As the Cardinal Flies

This chosen trio is, respectively, Professor Minerva McGonagall, Wesley Wyndham-Price, and Vala Mal Doran.

We'll suppose that they meet by happenstance in a posh London club, bond over drinks. We learn that Wesley's musical tastes run to classical, Prof. McGonagall's run to show tunes, and Vala mostly knows what she doesn't like (which takes in a lot of territory).

Eventually they manage to compromise on becoming a smoky jazz trio. Wesley, courtesy of many obligatory childhood music lessons, can play an absurd number of instruments but has a singing voice only a shower could love. Prof. McGonagall has a reasonable voice but does better at backup vocals; her lung power isn't what it used to be. However, it develops that Vala has the voice, lungs, and sultry magnetism of a classic torch singer. (We knew about that last part already, of course.)

Given their busy and conflicting work schedules, they only manage to play a handful of gigs a year, mostly at a different London club under assumed names. However, they develop a loyal cult following, produce a couple of CDs, and generate a surprising amount of Internet buzz in jazz circles....

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Here from liviapenn. I like this jazz trio a lot, and I can totally believe this scenario (especially the parts about Wesley and - yay - Vala, who'd probably have an awesome perspective on types of Earth music).

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Welcome to the nest; feel free to pose a question now that you're here (we've still got a lot of unmatched characters left).

As noted above, I couldn't really decide what sort of Earth music Vala would like -- but I could very easily see her giving Wesley grief for liking Boring Classical Stuff, making rude comments about the dissonance of heavy metal or the tackiness of rap/hip-hop lyrics, and so on. OTOH, anything that lets her play on her essential hotness would draw her like the proverbial moth, thus the "sultry torch singer" appeal.

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anything that lets her play on her essential hotness would draw her like the proverbial moth, thus the "sultry torch singer" appeal.

Oh, absolutely! I expect Vala would be vociferous about any of her dislikes. And that "sultry torch singer" appeal goes both ways, as you've noted - if Vala loves being the center of attention, the audience loves her, too.

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ok -- #6, #10 and #3 find themselves at a murder scene. Who are they, what are their functions and how does it end up?

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Interesting....

#6 is Remington Steele, #10 is Peter Parker, #3 is Willow Rosenberg.

What appears to have happened:

Mildred Krebs had been coordinating security arrangements for a TV shoot -- a series of commercials for a new cosmetics line, starring the line's spokesmodel, Mary Jane Watson-Parker. [We are finessing or ignoring those Marvelverse timelines in which MJ and Peter have been involuntarily unmarried...] There had been rumblings of sabotage involving a rival cosmetics company, and the TV producers were understandably concerned for MJ's safety. They appear to have been justified; Mildred's body has been found next to the craft services tent, next to a bowl of spilled fruit salad known to have been a favorite dish of MJ's. Mildred's mentor, Remington Steele, has been called in to investigate; meanwhile, Peter Parker is covering the shoot for the Daily Bugle (and watching out for his wife's safety, with Spider-Man ready to leap in at need). Neither is paying much attention to one of the makeup artists on set for the day's shoot, a certain Willow Rosenberg....

What's actually going on:

This being a Marvel universe, the Mildred-corpse is of course a duplicate; the real Mildred is being held prisoner by the forces in charge of the rival cosmetics firm. (This is, of course, illogical, baroque, and unnecessarily convoluted of the evil cosmetics firm -- but this being a Marvel universe, that's only to be expected.)

This being a Buffy universe, the rival cosmetics company is owned and operated by demons -- in this case, a consortium of demons attempting to market beauty products that allow those who wear them to be controlled by the demons and used for their illicit and evil purposes. However, the company MJ is working for is also owned and operated by supernatural agencies -- they're trying to covertly include magickal protective agents in their own wares. Willow has been (a) helping the company formulate its products, and (b) quietly keeping an eye on the security arrangements against the prospect of magickal threats.

What happens:

Mr. Steele, of course, is out to solve Mildred's murder...and quickly finds himself hip-deep in references to monster movies, comic book films, and multi-layered TV series arcs.

Peter quickly figures out that there's magic and corporate intrigue involved, and Spider-Man gets to face off with various sorts of demons -- not incidentally, saving Steele's life a couple of times and establishing that the Mildred who ate the poisoned fruit salad wasn't the real Mildred after all.

Willow is quickly forced to blow her cover when Spidey runs up against a particularly nasty demon and she has to bail him out with magic. She's perfectly willing to concede that Steele and Spidey are better detectives than she is; OTOH, they clearly need her to navigate the minefields of Los Angeles demonic politics (and yes, of course Wolfram & Hart are hip-deep in the relevant intrigues).

And we segue into a classically wacky Steele-inspired caper designed to take down the demonic cosmetics empire, rescue Mildred, and finish the TV filming without jeopardizing MJ's spokesmodeling gig....

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LOVE it -- amused that I ended up picking Pierce and Buffy-verse players? *I* am ;> And an Action Hero -- wOOt!

Can't wait to see the next one ;>

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Love this complex scenario, even though I'm not too familiar with Remington Steele!

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This fits that universe quite well -- you might enjoy netflixing the first season (though, as with any show, it hits stride somewhere in season 2,or 3,, depending on whom you ask :>)

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Sadly, I don't have Netflix, but I'll look out for a torrent when I have more hard drive space!

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Ah, Remington Steele -- the TV series that served as Pierce Brosnan's audition for the James Bond role, though NBC finagled him out of it at the time (thereby giving us Timothy Dalton for awhile instead).

Premise in a nutshell: Laura Holt (played by Stefanie Zimbalist) was the gutsy girl private eye who had lots of enthusiasm but no clients, so she invented an imaginary boss named Remington Steele to lure in business. In the pilot episode, Brosnan's character -- a mystery man with five passports, expensive tastes, and the ability to describe any situation by matching it to a classic movie plot -- popped up out of the blue and (much to Laura's dismay) assumed Steele's identity. There was instant chemistry, followed by several seasons' worth of slightly screwball comedy/action/romance.

If you do Netflix episodes, note that Mildred Krebs (played by Doris Roberts, more recently known for Everybody Loves Raymond) doesn't actually appear until the start of the second season.

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Thank you for the synopsis! It sounds like something I'd be interested in. I'll look for a torrent when I have more disk space.

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1, 7, and 12 invent something. How did they get the idea for it in the first place? What does it do? What are the consequences of using it?

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Bear with me; this one's going to be weird. And it's kind of a backward answer to the question, but given this particular trio, it kind of needed to work out that way....

#1 is Lionel Luthor (Smallville); #7 is Data (ST:TNG); #12 is Demona (Gargoyles).

Now, Lionel has an abiding fixation on possible ancient Kryptonian artifacts; Demona has an abiding fixation on ancient magical artifacts. Since Kryptonian science often serves to illustrate Clarke's Law, it's therefore not surprising that the two cross paths in the process of tracking down a particular ancient artifact. Nor is it surprising that an agent of multi-billionaire David Xanatos -- a natural arch-rival to both Lionel and Demona -- is on the scene when the artifact is ultimately located, and the three face off in a classic Underground Chamber Of Mighty Obstacles deep in the Alaskan wilderness. [We pause here to note that Demona is known to Lionel only via her alias as "Dominique Destine", the mysterious and wealthy owner of Nightstone Unlimited....]

Lionel gets to the ancient control panel first; Xanatos' man, the unflappable Owen Burnett, gets to the artifact first. "Dominique" is slightly behind both men, and casts a spell intended to immobilize them both.

This turns out to have been a Bad Idea of epic proportions; the artifact activates. Unfortunately, it's neither (precisely) the mind-amplifier Lionel thought it was nor (precisely) the mind-containment vessel Demona thought it was -- or at least, what it actually does isn't exactly either of those things. In fact, Owen goes all fuzzy and yellow-green for a moment, there is a black-hole-like POP/twist, and when the special effects subside, the person standing dazedly in the middle of the UCOMO holding the artifact is in fact Commander Data of the USS Enterprise.

(See, I told you this was going to get weird!)

This development startles everyone sufficiently that Lionel and "Dominique" declare a temporary truce. Both realize that Xanatos is going to be severely annoyed at losing his right-hand man, and this is late enough in Gargoyles continuity that Demona, who knows that Owen is rather more than he appears to be*, is also worried about certain other Powers' reaction to his disappearance. Data, of course, is also disconcerted at finding himself unexpectedly Elsewhere. The three of them put their heads together, but it's mostly Data who deduces that he and Owen are the victims of a classic multi-parallel space/time inversion**; the artifact has transposed Owen and Data between their native realities***.

In doing so, however, the black-hole-like quantum effect of the transposition has also created a serious cosmic imbalance...and a reality-bubble that has effectively trapped Our Heroes in the UCOMO. They must therefore work together to MacGyver Data's tricorder, what's left of the artifact and its control console, and "Dominique's" magickal abilities into a functional reverse-transposition device, before (a) the UCOMO collapses from the interdimensional strain, (b) Owen and Data are permanently trapped several hundred years removed from their own times, and/or (c) David Xanatos finds out what's happened and swears revenge on the lot of them.

////

*Spoiler for late 2nd-season Gargoyles continuity: "Owen Burnett" is a mortal identity assumed by Puck (yup, the sprite from A Midsummer Night's Dream).

**See Ruth Berman's classic ST fanfics, "Visit to a Weird Planet" and "Visit to a Weird Planet Revisited", wherein the stars of ST:TOS are unexpectedly exchanged with the actual top officers of the USS Enterprise during a transporter sequence.

***This is not quite as random an exchange as the uninitiated might think; as those familiar with Gargoyles already know, the voice of Puck (though not the voice of Owen) on that series was played by -- Brent Spiner. Clearly the Powers That Be have a perverse metafictional sense of humor....

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Although I've never seen any Star Trek (and I had to look up Gargoyles), I really enjoyed this slice of crossover madness. I love your brain! Thanks for the extra explanations, too.

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