Fanficcers???

Stuart’s eyes bulged. “Fanficcers? Are you out of your mind? They’re all barking!”

Jo put her hand on his arm. “Calm down, you’re getting wound up over nothing.”

He shuddered and glanced over his shoulder. “Easy for you to say...you don’t have Huxons.”

“Huxons?” Terry raised his eyebrows. “Sounds ... infectious!”

Stuart glared at him. “You have no idea!”

“Stu, get a grip, will you?” Jo felt rather irritated. “And besides, not all the fanficcers hate you. I can think of a couple that really like you.”

“Oh yes...so can I.” Stuart snapped sarcastically. “There’s that sadistic one for starters.”

“Sadistic one?” Terry struggled to look sympathetic, but could not suppress the smirk of fiendish enjoyment.

“Not content with breaking virtually every bone in my body at some time or other, she’s killed me.... twice!” He stabbed two fingers in the air for effect.

Jo patted his hand. “Three times, if you’re counting... but you always bounce back. Like in a video game.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of: having to bounce back for more. And what about the Huxons? They all want me dead or in prison.” Stuart sunk back in his seat.

“This is all very well,” Tony said, trying to get them back on track, “but how do we make contact with these people?”

“People?” Stuart snorted. “What makes you think that fanficcers are even human?”

“Stuart!” Jo snapped, “that was very nasty.” She glared at him. “This isn’t about you, anyway.”

“We need to make contact,” Tony persisted, before the argument could get completely off the thread. “So where do we go, Jo?”

She thought about it. “Social Networking, Tony. I know some of them hang around there.” Jo leaned forward. “Tony, the next time you’ve got some of that footage to watch on ‘CCTV’, how about using the computer for a little search?”

“So uniform does all the work, and CID swipes all the glory?” For a moment, Tony was suspicious. This sounded too much like many of his recent scenes.

Jo grinned. “C’mon, Tony... we’re all on the same side here.”

“Yeah.... right...” Tony sighed. After all, Reg had said he would be the one to save the older characters; he just hadn’t really banked on being the one doing all of it.

~*~*~*~*~

Hunting for fanficcers was quite alarming. Tony trawled through pages and pages of scribblings, some of it eye-wateringly bad. He managed to track down the names of a couple of the most prolific ones: Ravens Byte and Vampires Kiss, both of whom sounded more than a little too Gothic for his liking.

Looking as though he was searching for records was a doddle after twenty-two years, and the cameraman couldn’t see what he was looking at on the screen, so Tony typed the message, took a deep breath, and hit send.

Nothing happened for several moments. He let out the deep breath in a long sigh. Then nearly jumped out of his skin as a popping noise sounded the arrival of an instant message.

He stared at the screen, nervously reading.

How may I help you?

RB"