Both these fics are still in their infancy... If anyone would like to preread
them or give some constructive criticism, feel free to oblige.
James
-- Attached file included as plaintext by Listar --
-- File: shtblk1.txt
Shooting Blanks Part 1
by James Chu
http://jchu.simplenet.com
A Gunsmith Cat's / Columbo crossover fanfic inspired by a
spamfic that Bill Morse posted a long time ago.
Gunsmith Cat's and all related characters are property of
Kenichi Sonada. Lt. Columbo and related characters are the
property of William Link and Richard Levinson.
***
A man with a leather jacket, checkered hat and dark pants
with a stripe down the side knocks on the door of an
apartment building. He turns his head away as the occupant
of the apartment stares through the peephole. The door
opens to reveal a dark haired woman in her early thirties.
The woman gestures for the man to come on in. He sits down
at a brightly decorated table. After the woman offers the
man a cup of coffee, she opens the refrigerator and takes
out a carton of milk for the man. The man opens up his
jacket revealing a pistol. The woman's eyes register surprise
as the man empties the pistol into her torso. The woman flails
around for a few moments, knocking the man's cup of coffee and
the carton of milk over. After waiting for a few moments, the
assailant strolls over the woman's corpse, avoiding the mixing
blood and milk on the floor. He closes the refrigerator and
walks out of the apartment.
---
Rally Vincent and May Hopkins were walking out of the Police
Station with smiles on their faces and a check in Rally's
pocket. It was pay day.
"How are you doing, girls?" Roy Coleman called up from his
sitting position on the stone steps.
Rally turned around, "Hey Roy, your car break down again?
We can give you a lift."
"Oh, well, I'm waiting for an old friend of mine. He's
coming in from LA for some business."
"Oh ho, I always wondered what kind of buddies you hang out
with."
Roy smirked, "Well, he just happens to be the best damned
detective that I have ever had the honor of working with.
He's just, uh, a bit on the shabby side. Ah. Here he comes
now."
The sound of a horribly overstressed car drifted around the
corner of the police station. Roy's face seemed to take on
the pensive quality of a person listening to an opera.
Finally the rattling car made its way around the bend, under
the El tracks and into the station parking lot.
If there was a car that had seen it all, this car was it.
It was beyond dilapidated. Its paint was peeling off, a
windshield wiper was missing, the front bumper had seen one
too many accidents, the lights were grime encrusted, the
tires were balding and the upholstery was threadbare and
held together with duct tape. The car pulled up to the curb
in front of them.
Rally attempted to consider whether she should laugh or cry
at the condition of the vehicle, but settled on covering her
mouth. She felt a sudden urge to kick a tire just to see if
the thing would fall apart on the spot.
"What a piece of crap! Rally, what the hell is that thing?"
Minnie observed, tactfully.
The driver of the vehicle seemed to be an extension of its
disheveled condition. His slightly grayed hair seemed to be
in a state of confusion, his jacket was rumpled and had
trophies of morning coffee and past lunches stained
throughout. He had a shirt and tie that were so wrinkled
that they could have made most grown dry cleaners cry out in
despair.
"She's a beaut, isn't she? She's lasted me a good forty
years." The man spoke without a trace of irony and a good
streak of pride. He ambled up to Roy, who stepped off the
curb and shook his hand vigorously.
Roy gave a broad smile as he turned toward Rally and Minnie,
"Meet Lt. Columbo, ladies. The pride of the LAPD Homicide
division."
Columbo gave Roy a sidelong glance and then offered a hand
to the two girls, "I'm a detective."
Rally looked at May for a second before grabbing the
Lieutenant's hand, "Hi, I'm Rally and that's May."
"You can call me Minnie." Minnie beamed at Columbo as she
shook his hand.
Roy suggested, "Well, let's get some lunch. Do you ladies
want to join?"
---
Columbo, the two ladies and Roy were at a deli, munching on
corned beef sandwiches -- the kind that have really thinly
shaved beef topped with horseradish sauce and mustard on top
of dark rye bread.
"Mmmm. I can't get sandwiches like this back home," mumbled
Columbo through a mouthful of corned beef. "So, what do you
two do for a living, eh?"
"Oh. We run a gun shop. We also catch bail jumpers in our
spare time," Rally replied, while wiping a spot of mustard
off her chin.
Columbo raised an eyebrow, "Aren't you awfully young to be
running a gun shop, ladies?"
"Well." Rally looked at Minnie for a second.
"They've got special dispensation. They did some fine work
for the police department, so we let them stay open," Roy
interjected as he walked to the table, carrying a tray of
coffee.
*Bzzzzzt*
Roy looked down at his side, "Whoops, that's my beeper.
I'll be right back."
"So, how did you meet Roy, Mr. Columbo?" asked Minnie.
"It was about --let's see-- fifteen years ago? I was
assigned on a cooperative LAPD and CPD crime task force
alongside a headstrong guy."
"Roy, right?" Minnie interjected.
"My wife kept on telling me that he was never gonna grow
up." Columbo reminisced.
Roy rushed from the back of the deli, "I gotta get a ride.
Duty is calling."
"Okay. Let me finish this last bite and then we'll get
rolling," said Columbo, as he polished off his sandwich.
Roy put down some cash on the tabletop, "We'll see you
ladies later."
"No way. We're coming along," Rally said evenly as she
glared at Roy.
"Let the ladies come along with us, Coleman. It can't hurt,
can it?"
Roy chuckled as he dragged his duster off the back of his
chair and put it on, "I guess not. Let's go."
---
"Eeeeew." May wrinkled up her nose at the nauseating stench
wafting out of the apartment.
"See, ladies. This is why Coleman told you two to stay
behind. Our job usually stinks. Heh heh," Columbo paused
to lift the sheet as a stretcher with a corpse was wheeled
by. He sniffed the air a bit. "Hmm. Couldn't have been
dead that long. Doesn't smell like decay."
"What?! How in the world can you tell that? It smells like
utter crap here!" Rally sputtered while holding her
nose.
Columbo walked further into the apartment.
"Take a deep smell. It doesn't smell like rotten meat. Just
dried blood and coffee. This had to happen this morning. I'm
gonna take a closer look, girls. You two, just stay outside of
the crime scene ," Columbo made shooing motions at the two
girls as he made his way around the police photographer.
"'Scuse me, sir.
"Who the hell are you, buddy?" asked the photographer, as he
moved aside.
Roy poked his head in the doorway, "Don't worry Bob. He's
working for us."
"Okay, Roy. Go ahead, um..." trailed off the photographer.
"Columbo. I'm a Lieutenant with the LAPD. I'm doing a bit of
consulting for your folks," nodded Columbo as he peered about
the kitchen carefully. "Hmm. Something's a bit odd about this
stuff. It kinda smells rotten or weird, don'tcha
think?"
Columbo reached in to his jacket pocket and withdrew a
disposable tissue. He dabbed it in the milk spilled on the
floor and then walked over to the doorframe and let the girls
take a look.
Minnie took a sniff, "Oh. It's just soy milk. She must be
a vegetarian or something."
"My wife tried to get me to drink that stuff years ago. She
was trying to slim down and wanted me to stop eating
unhealthy foods and stop smoking. It disagreed with me, so
I replaced it with grade A, whole milk." Columbo picked up
a carton of milk gingerly with his vinyl gloved hands.
"So, who died here, Coleman?"
Roy came back inside the room, rubbing his hands up and down the
sides of his temples.
"I don't know. There was no ID on the body and the neighbors
never talked to her. We're tracking down the building super
right now."
Columbo, turned his head, cupped his hand on his forehead, and
peered out the window into the afternoon sun. He then turned
out toward the girls.
"Well, ladies. I'm going to take a short walk to clear my head
a bit. Do you two want to come along?"
---
Work in progress
-- Attached file included as plaintext by Listar --
-- File: More Human Than Human.txt
More Human Than Human
Part 1
by JJC
---
Oh! My Goddess! is property of Kosuke Fujishima. This work is a piece
of fiction intended for personal use. No commercial use of this piece
is intended or allowed.
---
Belldandy hummed a nice little song to herself as she folded
freshly washed linen. It was mindnumbingly boring work, something that
most mortals -- and quite a few dieties -- would have found
distasteful. It didn't bother her too much, though.
Keiichi had attempted to do the laundry a few times -- he had
wanted to do his fair share of work. Unfortunately, his attempts at
washing clothing had turned all his underwear pink. Urd also tried to
help a couple times, but she only ended up creating an extremely messy
situation -- all the clothes in a six kilometer radius of the temple
attempted to fold themselves regardless of whether they were being worn
by people at the time. Skuld made an automatic washing machine that
worked just fine, except for a few little details -- it tended to blow
out the entire city power grid from time to time.
*There! All done.*
In retrospect, it wasn't that much work after all. If it was a
really heavy load, there was always the option of just magically
cleaning the clothes.
Belldandy smiled to herself ruefully.
*Just because you can do it, it doesn't mean that you _should_ do it
all the time, 'neechan.*
She had told Urd that time and time again. Urd never listened to her
on that point. Come to think about it, lots of people never took her
seriously. She carefully maintained a facade of unearthly serenity in
an attempt to balance Keiichi's near constant exposure to the arcane
and esoteric that life with goddesses brought about. She knew the
heavy price that many a mortal had to pay for living with gods.
Sometimes Belldandy wanted to scream out at the world in frustration.
Oh, Kami-sama! There was only so much that one could take!
Keiichi was out at work -- probably doing some ridiculously hard job
that gave little pay. Something that he "got" from the motor club
grapeline. Oh, Keiichi. This was the man that utterly defined humble.
*She loved him. He was too trusting, too kind, too... too... timid...
Wait a second.*
Belldandy blinked for a second.
*Maybe that's why our relationship hasn't gone anywhere! Someone has
to take the aggressive stance. She had to talk to someone about her
situation.*
---
She hesitated before knocking on Skuld's door. When she heard no
definite answer she decided to open up the door carefully.
Belldandy peered around the door frame, "Ano... Skuld-chan... What are
you up to?"
The young goddess sat in front of her desk, bashing her head into the
keyboard. A mess of cardboard and cellophane sat upon Skuld's rumpled
futon in the carton -- "Windows 2000:Server Edition".
"Skuld-chan," scolded Belldandy firmly, but gently, "What did I say
about installing software?"
"Arrrrrgh! I know! I know! Don't install completely new packages on
production systems. Do it on a test system!," wailed Skuld, "'Nee-
chan! I'm sorry! I couldn't resist!"
Belldandy wrapped her left hand around the door's edge and pivoted
herself into Skuld's room. She put her right hand into the mess of
cables, breadboards and other electronic detritus. She drew her hand
back with a small black rectangular object held between the tips of the
index and the thumb. Her eyes crinkled up at the corners and her lips
stretched wide as she threw a mischievous grin at Skuld.
Skuld looked up slowly, tears smearing her rounded face. Skuld blinked
away the remaining tears and stared at the object in her sister's
hands, a joyful expression spreading across her face.
"You made a backup??!!! Oh, Onee-sama! You're the best!" cried out
Skuld.
Skuld hopped off her chair and smothered Belldandy in a massive hug.
"It's all right, Skuld. I made this backup disk image last night when
you were out at the software store. It wasn't too hard to guess what
you were going to do."
Skuld looked up at Belldandy. It wasn't fair! She knew this was gonna
happen??!! She quickly mentally revised her view of her big sister.
Belldandy was sugar and spice, but today, she had a hint of Tabasco
hiding behind those gentle eyes.
"Skuld. I wanted to talk to you about something," Belldandy breathed
softly into Skuld's ear as she patted Skuld's back.
Skuld suddenly loosened her grip on Belldandy and scooted back a few
steps.
"You know about Urd's bike? Oh man! I'm sorry! I didn't mean to take
the brake assembly off!," panicked Skuld, "Well, not all the way..."
Belldandy chuckled. Her light peals of laughter softly echoed off the
paper and wood walls of the room.
"Oh, Skuld! It doesn't have to do with that. I have some personal
things to discuss, and I think you should have some input. Besides,
Urd needs to learn some humility sometime..."
"Okay 'nee-chan. Whatcha want to talk about then?"
Skuld sat down on her futon, tossing the trash over to a large trash
can in the other corner of the room. She patted the futon with her
right hand, motioning Belldandy to sit down with her other hand.
Belldandy came into the room and sank onto the futon. Skuld wrapped
her arms around Belldandy's left arm and rested her head on Belldandy's
shoulder.
"Well, it's about me and Keiichi..."
"Hmph! He better be keeping his hands off you, Belldandy! I don't
want his grubby fingers all over you."
"Skuld, that's not such a nice thing to say about Keiichi!" admonished
Belldandy. "Besides, that's what I want to talk to you about."
"Huh?"
"Well, um. has it ever occurred to you that I want Keiichi to have his
'grubby fingers' on me?", asked Belldandy as she looked at Skuld out of
the corner of her eye.
Skuld looked at Belldandy with a shocked expression on her face.
"Waah! It's just that boys are so _icky_!"
---
to be continued...