Disclaimer: the characters of Methos, Cassandra, and MacLeod belong to Rysher, Panzer/Davis, the characters of Spock, Mr. Scott, Crewman #6, and the Captain belong to Gene Rodenberry and Star Trek. I have no claim on them, have just borrowed them for this little warped jaunt
Rated PG for a few curse words and one bare breast

The Old Man, The Witch and The Elf
(aka Tolkien Was A Rotten Bastard)

by kyrdwynCDC

He hated transporters. As far as he was concerned, whoever had come up with the idea of breaking a person down into molecules, sending those molecules whizzing through the atmosphere, and then rearranging them again at a far distant location, well, they had to be a few molecules short themselves.

He checked himself when it was done, eyes traveling up his blue jean clad legs, shoulders rolling under oversized sweater, hand feeling tentatively at his neck, just in case. He wondered, if the machine messed up and reassembled him without a head, if it would count as a beheading. Probably. At least, if it ever happened, he wouldn’t be around to see the mess that would result from a Quickening happening in the transporter room. He was pretty sure it wouldn’t be a *good* thing.

His backpack had materialized next to him and he reached down to pick it up, slinging it over his shoulder, grimacing when he felt something wet seeping through the nylon. He frowned, muttering curses in several different ancient languages when he realized that *he* may have come through intact, but his beer hadn’t. Trust the damned machine to materialize the liquid on the *outside* of the bottles instead of the inside. Then again, maybe one had broken and the rest would still be salvageable. There was no way in hell he was going to drink that artificial crap the replicators doled out. He’d rather put up with MacLeod and one of his “moral dilemmas” first.

The door to the transporter room slid open as he stepped off the platform, the shooshing noise startling him. The man? who walked into the room startled him even more and he just stood there, staring at something he had heard of but never seen in all of his 5500 years.

“Greetings, my name is Spock. Welcome to the Enterprise.”

“Uh, thanks. My name is...Methos.” He had almost forgotten his name, his attention arrested by Spock’s very noticeable, very pointy ears. So, he thought, elves really *do* exist.

Spock seemed to have finally gotten tired of being stared at and he lifted one fine black brow in inquiry. “Is something wrong?”

“You’re an elf, right?”

Methos thought he glimpsed something in the elf’s eyes, a bit of annoyance maybe, hastily subdued, and the elf just shook his head, the single eyebrow still uplifted.

“No,” Spock said, his voice neutral. “Elves are a figment of fantasy. I” and there was a subtle stress on the pronoun, “am a Vulcan.”

“Uhm, hmm, right, and I’m five thousand years old,” Methos replied sarcastically.

Spock’s eyebrow dropped. “Highly illogical. Now, then, you are here with the new specifications for the warp drive, correct?” Spock looked him up and down, taking in the casual dress that looked so out of place next to Spock’s crisp starship uniform. His glance seemed to say that he thought it was highly illogical for Methos to know anything about a warp drive either.

“That’s right.”

Spock nodded. “Follow me then and I’ll take you to Mr. Scott in engineering.” He made for the door, waited as it shooshed open, then stepped through it, lingering on the other side for Methos to follow.

Methos stopped at the door. Another little invention that he loathed, the motion detecting sliding door. One day, he was going to get cut in half by one, he just knew it, the odds on it, for as long as he had been around, were getting smaller every day. Once again he contemplated whether a complete accident would count as a beheading, although technically if he got cut in half he would still have his head, but still, it d

idn’t sound all that pleasant. “Something the matter?” Spock asked, trying not to look impatient.

“Just a bloody minute, Elf, or are you in some kind of hurry?”

The eyebrow raised again, higher this time if that were humanly, or inhumanly, possible. “No, *Old Man*, I am not, but Mr. Scott is waiting in abject anticipation for those new specs, and I have found it the better part of discretion not to piss off the man who makes the ship go.” Briefly, it looked as though Spock was warring with himself and for a moment he looked completely human. His lips moved silently as though in an argument, then he gave Methos a glare, and all the human resemblance dissolved back into the calm demeanor.

Methos sighed and stepped quickly through the doorway, flinching as it shooshed shut behind him. The elf turned his back on him and strode down the corridor, leaving it up to Methos to follow. Methos shrugged and hurried after him, reaching absently over his shoulder to fumble in his backpack for a beer, smiling in relief when he discovered that most of the bottles were intact, their contents still inside, then yelping in pain when his questing hand discovered the broken one. He brought his cut finger to his mouth, sucking absently at the blood, then watched as the cut healed. He pulled a beer out of the pack, a bit more carefully this time, twisting the cap off and giving it a practiced fling in Spock’s general direction. The elf stopped in his tracks as it hit him in the back, looked down at the cap as it rolled to a stop on the floor, then turned to give Methos that *look* again. Methos was sure that eyebrow was going to become permanently stuck in that position if he were around Spock much longer and he made a mental note to ditch the elf as soon as possible.

They continued on down the hallway, Methos swigging drinks of his beer and wondering what the hell all those crazy little lights were for. No labels on them, no buttons near them, just crazy little lights here and there, orange and red and yellow and white. Permanent Christmas decorations. They passed another crewmember in the hall, who nodded pleasantly as they went by.

“Mr. Spock,” the crewmember acknowledged, inclining his head.

“Crewman #6,” Spock returned, then kept going.

Methos turned to watch Crewman #6 disappear around a bend, then sped up to walk beside Spock.

“Isn’t that kind of impersonal,” Methos asked, “giving the crew numbers instead of names?”

Spock glanced sideways at him. “Oh, a lot of the crew have names. But don’t worry, he won’t be around that long anyway.”

Methos fell silent, wondering what poor Crewman #6 had done to warrant being done away with. Oh, well, not his call. There was probably a Crewman #7 waiting in the wings to take his place.

As they came to a halt in front of the door to engineering, Methos felt that particular itch at the base of his skull, the buzz of another Immortal nearby. He was instantly on alert, glad that the engineering door had to be keyed open instead of shooshing open on its own. He wondered briefly if anyone on the ship had ever gotten bored enough to walk back and forth in front of one of those doors, just to see how many times it would open and close before it shorted out, then pushed the moronic image from his mind as the engineering door whooshed open and he followed Spock into the Engineering room, the other Immortal’s buzz becoming distinctly stronger.

There were several people in the room, all of them engaged in some important task or other, but immediately two of them detached themselves from the rest and came to greet Methos and the elf at the door. One was a dark haired man of medium height and build, the other was a tall woman with red-brown hair, who glared furiously at him over the man’s shoulder. The buzz was coming from *her*.

“Aye, and ye must be Mr. Methos with the specs fer the warp drive,” the dark haired man said by way of greeting, his brogue thick.

Oh, gods, Methos thought, *another* Scot.

“Yes, Mr. Scott,” he said, pulling a clear disc from his jeans pocket and handing it to the man. Of course, Mr. Scott, he should have guessed from the name.

Mr. Scott took the specs gingerly, staring at the disc almost reverently. By this point, it had become too much for the woman to keep quiet and she pointed an impious finger at Methos, her whole body shaking with anger.

“You!” she cried, stepping around Mr. Scott, and pulling a sword from somewhere in *katana space* as there was certainly nowhere to conceal one in the skintight starship jumper she wore.

Methos finished his beer off in one last hasty gulp, negligently throwing the bottle sideways across the room, where it shattered against something, causing several people to yelp in surprise and an alarm to start beeping annoyingly. He drew his own sword from *katana space*, having left his duster with the rest of his luggage, and leveled it at the woman.

“Hello, Cassandra. Long time, no see.”

It was at this point that the elf decided to step between them, *both* eyebrows raised this time. He eyed the swords speculatively. “Methos, Lieutenant Cassandra, I take it the two of you *know* each other?”

Cassandra took a step back, bumping into Mr. Scott and knocking the disc out of his hand. He dove after it as it skittered across floor, but it was too late. It slid into the warp generator and vaporized with a small flash and a sizzle, leaving Mr. Scott to sit in open-mouthed shock at the loss of his precious specs.

“That murdering bastard killed my people!” Cassandra screamed, waving her sword around dramatically. Spock ducked out of the way in time to avoid having one of his ears cropped and muttered something in a strange language that sounded distinctly like a curse to Methos.

Methos was a little more considerate of the spectators and waited for Spock to move a safe distance away before he gave his sword a practiced twirl, then on impulse did a quick horizontal slash, diagonal slash, lower horizontal slash.

“I don’t want to kill you again, Cassandra. Just walk away now and let it be.”

Spock’s ears perked up at that remark, if they could get any perkier. “Again?” he asked, both eyebrows in the upright position. “When, may I ask, was the *last* time you killed her? And where did those swords come from?”

Methos never took his eyes off Cassandra as he answered Spock. “The last time was, what, about three thousand years ago?”

Cassandra shook her head. “No, about five hundred years ago, when you threw me off that bridge.”

Methos looked affronted. “Nuh, uh! You were still breathing when I dropped you.”

She snorted, gesturing with her sword. “Have you ever tried to swim in a heavy coat and heels? Doesn’t work too well, so you can add drowning me to your list.”

“Three thousand years? Five hundred years?” If Spock’s eyebrows got any higher they would join his hairline. “Highly illogical.”

“Highly illogical? Highly illogical?” Methos pointed the sword at Spock. “Being alive for over five thousand years doesn’t seem any more highly illogical to me than, oh, say, a bloody elf on a spaceship!”

“I am *not* an elf!”

Methos just rolled his eyes.

Cassandra looked at Spock, her pretty brow furrowed in confusion. “You’re not?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Positive?”

Spock’s calm manner was quickly eroding away. He turned toward Methos and said, “You can kill her again now.”

“But I don’t *want* to kill her,” Methos told him. “Besides, even if I did, I’m just not too sure about the effects of lightning on dilithium crystals. I’m sure it can’t be good and I would *really* rather not find out.”

“Please explain that remark.”

Methos glanced at Cassandra, who just gave him an exasperated here we go again look and leaned on her sword.

“Cassandra and I are Immortals. We can’t die. There are quite a few of us out there, but near as we can figure she and I are the oldest. I’m around five thousand five hundred, and she’s around three--ow, hey, why’d you hit me with that?” Methos glared at Cassandra, who’d thrown her communicator at him.

“It’s not considered polite to mention a lady’s age, Methos.”

“Who said anything about you being a lady?”

She gave him a look that said he was going to seriously regret that remark later.

“Anyway, the only way we can permanently die is to get our heads cut off. So the basic gist is that that’s what we do, run around cutting each other’s heads off, until there’s only one of us left, at which point I guess we win the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes. So far, hasn’t happened.”

Spock was clearly not buying it. “And the bit about the lightning? As well as the fact that you never answered me about where those swords materialized from.”

“As to the swords...” Methos glanced over to Cassandra, who shook her head.

“Trade secret,” they said in unison.

“As for the lightning,” Methos continued, “when one of us gets our head chopped off, something called a Quickening happens, where we absorb the dead Immortal’s power. It’s accompanied by lightning and explosions, just to up the dramatic effect, but hey, it’s pretty cool.”

“I see,” Spock said, although Methos wasn’t sure if he really *did* see.

Cassandra tapped her sword against the floor. “Well, I for one, don’t really give a crap about the effects of lightning on dilithium crystals. I would really rather see the effects of my sword on your neck, you blue faced bastard!” With that, she lunged for him, bringing her sword around in what would have been a deadly arc if Methos had been standing five feet further to the left. She screamed in rage and swung at him again, but she was cut short as a burst of bright light came from Spock’s direction, hitting her square in the chest and sending her flying backwards, her sword clattering to the floor. Methos was vaguely aware of shouting from the other people in the room, but his attention was focused on Spock, who now held a phazer in his hand.

Spock’s eyebrows had returned to their natural positions and he shrugged slightly at Methos inquiring look. “Illogical as your story may be, I have no great desire to see the effects of lightning on dilithium crystals either.”

Methos just nodded at the elf, then both of them turned at the sound of Cassandra’s groan, watching as the woman stood up and fingered the burn hole in the front of her jumper.

“Damn, that’s irritating,” she muttered angrily, then bent down to retrieve her sword.

Spock held his phazer up, inspecting it. “I wish the Captain would quit setting this blasted thing to Stun whenever my back is turned.”

“It wasn’t on Stun, you stupid elf!” Cassandra exclaimed. “I’ve got the hole in my suit to prove it.” She gestured toward her chest. Methos and Spock just stared, impressed.

“What?” She looked down. “Oh, good gods, I hate it when that happens.” Gingerly, she stuffed her breast back through the hole, then plumped and adjusted until she was sure they wouldn’t fall out again. Methos and Spock were still recovering from the amazing sight and she took the advantage to leap forward, pressing the blade of her sword against Methos’ throat.

“Well, hell,” she said, grinning maniacally, “if I had known it would make things easier, I’d have done that trick a lot sooner.”

The cold metal lying across his neck snapped Methos out of his momentary shock and he winced, turning his head away.

“Don’t do this, Cassandra. Do you want to be responsible for the deaths of everyone on board when this ship crashes?” Methos’ tone was pleading, but he wondered if she was too hyped on the idea of finally getting to kill him to hear him.

“You, Methos, Death on a Horse, are concerned for the lives of the people on this ship? Oh, spare me!” She laughed at him and he thought, oh yeah, she’s gone, totally nuts.

He was just about to deliver one of his infamous scathing retorts when Spock loomed up behind her and gripped the side of her neck with his fingers. She stiffened, her sword dropping from her hands, then her eyes closed and she sank to the floor in a boneless heap.

Methos rubbed at his neck, giving Spock an approving look. “Thanks.”

Spock gave him a half smile. “You know, Tolkien was a rotten bastard.”

Methos laughed. “I still say you’re an elf.”

The eyebrows disappeared completely into the hair this time. “*I* *am* *not* *an* *elf*!” He gave Methos as much of a scowl as he could, then whirled around to where Mr. Scott and the other engineering crew were frantically trying to do something with the warp generator. “What the hell is that friggin’ noise?”

The crew went silent, their mouths all agape at Spock’s outburst, only the shrill beeping filling the room.

“Mr. Spock!” Mr. Scott exclaimed, his expression showing approval. “Welcome to the human race.”

“I am not an elf!” Spock yelled, probably loud enough to be heard clear to the bridge.

“Of course not,” Mr. Scott replied soothingly, “you’re a Vulcan.”

Spock whirled on Methos, his eyes wide, eyebrows totally gone, pointing an imperious finger at Mr. Scott and stamping one foot. His expression clearly said, Hah, so there!

Methos shrugged. “Okay, so I was wrong. Sue me.”

Mr. Scott cleared his throat. “Gentlemen, I hate ta bring this up, but we hafta abandon the ship. Somehow, pieces of glass got in the warp generator,” he fixed Methos with a penetrating glare, “and it’s overloading. We’ve got about ten minutes before she explodes.”

“Well, so much for saving the ship from a Quickening,” Methos commented, earning reproachful looks from both Spock and Mr. Scott. “What?”

“Broadcast the abandon ship message, Mr. Scott, then get yourself and your crew to the lifeboats.” Spock headed for the door. “I’ve got to go explain all this to the Captain.” He stepped over Cassandra, then disappeared through the door and down the hall.

Cassandra had finally started to stir by then and she sat up, wrinkling her brow at the grating alarm. “What’s going on, Methos? Oh, gods, the warp generator is going to explode, isn’t it? I knew I’d heard that alarm before somewhere.” Methos gave her a funny look. “Don’t ask.”

“We have to get to the lifeboats,” Methos yelled to her as he sprinted past her and out of the engineering room. He could hear her following him, and then she passed him, turning down another corridor.

“This way!” she cried.

They arrived at the lifeboats a few minutes later, seemingly the only people left on the ship, until a gaggle of screaming crewmembers, led by Mr. Scott, came flying past them, piling into one of the two remaining lifeboats, closing the airlock and jettisoning away. That left one lifeboat, and the two of them.

“Ah, shit,” they said in unison. They looked at each other, shrugged, but as they started to enter it they heard a voice behind them.

“Wait! One more!“ Spock came running up the hall, skidding to a stop next to them.

“Where’s the Captain?“ Cassandra asked, looking back down the hallway.

Spock shook his head. “He thought the logical thing to do was to go down with the ship. *I*, on the other hand, though that was highly--“

“Illogical?“ Methos put in.

Spock snorted. “No. Highly stupid.“ He slipped past them into the lifeboat, then waited for them to get in before he launched it.

After five minutes of sitting as far away from each other as possible, trying not to look at each other, they saw a brilliant flash out the lifeboat window. All three crowded to the window, bumping heads, to watch the Enterprise explode into millions of tiny pieces.

“Cool!” they all said in unison.

When they realized how cozy they were to each other, all three swore and retreated to their own sides of the boat.

“Well, at least our swords were on the ship, so we don’t have to worry about that temptation,” Methos said, trying to initiate conversation.

“You forget,” Cassandra replied, “no matter where we leave them, they always return to *katana space*. Check, I bet it’s there.”

Methos checked, ignoring Spock’s curious gaze, and sure enough, there was his sword. “Well, I don’t fancy spending the next however long in this thing stuck with just *him*, do you?”

“Not really, no. Or with a rotting body, either.”

Methos wrinkled his prodigious nose. “Ewwwww.” He gave her a smile, leaning across the boat to extend a hand. “So, what do you say, truce?”

Cassandra thought a moment, then sighed, gripping his proffered hand. “As long as you don’t sing.”

“Agreed.” He suddenly remembered his backpack, still slung over one shoulder. “Hey, I’ve got beer.”

She grinned. “Well, at least you’re good for something.” Methos laughed, tossing a bottle her direction, a bottle at Spock, then opening one for himself.

Spock twisted the cap off his beer, sniffed it experimentally, then took a long pull. He gave Methos and Cassandra a pained look as two bottle caps struck him in the chest at the same time.

“Well, at least there’s one thing we can definitely agree on,” Methos said to Cassandra, who smiled as they both turned their gazes to Spock.

Spock scowled at them over the top of his beer.

“I am *not* an elf!”

the end

Copyright 2000 by kyrdwynCDC

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