Chapter 1: "Laurel"

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Two girls stood outside a tall gray metal door. One was a few inches taller than the other, but still rather short. She had dark red hair and blue eyes, with glasses that were about three centimeters thick. She was wearing plain jeans and a black shirt with white...jagged lines, it looked like, or are those letters? You can never tell. A thin cloak of grey filmy material was wrapped about her, fastened at the throat with a leaf-shaped brooch that looks rather familiar.

Her partner was short and rather round, with short brownish-blonde hair that blew all around her face and got in her green-gray eyes. She wore dark jeans and a shirt with what looked like monkeys hanging upside down on the front. She also wore a cloak, nearly identical to the redhead's, save with a slightly different brooch, this one looking as if it were hand-crafted. The two had been worried that the department might not take them on, seeing as how many Sues have red hair and green eyes, but that was before the short one had pointed out that they were applying because the poor people were so understaffed and would take anyone...even them.

Behind them, an altogether frightening beast towered a few feet above the doorframe. He had all the physical characteristics of a Balrog, but he was much smaller. His flame-whip was stowed carefully in his belt, and he was doing his best to look docile. The redhead turned around after knocking and patted him on the head, though she had to use a rather large step-stool to do it.

"You sure they'll let you bring him in there?" asked the shorter one, eyeing the creature dubiously.

"They better," her friend replied. "If they don't want Glorfindal, they don't want me. Isn't that right, Glori-poo?" she asked, hugging the Mini-Balrog. He nuzzled her with his fiery nose.

The redhead carried a dark blue backpack, a pillow, and a water bottle. Glorfindal was carrying another black bag of hers. The blonde was substantially more loaded down, with a larger pillow, a much more overstuffed backpack, a blue tote bag, a portable CD player case, and several long tubes sticking out of a rather heavy-looking bag marked "Wall stuff". The redhead had just knocked on the door (because she had a free hand), and since she was an author insertion, it didn't knock like it would for normal people, it nokked.

They only had a few moments to wait before a harried-looking wisteria plant wearing a rumpled track suit answered the door. Yes? it asked in an odd noiseless voice. If you're selling something, we aren't buying... It noticed the creature behind them, jumped back, and glared. And a Mini-Balrog...evildoers and friends of Cam! We will not give up any more agents to her insanity! If you want applicants for OFUM, try Fanfiction.net.

"Er, no," said the redhead, Nenya, being the first to recover her wits. "We're here to apply for a job -"

They never got a chance to finish. Two blue-flowered fronds shot out and grabbed them, pulling them inside and slamming the door behind them. If Glorfindal had not had the speed of a Mini, he would have been left behind. The wisteria locked the door rather hurriedly. Thank God! it non-yelled. This way...

The sisters found themselves being pulled along a long grey corridor. The wisteria had curled its fronds around each of their wrists and was cutting off the circulation to each hand.

"Ow ow ow ow ow....you know, I'm, ow, not going to be much good as an agent, ow, if I'm missing my right hand, ow!" Rosie tried to uncoil the frond from her wrist.

Sorry, the wisteria plant apologized briefly, but did not relent. He dragged them through endless gray hallways until they came to...a wall.

The wisteria let them go and stood there expectantly.

The sisters looked at the wall, each other, and back at the wisteria plant.

"It's a wall," Nenya said, earning her a high score in the Hall of Most Obvious Statements.

Oh. The wisteria looked ashamed. He quickly reached out and tapped a meaningless pattern on the metal. Suddenly, the girls felt a shove from behind, and they stumbled into a room whose walls were painted (surprise!) gray. Glorfindal followed them in and stood over Nenya, his wings spread protectively about her and Rosie. The door slid shut behind them.

There was a desk in the center of the room, made of some sort of undefinable gray metal. A swivelling chair was turned away from them.

New recruits? The non-voice sounded almost excited. Can it be?

"Yes it can," replied Nenya confidently. "We're here to help you out."

You sound remarkably sane. The chair swivelled around, and they were met face to blossom with the famed Sunflower Official, a bizarre-looking sunflower in a gray suit. It tilted its head up to once-over Glorfindal, and turned back to the two indifferently.

"God, is everything in this place gray?" muttered Rosie.

I heard that. Well, my dears, come closer.

The sisters exchanged a look, and warily approached the desk.

Two fronds reached out and grabbed them by the chins. Well, you're breathing. And you can speak. And you do not appear to possess any flamethrowers.

"Hee hee....fiiiire...." Rosie's eyes got big.

The SO raised a petal (eyebrow). I shall choose to ignore that statement. And that...thing, I assume, is tamed?

"Yes," Nenya replied proudly. "Glorfindal is very obedient and only cruel to Mary Sues. He doesn't eat much - raw eggs, bacon, and the odd fangirl."

Glorfindal tried not to drool - he hadn't eaten in at least five hours, and he was rather hungry. The mention of his favorite snack made his stomach growl.

Good. And I see by your attire, that if your preferred genre is what I think it is, that you are very dedicated and know your canon. Very good. Fill out these forms, and you can start work today. It threw a stack of papers at them.

"Yes, sir," they replied obediently. They picked up random pens off the desk and began scribbling away. Glorfindal amused himself by doing target practice with his whip on some scattered papers tacked up on the wall of the SO's office. The SO looked a bit peeved, but allowed it to pass.

All was quiet for a few moments, until -

"Nenya?"

"What?"

"Am I sane?"

"Compared to Hika...yes. Compared to Mr. Tolkien...no."

"Ah." Rosie began to scribble again. Then,

"Nenya?"

"What?"

"What is our preferred area of work?"

"Lord of the Rings. Any genre except slash."

"Ah."

After a few moments, they both finished at the same instant.

They blinked.

"Wow...that was a plot hole..." Rosie commented.

Those are abundant around here. The SO snatched up their papers and organized them in an instant. Good, good, good...REALLY? you're both an 8 on the sanity test?!?!?!

"Yes..."

YOU'RE HIRED! The SO threw a pair of black uniforms at them with the symbol of a spoon in a dish on the left sleeve. Lord of the Rings. Multiple Offenses department. We've only got two or three teams working there. We'll channel them so you don't get any slash. The Mary Sues are abounding, however. You'll have quite a few of those. You'll have to kill a lot...

"Oh, we won't have a problem with that," Rosie said, a strange light behind her eyes. Both the SO and Nenya subconsciously backed away.

Go. Go go go go. Change into these uniforms. The Head of Operations will take you to your Response Center. Your Mini can stay with you, but he can't accompany you on missions...

"The Head of Operations...is that the blue flowered thingy?" asked Rosie, showing off her remarkable lack of scientific vocabulary.

The wisteria, yes. The sunflower stamped each of them on the forehead with a rubber thing that said "S.O. Aprroved".

"Er...you spelled approved wrong," Rosie pointed out, looking at Nenya's forehead.

That's because I'm special. Now get out of here.

The sisters obeyed, still a bit dazed. They stumbled out the door and followed the HoO into the ladies' restroom, where they changed. Then they were given instructions on how to get to their response center, and left to survive on their own.

They were still standing in the middle of the hall, dazed, rather uncomfortable in their starchy black uniforms, with their Elven cloaks that hadn't settled down yet dancing around and refusing to be still, with Glorfindal carrying all of their things, when Jay and Acacia happened by. Jay and Acacia! If I were to tell you only a quarter of all I have heard about them, and I only know a very little of all there is to know, you would be prepared for any sort of remarkable tale. But enough with the corny swiped lines.

But of course, though Rosie and Nenya had heard of Jay and Acacia and all their marvelous exploits, they didn't recognize them, possibly because they were still a little dazed...that and the fact that the two famous agents were disguised as a pair of Uruk-Hai.

"EEK!" the shorter (but still remarkably taller than either Nenya or Rosie) Uruk squealed, grabbing the arm of the other. "JAYJAYJAY! NEWBIES! NEWBIES WITH A MINI!"

"Newbies? WHERE?" The other creature spun around and stared straight at them. "YE GODS! IT IS! OHHH SWEET VICTORY!" They grabbed each other and danced around in a circle, a rather strange sight with Uruk-Hai.

Nenya and Rosie backed away slowly.

"Acacia..."

"Yes?"

"We're scaring them." The taller one gestured to the frightened recruits.

"Oh. Silly, Acacia, remember - scare everyone but new recruits."

Her partner patted her on the head. "Good girl."

"We're terribly sorry about the disguises," Acacia said, turning back to the girls. "Our console screwed up, so we stayed in our disguises through one of those free-floating plot holes. We'll change back as soon as Makes-Things fixes it."

"Ah." The girls did not look much less frightened.

Jay fixed her eyes on Glorfindal, and let out a shriek. "He's so cuuuute!!! Ooozagoodboyden! Oh, yes, you are! Yes, you are!" She threw her arms around him.

Glorfindal looked a bit taken aback. Nenya glared. "Glorfindal's MINE, thank you!" she growled, hauling Jay away from her precious Mini.

All of a sudden there was a bang, and then a funny sizzling sound, and then a pff (onomatopoeia stolen from the Harry Potter/LOTR crossover done by the original PPC). The world flickered bizarrely before their eyes...

..and instead of two ugly Uruks in full war gear, they were suddenly faced by a pair of young girls, younger than Nenya but older than Rosie. There was a tall, gangly one with messy reddish hair and a shorter brunette wearing a pair of glasses. They both looked like assassins-turned-friendly, the effect rather disturbing.

"Hi," the taller one volunteered. "I'm Jay."

"I'm Acacia." They both smiled and grabbed the girls' hands and shook them vigorously.

"Ohhhh, right!" Rosie said all of a sudden. "The flake with the camera and the bloodthirsty homicidal maniac! I've heard of you."

"That's us," Acacia replied with a smile. "Come on, we'll take you to your response centre!" She grabbed Rosie and yanked her down the hall. Jay and Nenya rode on Glorfindal.

Soon enough, they reached another grey metal door, this one with a knob. Acacia threw it open and ushered the newbies inside. Jay reluctantly hopped off Glorfindal's back.

"This is your response centre," Acacia said proudly, gesturing to the room around them. It was gray (wow, big surprise) and metal. There were a couple of high-backed chairs next to a huge gray mainframe-computer-like machine with a screen and a lot of interesting-looking buttons and knobs. A rather tight uncomfortable-looking couch upholstered in scratchy gray material was set at the other end of the room, and a few cupboards with large doors hung on the walls. "Get used to it - you'll live here until they decide to liberate you."

Both new recruits looked rather frightened.

Suddenly, a loud "beeeeeeeep" jolted through the air, not from the computer in this response centre, but from a room down the hall. All four agents jumped.

"VERDAMMEN!" Jay yelled, and went running down the hall, Acacia following her. Screams of "What the HECK?" and "I swear, they give us all the hardest ones!" filtered through the gray metal door, and the sound of something whacking against metal was followed by the crunching and electronic sizzle of a computer being destroyed.

A second later there was a cry of "A MONKEY?"

Both newly-recruited agents decided they didn't want to know.

Nenya shut the door.

Rosie looked at Nenya.

Nenya looked at Rosie.

"Posters?" Rosie ventured.

"You can put them up. I have reading to do."

"Where are you?"

"Eowyn and Faramir."

"Cool."

"These tears you cry...have come too late...take back the lies....the hurt, the blame..." Rosie sang along with Gollum's Song as she put up a large poster of the Fellowship on the door of one of the cupboards. Glorfindal was sprawled on the couch with Nenya sitting cross-legged in his lap, reading a part from The Return of the King.

A tear slipped out of Nenya's eye. "Oh, Rowie, do you have to sing that?" She wiped her eyes on her sleeve. "I'm gettig by uniforb all wet!"

Rosie rolled her eyes. "Geez, you're too sentimental for this job." She continued singing along with the song playing in her earphones. "And you will weep when you face the end alone...you are lost, you can never go home..."

Nenya plugged her ears and began singing at the top of her lungs. "IF YOU SLEEP, YOU SLEEP WITH GOD...AND IF I CRY, IT'S FOR MY HEART..."

"AIIEEEE!!!!" Rose screeched. "Fine." With the lightning speed that comes from years of changing CD's in science class while your teacher's back is turned, she had her CD back in its case, stowed safely in her pack, and had the Matrix soundtrack playing before Nenya had time to get past the third line. "Du...du hast...du hast mich..." She lapsed into Rammstein from Gollum's Song remarkably quickly. She climbed down from her chair, dragged it over to a designated spot above the console, and began tacking up a large poster of Frodo with the Ring.

[BEEEEP!]

"Hey, our first mission!" Rosie beamed. She stepped down from her chair and pulled off her headphones, leaning towards the screen. "It better be suitably bad...hmm....this isn't THAT bad...but...OH NO!" She curled up in the fetal position and began to rock back and forth. "The pain," she murmured.

"What is it?" asked Nenya. "On second thought...maybe I don't want to know."

"It's a code 10, hair 27696," Rosie whimpered. "Remember how you said that those were usually the worst of all? Let me put it bluntly: THIS ONE IS! It's another of those second-daughter-of-Elrond fics - that should tell you a lot - and ELROND DOESN'T KNOW ABOUT ARWEN AND ARAGORN."

"Oh Eru," Nenya muttered. "Now HE, of all people..."

"Exactly," Rosie agreed as she climbed from her spot and went over to the console. "What shall we be this time?"

"Uhm...Orcs?"

"Sure - oh, SHIESSE."

"What?"

"We have to be Orcs," Rosie said glumly. "We have to infiltrate their ranks and RESCUE ARWEN EVENSTAR."

Nenya closed her eyes in exasperation.

Rosie decided that no more words were needed. She reached over and tapped a button on the console. A weird-looking oblongish plot-hole-deus-ex-machina-type doorway appeared in midair.

Rosie blinked. "Heeyyy...fun." She grabbed her pack - containing just her CD player, her CD collection, and her nifty new Canon Character Analysis Device, provided by Makes-Things. Nenya had a Non-Canon CAD, designed to tell who was a bit character and who was a Sue. They couldn't wait to play with them. Attached to the outside of Rosie's pack were a sleeping roll, a large Uruk-Hai bow, and several short thick black-feathered Uruk arrows in a leather quiver. If you looked closely, you would see that one of them had a couple of Nenya's hairs stuck under the arrow-head-on the off chance that they'd actually be hired at the PPC, Rosie had been practicing with her bow and arrows for the past week. She wasn't yet a perfect shot. Nenya had dodged, but her hair hadn't.

They both stood before the portal, carrying their gear. There was an awkward silence.

"You first," Rosie motioned for Nenya to use the portal first.

"This was your idea."

"You're the better fighter. If you fall into an orc-fight, you can defend yourself better."

"Thanks a lot."

Finally, Rosie, being the foolhardy one, gulped, and all of a sudden leaped through the portal and landed rather solidly on...

...a hobbit's bedroll.

Something moved under her. A head of curly, sandy hair popped out. A muffled voice shouted "Hey!"

"Wak!" Rosie hurriedly crawled off the bedroll. That's when she noticed she had landed on Sam.

If Nenya had not arrived at that moment and pulled her swooning sister out of Sam's line of vision, she would have been dead. As it was, Sam sat bolt upright, yelling "Strider!"

"Yes? What is it?" came a deep voice from their right. Nenya's face lit up.

Strider came crashing through the underbrush, looking manly, rugged, and fully the King of Gondor in disguise. Nenya's mouth dropped open.

"Er, Nenya...it's Strider..."

"Gleep..." Nenya couldn't keep her eyes off the ranger. "He's...so...smoking...hot..."

Rosie was having similar feelings towards the scared hobbit in the bedroll. Neither of them were focusing on the conversation at hand.

Rosie snapped out of it when Sam turned away. "Nenya...er, Nen...was this part of the story?"

"No," Nenya replied, turning a devilish smile on her. "But I figured neither of us would mind."

"Aha." Rosie grinned, the effect rather frightening on an Uruk-Hai.

"Strider! An orc! It landed on me!"

"What gripping dialogue..." Rosie said glumly. "SAM DESERVES BETTER THAN THAT!"

Nenya reached out and tapped a few buttons on some sort of electronic thing in her pocket. The world snapped and fizzled and went pff (onomatopoeia stolen from abovementioned crossover), and suddenly Sam was sleeping again, and Strider was sitting on the side, smoking a pipe, humming something in Elvish, looking thoughtful.

"Ohhhh..." Nenya was out of it again.

Suddenly one of the bedrolls (not Sam's, to Rosie's disappointment) stirred. Frodo's dark brown curls and (debatably) darling blue eyes popped out. He watched Strider for a moment in silence, trying to comprehend the elvish words.

Tinúviel elvanui Elleth alfirin ethelhael
O hon ring finnil fuinui A renc gelebrin thiliol,
Strider sang, confusing Frodo slightly, and sending Nenya into swoons of ecstacy.

"Who is she?" Frodo spoke up, looking up at Strider.

Strider looked puzzled. Frodo elaborated. "This woman you sing of."

"He's so hot when he's puzzled..."

"Mmmm...." Rosie replied dreamily. She was something of a Strider fangirl herself, though her real loyalties lay with Sam.

"Tis the Lay of Luthien. The Elf-maiden who gave her love to Beren, a mortal," Strider replied sadly.

"Lay of LEITHIAN, damn you," Rosie muttered to no one in particular. "If it hadn't been for certain things such as 'lawsuit', I'd be afraid they'd send us to exorcize the movie one day."

"What happened to her?" asked Frodo curiously.

Strider looked away. His face bore a hint of tears (at least according to the FOTR SE DVD transcript). "She died."

Frodo looked surprised and sad. Strider turned back to him. "Get some sleep, Frodo."

Frodo burrowed back under the covers and tried to sleep. Strider continued looking thoughtful and humming, blissfully unaware of the pair of Uruk-Hai standing there, ogling him.

After a moment, Rosie got up and walked around to see what Sam looked like when he was asleep, while Nenya crawled closer to Strider to inspect the pipe he was smoking. She then nicked the extra one out of his pack and began kissing it.

Rosie was inspecting Sam's frying pan. She was seriously considering snitching it, until she remembered a few words, like "Movie-Verse" and "The Frying Pan of DOOM". She settled for inhaling the Samwise's-cooking-smell deeply, rubbing it all over a handkerchief, storing the handkerchief in a plastic bag and placing it carefully it in her backpack, and regretfully fastening the frying pan back to his pack.

She crawled back to Nenya and tapped her on the shoulder. "Er, Nenya..."

"Wha?" Nenya was in a daze because she thought she'd heard Strider sighing something to himself about liking red hair.

"Don't you think we ought to get going? I'm not exactly keen on the idea of following a Ranger for two weeks weighted down with fifty pounds of Uruk-Hai gear..."

"Oh, yes, certainly." Nenya sighed and regretfully bade the oblivious Strider farewell. She was about to open a portal when she turned to Rosie with a pleading look.

Rosie sighed. "What now?"

"Pleeeease can we see Strider at Weathertop?"

Rosie brightened. "Sure!"

Nenya entered the info into the activator. A moment later, a portal flickered into existence. Through it could be heard the sound of Nazgul screeching, and they both spied a single dark figure, sword drawn and glinting in the light of the moon, running up the side of a hill, the top of which had the remains of a tower on it.

They looked at each other, grinned, and stepped through.

Frodo was invisible. Five Black Riders stood over him, one with a sword jabbed into Frodo's invisible shoulder. The blood was visible, and the effect was rather disconcerting.

"Eww..." Rosie wrinkled her nose.

All of a sudden, there was a Rangerish yell. Strider leapt into the clearing, brandishing a fiery branch and a sword.

Two invisible Uruks crumpled up in a dead faint.

The dead faint, however, became a little less dead when a hobbit stepped on Rosie's stomach.

"Oof," Rosie mumbled. She woke just in time to see Strider clashing swords with the third Nazgul.

She awoke Nenya, and the two stared, openmouthed, as the Dunedan fought off the five Wraiths singlehandedly.

After it was over, they sighed resignedly and opened a portal to the OC's entrance into the story.

"Laurel!" Arwen cried, running towards her sister, her dress flowing behind her as she moved quickly over the wet ground, sparkling with morning dew.

"Oh, God, NOT a 'flowing dress'..." Rosie dropped her head into her hands and fell to the ground.

"Arwen's sparkling with morning dew," Nenya mused, as she studied the Elven maid clad in a flowing gown that was covered with iridescent dew drops. "That's rather odd."

"At least it's not the Mary Sue," Rosie mumbled. "Thank God for small favours."

Laurel looked up from her writing and saw her sister, Arwen. "Sister, is someone hurt? Is father all right?" she asked, standing up.

Rosie peeked at the writing pad the Sue had disregarded and read a few lines of what she was writing. She began to cackle.

"What?" asked Nenya warily.

"These Sues are stupider than I thought. Look at her paper."

Nenya peered at the dropped writing-pad, careful not to let the OC notice her. "'Legolas is like, so hot and I'm like, so going to marry him when he like, so totally falls, like, madly in love with my beauty and perfectness...this story is, like, going perfectly!' Oh Eru!"

"Exactly."

Arwen took a deep breath, and spoke, her eyes glimmering. "Yes. Father is fine. But, the fellowship will be arriving soon, with news."

"One for the charge list," Rosie muttered. "Causing the Fellowship to ARRIVE at Rivendell, already a group of Nine. In other words, sidetracking the whole fircken Quest just to please their little Mary-Sue whims."

"It's not that bad, yet," Nenya allowed, watching curiously as the dew drops all over Arwen began to run down to the ground, soaking her dress. Arwen seemed not to notice.

Rosie did not reply. She was too busy beating her head against a handy tree. Nenya borrowed her Character Analysis Device, and held it towards Arwen.

[Arwen Evenstar. Elf female. Canon. Out of Character 14.4%]

"Well, that isn't so bad," Nenya ventured. Rosie just continued beating her head against the trunk.

Laurel nodded. Arwen practically danced. "Aragorn is coming. But, you mustn't let on to father about us." Arwen said mindfully.

BEEEEEEEEP!

The younger elf looked up. "What was that?"

"What was what, dear sister?"

The beep became more shrill.

"Shiesse!" Nenya hissed, fumbling for the mute on the device. She pressed it just as the Sue began to get up. She ignored the next story lines as she tried to read the text on the tiny screen.

"How bad is it?" Rosie moaned.

Nenya simply handed her the muted CAD.

[68.41 CHARACTER RUPTURE!] the screen flashed. Even with the mute on, it still was forced to let out a tiny bip...bip...bip at the horribleness of the scene.

Rosie rolled her eyes and stashed it back in her pack. "This is really, really bad. I mean really."

They both, unfortunately, remembered their duty just in time to see Laurel (gag) wandering by on the path that was lit by "eerily romantic" light, humming a truly awful lullaby.

"Oh, ye gentle prince, upon the shore, come bring to me your wondrous gift. Of simple rose and spring's soft dew, captured skillfully on the ivy." she sang in her (VERY debatably [it sounded like a hoarse cow trying to imitate Brittany Spears]) melodic voice.

Nenya was quietly sick in a bush, while Rosie rocked back and forth muttering "Sam will save me, Sam will save me" to herself.

"Celebrian would never sing something that horrible," Nenya muttered weakly. "But then again, Celebrian would never fall in love with -"

Rosie stopped her. "I really, really don't want to know..."

"No, you're right, you don't. Never mind."

Rosie pulled a pad of paper out of a plot hole and began scribbling. "Writing really bad songs and blaming it on Celebrian...being a second daughter of Elrond...what else have we missed?"

"Causing noble, honourable Elf-ladies to behave like human teenagers with a crush....oh, and causing Aragorn and Arwen to have a secret love affair."

"Yes...YES." Rosie nodded approvingly. Her pencil scribbled across the yellow legal sheet.

"What a beautiful voice you have. May I ask your name?" A voice interrupted the Mary Sue's song, to the extreme relief of the PPC agents.

Laurel turned around quickly. She saw a man standing there. He had silvery hair, the color of the moon, and from what she could make out deep blue eyes. He stood tall, with a regal pose, and soft elfin features.

Both agents heard a rrrip, as if in a heavy fabric.

"What's that?" asked Rosie, turning around.

"Just a major rip in canon," Nenya replied, studying her Device. "New Mini-Race. Thousands of half-sized Balrogs trying to get through the curtain of bad-writingness to get to Cam."

Rosie moaned. "Elfin? ELFIN?"

"Not to nitpick," Nenya added, while rifling through the contents of her backpack for her CD player to numb the pain, "but Legolas is not a man, and being a daughter of Elrond, she should know that."

"Charge list!" Rosie hurriedly pulled out the yellow pad and scribbled. "Charges D9 and E2!" Rosie had made it her business to know the Official Charge List off by heart.

"Whatever," Nenya mumbled, pulling out a CD player. "Shiesse! Neither Lianna Klassen nor Enya are loud enough to drown this out...do you have any harder stuff?"

"Uhh, I've got...Creed, Rammstein, Our Lady Peace, Delirious and Avril Lavigne," Rosie replied, rummaging through her things.

"Gimme," Nenya ordered, holding out her hand, not really caring which band she got. Rosie handed over Weathered.

"Wait, one of us has to take notes," Rosie protested, as Nenya jammed on her headphones.

"Can you do it? I'll take the banquet..."

Rosie scanned the Words. "Okay...but you have to take the walk with Legolas in the morning, because the walk in the garden is exceedingly painful..."

"Fine by me." Nenya was already lost in Bullets. Rosie suspected that if her sister had bothered to check the words, she would not have agreed so easily. But there were reasons why Rosie had considered her alternate personality as a candidate for the Ultimate Evil.

Rosie turned back to the story, pen and legal pad in hand and ready for battle - to find out that through a cruel and unsummoned plot hole, she had missed nothing through her dragged-out-in-hope-of-missing-the-painful-parts discussion with Nenya.

"My name, sir, is Laurel, daughter of Lord Elrond, sister of Arwen." Laurel replied, bowing shortly. "May, I have yours?"

"Legolas Greenleaf." he said, bowing too. Laurel smiled slightly. "Are you part of the fellowship?"

Rosie groaned. Several charges came to mind, and she began to scribble furiously.

She scanned the Words up to where Nenya was supposed to take over. It seemed excruciatingly painful, and there weren't enough charges to have to be there as they happened. Rosie hurriedly scribbled down a few charges, such as charge C 1.3 and Making Greenleaf a Last Name, and then pulled out a Discman, a pair of earphones and the treasured Human Clay.

When she could almost feel the spare litmus paper in her pocket turn red, she took them off and listened.

"When I was born, it was prophesied that I would contain a secret. A secret that only the one who truly loves me can reveal. No one knows what this secret it, but they know this curse. It's a curse of the Heart, I believe. It's very rare, and when the secret is revealed, it overcomes the bearer until it is fulfilled. If it's not fulfilled by a set date, the carrier of it dies, and evil succumbs the world for one thousand years. The reason you have never heard of me, is because my father fears for my life. He fears the prophesy and has kept me under strict surveillance until now." Laurel finished.

Ah, the cruelty of life and Laws. "At least she has a decent, albeit fairy-tale-ish and deus-ex-machinic, excuse for never being mentioned in canon," Rosie murmured, wishing with all her heart that she had made Nenya take this part. "So who cast this curse in the first place, anyway? And why is she telling this random Elf, who she knows nothing about, everything about her deepest darkest secret?" She started humming Army of Love to take away some of the pain.

Legolas stared at her for a moment, not knowing what to say. "A few chosen people know of this, but as it comes into existence, more will know." she continued.

"We are not the enemy, we are here to-oh, bloody hell. This cannot be this bad...."

"How did you come to get this secret?" Legolas asked, sitting down on a stone wall, next to a garden of peonies.

"My mother's side of the family is said to be part enchantress, part fairy and part elf. Something when this sort of blood is mixed, it causes a curse of this."

"It's this bad," Rosie groaned. She began methodically beating her head against the stone wall on which Legolas was seated. Luckily, the Elf was too taken by the Sue's magical enchanting I'm-so-beautiful-I-strike-you-dumb powers to notice.

"But why not to Arwen. Why you?" he asked.

"Arwen is perfect. I would never wish something such as this upon her. But, since you ask, I have no idea. I do not think anyone will ever know. It's like why do I have brown hair instead of blue or green. And why do I have golden hair instead of brown, fiery orange or sable? Simply, because it just is." Laurel finished.

"I wonder," the PPC agent muttered, squinting and trying to make sense of that paragraph. "Brown hair instead of blue or green...golden hair instead of brown...am I the only one that confuses? Or maybe her hair's changing colour as she goes...and, by God, don't insult us golden-heads!" Rosie absently twirled a strand of her own frizzy golden-brown locks (which looked quite out-of-place on a dark-skinned ugly creature) around a warped Orc finger.

She glanced ahead a little bit, and winced. She poked Nenya, who had fallen into a bit of a doze. "This is your ballgame, Nen, I need some sleep. Gimme the CD, I need something to wash my brain out with."

Nenya woke up after a few jostles. As the redhead was a heavy sleeper, Rosie had to take off her sister's earphones and practically yell into her ear to get her on her feet.

Before hauling off to the woods to set up her sleeping roll, Rosie glanced ahead in the Words, as was her habit. She mumbled something about 'shut off the volume, it's an Aragorn sex-change,' and headed out.

Nenya rolled her eyes and trailed after the Suvian and her Elven prey, humming the dreaded If You Sleep just because Rosie wasn't around. Then she glanced up...and blinked...and blinked again. The Mary Sue was trying to 'cast her eyes over her retreat'. With another glance at the words, it appeared she was also trying to create a painting inside her head, while Legolas attempted to see himself in spoken words...The effect was a maddening swirl of words in a paisley pattern.

Nenya shook herself to clear her head, and ignored the next few lines as she fished for silly putty in her bag. Silly putty was Nenya and Rosie's official means of sanity; it worked very well when one was tense, impatient, or just plain ticked. The redhead began methodically working it over in her hands as she hung out inconspicuously in a corner of the great banquet hall that had suddenly appeared in the Last Homely House. Perhaps it was the Hall of Fire, but it was neither dark nor particularly song-and-poem-like, and there was no fireplace.

Out came the charge list.

A sudden break of tension signified the Sue breaking company with Legolas; suddenly, the inexplicably golden-haired Elf was momentarily released from bondage as Laurel abandoned him to go and speak with her father (who looked pained at having to deal with another unexplained second daughter) and 'Lord Aragorn' (who looked wary of this strange new menace). He wandered away, dazed. Nenya, feeling for him, gave him a pat on the head and a whispered assurance that it would be all right. He relaxed. Unfortunately, he was called on again presently, to talk about random boring things with Elrond as the Mary Sue displayed her patience and endurance as she listened politely.

"Lord Elrond." Legolas was saying, giving the Elf a stiff bow (as he was very well aware it was not needed). "Lady Laurel."

Laurel nodded back, and affixed a serene smile to her face. She watched as her father and Legolas talked. She stood quiet, and did not show her boredom as she had been taught to.

"And did not show her boredom...as she had been taught to...she had been taught to show her boredom?" Nenya started giggling madly, thanking God that Jay wasn't here to see Elrond being depicted as such a teacher.

As nothing interesting was happening for an undefined amount of time, Nenya aimlessly scanned the room for any elves she would happen to know...

..and laid eyes upon a magnificent golden-haired grey-eyed Elf, standing in the corner and speaking with some friends, completely unaware of any Suvian influence beyond the regular distortion the presence of a badly done OC adds to the environment.

Glorfindel.

Nenya's heart nearly stopped. The Elven warrior was her reason for being accepted to SNAOL. Her Mini-Balrog was named for him. He truly was a great Elf...If only she had more time to speak to him. Perhaps, next mission, if she pushed for Elven disguises...

An ear-piercing shriek roused the hall and nearly split the PPC agent's eardrums. A perfectly-manicured finger pointed at Nenya, and a gratuitous daughter of Lord Peredhel screeched "THERE'S AN ORC IN THE HALL!"

"Bloody hell!" Nenya cried, dashing for the exit before she was seen. Bad Nenya! her rational mind yelled. You know Upstairs frowns on drooling...And NOW look where it got you!

She managed to make it outside the doors before they caught her, utilizing a handy plot-hole that she'd found near the Sue. So, as the Elves rushed past her searching for the mysterious Orc, no one noticed her, even though she was calmly leaning against the side of the building.

The Sue, of course, stayed inside and directed things. When no orc was found, every Elf suddenly was returned to their proper place, and the story carried on as it had before.

In a few seconds, Nenya had to hide herself in the bushes and take notes as Arwen and her pseudo-sister giggled together like a couple of teenagers. All of a sudden, through a quirk of description, the very darkness rustled.

Very abruptly, the scene shifted from a nighttime outdoors to mid-day in an Elven bedchamber.

Nenya blinked. The change was so sudden, she had to cover her eyes for about five minutes until they would adjust to the bright sunlight shining through the windows.

"Wha-hop?" Rosie asked sleepily, yawning as she came up behind her sister, the quick transportation a result of their last remaining available plothole.

"Good morning. Darnit, Rosie, that was our last plothole! The Sue just heard a rustling and suddenly it changed to day, for no real reason whatsoever," Nenya replied, firing off three different topics in the same sentence with practiced ease.

"Thank you. Sorry, I needed it. You know I can't think in the mornings. Lovely, now she's interrupted a nice dream about Sam. May I have the honour of murdering her?" Rosie yawned, replying in kind.

"Be my guest...I'm not one for blood."

Rosie made a strange face. "Neither am I. Only the blood of Sues, especially ones after Legolas." Rosie had been a Legoluster once upon a time, and old habits are hard to break.

They both turned their attention to the scene, just in time to see the Sue wake up from a long fitful sleep to see Elrond suddenly appear by her bed, where he had apparently been 'anxiously pacing' for some time. Rosie suspected he didn't want to have any more to do with this Sue than he had to, and had made use of a plothole she'd left behind.

"Laurel, my daughter. You're awake." Elrond said. "You've been asleep for only one day, but I was worried."

Laurel smiled slightly. "I'm all right, father. Is Arwen not with you?"

Nenya rolled her eyes. "I don't think Arwen's gained invisibility powers in the last day..."

Elrond was silent for a long time. "Arwen, was taken." He finally said.

"Taken! Where?" Laurel cried, sitting up.

"Calm yourself, daughter. She was taken to Isengard." Elrond said.

Nenya glanced at the Words, and grimaced. "You were right. Arwen's been 'kidnaped', apparently with no one noticing, not even our ever-alert Sue. And apparently, for some unknown reason, they ignored her and just took Arwen..."

Rosie winced. "Brace yourself, here comes the .2 seconds in which she speeds ahead two and a half days..."

Nenya grabbed ahold of the nearest delicately-carved pillar.

"Get your rest. You'll need it." He said, then left, closing the door behind him.

Suddenly, with a glittery pink asterisk and a nauseating time-separator, the room gave a spine-tingling jolt, threw both of the agents across the room, and then settled calmly back in place. The Sue, of course, remained unaffected.

"Ow..." Rosie groaned, as she pushed herself up. "Dammit. Put down some Temporal-Spatial distortions, would you? Try charge B 1."

Nenya obediently got out the charge list from her position half-suspended about four feet off the floor in the arms of a large decorative candelabra. The redhead was gifted with the ability to read or write in any position at any time, something Rosie greatly envied.

Then the blonde was forced to make a dive for cover under the Sue's divan as she realized that they were no longer hidden. Had a second more passed, and had Rosie a fraction less of the instincts of being raised in a family of six children, she would have been seen. Nenya, however, was pretty much hooped.

Luckily, Laurel didn't notice her right away, and she had time to slip down and join Rosie under the Elven bed. "That was close," she whispered to her sister. "And you aren't really blonde, you know. There's more brown than there is blonde."

"Quit reading the narration, it's annoying," Rosie replied. "And it sounds better to say 'blonde' than it does to say 'golden-brown-haired person'."

"Golden hair is very Suvian. Wouldn't it be easier to call you a brunette?"

"So is red hair," Rosie pointed out. "And I don't like that word, brunette. Sounds like some sort of fish-catching device."

Nenya looked at the words and groaned. "Can I tune out for a bit, Roslyn? This is nauseating..."

Rosie glared at her. "No. You promised, remember?"

Nenya rolled her eyes. "Fine." She clutched the charge list and handed Rosie her pack. Then they both grabbed ahold of the passing plot hole that Laurel had used to get out to the garden in a matter of nanoseconds, and were pulled out over Rivendell and dropped about five metres away from the Sue.

Both managed to land so as not to attract attention, and then Rosie pulled out her CD player and two custom CDs their brother had burned for her. She slipped in the first and tuned into Jesus Freak. "Separated, I cut myself clean," she started humming.

Nenya left her oblivious sister sitting in the midst of an Elven paradise (there WERE perks to this job), and singing rather off-key, and followed the wandering Laurel around, plugging her ears so she wouldn't have to listen to the 'random poems' the Sue made up.

Suddenly, with no warning at all, Legolas appeared randomly at her side, and delivered his line "Good evening, again," with a glazed look in his eye. Nenya winced in sympathy.

Laurel whirled around to face Legolas. "You, sir, have a habit of following me, don't you." She said, a smile tugging at her lips.

Legolas shrugged. "It could be that we just happen to be at the same place, at the same time."

Nenya looked around for a handy wall, found none, and settled for beating herself over the head with her Official Handbook. She continued in this manner until finally, the Laws of Narrative Comedy decided to take pity on her and ended the scene early.

"Hey! Unfair!" Rosie protested, hoisting herself up from her comfortable seat. "How come the Laws didn't do that for me?"

"I'm *special*." Nenya stuck her tongue out rather childishly. "Besides, I read the scene in advance and documented all charges."

Rosie glared. "Fine. So, can we kill her now?"

"Let's wait till she sidetracks the whole Quest AND invites herself along."

"She's already done that..." Rosie fingered her crossbow anxiously. She wanted blood.

"No, Ros."

Rosie grumped. "Okay, okay." Temporal distortions always put the precision-loving Rosie in a bad mood. "And we can skip the very painful talk with Elrond. We can get her as soon as she sets out - she'll be alone and unprotected. Except for 'light Elfin armour', which, since it's non-canonical and not Elven armour, should be easy to shoot through."

"What about her bow, 'bundle of arrows' and sword?"

"I'll sneak in and -" Rosie paused, considering her own remarkable lack of grace. "On second thought, you sneak in, handcuff her and hold her, and I'll charge and shoot her."

"Fine by me."

Rosie hoisted her pack higher on her back. "Lessgo."

They reached the spot on the road just out of Rivendell by way of portal, just as the Sue was approaching on horseback. Rosie cursed silently - she hadn't been counting on a horse.

Nenya just hid behind a rock and waited. Rosie shrugged and did likewise.

As the Sue clipped past on her horse, she suddenly sensed some sort of enemy presence. Stupidly, instead of riding away, she dismounted and looked around for it.

Nenya took this opportunity to leap out, grab her by the wrists and hold her down with one hand while she searched for the handcuffs with the other. The horse very wisely bolted.

"What are you doing?" she screeched, trying to wrestle free. "Let me go!"

Nenya just clipped the handcuffs on and held the girl in place. "Rosie," she called. "It's your cue."

"You've got no right to do this to me!" Laurel squealed, throwing a typical Suvian tantrum. "I'm a daughter of Lord Elrond! I'm a princess of Rivendell!"

"Like hell you are," Rosie said calmly, stepping out from behind a clump of trees to the right of the path. "My dear, Elrond has a total of one daughters, and if you think that we can let you force your way into this wonderful family, you've got another think coming. I've got some charges for you." She pulled out the charge list, which was rather long indeed.

"But you can't do this!" she wailed. "Everything was going perfectly until you showed up! Oh, Leggy, my Leggles, saaaaaave me!"

"Shut up," Nenya replied calmly. "Rosie?"

Rosie cleared her throat and adjusted her spectacles. "Ahem. Laurel (Kudos to you for having only one short, bearable and almost Elvish name), you are charged with *deep breath* Being a second daughter of Elrond, writing really bad songs and blaming it on Celebrian, causing Aragorn and Arwen to have a secret love affair, causing noble, placid Elf-ladies to behave like a human teenager with a crush, having a voice like a sick cow imitating Brittany Spears and making Legolas call it beautiful, doing away with Elladan and Elrohir, covering Arwen in dewdrops (Quit glaring, Nenya, it's a charge! *deep breath*), charge D 9 - causing an original character to have an unbearably beautiful voice, charge E 2 - displaying extreme stupidity, forgetting to separate your paragraphs, saying things that make absolutely no sense whatsoever, making Greenleaf a last name, charge C 1.3 - creating non-canonical races such as fairies and enchantresses, having contradictory hair, replacing the Hall of Fire with some strange banquet hall, charge A 1.4 - causing a character to act like a lovestruck fool, especially over an original character, charge B 1 - Causing time compression, *breath* And, last but not least, charge E 1 - REALLY annoying PPC agents.*" Rosie glared, stepped back, and drew her crossbow.

"What are you do -"

*tzzing*

*thunk*

Rosie walked forward and pulled the arrow out of the Sue's forehead. Remarkably, Sues didn't bleed when killed; they only let off small puffs of glitter. Rosie examined the arrow, and stowed it in her pack for a souvenir, as the first Sue she had ever killed.

Nenya slung the body over her shoulder. "What should we do with her?"

Rosie thought a moment. "I always heard that the Cats of Queen Beruthiel were rather vicious when around spawns of the Enemy."

Nenya smiled rather evilly. "Yes. Portal?"

The blonde pulled out a generator and tapped in the coordinates, and watched bemusedly as Nenya dragged the dead willowy character with confusing hair through the oblong door. She then followed, and the two watched satisfactorily as a group of clawed felines ate their dinner.

Then Rosie borrowed the generator and created a portal back to Headquarters. The two stepped through, and felt that rippling change of form that always happened when you changed from one being to another. Instead of two Uruk-Hai standing there, there were two sisters in Elven cloaks carrying backpacks.

There was an excited "Grrraarrr!" from the corner, and Glorfindal leaped out and hugged them both tightly.

They grinned at each other, and, just as if they were veteran agents back from their hundredth mission, dropped their things on the floor, flopped onto the couch and went to sleep.

Unfortunately, the computer refused to leave them alone.

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!

"Utumno agar tummen!"

Rosie's A/N: Well, it's finally done! Nenya's been on my back to finish this ever since she finished her chapter and posted it. I'd been putting it off; however, adding Luxury, Jay and Acacia to my MSN list and actually getting to *talk* to the heroines inspired me greatly, besides the fact that they hinted at a new chapter coming out soon. Happiness is oh so wonderful!

Oh, and the fact that Nenya's coming home in two weeks helped too! :D I am ecstatic. The only reason I'm not bouncing off the walls is because I haven't eaten any sugar in the last week, specifically to keep myself calm.

Oh, and 'Utumno agar tummen' means 'bloody hell!' in Elvish. :D


Nenya's A/N: Rosie wrote most of this chapter, and I just helped with beta-reading and real-life inspiration. If you count general insanity and nagging as 'inspiration'. Actually, I've been more active in supporting other PPC authors than in writing, these last few weeks. But I hope you enjoy our latest chapter. There shall be more to come! And in case you haven't noticed, Rosie's taken up Creative Invective 101, which includes a lot of Elvish swearing. Sigh. And I thought she had innocent reasons for wanting to learn Elvish....!

Chapter 2: "The Dark of the Moon"

"There!" Nenya marked the last square on the monthly calendar and turned it to the next page. "Six months since that over-eager wisteria yanked us through the front door."

"Really?" Rosie looked up, lazily interested, from her comfy bean-bag seat, and stretched. "You would never know it, would you? I mean, by the contact we have with the outside world."

"Well, we wouldn't even know it by the calendar dates, if it weren't for Glorfindal keeping track of how long we're gone on missions." The mini-Balrog had, apparently, picked up basic counting and addition skills at OFUM before he'd come to Nenya's care. Nenya was trying to teach him his multiplication tables. "That, and the dates on our pay cheques."

"That's one thing we can say for the Marquis-or maybe for Jay and Acacia, they bugged him about it enough-at least we get regular pay cheques around here." Rosie pulled herself up from the comfy depths of the chair and went over to the storage closet in the corner. "Aha!"

"What aha?"

"Acid test." She swiped a finger across the dust on top of the cabinet and held it up to her face. "Hmmm. Yep, six months." Looking sidelong at Nenya she added, "Plus or minus three and a half days."

Nenya grinned. "Hey, it's not my fault I like physics! Besides, we're trying different ways to stave off insanity, right? I do science, you do art." She glanced guiltily at the stack of textbooks and papers that marked the latest resting place of the paraphernalia for her correspondence physics course. "Though I have to wonder sometimes what my markers think of the odd coloured smudges on the papers I send in-I doubt the blood and mud really look all that much like red pen and chocolate cookie stains."

"Not to mention the singe marks from when Glori's looking over your shoulder."

"Maybe I was just getting into the spirit of things and was searching for the deep secrets of the universe by candle-light?"

Before Rosie could give her opinion on that theory, the console (nicknamed "Rincewind" because of its unlucky connection with the Universal Laws of Narrative Comedy) let out a shriek.

"That's a new noise...." Rosie, who was closer to the noise source, was already looking over the monitor screen. "Oh, for Vana's sake!"

"Don't you mean 'Manwe,' or 'Eru,' or. . . . 'Someone was king'?! Says Aragorn? What the. . .?" Nenya had made it over to the console by now, and was gaping in a rather unbecoming fashion at the Words.

"Yeah." Rosie absent-mindedly handed her the Tylenol, knowing that anything having to do with Aragorn in this fic was going to affect Nenya badly, Ranger fanatic that she was. "'Aragorn took a deep breath of the cool autumn air around him. . . .It had been about a year since they had destroyed the ring. Frodo nearly didn't escape, but with one less finger. Early on, Boromir was shot 3 times by a horrid creature. . . .So much had passed in a year's time, and someone was king.' Someone!? Ye gads."

"It gets worse, doesn't it?" Nenya trailed a finger down the monitor. "She's only read FOTR and the beginning of TTT. But she's writing a post-ROTK fic-wait a second...." Nenya began scribbling on a piece of paper. "Gotta tell Jay and Acacia about this one-a post-War fic that still manages to be non-canonical! And from the looks of it, it's a Mary Sue, too."

"Yep, half-dead girl by the side of the road, and everything. Look, they're heading to Rivendell-does that make us Random Elves ™, or are we Uruk-Hai again?"

"Elves, I suppose. She doesn't leave Rivendell for the duration of the fic, so we'd better go for inconspicuous. It'll be a nice change, anyhow."

"It will, at that. Being ugly and terrorizing people loses its charm pretty quickly. Well, OK, maybe not terrorizing people." Rosie had a rather more bloodthirsty reputation than her partner.

"Alrighty then. I'm gonna set us to arrive in Rivendell-inside the House of Elrond, to be exact. We'll miss out on Aragorn picking up our lovely Sue, but since the canon breach of him not knowing who was king in Gondor is only something he thinks, it won't much matter if we're there or not. Besides, I doubt we really want to try to follow his horse on foot all night."

On went the portal, through went the agents. As they stepped through the portal, Rincewind's screen display changed from the Words of the fanfic to a large flashing red warning sign. The portal snapped shut, cutting off the emergency siren the console emitted before it reached the agents' ears.

Rosie and Nenya found themselves just inside the doors of the Last Homely House. Before they had time to adequately admire the decor (impressive, even in a Suvian universe) Aragorn burst through the front door, carrying the unconscious Mary Sue over his shoulder.

"Elrond! Elrond I need you IMMEDIATELY! It is IMPORTANT!" Once he had reached the House of Elrond, he didn't bother to knock. He walked in.

"Just a minute, just a minute... Oh, It is you Aragorn. Such a pleasant surprise, couldn't you have given word of arrival, enough to let us make a room for you and you're ah... guest?" Elrond replied.

"Ouch, ouch! My ears hurt, Aragorn. Inside voices, inside voices," a shaggily red-haired Elf whispered from a corner. "Why's Elrond expect him to 'give word of arrival' if he's been out in the wild?"

"Dunno. But one would hope the Lord of Imladris knew his pronouns," the short blonde Elf beside her answered. She pointed her Canon Analysis Device at the Elf Lord.

[Elrond Peredhel. Half-elven male. Canon. Out of Character 13.19 %.]

"Eh, not so bad. He does take care of people who are brought to his doors by friends." Rosie switched the Canon Analysis Device to the limp creature now being passed to a servant of Elrond (did Elrond even have servants?) and blinked at the display.

[Aniron Renoldi Sauron. Human female. Non-canon. Mary Sue.]

"Oh, Eru, does that mean Sauron's been watching the Princess Diaries? Aniron Renoldi Sauron? And does the author know that 'Aniron Sauron' means 'I desire Sauron'?"

Nenya giggled. "I doubt it. Besides which, I doubt that 'Sauron' is a last name. Apparently she goes off to be healed now-do we follow her and watch her wake up? Actually, I'm going to portal; it doesn't say how long she's going to be asleep."

"Alrighty." Rosie stepped through, lugging her backpack behind her, and Nenya slipped through behind her. A voice floated from a nearby doorway and they crept up to listen as the Sue replied to Aragorn's request to tell him about herself.

"My name is Aniron, which is Elven for desire. But since you speak to them in their tongue, you probably already know that."

Rosie began to administer the time-honoured anesthetic of thumping her head against the doorjamb.

"You can call me Desi for short," continued the Sue, oblivious. "Desi, as in Desire. But it's pronounced like Deci-mal."

Aragorn's eyes, glazed though they were, reflected brief puzzlement at "decimal," not least because his brain seemed to somehow understand English when the most the Sue should have been speaking was Westron. Nenya joined Rosie in beating the doorjamb into submission with her forehead.

"When do we get this paragon of linguistic ability, anyway?" Rosie wondered. Her eyes glazed, looking at the Words.

"Well, she's committed her first major breach of canon already-'someone was king'-but we should probably stick around for the part where she beats the crap out of Gandalf (whose name she misspells) and is revealed as Legolas's half sister, and also the daughter of Sauron. And has another Ring-the, er, Ring of Life, which undoes bad stuff." Nenya winced a little.

The Sue, so talkative about her name, had suddenly decided to be contrary when it came to revealing any more about herself. Elrond's attempt to read her mind had apparently failed, though it was Nenya's private theory that this had more to do with his general inability to do this than with any mental shields Desi might have put up. His strange attempt to call "silently" to Arwen made him a candidate for HQ Administration, however.

When Aragorn left the room (to "sit pacing" in his own room, a rather interesting feat of flexibility) the agents followed. Apparently he was wishing that Gandalf...er, Gandolf...were there, for suddenly the in-line author's note roared through the quiet morning air. "(A.N: I know Gandalf comes back again...Or does he???)"

"Are you trying to deafen us, woman? Now I've got ringing ears along with the headache," Rosie complained. She rubbed her forehead. "Mind if I tune out for a bit?" She slipped her headphones on over her ears and tuned into Gollum's Song, just because Nenya couldn't hear it. Aragorn and Elrond discussed the Sue, and why she wouldn't tell them who she was.

Apparently Aragorn's wishes had gotten through to someone Up There, for Gandolf appeared out of thin air, amazingly looking like a wizard and not a miniature Balrog. Nenya poked Rosie. "I am Gandalf, hear me roar. Shut off the volume on your Canon Analysis Device."

"Listen, who is your father? If you do not tell me, I will use my Magic and MAKE you tell me." Gandolf told her

[Gandalf the Grey. Maia. Canon. Out of Character 42.03 %.]

" I will not tell you, and don't come near me or I'll hurt you."

" Very well... you leave me no choice..." Gandolf said advancing towards her.

" NO, you're mistaken. I warned you, now you'll have to pay for it..." WHAM! Gandolf rammed against the wall with such force he was knocked out, Deci, seizing the chance leapt from bed, landed a kick in his groin and ran from the room.

[bip. Out of Character 55.03 %.] said the Analysis Device.

"Classical vicious stronger-fighter-than-you Suvian," said Rosie. "One for the charge list: being able to beat up an Istari. Istar, whatever. Mind you, she does get points for having Elrond and Aragorn notice later that that's an unusual thing, but still."

"And the servant girl changing the bath towels 'calls silently', too. Is this whole place full of plant wannabes? Seriously, there's a reason I don't hang out Upstairs very much. It gets creepy after a while."

"At least Elrond had the excuse of having a radioactive mother-in-law for being creepy. The servant girl doesn't. Well, at least movie-Elrond did. I actually think this fic pre-dates the films, which is a pretty scary thought."

"What, that people can mess things up without PJ's help? You don't want to see some of the crap in the other universes, then." Nenya tried to appear world-weary, with the success born of having several thousand fanfic readings under her belt. Rosie had only one thousand thirteen at last count.

"Shshhh! She's gonna take a bath now. You just missed Elrond telling her she's under house arrest till she tells them who her father is. We gotta be quiet now, 'cause I really don't think she'll ignore us if we keep discussing PJ, even if she is absorbed in a flashback."

"Crap! The flashback! Is this one of those where we get dragged along with her?"

"Yep, and it's to Mordor, too. Hang on."

Removing her clothes, Deci slipped in to the water and fingered the ring around her neck... it was like her father's. Thinking of him, she slipped into a daydreaming stage

With a gut-twisting lurch and a distinct lack of sentence-terminating punctuation, the scene changed from a Rivendell bath to the top of a tower in Mordor. Probably Barad-dûr, as it seemed to be the scene of a lot of the Sue's 'Sauron Family' memories, which were suitably gross and rather glibly passed over. Sauron raping the Sue seemed in character, but how he'd managed it in eyeball form was hard to visualize. In the Sue's current memory, Sauron was indulging in a bit of legacy-shaping.

He took her to a ledge, and held her close. Sighing, he said 'Someday Andiron Renoldi Sauron, Someday... this will all be yours...'

Rosie was sick over the edge of Barad-dûr (another high-altitude Galilean experiment to tell Acacia about), while Nenya bent over double trying to keep the snorts and wheezes of laughter in. Sauron bequeathing something to a descendent! Sauron willingly giving his kingdom to anyone! Sauron speaking like a mortal who was going to die and hand his goods over to another! And a Sue who couldn't even spell her own first name!

With another lurch that made Nenya wish she'd been the one who'd already emptied her stomach, the story settled back into place around Desi's Rivendell bathtub. She remembered mourning the death of Boromir-though how she'd known of his death at the time was unclear-and in a surprisingly concise and well-punctuated paragraph, finished washing her hair and got dressed. Nenya made a note to commend the girl (before she killed her) on her taste in clothing. The green and white dress was far less flashy than the general run-of-the-mill Mary Sue outfits, and actually seemed to suit her complexion.

While Desi feasted on Elvish dinner delicacies, Rosie and Nenya went over the charge list and gnawed the granola bars Rosie had thoughtfully brought along. Upstairs kind of frowned on agents sneaking food from a fictional universe, and after the last Hobbit-centric fic in which Rosie had strategically entered the story at a moment when attending a feast would be inevitable, the two had resolved to keep canonical refrigerator raiding to a minimum. Even the amazing lack of variety in their diet back at HQ wasn't reason enough to get themselves dragged up before Legal. The temptation was pretty strong, though. These days, the pizza delivery guy was on a voice-recognition basis with them.

Rosie had given up on the charge list and was touching up a drawing of Britney Spears as the Balrog of Moria, and Nenya was counting the strands of hair on the bust of Elrond that stood in a nearby alcove, when a lightening of the atmosphere signaled the lapse of the Sue into slumber. "She ate a good dinner, of fresh baked bread, nectar, and many other things. She slipped into an easy sleep" reported the Words.

"At last!" Nenya cheered. "Nighttime! We'd better go get some rest, too, before we get woken up by people running around screaming in the morning. Somebody shoots at Desi, and then all hell breaks loose when they discover who she is, and she does a Boromir with the prophecy-from-a-strange-land thing. The author's really bad at signaling the passage of time, so we have no idea how long the night will last here."

"Where are we going to sleep? I really don't want to camp out in the forest this time, not after hanging around all these lovely Elvish bedrooms. Pity we're not actual guests of Elrond."

A crafty smile crossed Nenya's face. "You know, you've just given me a most excellent idea! Wait here a second-" She scuttled off down the hall and around a corner.

"Weirdo." Rosie shook her head. She dug around in her pack and produced a package of bubble gum, which she proceded to chew with great gusto. It was generally dangerous to blow bubbles around Nenya, since she had the unfortunate tendency to pop them for you. Rosie had finished up the Britney picture and was doodling on the edge of the charge sheet and blowing a particularly large, satisfying bubble, when Nenya appeared a few minutes later with an ear-to-ear grin on her face.

"Quick! This way! Follow me! Shhhh!"

"What's this about? Did you find a place for us to sleep?"

"Oh, yeah, baby," Nenya answered, grinning, if possible, even wider. "Just you wait and see!" She pulled Rosie down the hall, out across a porch, and up a short flight of stairs. Glancing both ways, she ducked through a doorway into a spacious bedroom. "Like it?"

"Er-"

"The El twins? You know, Elladan and Elrohir? Sons of Elrond? Well, this is their place, and we're staying here tonight. Perk of the job."

"You can't just-how do you know they're not here? And won't someone mind if they find out?"

"The author doesn't mention them in this fic, does she?"

"Nooo..."

"So I thought, maybe they're off doing something canonical like scouting for the last few Orcs in the area, or maybe they're off in Ithilien like Legolas is supposed to be."

"Or maybe the author doesn't know they exist."

"Well, yeah, that, too. But I went down to the gardens and asked some random Elf where the Lords Elladan and Elrohir were. Luckily this place is Sued-up enough that they didn't think it was weird that I didn't know, or even stop to think what a strange Elf was doing here. They're off on a scouting mission."

"Well, if you say it's all clear...." Rosie wandered towards a beautifully carved divan near the windows. "Is this a bed? Looks awfully comfy." She bounced on it a little. "Gorgeous view out the balcony."

"It takes a lot of work for even a Suvian to wreck a place where Elves live, to loosely quote Gandalf. Yeah, I think that's a bed. Looks kind of like what Arwen had in the movies. There's another through here." Nenya stuck her head through an adjoining archway. "I guess they have separate bedrooms. Though with the whole Elvish-dreaming thing I don't think they sleep as much as humans do. Oh! I filched some bedclothes from the stores downstairs, so we can make up the beds and take them down again, and no one will be the wiser even after canon snaps back." Nenya dropped a set of linen on the divan and handed another to Rosie.

Rosie had been strolling about the room while Nenya was talking, and had now stopped in front of a bookshelf packed with scrolls and books. She looked interestedly at the top shelf, running her finger along the spines of the books. OFUM had taught the Fëanorean tengwar, and while she was a little rusty (this job required more action-hero work than reading) she could make out the titles quite easily. "Classification of Trees Native to Eriador; The Lay of Fingolfin Son of Finwë; Of the Powers of Arda; The Tongue of the People of Haleth; Of Ulmo and Voronwë....wait a minute-" Some lettering across the top of the shelf had caught her eye. "Nenya! Personal Library of Elrohir Peredhel! This must be Elrohir's room! Mine mine mine!" The student of elf-lore began to do a little dance, rather more resembling the "Frodo funky chicken dance" from the movie version of Bilbo's party than anything Lúthien might have done.

"I get the other room then! Ah, Elladan, starry grey-eyed son of Men and Elves...." Nenya's eyes glazed over, and not from reading the Words.

"Nen, you're soaking your uniform sleeve with drool." Rosie remarked, casually.

"So are you, or you would be if you weren't using your mouth to talk so much. Don't lean over the antique woodwork or the ancient manuscripts when you think of your hero, OK?" Nenya replied, not at all perturbed.

The agents had only seen the sons of Elrond once or twice, and that from a distance, and they had to agree with Tolkien that the two looked almost identical. Nevertheless, Rosie was an Elrohir fan, while Nenya had fixated on Elladan. It might have had something to do with the names-Tolkien himself had said that people formed ideas of the sense of words from their sound before they were told what the words were supposed to mean. The Professor had probably not factored drool into his theory.

"Hey, can you read any of those books? I didn't do so hot in Basic Sindarin-Celebrimbor was less vicious than Elrond," Nenya said, after a few moments of reverent contemplation of the owner of the next room. "Not to mention being rather nonplussed and distracted by the fact that he was teaching one of his own magic rings."

Rosie giggled. "Yeah, I remember that. Well, I'm better at Westron, but I could probably read the easier ones of these-maybe the ones that we've gotten in our world in English already. I'd love to read Of the Powers of Arda and see how it compares to the opening bit of the Silmarillion. Of course we could always exercise Mary Sue powers and use whatever linguistic ability comes with our disguises to-what's wrong, Nen?"

Nenya had stopped listening to Rosie (not an unusual thing in itself) and was staring out over the balcony. "Rosie, is the sky supposed to be doing that?"

"Doing what?" Rosie left the bookcase to come and stand beside her sister at the window.

"Turning pitch black and dropping stars in funny patterns."

"I'll check my General Purpose Reality Meter for ya if you like, but no, I don't think it's supposed to be doing that. Especially since the stars seem to be tracing out tengwar as they fall."

Rosie's assessment was interrupted by a squawk from the Canon Analysis Device. Nenya grabbed it and was rewarded with the single most frightening set of words she'd seen in her entire life.

[STORY DELETION IN PROGRESS. Evacuate Immediately!] said the display. [Author Entering Post-Suvian Stage] it added helpfully.

"Augh! 'Fic deletion in progress'? Can it do that? While we're inside?" Rosie was peering over her shoulder. "I mean, don't they stabilize these things back in HQ before we go into them?"

"I don't know! I always thought there was some kind of firewall up so that no one could change the stories once they were in the HQ computer system, but maybe I was wrong. We have to get out! Now!" Nenya tossed a Portal Generator to her partner and began to point the Canon Analysis Device at the sky, hoping to get a reading on what was going on and see if the tengwar actually spelled out any useful information.

Before Rosie could open a portal, a rumble shook the building. Both agents were knocked to the floor, and the Portal Generator flew across the room, sliding under the divan and into the corner.

"Oh, shit." Rosie crawled across the floor and peered under the bed. It was difficult to make anything out as the only illumination came from a sky rapidly losing its stars. "Have we got anything long and broomlike to stick under here? It's too far back for me to reach."

Nenya struggled to her knees and peered intently at the sky, distracted. "I dunno, are there any swords or bows or anything around here? Look, the sky-it's...it looks like the Matrix now. Falling code. Except it's not green code letters, it's tengwar, and they're trying to be silver and, I dunno, neon yellow, at the same time. My eyes...."

"Ow. Can you read anything?" Another rumble shook the room, and Rosie slid gracefully from the other room, where she'd been looking for long objects. The Portal Generator slid out from under the divan, did a flip through the air, and sailed out through the window and over the edge of the balcony outside. Rosie swore creatively in several tongues of Men and Elves.

"Crap! Nenya, you didn't bring another one, did you?"

"What? Portal Generator? No, mine was on the fritz so I didn't bring it. The code-you can read what's happening if you look at the sky. It looks like a list of the contents of the fic, and stuff is being deleted item by item. What's that noise?"

Indeed, the quiet night was not so quiet any more. A loud rushing sound could be heard, as if someone had turned on a staticy TV channel. Nenya suddenly realized that with each item deleted from the falling tengwar code, the noise increased in volume and changed tone. It was almost as if objects were being converted into sound, or were protesting being erased. It reminded her of something, but she wasn't sure what. She shook her head to clear it a little, but the noise and the impossible colour combination in the sky were making her uncomfortably dizzy. The ground was trembling pretty much constantly by now, adding to the sense of disorientation.

Rosie grabbed her pack and pulled Nenya away from the window. She made a note not to look at the sky any more than she could help. They needed someone with decent vision if they were going to get out of this alive. She briefly wondered if the world would be deleted slowly or if it would just crash in on them like a black hole. As she pulled Nenya out into the hall, she noticed that the bookshelf with all Elrohir's books on it had disappeared, and the divan-still unmade-was fading into nothingness before her eyes.

Nenya shook herself out of the slight trance she'd fallen into and gripped Rosie's arm. "The Duty! We gotta kill the Sue! I'll meet you downstairs, OK? Go find the Portal Generator, and I'll get Desi." She patted the dagger at her belt. "C'mon! Hurry!"

Rosie nodded shortly and spun off in the direction of the garden below them. Nenya charged down the hall and down the stairs to Desi's part of the house. She dashed across a stone terrace-and nearly collided with Aragorn.

He was leaning against a railing, hardly disturbed by the weird light of the falling tengwar code or the shaking of the ground. Tall, dark and handsome he stood, clad in Ranger gear. His hair was tousled and the top button of his shirt was undone-he'd been sleeping. Nenya skidded to a halt, the remains of her agently dignity falling from her shoulders and smashing to fragments on the ground. Strider! She'd fallen in love with him in Bree (and, like the Hobbits, continued to refer to even the crowned King Elessar as Strider) and still swooned for him more than for any other on the face of Arda. He really was wonderful....

The stunning Rangerly effect was somewhat spoiled by the look on his face, however, which could only be described as a leer. "Hobbits," he drawled. "Do you know how hard it was to keep my hands off the Ringbearer? So cuddly! And just the perfect height!"

Nenya's jaw joined her dignity on the floor. That wasn't Strider! She knew this universe was badly screwed up, but she was pretty sure it wasn't slash. And bad slash, at that.

Strider's countenace suddenly changed. He drew himself up, tall and straight, and his face became serious. "Et Earello Endorenna utulien. Sinome maruvan ar Hildinyar tenn' Ambar-metta," he intoned, looking every inch the last king of the Elder Days. Nenya smiled. Now that was more like it. She moved to duck around him and keep looking for the Sue. She still needed to get out of here, no matter how awesome Strider looked.

"Women in the Fellowship?" His voice, dripping scorn, stopped her. "Women are weak! They'll just trip over their own skirts and cry all the time. This is a job for men!"

Nenya turned around, but by the time she had a chance to register what he'd said, he'd changed again.

"Hey, do I keep fucking your wife in the meantime, or what?" he said, sarcastically, to no one in particular.

Nenya stared. What in Arda? A Perfect Murder?

But Aragorn was still talking. He was himself again, and seemed to be remembering the days during the Quest. "Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among Men," he said, an Elvish light gleaming in his eyes. Then his voice changed yet again. "Oh, Legolas, you're so hot!" he sighed. "Arwen was only a passing infatuation, you have to believe that! Oh, Leggy, don't leave me!"

"Augh!" Nenya cried. Her head hurt. This was a little too confusing. The building and the trees were wavering in a sea-sick fashion, the air was rushing and murmuring with the cries of every inanimate object that was being deleted, and now she'd found Strider, but he couldn't even stay in character for more than fifteen seconds. Now he was tossing a baseball back and forth between his hands and commenting on cocaine addiction. She really needed to get out of here. She took one last look at Aragorn and realized that he was staring straight at her. No, wait, he was staring at his hand-and his hand was fading into thin air.

"Help me!" he whispered. "They're changing me! I'm fading! By the Valar, help me!" His entire arm was transparent now, and his legs looked like they'd been cut off at the knees. Nenya stumbled forward, desperate to do something to help him, but before she could reach him, he was gone. With a pain-filled cry, his body shuddered and dissolved into empty space. Aragorn had been deleted.

"Strider! Nooo!" Nenya gasped, wincing in sympathetic pain. She doubled over, clutching her stomach. No! They couldn't do this! Whoever they were, they couldn't do this! It was too much. She dropped onto the bottom step of the stairway and put her head in her hands.

"Nen! Are you OK? I found the Portal Generator, it was under a bush in the garden. Did you get Desi? We gotta hurry! All the trees in the garden are gone now, and half the building." Rosie came scurrying up the stairs from the garden in a storm of words. She shook Nenya by the shoulder. "Earth to Nenya! Nen!"

Nenya was staring out into space and appeared not to hear her, but after the third or fourth shake she answered in a faraway voice, "Strider...deleted...too many Aragorns...Legomance," she shuddered slightly. "A Perfect Murder. Head hurts. Baseball. Shouldn't'a killed him. Chicken....tastes like everything.... shouldn't a killed him either. Eighty-eight miles per hour...."

"Nen? Aw, c'mon, don't tell me you've lost it." Rosie tugged at Nenya's shoulder, but all she got were more mumblings-"Join me and fall down the rabbit hole, Neo Morpheus"?

The world was practically spinning, now. It was very hard to tell which way was up, since the walls behind the agents had disappeared and the floor underneath them was non-descript dark stuff instead of wood or stone. The rushing sound was almost deafening, and mixed in with it were cries as of living things in pain. All the lights in Rivendell had gone out by now, and the only lighting came from the scrolling tengwar in the sky. Rosie squinted at it and realized what had happened to Nenya. Aragorn had just been deleted, and apparently right in front of her.

Rosie groaned. She could imagine what she would have been like if Sam had been obliterated right in front of her eyes. But how were they supposed to get the Sue before the whole world crashed? It looked like just about all the inanimate objects were gone, now, and if Aragorn was gone that meant people were going too. Shit, this was bad. She didn't have much time.

Maybe she could just get Nenya back to Headquarters and come back for the Sue? Or maybe the Sue would just be deleted with the rest of the world? She stumbled a little with the next quake of the ground.

She heard a thunk behind her and realized Nenya had just toppled over. Good grief.

Rosie grabbed Nenya's arms and pulled her to her feet, where she stood, swaying. Just as Rosie was about to ask her if she could walk, her knees buckled. Rosie caught her, putting one arm around her own shoulders. Portal Generator, where was the Portal Generator? She fished around in her pockets with one hand, and hoisted Nenya, who was starting to slip, back up onto her shoulder again.

Oh, right, she'd stuck the Generator in her bag. She leaned over to where it sat on the ground, careful not to let Nenya fall off her back, and fished around in the top of it. There! She grabbed the Portal Generator and stood up unsteadily, back creaking, and input the co-ordinates for their response centre back at HQ. She tapped the button.

Nothing.

Too tired to swear, Rosie thumped the Portal Generator soundly and tapped the key again. Nothing. She shook it, hoping she hadn't broken it, and pushed the key a third time.

An unsteady portal flickered to life in the air in front of her, and winked out again almost immediately. But in the two seconds it was open, Rosie saw the inside of the response centre, and, wonder of wonders, Agent Jay on the other side. There seemed to be someone else with her. The two were gesticulating with their hands and peering through the portal at the agents stuck in the fic. They looked worried.

Rosie jammed at the button again and hitched Nenya higher on her shoulders. Suddenly a horrible screeching wail, like Saruman's nails on a wet chalkboard, tore through the numbing rush of sound surrounding them. She jerked her head up to read the falling tengwar code. The Sue! The Mary Sue was gone! Frantically Rosie hit the portal button, jabbing at it again and again. Would it take, now that the Suvian presence had lifted?

On the fourth jab, the portal flickered open, wavering wildly. Rosie made a dash for it, not caring if she got caught between worlds. N-dimensional space couldn't be much worse than what they were experiencing in the collapsing universe. With a lurch, she staggered into the response centre, dragging Nenya with her.

"Oh, thank Eru!" Agent Jay exclaimed. She grabbed for Rosie, helping her through. The other agent, a rather grim-faced woman in a uniform Rosie didn't recognize, caught Nenya as she fell off Rosie's shoulder. Jay caught the portal generator as it slipped from Rosie's hand and shut off the doorway to the fanfic.

"Divide by cheese....re-install Arwen....the clock strikes 10:04," slurred Nenya, collapsing gently onto the stretcher by Jay's cohort's side. "Meepmork, little dancing sporkies...."

"I'm Agent Dead." A face loomed over her. "You're back in Headquarters now and you're gonna be fine, you hear? Just look here for a second." She propped Nenya's head up with surprising gentleness for someone with such a name, and flashed a Y-shaped gizmo before her eyes. Nenya's last conscious thought before blacking out was Pretty hallucinationses....hey, that's a sleep-inducing alpha-rhythm generator! She was, after all, a geek.

"Are you okay, Agent Rosie?" Jay's normally manic face was a picture of concern. "Dead, here, got an alert at the Department of Emergencies when the fic started deleting and you hadn't come back yet. I'm here instead of Heal 'cause she thought you two might recognize me and not freak out quite as bad," she added by way of explanation.

"Yeah....I think...." Rosie rubbed her forehead, wondering who Heal was, and sagged into the beanbag chair. "I've got a killer headache and I'd really, really, really like the world to stop spinning, but I think I'll be all right. My partner, though-I think she's in shock or something. She saw her favourite character vanish in front of her eyes."

"We got really worried when we couldn't set up a link from here," said Agent Dead. "We tried a couple of times to link in, but the system was only recognizing the fic as a valid destination about half the time."

"We've been reading about a Level 4 or 5 reality disruption ever since we got the alert, but it flashed up to about a Level 9 for about three seconds just before you came in. I don't want to see anything like what I saw through that portal ever again," said Jay.

"Ever hear of Holmes' Theory of n-dimensional space? Where all the senses get overloaded at once and it drives you mad? The space between universes? It was kind of like that."

"Heard of it, yes. There was an agent over in Intelligence a couple years back who got caught between worlds during a crossover fic investigation. We pulled her out after about forty minutes, but she was in very bad condition. Was in therapy for about eight months afterward and never did get back into mental shape for missions. Not quite as bad as the infamous flamethrower case, but close," said Dead. She shone a small flashlight in Rosie's eyes and took her pulse.

Rosie's face creased into a deep, worried frown. "Are we gonna be OK? I mean, I've kidded about flamethrowers before, but I really don't wanna lose it, really." She shook slightly, from fear or from cold. Jay handed her a blanket and she wrapped it around herself. "Thanks, Jay. Um, I mean, Agent Jay."

Jay cracked a smile. "Eh, Jay's fine. 'Agent Jay' just makes me think of Upstairs. Don't worry, though," she continued, in her trademark fashion of referring to a statement two lines back, "you're conscious, talking, and seem to have all motor functions intact, which is more than we could say for the Intelligence girl. Even Nenya didn't black out till Dead put her under, and she wasn't twitching more than the normal amount for a PPC agent, so I think you guys'll be fine. You weren't really in very long once it started actually deleting. Get some rest, though, if that infernal console will let you." She handed a blood pressure cuff to Agent Dead.

Rosie sagged in relief and held out her arm for Dead to attach the cuff. Jay got up from the table she'd been leaning against and started packing various gadgets back into a briefcase.

"Are you taking Nen down to Medical? Do you want me to come?" Rosie asked.

"Taking her to Psych, yes. If you experience any of the classic symptoms of a head injury-continued dizziness, nausea, spots in front of your eyes, memory loss other than that caused by mental scarring from OFUM-beep the guys in Medical and let them know. Otherwise, just rest a lot, and don't get into wrestling matches with that mini-Balrog of yours for a couple of days." Dead recorded Rosie's blood pressure reading and tucked the cuff into Jay's bag. The two emergency agents started to wheel the stretcher with the unconscious Nenya on it out the door.

"Okay." Rosie snuggled deeper into the beanbag chair. "Where is that bundle of flames, anyway?"

"Probably eating. We kicked him out of here pretty soon after we got here-he was wearing holes in the floor with all the pacing he was doing, and while he's very bright for a mini, he can't operate any of our equipment. So we sent him down to the cafeteria and told him to bring up some coffee. He hasn't come back yet."

"Ah. Don't be surprised if he shows up in Psych. He's got a sixth sense about where Nenya is."

Dead and Jay nodded, and Rosie waved to the departing agents. Jay quirked a smile at the sign on the door-"Lonely men are we, Rangers of the wild, hunters-but hunters ever of the servants of the Enemy" and was gone.

Rosie snuggled down into the chair, wrapping her blanket more tightly around her. Suddenly she laughed. "We never did get that Sue after all, did we? The world-crash did it for us. Armageddon, the latest recruit to the PPC. Won't that throw Upstairs for a loop." And so saying, she laid her head down and passed into the restful repose of a well-deserved nap.

Nenya's A/N: After I first read this story, I reviewed it and got an email from the author saying that she had finished the books, now, and knew that her story line was impossible. Since she was quite repentant, I felt bad about killing her Sue, so I decided to take the concept of what would happen if she deleted the story to its logical conclusion.

I don't know if the idea that the n-dimensional space between worlds isn't a vacuum but is full of such a huge amount of sensory information that it overloads your mind (thus driving you crazy very quickly) is original to Mary Jean Holmes, but since that's where I heard of it first, I thought I'd plug her stuff whilst giving the idea a cool-sounding name. :) Most of the other references are probably obvious, but the hacker named Neo Morpheus comes from the excellent Matrix parody story "The Fanfix".

Rosie's A/N: This story was just painful. Really. It hurt to read it. I'm glad I got Nenya to write the PPC version. Anyways, no worries about Rosie having to handle missions on her own-we found a partner for her, a LOTR freak. There are going to be some changes made on department and stuff in the next chapter, but it will change back.

or, Nenya's Adventures in the Department of Fictional Psychology
An Eyewitness Account

Disclaimer: The Protectors of the Plot Continuum belong to Jay and Acacia, who have kindly allowed us to play in their grey corridors. Glorfindal and all things OFUM belong to Miss Camilla Sandman, and Maeluiwen belongs to Jen Littlebottom. Lord of the Rings belongs to the Tolkien Estate, X-Files to Chris Carter and Ten Thirteen Inc., Star Trek to Gene Roddenberry and Paramount, X-Men to Marvel Comics and Twentieth Century Fox, Harry Potter to J. K. Rowling, Men in Black to Columbia/Tristar Studios, the song "David Duchovny" to Bree Sharp, Winnie the Pooh to A. A. Milne, Green Eggs and Ham to Dr. Seuss, DiscWorld to the illustrious Terry Pratchett, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to the late Douglas Adams. (deep breath)

There is, for once, no fanfic story dissected in this tale. ("21 Uses for Tribbles" by majorkami and "Gofi and the Balrog" by Levade [excellent story! read it now!] are real, but the stories our fictional characters are in treatment for are generalized from a variety of sources.)

Summary: Agent Nenya finds herself in the Department of Fictional Psychology after having a breakdown in the last chapter. Guest-starring Agents Nathonea Dewstan and Constance Sims.

"What sort of person sits down and writes a maniacal laugh? And all those exclamation marks, you notice? Five? A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head."
-Terry Pratchett, Maskerade

It was dark when Nenya awoke. Whether it was stormy, and whether it was night, was a matter for conjecture. Nenya's training and experience as an assassin for the Canon Protection Initiative's Department of Multiple Offenses had thoroughly accustomed her to awakening in strange circumstances. She was well-used to awakening in the dark, in an unknown location, sprawled flat on her back. She was even used to awakening in places with weird smells and odd, unidentified humming noises in the background. None of this bothered her. What she wasn't used to was awakening in an actual bed. With sheets. And a pillow and blanket, both of which seemed to have been washed within the last decade-possibly with scented soap. That made her nervous.

Nenya opened her eyes and stared at the (probably grey) ceiling overhead, ears straining for any sound of hostile motion. All she could detect was a low beep from some kind of machine, and the light whoosh of several people or animals breathing. She sat up warily, peering into the darkness, hoping to figure out where she was before being attacked by a warrior princess, a psychokinetic Cute Animal Friend, or a large plot-bunny. There were...unusual...hazards to this job, to be sure.

After some study, she decided that she and the bed seemed to be sharing a large, deeply shadowed room with three other beds, two of which were occupied. A set of thick drapes was drawn at the end of the room, faint light seeping from around its edges. Windows, perhaps. Several strangely shaped machines stood about the room, blinking little lights and emitting the hums and whirrs she'd heard earlier. A sliver of soft yellow light to her left indicated a door, slightly open, leading to some kind of hallway.

A groan from the darkness make her turn her head. The long, dark shape in the next bed was tossing about in its sheets, moaning something in a distinctive male monotone.

"No.... don't.... no, Sk...Sklu...Shkully...." said the voice. Nenya watched, intrigued, as his body executed an impressive set of full-length twitches and spasms. "Come back...! Shkully.... Scully.... extraterrestrial.... Scully!"

Whoa. Scully? Nenya thought. That must mean-what on earth was she doing in the same room with Fox Mulder? Who else could enunciate "extraterrestrial" so clearly in their sleep?

Wincing slightly at a sudden pain in her head, Nenya swung her legs over the side of the bed. Time to do some investigating.

The night nurse looked up from her game of computer Solitaire and jumped slightly. A wild-eyed apparition loomed over the edge of the nursing station counter, dark gaze glittering dangerously. Frizzy red hair stuck out from all over its head, thick glasses perched on its nose, and wrinkled blue hospital pajamas covered its twitching shoulders. It glared at her.

"Where in Ëa am I?" it rasped.

"That depends on who you are," replied the nurse calmly, quite used to dealing with strange apparitions appearing in the middle of the night. Or early in the morning. 5:45 am. The morning shift should be coming on soon.

The creature shook its head. "Don't try that on me. I may not know where this is, but I'm pretty sure it's not the DiscWorld afterlife. For one thing, there's an FBI agent in my room, and for another," it glanced around the hallway, "I don't think my personal afterlife will be this...grey."

The nurse smiled. "What I meant is that my description of where you are will depend on what sort of person you are, and the last thing you remember before waking up."

"Oh. Well, I was on a mission, and Aragorn was...." It stopped, shaking its head as if confused or in pain. "...he was behaving very strangely, and then I got hit by a rabid Klingon on a motorcycle, or possibly an especially heavy dangling participle, and-"

"Wait a minute. A mission? You're that agent, aren't you? Anya, Enya, something...." The nurse clicked a few buttons on her computer. "Nenya, that's what it was. A couple of those crazy Sue Department agents wheeled you in here in the middle of the night, going on about how the whole Medical ward was full of casualties from the latest plagiarism offensive in the Fanfic Wars, and couldn't we bend the rules enough to put an agent in FicPsych for one night, and they were sure you'd be discreet and not interfere with any of the fictional patients, and-" She stopped for breath, shaking her head at the thought of last night's crazed visitors. "At any rate, if you want to know where you are, you might as well just read the sign up there." She waved a hand vaguely at a spot on the wall behind and above her head.

Nenya squinted. On the grey-painted wall was a (slightly lighter grey) plaque with (darker grey) lettering on it. Most of the space on the plaque was taken up by a row of large exclamation points. Above them, in tiny letters, were the words "Canon Protection Initiative" and below them-

"Department of Fictional Psychology," she read out slowly. "I should have known. Even when I get hurt I don't get out of Headquarters." She sighed heavily. "You work here, eh?"

The nurse smirked a little and held out her hand to shake Nenya's. "Apparently so. Nathonea Dewstan, at your service." She tilted her head to one side. "You know, you field agents are as weird as I've always heard."

Nenya laughed. "Nenya Gabriel at yours. I'd claim the insanity was a result of the job conditions, but that'd be misleading you, and we're sworn to uphold the truth here in this dungeon, are we not?" She shook the proffered hand, being careful not to use bad grammar, which would have resulted in her shaking her new acquaintance by the hand, a rather more vigorous exercise than she was prepared to engage in at the moment. "You know," she said after a moment, "I take it back. I think my personal afterlife will be grey. After a few more years spent in this place, that's the only colour my eyes will be capable of registering."

Nathonea gave an answering smile that promised evil to whoever the architects and interior designers of this place were, if she ever caught them. "Tell me about it. At least you get some fresh air sometimes. Must be nice."

"Nice? When you're being chased by the warrior daughter of Galadriel and Sam Gamgee? Or running at full-tilt up Caradhras to catch her so you can Do The Duty? In full Uruk-hai armour? Without losing the charge list?"

Nathonea leaned back in her chair and folded her arms behind her head. "Guess the grass is, er, less grey on the other side of the fence, huh? Here I am thinking what a pain it is to be stuck in here, especially when we're as busy as we've been lately. I think all the sequel movies that are coming out this year have something to do with it, but in any case we've been run off our feet trying to keep up with all the mentally abused characters lately. The MIB neuralizers just don't seem to be doing it these days, and three of our nurses' aides just got transferred to Intelligence, and-"

Suddenly the nurse sat bolt upright in her chair. "Saaaay, you're off duty right now, aren't you?

Nenya quirked an eyebrow, subconsciously imitating Fox Mulder's partner's Inquisitive Stare #15. It wasn't quite Elvish Glare #27 (it was nearer, in fact, to Vulcan That's-Fascinating #14 [1]), but it was close. "I suppose I am. If they've gotten around to filling out the paperwork, which I doubt."

"How'd you like to try some of that greener grass? We could use a hand around here for a few days till you have to go back to your Response Centre. I bet Head Nurse Suzine and Doctor Freedenberg could be convinced not to remind Personnel of your whereabouts for a while, in exchange for your help. Don't know if we could pay you, but I bet you could brow-beat-er, frond-beat-the SO into giving you a raise for the 'initiative' you showed, next time you have to go see him. How about it? You wouldn't really have to do anything medical, just general helping-out kind of stuff."

Nenya considered for all of seventeen seconds. "All right," she said, "on two conditions. First, I get one of those cool uniforms like you're wearing, with the exclamation point on the shoulder."

"No problem. And the other condition?" Nathonea's eyes glinted greedily at the prospect of a new recruit.

"You tell me what Fox Mulder was doing in my room."

Nenya, freshly showered and uniformed, followed Nurse Constance Sims' clipboard down the hallway, munching on the large apple fritter she'd been given for her breakfast. Like most Headquarters food, its age was indeterminate, but at least it was sugar. Nurse Nathonea, who had outfitted her and given her a quick tour before turning her over to the day staff, had mysteriously not been notified of the ban on sugar for field agents. Nenya was not about to enlighten her.

She sighed contentedly. Though this was only the second donut she'd had in three months, it was the fifth she'd had today. (Don't ask how that's possible. It's related to the sock-dryer phenomenon, which nobody has been able to explain yet, either. Possibly the Universal Laws of Narrative Comedy had decided to have mercy on Nenya since she had managed not to lose a single sock through her entire four years at OFUM, and were choosing this way to reward her. Probably not, though.) She grinned as the sugar hit her bloodstream, and began to sing (in a sadly off-key voice).

"Any Sue you can shoot, I can shoot faster," she warbled. "I can shoot anything faster than you. Yes I can, yes I can, yes I can!" Life was good, and if she was irritating her amazingly placid new guide, so much the better.

Suddenly her song was drowned out as a loud, wild, tortured wail shrieked through the corridors. Nenya yelped, jumped several feet in the air, and crouched, back to the wall, fumbling instinctively for weapons that were no longer on her person.

"What," she panted, "was that?"

Nurse Sims turned around calmly, noting something on her clipboard. "Seven of Nine," she replied, not a hair out of place.

"WHAT?!"

"Hmm? Oh." The Spock-faced nurse looked up and cracked a small smile. "Technically, that was Nazgul Number Seven. But we figured that it would be less traumatizing for the folks who have to give him therapy if we nicknamed him after a hot Borg sex-symbol."

Nenya straightened, calming her racing heart and taking deep breaths. "I'd say he's pretty well recovered, what with a shriek like that. Trust me, I should know." She shuddered.

Nurse Sims nodded. "You're right. It is a good sign that he's on his way to full recovery, if he can scare a hardened field agent as badly as he scared you." Noticing Nenya's slightly ashamed look, she added, "Actually, it's a good sign for you, too. If you hadn't reacted in terror to a Nazgul shriek, we'd know there was something seriously wrong with you."

Nenya grinned at that, and started searching the hallway for the last half of her donut, which had gone flying in the excitement. After a short search she found it being chewed on by a large potted fern in the corner. She sighed. No sense fighting over food with what was probably a relative of the Director of Fictional Psychology.

"So what are we doing again?" she asked, for the eighth time since she'd started following Nurse Sims down this corridor. "Something about angst?"

Nurse Sims sighed. If Nenya hadn't already decided that her companion was at least part Vulcan, she would have interpreted the sigh as aggravation. "Yes. We are going to the room you were in last night, to check on the progress of the others there, and then we will proceed to the rest of the rooms in that section. Incidentally, while we are there, you may retrieve any of your belongings that came in with you, and bring them back to the nursing station after our rounds."

"And what about angst? You said something about angst earlier, I know you did. And you weren't just talking about the headache I'm giving you, either."

"All of the patients in this wing have been diagnosed with an overdose of angst. Fox Mulder, whom you encountered upon awakening, has just come from a sequence of fics in which he was quite angstily slashed with several of his male colleagues, and in the last one he was traumatically separated from his partner, Dana Scully, by means of a tragic car accident. Thus, he's also suffering from Scully Withdrawal Syndrome, a specialized type of Partner Separation Anxiety. The other patient in your room is Rogue, birth name Marie D'Ancanto, of the X-Men continuum, who has also been heavily involved in angsty romantic relationships recently."

Nurse Sims turned a corner, and Nenya followed after her, trailing her fingers along the flame-thrower marks on the walls. "Down the hall from them, there's Draco Malfoy from the Harry Potter universe. Along with angst, Malfoy has Delusions of Love for Harry Potter and is running a rather high fever. The other patient in that room is Wesley Crusher from the starship Enterprise, who, due to cross-continuum contamination, now believes that everyone hates him."

"But don't they?" Nenya was puzzled.

"Don't who what?"

"Don't most Star Trek fans hate Wesley Crusher, for being a Marty Sam?"

Nurse Sims sighed. "Well, yes, a lot of them do, which is why we don't let our more...enthusiastic...TNG Trekkie agents near him when he's here if we can help it. He's flunked most of the Mary Sue Litmus Tests we've run on him, so they do have a point. But he is a canon character, so we're sworn to protect him no matter how much it grates on our sensibilities."

"What happened this time?"

"The usual-Picard or Riker or someone going on about how much they couldn't stand him. However, I think they said it to his face, instead of behind his back as they usually do. In any case, he became quite depressed and was just about to leap out the nearest airlock when a PPC agent found him."

"No rabid tribbles?"

Nurse Sims flashed a full smile for the first time all morning. "Not this time. You heard about that one, did you? It was called '21 Uses for Tribbles', I believe. It came in through the Parody Department."

"Yeah, one of the uses for tribbles was 'substitute ensign'-filling out Wesley's uniform and reporting to the bridge for duty. After having killed him in a rather bloody fashion, of course. Later they fired the tribbles at an enemy ship, and ended up using the ones who were pretending to be Wesley, too." She shook her head sadly. "Poor tribbles."

The nurse regarded her curiously. "Don't you work the Lord of the Rings continuum?"

Nenya nodded. "I do. But Star Trek is a recent hobby of mine. I don't know enough about it to work it-and, besides, LOTR is so much busier right now that I don't think they'd transfer me even if I did know the Trek canon. But it's a good break from Arda sometimes. It's the future, Middle-earth is the past, so between the two I'm pretty happy."

"And it also explains why the author has been dropping references to Vulcans and Klingons in this chapter, doesn't it?"

"Er, yes."

"I thought so. Well, we're here." Nurse Sims pushed at a grey door, identical to the last dozen or so they'd passed. "Let's go see how Mr. Mulder is faring this morning."

Mulder was sitting on his bed, his back to the door and his head in his hands, when the agents pushed open the door. He wasn't twitching noticeably, thank goodness, but his shoulders were slumped dejectedly. The agents looked at each other and Nurse Sims shrugged. Nenya tapped him on the shoulder. He jumped.

"Where am I?" he asked, causing Nenya to go weak at the knees. She valiantly attempted not to drool.

"Uhm, nowhere you need to, uhm, know about right now," she stammered, captured (like Bree Sharp) by the alien light of the spaceship of love. "You won't remember it when you wake up back home, anyway."

Mulder's eyebrows shot up and Nurse Sims glared at Nenya. Too late, Nenya realized that evasiveness was precisely the wrong tack to take with someone known for his tenacious investigative tendencies. Damn.

"Having nightmares again, Mr. Mulder?" Nurse Sims said, by way of changing the topic. She continued to glare at Nenya, who looked at her shoes.

Mulder nodded.

"Was it Scully again?"

Mulder looked surprised that she knew his partner's name, but nodded. "She's in a car crash, and I can't save her. Because I wasn't there. Because..." He trailed off, his eyes going glassy. "Because I was across town spending the night with...Deputy Director Skinner? Or was it Alex Krycek?" Mulder's forehead crinkled with the effort of remembering. "And she's in the ICU but they won't let me in to see her. And it's all my fault!" A single, over-dramatic tear ran down his cheek. "And the whole time, I hear this voice, chanting in the background."

Catching Nenya's eye, Nurse Sims mouthed, "Latest fanfic." To Mulder, she said, "What was the voice chanting?"

"I think-I think it was saying 'Legolas, Legolas, Legolas,' over and over and over and over and ov-"

"There, there, it's OK, Mr. Mulder. Just have a sip of this and lie down again. It's going to be all right," Nurse Sims said quickly, producing a vial of something orange from her pocket and patting Mulder gently on the shoulder. He'd started twitching again at the mention of the L-word.

As she tucked Mulder back under the covers, Nurse Sims said, "Nenya, will you check the soundproofing system for me? The insulation must have fallen out if he's hearing about Legolas in his sleep."

Nenya nodded and headed towards a tall black-chromed machine in the corner. The Four-S, or Subconscious Suvian-Soundproofing System, was one of Makes-Things's devices-and one so useful that it was installed in every room in Headquarters. Because the PPC was so closely tied in to the fanfiction Word Worlds, the place positively thrummed with the psychic mental projections of all the obsessed fan-authors. Usually this took the form of a subconsciously-projected repetition of the most-drooled-over lust object of the moment. The Four-S was designed to muffle this grating noise. At the moment, of course, the name being chanted was "Legolas", though a few years back, before Nenya's time, it had been "Leo!" (Which may explain the tendency of many older PPC agents to turn homicidal at the mention of boats, icebergs, blue jewels, or the year 1912.)

The Four-S in this room had obviously broken down a lot lately. The cover to the insulation compartment had been removed and kicked halfway across the room. There was a large bucket of cotton batting sitting beside the machine (Do Not Remove Bucket On Pain of Pain! it said), and vitriolic graffiti had been scrawled on the wall behind it. Nenya quickly grabbed a handful of cotton batting from the bucket, pulled the old, singed insulation from the innards of the machine, and stuffed the new batting in. The machine sparked a bit and growled at her, but the low-grade headache she'd had ever since entering the room disappeared. Mulder sighed happily as he drifted off into his orange-medicine-induced sleep.

Nenya pulled herself to her feet, bumped her head on the edge of the machine, fell to the floor, swore at the bloody Universal Laws of Narrative Comedy, and was loudly shushed by Nurse Sims. The latter was checking over Rogue, who, amazingly enough, had slept through the entire interview with Agent Mulder.

Nurse Sims slipped a pair of earphones on Rogue's ears. Nenya could hear a tinny voice coming out of the small speakers-I am not a psycho, I am not a psycho, I am not a psycho....

"She is still asleep," Nurse Sims said, taking a Jay's Obvious Statement of the Day award. "She does not seem to be in any pain, so if you will get your belongings, we can proceed to see our next patients."

"My stuff, right." Nenya staggered over to her bed and retrieved her water bottle, eyeglasses case, slippers, and a large stack of magazines which had not been there when she had left. The scrawled note on top of the stack said they were from Glorfindal, and the crispy edges confirmed this. She shook her head fondly at the thought of her mini. What a sweetie, even if his carrying methods meant half the magazines would be unreadable due to scorch marks. She snapped her fingers to call up a plothole and tucked her stuff into the bookbag it spit out, earning an arched eyebrow from Nurse Sims.

Swinging her bag over her shoulder, she moved over to Mulder's bed, whispered something in his ear, and then followed the nurse out of the room.

Several yards down the hall, Nurse Sims stopped walking and turned to her. "What did you say to him?" she queried.

"Mulder? Oh, nothing," Nenya said innocently. "OK, OK, stop looking at me like that. All I said was, 'This isn't a conspiracy'."

Nurse Sims looked at her oddly but continued walking. Three steps later she stopped again. "Why are you walking like that?"

"I'm proceeding. You said we were going to proceed to see our next patients, so-"

Nurse Sims muttered something under her breath that sounded an awful lot like, "Why me?"

"Well, that was interesting," remarked Nurse Sims, rather too casually, an hour or so later.

"I'll say," said Nenya, trying to keep up with Nurse Sims's brisk stride. "It's not every day I get screamed at and called a 'bloody red-haired American exchange student AARGHH!!!'"

"Not to mention being turned to stone for several seconds. Which looked quite uncomfortable, by the way."

"It was."

"We're lucky Mr. Crusher had managed to rig up a security forcefield in front of the door using his mattress springs and one of the lightbulbs. Otherwise Draco might have done some real damage."

"You don't call being paralysed and having your entire ethnic group slandered 'real damage'?"

"Ethnic group?" Nurse Sims's eyebrow was doing it again.

"Redheads."

"That is not an ethnic group."

"So? It's a, whachacallit, visible minority. Eighty percent of all Sues have red hair, especially in Middle-earth. It's slander to the species! Not all redheads are imbeciles with improbable heritage and tragic pasts who just want to get into Legolas's pants! It's slander, I tell you! Slander!"

"As opposed to being of supposedly sound mind and willingly enlisting in an agency which exists only in a few deranged writers' heads and which assassinates characters which exist only in other deranged writers' heads?"

"Exactly!" Nenya had worked herself into enough of a rage to be impervious to Nurse Sims's sarcasm. She blew out a breath. "I just wish they'd-"

Excuse me? said a voice at knee-level. Nenya plowed to a stop. Pardon me. Down here.

"Who said-oh, it's you. How was the donut?"

It was the fern who'd eaten Nenya's apple fritter earlier.

Very delicious, thank you. But I have a message for an Agent Nenya Gabriel. Am I correct in assuming that you are she?

"Yup. C'est moi." Nenya placed her hand dramatically over her heart.

The fern handed her a sheet of paper. You are not Miss Piggy, Miss Gabriel. And your accent is horrible. You are to report to Section 31, Room B9, for a...debriefing regarding your latest mission. Immediately, I might add.

"What's an 'ellipsis debriefing'?"

I suggest you run along and find out.

Nenya shrugged. Talking plants were, as a rule, not very helpful when you wanted information.

"Have fun with the rest of your patients, Nurse Sims. Don't get killed."

"I will do my best, I assure you."

"If you do find any tribbles, let me know. I think they'd get along well with Glorfindal."

"Certainly. But you had better get along to your...debriefing. They don't like to be kept waiting."

Nenya shrugged again, and headed off to find Room B9. With a name like that, it'd probably be anything but benign. Ah, well, anything was better than being screeched at by an upset wizard-in-training who was probably getting all kinds of ideas on the meaning of "sufficiently advanced technology" from his precocious roommate.

Or so she thought until she reached Room B9 and saw the sign on the door.

Multimedia Anti-Salivation Department, it said. Uh-oh. No-Drool Videos! And she'd definitely been appreciating the scenery on her last mission....

A pair of surprisingly strong fronds reached out and grabbed her before she could get away.

The whimpers started three point five minutes later, and went on for quite some time.

"And lift, and stretch, and lift, and stretch...." Nurse Nathonea, standing in the middle of the floor in the nurses' common room, hefted two thick copies of the Official PPC Handbook over her head in time to the music. "I, comma, square bracket, and stretch, recruit's name, square bracket, and comma and stretch, do solemnly-"

The exercise music was suddenly interrupted by the sound of someone lurking unobtrusively in the doorway. Nathonea turned, grateful for an excuse to stop her Stoutness Exercises for a minute. "Look, can't you at least lurk obtrusively or something? All this unobtrusive lurking is really quite-oh, it's you."

Nenya, a piece of paper in her hand and a large rubber band around her head, stared glassily back at her from the threshold. Her face was tinged an interesting shade of green. She didn't answer the greeting.

"What's wrong with you?" Nathonea set down her Handbooks-cum-barbells. "Lunch wasn't that bad. And I know the Kit-Kats in the vending machine aren't all that fresh, but I daresay you've seen worse on some of your missions."

Nenya held the piece of paper out towards her new friend. "Nndrr vdsz," she said through the band holding her jaw shut.

"Take the rubber band off your head so I can understand you."

Nenya complied. "No-Drool Videos," she said.

"Oh. Talking sunflower on a crutch! What did you do to earn those?"

"Apparently drool leaves a distinct chemical residue on uniform sleeves."

"What?"

"Just read it." She pushed the piece of paper into Nathonea's hand.

"'First infraction:'" read Nathonea, "'March 14, 2003 AD, Canon Protection Initiative Headquarters. One count of kissing picture of actor portraying Aragorn son of Arathorn.

"'Second infraction: Stardate 60741.5, Federation Starbase Deep Space Nine. One count of near-Mary Sue glurge-writing, subject Julian S. Bashir, MD.

"'Third infraction: September 22, First year of the Fourth Age of Middle-earth, Imladris, Eriador. One count of drooling, subject Elladan son of Elrond Peredhil.'

"Oh, my. You really should know better. What did they make you watch?"

"Maeluiwen. The Librarian of U. U."

"What? Together?"

Nenya turned a shade greener. "Thank you for that mental image. No. Separate videos. But she had all the mithril lingerie bits on, or off, as the case may be. And they cut out all the bits with the hot male elves shirtless. And the Librarian-" Here she turned an intriguing shade of puce and covered her mouth with her hand.

Nathonea wordlessly handed her a trash can.

"Thanks," said Nenya, a few minutes later. "Have you got any sporks handy? Or one of those MIB flashy-thingys?"

Nathonea rummaged through a cabinet. "Got something better. Here." She held up a large white bottle. "Bleeprin."

"Never heard of it. What's it do?"

"Combination of bleach and aspirin. Very effective in eliminating bad mental images. Made by Meir Brin from HFA and Miss Laurel from OFUM."

Nenya looked at the bottle as if it were a container of Mary Sue glitter. "Miz Laurel? Have you actually tried this stuff, or are you using me as a guinea pig?"

Nathonea smirked. "Run into Miz Laurel before, have you? No, I've tried it. It works quite well, though personally I prefer the liquid version, Bleepto-Dismal. But we're all out of that."

Nenya still looked skeptical, but poured out two small white tablets into her hand. She dug around in the backpack she still carried over her shoulder, retrieved her water bottle, and swallowed the pills.

She blinked.

"Bloody hellfire."

Nathonea just grinned, and swiped the bottle back before it could disappear into Nenya's backpack.

"Now, now, don't try to steal these. You can get your own from Leto up at the cafeteria. Good, though, aren't they?"

"Does Upstairs know about this stuff?"

Nathonea shrugged. "Probably. They know most everything. But they haven't outlawed them yet. Probably figure that un-mentally-scarred agents work better or something."

"Or that if we have a means of healing the mental scarring, they can send us into danger more often 'cause we'll survive the aftereffects."

"Probably." Nathonea rolled her eyes at the Flowers That Be.

"Bleeding pragmatists." The happy grin still hadn't faded off Nenya's face. "Wow. Bloody wow. I have got to tell Rosie about these."

"Make her buy her own." Nathonea placed the bottle back in the cupboard, let Nenya have just a glimpse of all the wonders therein, shut the cupboard door and locked several large padlocks. "Incidentally, why were you wearing an elastic band around your head?"

"Splitting headache. Had one. Don't now, though." Nenya flicked said elastic band at Nathonea, who ducked. The elastic band zinged off a piece of valuable equipment and landed on one of the ever-present computer consoles, hanging off the monitor like a stretchy bit of Christmas tinsel.

"Ouch."

"Look, it didn't hit you. And, Nathonea...what's 'Pink Stuff'?" Nenya had seen rather a lot of the contents of the cupboard before it had been locked.

"You don't want to know." She made a face.

"Yes, I do. Does it go with Purple Stuff?"

"Well..."

"And what's Ye Olde Poisonous Poison? Can I have some?"

Nathonea looked at her watch in a suspiciously inconspicuous manner. "Don't you have an appointment with Dr. Freedenberg to be heading off to?"

Nenya glared at her. "As a matter of fact, I do. How did you..."

"I'm a FicPsych employee. I have my ways." The nurse made a face that was obviously supposed to be mysterious. "Now shoo. I have another patient due in five minutes."

"If you insist." Nenya shrugged once more, retrieved the elastic band, and headed out the door.

Whump.

That is, she was planning to head out the door. Her progress was unexpectedly impeded by something large, black, chest-shaped, and embroidered with a white tree. She followed the chest up to the head and was confronted with Lord Faramir, Steward of Gondor, Lord of Ithilien, and all-round impressive royal Numenorean.

"Er...um...that is...uh...Hi, Lord Faramir," she stammered, giving a little wave. She felt like a midget; the man towered over her by a good fifteen inches. She heard Nathonea hyperventilating behind her. Ah. A fellow Faramir fan.

"Forgive me for intruding, but could either of you direct me to the offices of Doctor Freedenberg?" said Faramir. "I am a Ranger, but the corridors are very confusing."

"Glurgh!" said Nathonea, and promptly fell over backwards.

Nenya rubbed her nose-ouch, Faramir's chest was rather solid-and backed up a few steps. "Don't mind her," she said, waving at the prostrate form behind her. "Too much Bleeprin, not enough ellipsis debriefings."

"Pardon?" said Lord Faramir.

"Never mind. Did you say you were looking for Dr. Freedenberg?"

"Yes. Do you know where I might find him? I have been summoned to speak with him, and, to my shame, seem to have become quite lost."

"You're a Ranger. How could you get lost?"

"I am accustomed to tracking things in the wild, not to finding my way about infinite corridors all of a single disturbing hue."

The proverbial incandescent lamp went on in Nenya's brain. "Wait a minute. Were you watching where you were going?"

"Yes, of course. Quite carefully."

"That would be your problem, then. Here, take this." She dug about in her pack and produced one of Glorfindal's ancient dog-eared and singed magazines.

Faramir turned it over several times in his hands. "This is in a strange tongue, or at least a strange script."

"Never mind that, just look at the pretty pictures. Try not to wonder where Catherine Zeta-Jones got all the money for that wedding dress, or what on earth she sees in Michael Douglas anyway. As for me, my salivary glands may not be working after that marathon video session, but walking next to a Numenorean should be quite distracting enough to get me from here to there."

"I do not understand."

"You don't have to. Just look at the pictures, follow me, and we'll be at Dr. Freedenberg's before you can say Cormacolindor."

Possibly because he recognized the voice of experience when he heard it, or possibly because he was just coming from a story in which he was the poor submissive younger child, Faramir followed her without another word.

Yellow. Dr. Freedenberg's office was yellow. Cheerful, sunny-side-up-eggs yellow, and the change from the grey corridors outside was quite a shock to the eyes. Nenya had a sudden urge to introduce the interior decorators to green eggs and ham. Didn't they know green was supposed to be more soothing?

She sat gingerly in a rickety plastic chair across from the good doctor, answering questions and listening vaguely to his diagnosis and treatment plan. Basically, it seemed that Upstairs thought she'd cracked because she was lusting too much after Aragorn and assorted Elves; thus the No-Drool Videos. If she wasn't developing any new tics, wasn't howling at the moon (not that one ever saw the moon from inside Headquarters, which Nenya pointed out to Dr. Freedenberg), and wasn't stealing hand-grenades from the supply office, they saw no reason why she should not go back to work yesterday.

Dr. Freedenberg, on the other hand, thought that complete incoherent gibbering from a person normally capable of filling out intelligible reports meant something. He thought she should take a few days off, go talk to a few people who weren't either fictional or insane (Nenya pointed out that she didn't know any), and maybe find out where the swimming pool was in Headquarters. Nenya said she didn't know there was a swimming pool in Headquarters [3], and that she thought Dr. Freedenberg looked like Alec Guinness.

At the moment he was delineating the amount of Bleeprin he felt was healthy for the human body to ingest per day, and Nenya was mentally multiplying his figures by at least three and a half. She made a mental note to go by the cafeteria as soon as possible after she was done here, and stock up on a month's supply of the stuff. Which, given the way things had been going lately, would last about three days.

"Well, that should be all, then," said Dr. Freedenberg, bringing Nenya out of her reverie. "There's just one more thing I'd like to have you do for your treatment. I have a video here-"

"AAAARRGHHHH!!!" said Nenya, leaping up from her seat and running out of the room. "I would like to eat your foot! Hello, thinks Mr. Purple Cat! AAAAAARGHHHH!!!111!!"

She didn't stop running when she passed the doctor's outer office (where Faramir sat, absorbed in People); in fact, she didn't stop running when she reached the nursing station (where Nathonea was still out cold). She didn't stop running till she reached her own response centre, where she dived into the bean-bag chair and under several large blankets. She whimpered.

After a moment, she stuck her head out, grabbed her Lorien cloak from its hook, and pulled it over her head.

"Odd," said Dr. Freedenberg, back in his office. "I thought she liked 'Gofi and the Balrog'. Ah, well. Mine is not to reason why; mine is just to try to keep them from killing anyone. When they're off duty, at least.

"Nurse Sims? Next patient, please."

[1] Technically, the name for this look is "That's-Fascinating-But-I'll-Be-a-Ferengi-Before-I-Admit-To-Being-Actually-Interested #14" which is subtly different from "...But-I'll-Be-a-Blue-Smurf-Watching-Elf [2]... #5", which in turn is different from "Kirk-You-Really-Didn't-Just-Say-That-Did-You #33", which is in fact the most common Vulcan stare, even among Vulcans who've never heard of Captain Kirk.

[2] The alternate explanation for the MSTer Al's Waiter's unusual colouring involves a Vulcan, an Andorian, a romantic moonlit night, and several bottles of Romulan ale. For understandable reasons, the Vulcans don't like this story to get out, so they've told the world at large that he's actually an Elf who watched too many Smurfs cartoons as a child. His brilliant mind is evidence for the Romulan-ale theory, while his hot body is cited as evidence for Elvish heritage (not to mention being responsible for several fainting fits among PPC agents).

[3] Dr. Freedenberg assured her it existed, and revealed that his secretary had, in fact, once made use of it. Or at least she said she had; since his secretary was a Hooloovoo, a particularly intelligent shade of the colour blue imported from Douglas Adams' works, witnesses to the event would be hard to find.

Nenya's A/N: Wow, this took longer to write than I thought it would! I had fun with it, though, and I hope I didn't overload on the references to other people's writings. (I thought the disclaimer section was going to be longer than the story, for a minute there....) I hope it's not all in-jokes that no one gets. Let me know what you think of my report on the Department of Fictional Psychology. I'm afraid that after Mulder and Faramir in the same story, I'm going to have to watch the No-Drool Videos again. (Paaaaaiiiiinnn!!) On a faintly more serious note, go on over to the Henneth-Annun Story Archive and read "Gofi and the Balrog"! It's a great story about Glorfindel and the young twin sons of Elrond. I wrote most of this chapter, but part of the Faramir scene belongs to Rosie. Rosie, take a bow! *hides behind Rosie, hoping no rotten tomatoes are thrown*