Search Results for 'annie'

Queens Team and 2121 originated time-travellers

Reginald / Maurana Banana
Cedric / Consuela Winnie
Amar / Terry Bubble
Sadie Merrie
Linda Paul

Supporting team

Pseu, Maria del Mar, Janice (from the City, around 2257)
Sanso (from other dimension, multi-dimensional travel contractor)
Frindle, Trumble, Jingle (fuck knows who they are)
the Hawai’i techromancer

Management team (around 2222 and later)

Irina, mermaid Russian spy and parrot whisperer

Jonbert, the orchestrator of the time-travelling arcs, wanting to retrieve key information from St Germain which were collected in 1757. En route back to 2222 to intercept the whales’ crystal with help from Linda Paul’s team, and his luxury submarine

1757 King’s Versailles

The Queen
Madame de Pompadour
her maid Nicole du Hausset, coming from a line of time-smugglers
Mr Aliette the wigmaker and finger reader
Count de St Germain
Giacomo Casanova (pseudonyms Monsieur de St Galle / Jacques de Seingalt)
Father Balbi, Casanova’s travelling companion
Theater du Soleil actors (Lison Tailleur, Jean Pastisse, Geoffroy du Limon, Francette Fine)
Robert-Francois Damiens, the assassim
Jean-Pierre Duroy, the Grand Intendant, his wife the Pastry Chef Annie
Cook and Helper
ghost of Marguerite Isabeau

The 1757 originated time-travellers

Mirabelle the oldest and bossiest, Adeline the youngest (thief of the first ferret) and Fanetta, the French maids
Igor Popinkin, Boris and Ivan the Russian con-artists and saboteurs hidden with the Russian Ballet troupe visiting Versailles
Huhu the parrot
The Whale ghost, the ghost ship (died/sunk around 1600s) and time-travelling fin whales of 2020s
Belen, the whale
Santa Rosa, the galleon
the ghost obese gardener-captain Peter Pugh Petit Pois, from Peasland

The Spanish farm and fat mermaid dolphins

Lisa, Jack
Pierre and Etienne
The Italian cruise ship
pink Amazonian dolphins

There was a lot of commotion that night.

It all started a little bit before 6 PM, while the winter sun was very pale and slowly rolling behind the horizon. Jean-Pierre Duroy of the Royal Intendancy had the maids rounded up in matching uniforms to finish the cleaning of the Opera House, and ready to start to light the thousands of beeswax candles with almost military precision. This didn’t go without hiccup of course, but they did mostly well, and the Opera House was ready for the comedians before 5:55, leaving them with 5 spare minutes to catch their breath before the eighteen rings of the bell.

Even a little bit before that, Nicole du Hausset who had spent the whole dreaded day in anguish about the Queen’s lost ferrets, while attending to Madame’s every whims, realized after scouring through the Palace and hearing through the grapevine of the maids’ ring of deals in stolen goods that she should slide a word to the Royal Intendant through some unofficial channels (she knew well Helper, who was a great influence on Cook, who then could talk discreetly to Annie Duroy, of the Royal Pastries and Cookies) so an investigation could be carried out without any particular mention of the ferrets. As she would realize later the morrow, not only would the ferrets be retrieved at the Opera House and the Royal Chapel, one for each location, except slightly lighter and cut open, an act that would be seen as a hidden message and possible attempt on the Good Queen’s life, and dealt with appropriately by a specially appointed Inquisitor —but also, and notwithstanding any longwindedness, that it would make little difference as the perpetrators would be nowhere to be found the next day, having vanished, it seemed, in the ensuing confusion (of which we will come to in a minute), stealing in the process the Royal Balloon and a few chouquettes from the Royal Cuisines.
Her duties fulfilled, and being now on the other side of the fateful date of Jan. 5th, 1757, at 17:57 without any significant change to her reality or life, she deducted her mission as the safekeeper of the time-smuggled ferrets was by then accomplished, and she could focus on her more pressing duties.

It was only 5:57 PM shy of a few more seconds, that Madame Pompadour, powdered like there was no tomorrow, would be helped by her two maids into her gorgeous John Pol Goatier designer dress, and her lambswool petticoats. She was dressed to kill, and that made her all the more suspicious in the minutes to come, but we are getting ahead of ourselves.
Madame de Pompadour’s schedule for the soirée was very precise. At 6 PM, she would greet her guests, and the King back from his afternoon at the Parliament at the entrance of the Palace, so they could all head to the Royal Opera, passing through the Chapel into the brightly candelight-lit half-built building where the show would take place.
There was to be a toast first, from fine champagne delivered the morning in zebra carriage (one of the Queens’ daughters idea, which had pleased enough the King that he’d booked them for an evening ride into the Gardens). She was all set, and with great dignity and carefulness, arrived at the spot a mere seconds after her Grace to great the King.

At the same time, Jean-Pierre Duroy, who had not seen them as he’d passed through the Chapel the first time (ungagged but still under sleeping curse and tucked in the corner of the stained glass windows depicting the martyrdom of Christ), and as he was getting anxious at the lack of punctuality of the comedians whom he’d thought sleeping in their trailer parked nearby, was notified that the trailer had been found empty by the bellboy he had sent to remind the comedians to be ready in 10.
A man of great resources, always ready with plans B to Z (he wouldn’t boast, but the zebras being one of such past plan Z, second only to an unlikely belching toad plan, the details of which we won’t get into just now), the Royal Intendant was ready to put in motion said plans, but the comedians suddenly emerged from the Chapel slightly groggy but apparently ready to take over their duties —especially the two ladies, who were bickering with the two men about being the Controllers of the Ascension. Little did all of them know at this moment that the hot air balloon was being highjacked by a team of rogue maids in cahoots with the Russian Ballet props technicians who had arrived some days before the bulk of the Russian troupe trainees.
The Russian ballet dancers were indeed still stuck in the heavy snows somewhere along their trip to Versailles, so the four comedians with their balloon and tricks were technically, already a Plan B.

By then, it was well into 5:59 PM, and the next minute would seem to stretch forever, but for the sake of a patient audience, we will not make it over 10.

In the first half of this fatefulest minute, Casanova had arrived with Father Balbi, his travelling companion, followed by none other than St Germain, all dapper and heavily scented. A score of less important nobilities the names of which we won’t go through were also here.
There were seconds enough in that first half minute, to rub cheeks and say plaisanteries and even utter a few rude witty comments with sweet tongues laced in vinegar, whatever that meant, and also enjoy the sparkling wine served at perfect chilly temperature.
It was only as we entered the second half of this minute that the King arrived, padded in heavy and warm coats and looking exhausted.
Seconds were spent in the same proceedings as above mentioned, if only in a slightly accelerated fashion, and slightly and almost unnoticeably higher pitched voices.

That’s only when the mission bell’s sang Welcome to the Eighteenth’s Hour et ali (for naught), in loud and ringing dongs that the unthinkable happened, living all witnesses traumatized enough that nobody could think of anything to do before the third dong had elapsed.
The King collapsed, a knife in his ribs. The perpetrator was caught by the guards before the end of the last dong.

While the King was rushed to the RER (Royal Emergency Room), and attended to by Royal Leechers and Clyster Masters who felt it was wise to call the Royal Priest seeing that there was little blood to leech, back at the Chapel and Opera House, the maids and Jean-Pierre were in a rush to blow out the candles, as it was obvious their attention was required elsewhere, and that the show would be cancelled.
Everyone would sigh in relief, but not before a few more hours of the drama, when they realized the King’s heavy padding had saved his life, and that the gapping wound everyone was dreading was no more than a pen’s prick. This would encourage Annie to admonish her children when they wouldn’t eat more of her delightful pastries.

Meanwhile, using one of the last candles, the maids and their Russian lovers had lit the tub of lard of the hot air balloon, which rose slowly in the night sky, out of sight when most of the attention was directed towards the King’s fate hanging on a thread.

The four actors where vaguely wondering if they were still dreaming when they saw the carriage of thousands of tinsy frogs croaking through a portal, with brightly coloured dressed lady-men inside, and driven by an unkempt man with a wild gaze and an air of sheer insanity.

Of course, by then, they knew better than to discard it as a mere dream.

Jean-Pierre Duroy, the Grand Intendant of the Palace of Versailles woke up every morning an hour before dawn, when everything was still calm, the last fêteurs of the guest nobility were, at last, fast asleep and the stars’ lights were beginning to fade on the dark sky. The Palace was never sleeping really, but this was as close a moment of peace as he could get.
His wife Annie, the Head of the Royal Pastries Chefs, would usually sleep contentedly an hour more, waiting for the chantecler’s sonorous hail to the rising sun.

When he realized he had overslept for the first time in many years of services, he knew there was something not quite right about this particular day.
As usual, and especially during winter, there was much to be done. Preparing the routine menus for the noble tables, getting his army of little people bustling around to stock the fires with wood for the cold-fearing ladies, clean up, wash clothes, drapes and the darn mirrors. Receive the fresh foods from the local markets, clean up the latrines, which tended to get clogged with the dreaded cold… When that was done, he had to make sure the servants were doing their job properly, not abusing the generosity of His Majesty, taking good care of the Gardens, which was an horror when the snow started to melt, ensuring the guards reported to their duties, etc. etc.
And after all that, no matter what, do a meticulous accounting in the Royal Ledger.
Jean-Pierre was but a cog in that enormous machine, but a cog which could make a vital difference between a day gone right, and a day gone awfully wrong.

He had to turn that day around quickly lest it would be the latter, he thought while putting his white starched breaches. A last look at his wife who was starting to move her weight around and yawn, and he was out.

“Annie Pooh, I would be the last on Oorth to point typos back at you… I thought you had even a word for them? What was that already?… Cloohs?”

Even in Noozooland, Godfrey had a hard time getting rid of his Brootish accent. But he suspected Anne was taking a string liking to it. (“is that a clooh?” he wondered aloud to himself)

“Not to worry Annie Pooh”, after years had passed, Godfrey was still biting his lip refraining not to call his new fledgling author ‘Elizabeth’ or ‘Lizzie Pooh’ as she was affectionately known… “You may think it is a tad quaint, but I start to suspect our dear cleaning lady Franlise to be working hard in her eight hour shift to make things fit, odd as it may seem.”
“Now, if you will excuse me, I have a peanut factory to run”.

In another probability, Becky was in fact sterile, and was glad to hear her friend Tina propose her to be a surrogate mother to give her the joy to have little rugrats err… children… [¹]

With a few embryos implanted to make sure one would grow, it came as a surprise that all of them did in fact became healthy babies…

Good thing Sean and her could afford a few surrogate nannies too… had thought probable Becky when she’d heard the news.

[¹] This was in fact a cluster of probabilities, in which forks equally disastrous had her in turn

• adopt a baby, but an administrative mishap has her end up, again, with a dozen of them
• get custody of long-lost family member’s children that her lovely maternal heart couldn’t bear to leave to the social services
• finding a few babies brought by mischievous storks at her doorstep
• ad libitum