The Famous Mutant Squid of Ankh
“Mr Lipwig, where is the report I had asked you for?”
“Er…” Moist tried, “...a mutant squid ate my homework?”
--
In which Moist von Lipwig suffers the consequences of ADHD, tells a ridiculous lie, and reality has a funny way of lining things up sometimes…
(G Rated, 662 words, HC: Moist has ADHD, Vetinari wears reading glasses
“Mr Lipwig, where is the report I had asked you for?”
“The report?”
“Yes,” Vetinari said. “On the purchasing power and methods of exchange of the Ankh-Morpork dollar.”
Shit. He had completely forgotten about that. Well, he hadn’t forgotten about it. He had known he was meant to do it, had meant to do it, he just… hadn’t gotten round to it. Vetinari was waiting for him to answer, drumming his fingers on the desk in an ominous rhythm.
“Er…” Moist tried, “...a mutant squid ate my homework?”
“Oh really,” he said.
“Uh, yeah…” Moist said for some reason. “It came up out of the river…”
“Did it?” Vetinari asked in an exaggeratedly high-pitched tone of sarcastic cynicism.
He was committed now, the horse was running.
“It did, swear on my life, sir. It had twenty-seven eyes and forty-three legs, sir, it was horrible.”
Vetinari raised an eyebrow and dropped back down into his usual tone. “I see you had time to count them.”
Damn it, he knew the numbers had been a mistake--
“Well… uh… it couldn’t move all that fast with all those legs, sir… it was a bit over-encumbered.”
“And yet it ate your report.”
“It… had a lot of teeth, sir,” Moist said lamely.
Vetinari turned his head and looked at him over the hinge of his reading glasses.
“Teeth?”
“Well, y’know… squid…” he said, running out of steam and fishing desperately for any knowledge of cephlapodean (was that a word?) anatomy, “they’ve got teeth between their legs…”
“I believe the typical feeding apparatus of a squid is referred to as a beak, Mr Lipwig,” Vetinari said, unimpressed.
“Well it was…” this was the stupidest defence in the world, “...beaky.”
The noise Vetinari made was not a sigh, nor was it an exasperated groan, but Moist would have felt a lot better if it had been either.
“I will give you until Thursday to produce a replacement,” he said.
“Next Thursday?” Moist asked hopefully.
Vetinari lowered his eyebrows. “What about next Thursday?”
“Well… today’s Wednesday.”
“Is it?” He turned to Drumknott for confirmation.
They whispered back and forth for a few moments, becoming surprisingly animate. From Moist’s perspective it was impossible to tell who was winning -- or if there was anything to be won in the first place. Vetinari turned back towards him and shrugged.
“You may interpret ‘Thursday’ as you like, Mr Lipwig,” he said, “as long as at least sixteen hundred words makes it to my desk, handwritten and legible.”
The edge to his gaze suggested that there was in fact a wrong solution to this problem, and it was up to Moist to avoid it.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
“In that case, Mr Lipwig, you may go. To my understanding, you have a report to write.”
Drumknott cleared his throat and stepped forward to whisper. Vetinari listened to him.
“Ah, of course. Re-write, I apologise.”
Vetinari watched as Moist closed the door behind him with a mildly sheepish rounding to his shoulders. Drumknott politely waited a minute before making a comment.
“A ‘mutant squid’ indeed, sir,” he said in a low voice.
“Yes…” Vetinari replied, rubbing his forehead. “Make a note of this in his file, will you?”
“Of course, sir.”
***
In the sleepy, after dinner heat of the sunroom, any streams of conversation had run dry and the three people involved each found themselves staring at different walls.
“There’s been some odd looking squid showing up in the river lately,” Vimes said eventually.
“Have there?” Sybil asked distantly, seemingly studying shapes in the shrubbery halfway across the garden.
“Yeah, there was one with sixteen legs picked up the other day.”
“Oh, that’s unusual-- are you all right, dear?” she asked Vetinari, choking on his tea.
“Yes,” he accepted a napkin. “It just went down the wrong way.”
“Oh dear.”
“I’m fine,” he said, clearing his throat. “Mutant squid in the Ankh, you said?”
Vimes shrugged, “You could put it like that.”
“I say…”
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So for awhile now (years really) I've been coming back to the crab tank to find the freshwater bowl mostly untouched but the saltwater one empty
I thought there might have been small leaks like the saltwater is dissolving the bowls into microscopic holes so I switched materials (plastic, metal, cooking safe ceramic, I'm on glass now) but the freshwater bowls were always fine and there was no way I was getting the same bowl as the saltwater bowl every time so what gives...
I finally connected the dots... the crabs ARE bathing!!
I thought this whole time they were avoiding it or splash bathing (Gurkle will dip his legs and claws in and walk away) I've seen Scupa bathe (and SOAK which scared the shit out of me) and Speedy bathe, both by walking THROUGH the bowl or climbing in to dip their shell in
Took me 7 almost 8 years but finally I have an answer. They're not stinky boys after all
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