The Collar Job, Part XV (Tír na Cali/Leverage fanfiction)

This is an ongoing Tír na Cali/Leverage fanfiction crossover.

Table of Contents here


Fade back in from commercial. Lady Anastasia is sitting on the edge of her bed, a corner of a sheet barely covering her; Eliot is propped up on one elbow, watching her.

A knock sounds on the bedroom door. “Lady Anastasia? You have company.”

Ana slides on a shirt, then swoops up Eliot's pants with her toes and tosses them at him. “Who is it?”

“The Lord Lorcan ap Malaney, Baron of Red Bluff, and his guest.” There's a tone to the voice, now, as if the person knocking is quite put out by being asked. Ana sighs.
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Escape From Rochester (Camp Nano July'14 project) Prequel Vignette: Jennifer

Third in a series of stories leading up to my Camp Nano Project - this one features Jennifer and is a practice at finding Raven's First-person voice.

Jennifer made it first to the Thursday Fire this week, which was a first. She'd been coming to my gatherings - and other people's - for almost a year, but this was the first time I'd actually been alone with her.

"I brought bitch beers." She held up the six-packs: Mike's Lemonade and Smirnoff Ice. "And a bunch of stuff."

"Stuff?" I popped open the cooler for the beer, and tried, "You're here early."

"I know." She flopped into a chair to my left and started unpacking a Wegman's bag onto the ground. "But I had to hit the bakery before it closed, so I thought I'd just come here. Hope you don't mind." She glanced over at me, her hair falling into her face and making her look, for once, a little bit vulnerable.

"Not at all." It wasn't a lie, not really, even it it wasn't the whole truth. "Just, ah, surprised me."

"Yeah, I know. I'm not really good at the whole social thing, you know..."

"That's the point, more or less." I gave her a smile, one of the sort that at least mostly feels genuine. "None of us really are."

"You started a social gathering for people who are bad at being social?"

"Well, technically, I started hanging out with Ess and 'Nelle, and 'Nelle collects people..."

"Looks to me like you collect people." She popped open a bottle of the lemonade. "Want one?"

"Sure." I couldn't get drunk that easily, anyway. And Ess and everyone should be here soon... hopefully. "Nah. Anelle collects. I just.. hunh. Coordinate."

I liked that. Coordinate.

A Game, a story for the Giraffe Call

I asked for prompts regarding Variants here for The MicroPrompt Giraffe Call. This is written to Kelkyag's Prompt here.

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Whenever Asata traveled to a new place, she included in her weight allowance a proper set of Chatha pieces. The board was woven cloth, the tokens polymer scrimshaw, and the cards tissue-thin, but she had yet to find a place where it did not pass muster as a Chatha set.

It lived nestled in her always-on bag, next to the first-aid kit, the wrinkle-free change of clothing, the emergency rations, and the treesilk towel-slash-sarong-slash-hijab. And she'd found that, of every item in the little bag, she'd gotten the most use out of the Chatha set.

The game in its core was simple, but nobody - except people like Asata, interstellar anthropological diplomats - played it in its core format. Every town, every colony, every station had their own variation, and every variation told you something about the people playing the game.

In Hosier and Calbranta, none of the pieces were female, and the female cards were replaced - with trees on Hosier and with animals on Calbranta. Landri and Tolmecha did the opposite, replacing male cards with minerals in one case and more females in the other case. Asata's deck had new cards for every variation she encountered, and her notes on the culture began, each time, with at least four games of Chatha.

And now she was landing on a new colony, a Lost Colony that the Federated Empire was only now re-contacting with. They were not first down, but her team would be the second contact the colony had with the greater space-faring humanity.

And it would begin with a game of Chatha. Asata studied the first-down team's notes, and got ready to play.

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Repentance - teaser, a fragment of Boom

This is another teaser, in the same story as this one. The story took a left turn and now it's going to have to be twice as long!


It took less than a half hour for a carriage to ride up to her. The vehicle - you had to call it carriage because horse-drawn pickup truck just sounded wrong - was pulled by two of the biggest horses Cynara had ever seen, and piloted by a lean, grizzled man wielding a shotgun. Cya stopped on the side of the road and made sure he could see her clearly.

Take Me, a ficlet of Unicorn/Factory for the giraffe call

I asked for prompts regarding Variants here for The MicroPrompt Giraffe Call. This is written to Ysabet's Prompt here.

It doesn't properly have an ending, because I could not make it come to an end.

Content warning - suicidal/depressed thoughts and intentions.

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