Chapter 2

When Dann got back to the lab, Makes-Things was waiting for him.

"We've got a problem. Those fangirls didn't come in through a PPC portal." He sighed and continued. "We've been found."

Dann took this in. "I assume that that's bad?"

Makes-Things nodded. "Very bad. Until I can work up some way to stop them, they'll be able to rush into HQ whenever they want. I've already got some ideas, but I need some more data. I need you to go into a fic to get me that data."

Dann would have asked for more information, but a flickering light and a low humming interrupted. Dann and Makes-Things looked. A neon pink portal was opening into the lab. With the ease of long practice, Makes-Things dived under a table, with Dann not far behind.

Fangirls (who looked a lot like Sues) poured out of the portal. Waving katanas and scimitars, they ran into the lab and towards the door. The door swung open ahead of them, revealing Tess.

"What are you doing here?" She asked.

The fangirls stopped for a moment, and then advanced. Tess raised her Uzis.

Two seconds and sixty shots later…

The lab was quiet, except for the hum of the computers, the humming portal, and the fading echoes of automatic gunfire. Tess snapped on the safeties, and then put the guns on a table. Grabbing a plastic bag with some gray powder inside, a small block of magnesium, and a length of fuse, Tess advanced on the portal.

On the far side, she wrapped one end of the fuse around the magnesium, dropped the block into the bag, zipped it shut, and placed the improvised thermite bomb on top of the portal generator. She lit the fuse and stepped back through the portal.

The fire reached the powder and the block. A simple gunpowder fuse is nowhere near hot enough to start a thermite reaction. However, it is quite enough to light magnesium. Unlike a fuse, magnesium burns at temperatures high enough to light thermite.

The powdered aluminum and iron oxide reacted, becoming aluminum oxide and iron. Tremendous amounts of heat were released, and the entire reaction melted into the machinery, led by molten steel that was far over five thousand degrees.

Behind Tess, the portal distorted and then winked out of existence.

"It's over. You can get back to work."

Dann and Makes-Things crawled out from under their respective tables. Makes-Things looked at Tess.

"Thanks."

Tess grinned. "What would you do without me?"

Without waiting for an answer, she grabbed her Uzis and walked back into her office. Makes-Things turned back to Dann.

"As I was about to say, head down to the armory and get some canon weapons. You're going to be going into a Lord of the Rings fic. Then, come back here and I'll get the sensor equipment."

"How do I get downstairs?"

Makes-Things grinned. "The same way you get anywhere else, except you've got to find some stairs as well."

Dann walked out the door and into the halls.

Some time later…

Dann walked down yet another hall, and then realized what he had been doing wrong. He was still looking for stairs. He stopped and looked around, trying to get distracted. Then, he saw it. Right below a neon sign that said 'Al's Wait and Eat', there were several large windows looking into a restaurant. Inside, there was a blue skinned elf with bright orange hair, hurrying towards a table while balancing a heavily loaded tray.

Suddenly, the wall that Dann had been leaning on gave way! He grabbed at the edges of the hole, and realized that he had been leaning on a door. He turned around and saw the sign on the door. Stairs. He walked through, and went down.

The stairs wound around and down, finally coming out into a large room. Stairways, bridges, and doors were built into the walls, floor, and ceiling at impossible angles. A stairway dropped out of the wall, and went to a door built in the floor. Far above Dann, a door built into the ceiling was labeled 'cafeteria'. Another door sat in the middle of the far wall, with a stairway leading down to the left wall. The door was labeled 'armory'. Dann looked around. It looked like he had wandered into an Escher drawing.

"At least I know where I need to be… The question is how to get there." Then, he took the prize for stating the obvious. "It looks like Escher designed this place."

He walked across the room, up a flight of stairs, and opened the door at the top. Behind and below him, another door opened. He whipped around and looked. A door coming out of the floor was being held open by… himself? He looked closer. Sure enough, the figure looked a lot like him, but was turned and looking over it's shoulder.

"Aha! I know what this place is doing!"

He turned back to the door and looked. There, standing on a top step, was himself, now peering through a door built into the floor. He stepped through the door and let it close behind him. He walked over to the armory door that was now going down into the floor. He opened it and stepped through.

After taking stock of his various bruises and bashes, Dann looked around. He was lying on the floor, with some chairs to his left and a counter to his right. Rubbing the back of his head, he sat up.

"-never seen anything like that before!" A female voice was talking, evidently a bit shocked. "He just flew through the door lying down!"

"I'm sure there's a rational explanation for this." A deep, strong voice spoke. "He's awake, let's ask him."

Dann spoke up. "Zim?"

The bass voice spoke again. "That's me. Welcome to the armory."

Dann explained how he had gotten there.

Zim looked at him. "Damn!"

Dann, still a bit dazed, looked back. "Yes?"

"Never mind." Zim shook his head, and then turned back to the other agent. "Here's your new staff, WyldeHorse. The tips are hard carbon steel, and the rest is titanium. Ultra hard, practically unbendable, and lighter than a regular one. It should serve quite well."

"Thanks." WyldeHorse turned and walked out the door.

Zim turned his attention to Dann. "Now, what can I do for you?"

"I need weaponry. Lord of the Rings."

"Right. This way, please."

Zim led the way back into the armory itself. It might have been a large room, but it was crammed with weapon racks. The racks each had a sign on top. There was a Star Wars rack, a few Matrix racks, a Star Trek rack, and so on. As they walked, Zim began to talk.

"We have weapons for every major fandom, and bunches of generic weapons that can fit into smaller canons. We've got hand to hand weapons, ranged weapons, bombs, missiles, and even a few large weapons. We can equip an agent to go into almost any fandom, disguised as almost anything. Want to be a Matrix rebel? We have the stuff. Want to be a Jedi? Same deal. You said you were going into Lord of the Rings? What were you thinking of going as?"

Dann needed no time to think. "Elf. The Sue hops from Mirkwood to Rivendell to Lothlorien without mentioning anything in-between."

They arrived at the first Lord of the Rings rack. Zim gestured grandly down the aisle, and said "Pick a weapon, any weapon."

Dann walked down the row, hefting a sword here and pulling a bow there. Finally, he made his decision.

"I'd like this bow and this sword."

Zim grinned. "Excellent taste. The bow was used by one of the Galadrim, and the sword was made in Gondolin. The weapons that were used by the elves in the last alliance were based off of that sword."

The sword being discussed was a beautiful weapon. The subtly curved blade was sharpened on one side and was just over two feet long. It could have been described as a small katana, except for the handle. The handle was also two feet long, made to be held near the blade and near the base. Dann tested the edge with his thumb. It was sharp. Very sharp.

Zim walked around to the other side of the rack. "Now, let's discuss arrows…"

A while later, Dann was walking out the door, carrying bow, arrows, sword, and two small throwing knives. Instead of coming into the Escher room, the door opened onto the base of a staircase. Dann shrugged and started up.

Meanwhile, at the author's whim…

A pink portal opened into one of the halls. Fangirls poured out. With their huge eyes, fancy weapons, and long, brightly colored hair, they could only be one thing. Anime fangirls.

The agents turned and attacked, agent WyldeHorse in the lead. Bows twanged, swords clashed, and guns roared in the melee.

In PPC HQ, the only way to get anywhere is to not be thinking about it. An Agent can end up somewhere that he never new existed because he was thinking about somewhere he knew. Dann was thinking about getting back to the Lab. Therefore, the Lab was the one place he could never get to.

Dann turned a corner. There, illuminated by the florescent lights and the pink glow of a portal, was a war. Agents were fighting with more fangirls. There, an agent killed a witch. Over there, another agent sliced through a fangirl's sword with her lightsaber. There, a huge robot was shoving its way into HQ. The massive robot had a glass cockpit on the front, revealing another fangirl piloting the thing. Grabbing a huge axe, the robot started swinging, trying to hit the agents.

Dann grabbed his bow. He wasn't as good a shot as an elf, but he was still good. He aimed at a fangirl and fired. Then, he aimed at another one, and fired. And then another, and another, and another one after that. An agent that he recognized as WyldeHorse came up beside him.

"We can't fight them all like this. See what you can do to drop that mecha."

"Gotcha."

Dann was planning to work his way to the front of the battle, but the front came to him. In what seemed like seconds, he was using his sword. Suddenly, he was lying on his back, with a sky-blue furred fox sitting on his chest. The little thing's eyes began to glow an ugly shade of blue when…

A fiery whip snapped out and hit the Cute Animal Companion, knocking it off of Dann. He looked, just in time to see Gothmorg grab his sword and attack. Dann climbed to his feet and was looking for his sword when one of the fangirls pointed her hand down the hall, and said something in Suvian. A blast of water thoroughly soaked all the agents. Beside him, WyldeHorse was shrinking. Her skin was also turning red, and hard and scaly too. Dann would have loved to look closer, but a fangirl with cat ears and tail and a long sword was moving to attack.

"Step back!" A voice at his side spoke up.

Dann looked. There, stood a dragon. A small, bright red dragon. Dann stepped back. The dragon let loose a blast of fire that filled the hall. While the hall was cooling off, Dann looked at the dragon.

"WyldeHorse? Is that you?"

The dragon looked back at him. "Who else would it be? I've got a Jusenkyo curse. Splash me with cold water, and I turn into this. Now, about that mecha…"

The giant robot was advancing. It dropped its huge axe and a machine gun appeared out of nowhere. Dann dashed forward and ducked under the gun. Grabbing a handhold on the underside of the arm, he swung up. The robot swung its other arm at Dann. Dann jumped, and landed on the other arm. It wasn't much of a landing, more of a crash and then a brief scramble for another handhold. The robot pointed its gun at one of the agents, and…

In hitting its own arm, the robot had dented the firing mechanism on its gun. Not very much, but enough to jam the weapon. Dann hopped down off the arm, and onto the robot's shoulder. Pulling out one of his knives, he swung down by the cockpit. There, right in front of his face, was a lever labeled 'RESCUE'. He grabbed and pulled.

The glass canopy blew off, leaving the pilot unprotected. Before Dann could move, an arrow hit the fangirl. She fell out of the cockpit, dead. Dann clambered down.

After a nice, long cleanup session…

Dann walked back into the Lab. He was sore all over, and wished for nothing more than a long hot soak, and then a good night's sleep.

"I'm back…"

Makes-Things extracted himself from a large device being built against a wall. "Took you a while… The equipment you need is over there." He waved at a pile of wires, boxes, and other electronic components.

"The equipment's buried under all that?"

"No. That is the equipment."

A/N: I really thought I would get into a fic this time. Then, those anime fangirls forced their way in and made me wait. Oh well. Into a fic next time. Stay tuned!