Remilia and her family are in Paris, waiting for the wheels of the bureaucracy to turn. And when at last they do, it's time to celebrate.

Act III: "Enfants de la Patrie"

A couple of administrative notes:

The bad news: Despite how long it's taken to put together, this act is on the short side as GG episodes go.

The possibly better news: That's partly because the draft was half again as long as this when I decided I should end this one where it ends (because otherwise, if I carried on to my originally planned endpoint, it would probably have ended up a double-length episode), so there's a substantial portion of Act IV already written.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

We've seen more disreputable characters hit rock bottom and bounce - Saionji is just the first to come to mind. I have high hopes for Wentworth. He recognizes what he's done wrong and is working on fixing it.

>We've seen more disreputable characters hit rock bottom and bounce -
>Saionji is just the first to come to mind. I have high hopes for
>Wentworth. He recognizes what he's done wrong and is working on fixing
>it.

If he manages to pull his manners together enough when selling the car, he may even find himself employed. Somebody has to drive, and it's probably faster to hire him than to train somebody and get them a license.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

LAST EDITED ON Mar-21-21 AT 09:26 PM (EDT)
 
I bet Sakuya at least can drive. Meiling may have learned during her journeys with the Docfor as well, but she wouldn't be anywhere near as perfect.

LAST EDITED ON Mar-22-21 AT 00:26 AM (EDT)
 
>I bet Sakuya at least can drive.

"Starting the 1935 Duesenberg SSJ’s engine is a rather complex process: Pull out the metal organ-stop choke from the hand-engine-turned metal dashboard; turn the tiny brass key clockwise one detent; retard the spark with one of the beaded metal sliders on the black Bakelite steering wheel; lightly press the giant shoe-shaped throttle pedal; and yank on the cable-actuated knurled starter knob until it almost collides with the S-shaped floor shifter that’s topped by a black doorknob."

She's perfect, but I imagine that she still would need two or three tries before she could do that sequence cleanly. I suppose it's possible that the SJ is simpler than the SSJ, but I wouldn't bet a bent penny on that.

Even if she does pick it up quickly, she still doesn't have a driver's license.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

>
>Even if she does pick it up quickly, she still doesn't have a driver's
>license.
>
Although the 3rd(?) Doctor did have Bessie which he drove around in during his time of exile... Don't recall if it was explicitly destroyed or not; but your right about even if Sakura had learned to drive it, she wouldn't have the proper license for THIS fica.

But its Sakura. She'd ace the process with flying colors.

Bessie appeared in the 1989(? I think?) 7th Doctor serial "Battlefield", which suggests that UNIT looked after it at least as long as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart was in charge.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

LAST EDITED ON Mar-22-21 AT 09:01 PM (EDT)
 
>"I'll have the evening papers sent up so you can gauge that for yourself,
>Countess. I would say they are more bemused than anything, at least for the
>moment. If I were a betting man, I would wager their editors are still trying to
>find out when anyone last publicly acknowledged the existence of vampires."
>"I must say, you don't seem particularly surprised," Flandre observed.
>"Mademoiselle," said Berjeau with a slight twinkle, "this is one of the great
>hotels of Europe—of the world! We have seen far stranger things in our time."
>

See, I'm not sure if the man simply has an epic poker face and flair for bravado, or if he actually has seen stranger, in which case he ought to write his memoirs and retire on the proceeds.

>...the bands and solo acts the foursome encountered as they roamed from club to
>club pleased her more often than not... but she wasn't sure what to make of the
>women taking their clothes off.
>

I'm impressed, though I suppose not actually surprised, at Remilia's composure at being exposed to something that would have been quite scandalous by the standards she's most familiar with. I am mildly surprised that Flandre didn't have any noteworthy commentary on the shows.

>That didn't really explain why bathing wasn't a problem, but that, Flandre
>recalled from her long-ago studies under her mother, was magic for you.
>Internal consistency was not one of its strong points.
>

So magic follows Bellisario's Maxim does it?

>Flandre uttered a bestial snarl that would have alarmed both her sister and
>Gryphon if they could've heard it, then doubled her efforts to match, towing
>the waterlogged man to shore.
>

Given the directive/threat she hissed into his ear not a moment before I actually wonder what her current (cargo? passenger?) had to think about that snarl. Probably it is best for his dignity that his clothing was already soaked with less than pristine river water.

>"Me, a sailor?" Wentworth scoffed. "I've no nautical skills at all. I'd be a
>positive liability to any captain fool enough to take that bargain."
>

Well, at least the man is aware of his faults. Though that awareness probably contributed to his ill considered leap.

	-={(Astynax)}=- "Sometimes fanfic is a love letter to canon, sometimes it's a polite disagreement, and sometimes it's 95 things canon did wrong nailed to a door."

So, I got to thinking about things at work (always a dangerous proposition) and some threads from different parts of UF got crossed in my head, resulting in this thought:

"Now that they're citizens, the real challenge begins. They only have 25 years to prevent the construction of the Centre Georges Pompidou."

-IA.

(received information not interpretable)

>So, I got to thinking about things at work (always a dangerous
>proposition) and some threads from different parts of UF got crossed
>in my head, resulting in this thought:
>
>"Now that they're citizens, the real challenge begins. They only have
>25 years to prevent the construction of the Centre Georges Pompidou."
>

For all we know, the future holds the timeless architectural styling of the Centre Georgette Pompidou.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

Or - and hear me out - it holds the beautiful, challenging Centre Georges Pompidou, which is exactly the same as in our timeline, but people don't despise it because it wasn't made of Bath stone in a boring Regency pastiche or, worse, an equally uninspired attempt at replicating Versailles.

"The Centre Pompidou Is Good Actually" is not the weirdest hill I am willing to die on, but it's up there. =]

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards.

Paris is a big city. There's space in it for buildings that are interesting.

>"The Centre Pompidou Is Good Actually" is not the weirdest hill I am
>willing to die on, but it's up there. =]
>
>Paris is a big city. There's space in it for buildings that are
>interesting.

I'm afraid I'm with Bill Bryson on this one. I like some of greater Paris's architectural oddities--that office building in La Défense with the hole in it, for instance--but the Pompidou is just ugly and bad. I mean, it's not Le Corbusier/Soviet Brutalist-style ugly and bad, it is at least weird, but it's still ugly and bad.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I think it's the staircase on the outside that ruins it- it just screams "we forgot to put in stairs until we started building the thing", and that in turn makes it hard to buy any claims that the rest of it had artistic purpose in mind.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

LAST EDITED ON Mar-24-21 AT 05:30 PM (EDT)
 
I actually find the staircase on the outside to be charmingly weird more than anything else. In fact, that's actually how I feel about the building as a whole based on the photos I've seen...

It's just funny imagining it as some kind of eldritch location that must be fought off in different worlds for the good of humanity.

-IA.

(it's better than one of the buildings my community college courses were in at least)

"...It's not every day you get to meet a head of state."

Upon re-reading, I imagine that Sakuya did this in part because it's an opportunity to make Meiling something new to wear. While Sakuya isn't bad with words, I get the impression that she shows love more in things like new clothing, a perfectly timed hot bath, and one's favorite dinner.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

>"...It's not every day you get to meet a head of state."
>
>Upon re-reading, I imagine that Sakuya did this in part because it's
>an opportunity to make Meiling something new to wear. While Sakuya
>isn't bad with words, I get the impression that she shows love more in
>things like new clothing, a perfectly timed hot bath, and one's
>favorite dinner.

Well, you're not wrong. :)

Sakuya spent a long time cultivating the virtue, if it is one, of taciturnity; before the age of 10, she had to keep her feelings to herself to survive, and after, she was in a situation where she didn't feel free to speak her heart for reasons that were less hostile, but no less compelling to her at the time. It's not really an issue any more, but old habits and all that...

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.