and she is off, doing whatever it is she does, turning her back on those she once called friend, just as so many of the old guard have. It is almost too much to bear.

And yet... and yet. There are those who have not left, and those who have not left completely; and there is something in the air, something in the rustle of the trees and the tiny, barely-noticeable green shoots even now appearing on the wretched and ruined Sheffield plantation that tells him it is not over yet.

Not by a long shot.

Never give up. Never stop trying. As long as we're still fighting, as long as we still care, there's hope. Be strong, old friend.

There is a war coming. He knows that. And maybe, just maybe, there are those whose backs have not turned. Out of sight is not even nearly the same as out of mind.

"Cars are sexy," he murmurs. "Fellate them."

And somewhere in his mind's eye he sees black eyes crinkle in a smirk of appreciation.

"Back to fighting the good fight, then," he sighs. "Whatever you are doing, Priestess, it had better be good. This is becoming tedious."

Tedious yes. But he still cares. And for the moment, perhaps all moments, that is all that matters.

Sam, don't tease me. At least not on so many levels at once...

Very good - apart from the idea of me worrying about curtains. Surely, I'd get someone else to worry about them for me .

I think I'm more worried as to whether I can persuade Berlei to design me an effective Shock Absorber discreet enough to go under my clothing.

Emma Frost worries about curtains.

You wanted to be Emma Frost. I don't think she wears Shock Absorbers.

Anyway. That's #6 done now.

Sam

Can't wait for the sequel:

"Return to the Valley of the Fanny Dolls"

Super.

:)

H

Here's a teaser.

It's a wmv file and takes about 30secs to download on broadband.

Sam

Yipeeee!!!!! Ooops.... too loud.

You wish to bugger me? You'll have to promise to be gentle and use plenty of lube. I wouldn't want my favourite saddle to be unable to recognise my "face"

<center>Chronicles of the League and the Intrepid Sorority
Vol VIII No. 7


Soundtrack:
Dandy Warhols - Welcome To The Monkey House</center>

Good day! Welcome to the much anticipated next episode of our educational adventure periodical for boys and girls of all ages! Things are changing in the world of the League, and in more ways than simply the success of the Feline Menace's "Divide and Conquer" strategy. Can our intrepid band of chums pull through? Can they survive as the very fabric of reality itself is pulled this way and that (thus allowing the plot to mesh seamlessly and bizarrely appropriately with Marvel's recent House of M storyline)? Can the author pull off such an audacious plotline now that most of the League are scattered over three fora and no longer even come visiting the Club? Read on and find out...

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"Why does it have to be so damn complicated?!" Ravenbait gesticulates furiously with one Body Geometry-gloved hand. "Why can't you people just leave well alone and stop creating alternate time lines? Good gods, man! I turn my back for two minutes and you've gone and created another one! The only thing they have in common is that you can bet your ass Jean Grey dies, again, and the bloody school for the bloody gifted will get bloody blown up. Again."

"No need to get your pants all twisted, darlin'," Wolverine replies, shrugging.

"Fer pity's sake, Logan! If I get this wrong we could wind up someplace where you're married to Storm and Xavier's dead. Fat bloody lot of good that would be."

"Then don't get it wrong."

Mumbling to herself, the occasional snatch of invective just about clear, the Priestess calls down her two ravens and fixes them with a crystalline stare. Switching between worlds using A-Time is a complicated business at the best of times, especially where there are so many choices. With the birth of yet another alternative still causing aftershocks, it is riskier than ever.

"So help me, Logan," she mutters through clenched teeth as she tries to hold a clear pattern in her mind. "If we end up somewhere ridiculous, where the Hulk is Defence Secretary and Captain Britain is Prime Minister, I'm going to hunt down whoever is responsible for this new timeline and I'm going to rip his ears off and make him eat them. With a dollop of mint sauce."

"Whatever you say, toots," Wolverine tells her, smiling to himself around his cigar.

"Just... just stand still and keep quiet. Otherwise we could end up in a DC universe. Or worse. I mean, can you imagine being stuck in Stormwatch territory? With our reputations?"

They are standing astride their bicycles at the edge of what appears to be a massive escarpment of purple sandstone, a colour not seen in any Munsell index. Behind them there is a dusty plain that is etched with the curls and crevices of a dried up river bed, as if, at some point, this had been a river valley with a fertile flood plain. They stand on the edge of that plain, looking out into a swirling mass of complicated, striated space; a bruised vista crawling with feather-fine tendrils of differing density. It appears that this chaotic mass of pattern and topography somehow ate one side of the river valley, allowing the waters to fall away.

It is not entirely inaccurate. In fact the waters had boiled away. The Priestess remembers that day. Fish had flown; birds had drowned on the wing. Even the giant clowns had retreated. A-Time is an endlessly shifting space, a world of change and flow, and yet that had been catastrophic. She remembers coming here, afterwards, looking to see what had been left in order to report back to Óðinn. There had been at least one of each of nearly the entire range of A-Time fauna - many more of the more fundamental ones - all dead and steaming gently. It had been as if someone had gathered them all up in order of their place on the food chain and run a core sampler through them. It was the first time she had seen any of the A-Time creatures dead. Normally they are gone instantly, subsumed and recycled like everything else here. Before then she had only known that things died here because death is a change of state, a form of information exchange, and thus must have a place. It had been a shocking sight; and the stench of it, arc-welding overlying rotting rose petals, remains with her to this day.

As a rule she avoids this place, this edge-space where the fabric of A-Time is so unstable. Normally she would have followed Logan to his world, let him lead the way. But the new timeline changes things. The risk of him being pulled into the wrong universe by the aftershocks of whatever calamitous event created this new split are too great.

She is a messenger, a messenger of the gods; an avatar of a trickster spirit whose children carry news each day to the All Father of the Norse pantheon, and whose namesake was decapitated so that his head could give prophecy from the Tower of London.

It's a crummy job. The hours are bad, the risks are high, the pay is non-existent and the boss is incredibly demanding. But it does have its perks, not least of which is that messengers to the gods are given the ability always to find the intended recipient.

She, unlike Logan, might not be able to tell what brand of deodorant a person was wearing a year ago, but if she needs to find someone to complete a ticket, she will find him, even if she has to cross universes to do it.

A silver thread appears in the swirling mass of deep blues, blacks and violets, wriggling like a solitary threadworm in a lavatory bowl. Ravenbait squints at it, her Rudy Projects dangling from the collar of her jersey, and her black eyes capture its reflection. The thread begins to warp and shift, and the reflection does as well, but they are not quite in synch. It is a feedback effect, like pointing a camera at the monitor to which it is supplying an image.

The thread grows in size, thrashing and whipping, becoming brighter and brighter until finally it is almost too bright to look at. The Priestess's eyes blaze with silver light.

She blinks. A crack appears along the length of what is now a tendril as thick as a tree and as long as a bendy bus.

"I hate this bit," grumbles Thought, fluffing his feathers moodily.

"Last time I lost half my feathers," Memory adds. "Took weeks for them all to come back. I looked like a depressed pigeon."

"Well, if you will insist on trying to fly through before I'm good and ready then things like that will happen," says the Priestess, doing a passable impression of the Queen in Blackadder the Second. "Take your positions, boys. We're going through. Ready, Logan?" She holds out one hand towards him.

"You sure that's the right one, girl?" He nods towards the silver ribbon of twisting space, with its ever-widening crack.

"Do I ever ask if you're using the right claws, Logan?" Eyes, their usual black once more, flash with a hint of irritation.

"Only askin'." He grabs her wrist.

The ravens hop to cling to the priestess's shoulders, each one of them bigger than her head. She reaches forwards, arm seeming to extend simultaneously across an unimaginable vastness and hardly any distance at all. Her fingers penetrate the ribbon with a blaze of diffracted light and then suddenly the whole party is sucked through with a soft glup, like a fistful of Swarfega coming free from its pot.

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<center>* * *</center>
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His Most Honourable Club Secretary Spesh drops his jacket on the table and himself into a chair. Jarvis discreetly retrieves the garment to hang in the proper place.

"Coffee, sir? Or something stronger?"

"What's today's roast, Jarvis?"

"We have some Fazenda Cachoeira from Brazil in the grinder at the moment, sir."

"That will do, Jarvis." Spesh puts his feet up, warming his frozen toes at the fire roaring in the hearth. It is cold out there. "They are at it again. Religion. I don't get it."

"Get what?" asks Redshift.

"Why it is that everything seems to be about cars and God these days. What happened to bikes? What happened to us? Where is everyone?"

"I like the peace and quiet," Redshift says.

At that moment AndyGates comes in, looking quite shaken. "I'll have a stiff one, Jarvis, there's a chap."

He suddenly realises what he has just said and has a furtive look round for any sign of Hummers or Zipperhead. Neither is anywhere to be seen.

"What's the matter, Chairman?" Spesh asks, concerned.

"Oh dreadful, dreadful business," is the response, accompanied by a shake of the mutton chop beard. "I heard the most frightful news on the BBC and thought that we had lost Fatters. It was only when I heard them referring to the poor creature as 'she' that I realised my initial assumptions were unfounded." He frowns. "Well, I confess that my first thought was 'when did Fatters have a sex change?'"

"What are you talking about, Chairman?" Spesh is puzzled.

"The whale, man! The whale! Came sightseeing up the Thames, apparently. Died. Gave me a dreadful fright. Dehydration, they say. Probably a dearth of Stella."

"I thought you said it was a whale, not Fatbloke?" Cath Humes inquires patiently.

"Quite so. Quite so. No squid, y'see. Probably for the best. Can't be having with all those Shoggoths." He drifts off into some internal reverie.

Jarvis sets a large malt whisky on the table by the Chairman's elbow.

"I don't like the way this is going," Spesh frowns, deciding it's probably best to leave the Chairman to whatever strangeness is going on inside his head. It might be time to check the use-by date on his dried frog pills. "These are standard warfare tactics: divide and conquer. I haven't seen Madame Vice or Hummers around the Club in weeks, the Archivist is off doing gods know what - probably literally - and can't keep up with what's going on at the Other Place any more anyway, Mr and newly Mrs Provost are out of action... well, they're probably engaged in all sorts of action, but not the sort of action that's of any use to anyone except themselves. There's a Road Safety Bill coming before Parliament soon and yet still all the talk of the Cake Stop is about 'car tax' and God! It's just not right." He stares moodily at the ceiling. "I'm worried that we might be seeing the end of the League, here."

"If I may sir," Jarvis says politely, "that's somewhat pessimistic. This is the off-season. I understand that Madame Archivist is moving from her current abode in a month's time and has a list of things to do before she leaves, including the alleycat she has been threatening to organise for the past year. The League has always been a place for doers rather than talkers. I have no doubt that things will pick up again once the season gets underway."

He sets a pot of coffee on the table near Spesh and pours. Heady, aromatic steam mixes with the scent of burning wood resins coming from the fire.

"I hope you're right, Jarvis. I really do. I also kind of wish things would kick off soon. I could do with some exercise. Wasn't Spen talking about getting a pet troll?"

None of them sees the small tabbycat rubbing itself backwards and forwards against the glass of the window, back arched, tail stiff and straight as a car aerial.

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<center>* * *</center>
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Jaded is also not very happy.

"I'm really not very happy," he says. "It might just be random clustering, but it does seem to me that we've had far too many reports of assaults on cyclists lately."

Pete-661 shrugs. "It's nothing new, not really. Happened to me back in '89."

"Mmmph. I am suspecting something more sinister. Open season on cyclists, that's what I think."

"Maybe God told them to do it?" suggests Cuddy. The others look at him. They cannot decide whether or not he is joking.

"More likely it's the Petrolheads in the Inquisition,"says Tourist Tony. "Did you read that Papal Bull?"

"More like Papal Bullshit," says NickM.

"That too."

Cuddy can feel it. Things are about to start happening. He can sense the first teetering grains that will set the whole thing cascading into a landslide of disaster. On the roads there are already the happy slappers - the ground troops, the front line infantry. Higher up there are the Intelligent Design lawsuits already making their way through the courts. The world is about to hit a tipping point, and it's not just a question of whether the North Atlantic Conveyor is about to shut down.

There is a teaspoon on the table, stained brown with tannin. He stares at it. Slowly it rises into the air and twists into a knot. The time for hanging back, the time for waiting, is over. Whatever the Priestess had in mind, however she planned to deal with this, it is too late. They have endured the attentions of the Petrolhead trolls for long enough - so long, in fact, that even Flying Monkey is losing patience. If Trek Star has to keep changing his name then he's going to run out of names from which to choose.

"Round them up," he says to Heretic. "It's time to bring this to an end. One way or another."

Heretic gestures to Heavymental and McBain and they sidle away, being as quiet as they can. No point alerting the enemy to their intentions just yet.

At last the waiting is over. It's time for action.







Sam

Ominous sounding as ever. All this time for action business. All this goodies are goodies, but some are misguided to the point of being baddies

I think I'll retire to the smoking room for a while

Erm, Jarvis, any chance of a bottle of Lagavulin and a tin or two of pilchards just in case it isn't safe enough to come out for a while?

Cowardice, my dear Archivist, is an art form

I think I put down for the goody, goody side - we are going to win aren't we???