Johnny, the infamous Bard of Bald Ballads, threw down his pack and electric banjo in a stack of autumn hay.

The barn had looked deserted, warm and dry from the road, and after scampering from Gob Beldof at the Vermillion Rose, seemed like an ideal place to rest. No sooner had Johnny lain down to sleep than a voice interrupted him.

“Who are you?”

Johnny sat up, one hand going to his banjo. The face of a young woman came into view.

She stood there, dressed in a plain cotton dress, hair pulled back by a simple cat intestine string. The farmer’s daughter?

“I’m the Bard of Bauchery”.

The girl frowned. “What does ‘Bauchery’ mean?”

“It’s kind of like debauchery, only more chivalrous.”

“You don’t look like a Bard. You look like a drunk with no money.”

“Can’t I be both?”

The girl thought for a moment. “No, I don’t think so. Prove it to me. Sing a song.”

“Look, I need to rest. Every place I stop I get jumped by old enemies or assassin spiders or something.”

“Prove it, or I’ll scream for Daddy and he has a big pitchfork that loves pulling out gizzards.”

Johnny sighed and pulled out his electric banjo. “What would you like to hear?”

“Unskinny Bop by Poison.”

A jolt of fear went through Johnny at the request. Only one sort of creature would request that song.

While his hands made a distraction of tuning, he cast a simple disrobe spell, often handy with the ladies. In this case, the dress fell from the young woman revealing a metallic skeleton from the waist down.

“God damn it, another terminal android.” Johnny snatched up his pack and scrambled up the ladder into the loft.

The android followed more slowly, confident of being able to trap her prey.

At the top of the straw-filled loft, the Bard of Bauchery found himself cornered. As a last resort, he opened out his banjo and began playing Back in Black.

The straw swirled in reaction to those mystical notes. It curled and whipped up into an eddy, then a whirlwind, and finally a miniature tornado. Then it burst into flame.

The top of the barn blew clear off, and the blast threw Johnny into a field a hundred metres away. Fortunately he landed on top of a cow.

Of the terminal android there was no sign, but Johnny wasn’t waiting around to find what had happened to it. He hoisted his pack and sought the cover of the nearby wood.