Chapter 1: Introducing our Heroes.

(( DISCLAIMERS:  I don’t own Protectors of the Plot Continuum.  That wonderful, hilarious, fantastic series was spawned by the owners of Jay and Acacia, whom I will forever love and admire.  You can find the original website HERE and I highly recommend that you go and check it out because it is wonderful.  I also do not own L.J. Smith or any of her characters, nor do I own the Marty Stu fic in question, which can be found HERE.  Information on Ice can be found HERE and information on lil old me can be found HERE.  Thank you.))

"So this is the new office," Ice announced, tone falsely enthusiastic, but still managing to portray the sarcasm beneath.  "Smashing.  No, really.  When have I ever seen such classy accommodations?" 

"Maybe the last time you visited a morgue?"  Gabriella dropped her backpack, duffle bag, and suitcase on the poured cement floor and sighed, flicking a few errant strands of ebony hair from her face as she took in her surroundings.  "At least it’s clean."

"Like new-fallen snow," Ice muttered as his own bags, which had been telekinetically suspended in the air around him, dropped heavily to the floor.  "You expect me to live here."

"No, I expect you to work here," she corrected, contemplating the gleaming computer system with its massive display screen and darkened console.  "Hm, it doesn’t seem to be on," she observed as she moved in closer and flicked a couple of switches.  Nothing happened.

"That would be a good thing," Ice told her, "but I’m not going to tell you why.  The Narrative Laws of Comedy would jinx me…."

"Ah yes, avoiding the Narrative Laws of Comedy at all costs," she agreed hastily.  "But really, I think it only needs a few homey touches.  Maybe a few weapons on the walls, a nice writing desk with a lava lamp and a matching jar of flames…."

"You go ahead and feel free to make like a psychotic Martha Stewart," Ice told her in a gentle, if patronizing tone.  "I’m going to start setting up, and I recommend that you do the same."

Ice’s advice was usually sound, so Gabriella obeyed, opening her various pieces of luggage and claiming the largest closet as her own.  As she hung up her clothes, Ice eyed her dubiously.

"Aren’t we going to get uniforms?" he inquired.

"Well, that was the policy a while back," she huffed as she strained to lift the hangers to the cross-bar.  "Dammit, the people who make these things must be six feet tall.  But lately they’ve been loosening up on the dress code.  So I suppose it’s okay for us to wear whatever we want."

"It’s not that I mind the cactus," Ice told her, "In fact, it could look almost respectable assuming the patch was worn with an otherwise black ensemble."

"Well, I’ve got a whole box of iron-on insignias!" she said cheerfully as she bounced on the balls of her feet, trying to gain sufficient height to stack her collection of baseball caps on the shelf above the crossbar.  She jumped and threw a bundle of them, and they scattered across the shelf.  Smirking in satisfaction, she turned and slid the closet door closed.  "You could put one on every outfit."

"What a charming idea."

She glared mildly at him.  "Hey, now.  You’re the one who agreed to this, Mr. "I’ve got all of eternity and nothing to do with it".  You wanted a job and I found us one.  It even involves killing and bloodshed, and nobody cares about your past work experience."

"And I suppose it helps that I’m already insane?" he said dryly.

She grinned.  "Oh, absolutely.  Insanity is a hallmarked and valued trait in PPC agents.  But you know that, you read the files too."

"Yes, and memorized the charge list," Ice told her, settling himself in a comfortable, faux-leather glider/rocker that looked suspiciously like an office chair and felt suspiciously like heaven.  "And I hardly think it’s sufficient.  You know as well as I do what we’re going to be dealing with here: Mary Sues, OOC behavior from canons, massive plot holes, temporal-spatial distortions, and as if all that wasn’t enough . . . our boss and superior is a DAISY."

"Sunflower," Gabriella corrected him.

Ice rolled his eyes.  "Sunflower."  He let a moment pass, then exploded with, "SUNFLOWER?  Odin’s beard, the Sunflower Official?  It makes me want to run for weed-killer.  A SUNFLOWER."

"All right, all right, enough of the gratuitous capitalization!"  She looked around for another chair, saw none, and decided to put that first on the list of Things Gabriella Would Buy If She Possessed Disposable Income.  "Come on, Ice, think of this as an adventure.  Hey – at least it’s something you’ve never done before, not in… in… however many years you’ve been alive."

"Too many to count."

"And you’ve never hunted Mary Sues or worked for an organization like this!  They do amazing things here."  She ran a loving hand over the computer console.  "I’m a big fan of Jay and Acacia’s work, you know."  Her eyes, normally a dark enough brown that they could be mistaken for black, lightened as she contemplated the computer.  "Plus, we’re the beginning of an entirely new sub-division, and I know you’ve been dying to stick it to some of those crazy fan-girl authors who make such a mockery of the character of Damon Salvatore."

"A capital offense," Ice agreed, eyes narrowing at his hyperactive partner.  "In fact, if memory serves, it’s a capital offense that you yourself are guilty of perpetra—"

"I was young and stupid," Gabriella protested, hands coming to rest on her hips as she glared at him.  "I’m better now."

Ice hiked a frost-white eyebrow, then slowly kicked the chair away from the console (it moved so smoothly… like riding on air…) and bent down to rummage through her backpack.

Gabriella blinked.  "Um… what are you doing?"

Ice didn’t answer her and he didn’t stop rummaging until he had extracted a shiny blue folder, thick with papers stuffed haphazardly into its pockets.  He flipped it open and began to riffle through them.  Gabriella merely watched, half-annoyed and half-curious, until he extracted one paper and read with flourish:

"And Sabbath, the beautiful, shadowed witch?  There was a certain innocence, he felt, contained in her passion.  In the way she hid nothing and was, in no way, false.  All her feelings were there to read in her eyes, all her intentions. No, that wasn’t innocence.  That was… honesty.  The quality for which Farfarello hungered most, and had never found.

‘And while confession’s not yet stated, our next sin is contemplated.  Never did we know what the future would hold, or that we'd be bought and sold when we were innocent.’

He decided that he liked the song.  He decided that he liked Sabbath.  And as the dim lights of the city, which eclipsed the moon, filtered in through his window, he decided that in a way she was symbolic…."

"I’m editing that part out!" Gabriella protested, lunging for the paper and collapsing on top of her backpack as Ice kicked himself away, laughing melodically.  She sprang to her feet again and chased after him and he put the back of the chair between them, spinning it and holding the paper out of her reach as she tried vainly, with inferior human reflexes, to get it away from him.  Finally, she grabbed the back of the chair, forcibly spun him around, and pounced on him.

This, unfortunately, caused the chair to lean so far back that its center of balance was irrevocably lost and it toppled backward, causing her to land solidly on top of him.  It wasn’t that this hurt him, since Ice was near to indestructible and Gabriella weighed very little, far less than was healthy.  But at precisely that moment, the door hissed open and a young Asian man whose shoulders were bent forward in the manner of the permanently cowed stepped inside.

He took one look at the two new agents sprawled in a tangle on the floor and started to back out of the doorway, eyes wide.  "I don’t think I want to know," he squeaked, then turned and started to flee.

Ice was quicker.  But that was something of a given – he was a vampire, after all.

"Ack!" the young man squawked as strong hands caught him by the scruff of the neck and the seat of the pants and hauled him very un-gently back into the office. 

"Ow," Gabrielle exclaimed as Ice’s hasty departure from beneath her caused her to crumple to the floor.

"And who, exactly, are you supposed to be?" Ice purred as the slim human struggled in his grip.

"Ice…."

"L… let go?" the boy pleaded, and Ice smiled slowly, the wide and wicked smile of a predator looking upon a much-anticipated meal.  The boy turned pale.

"Ice."

"Tell me," the white-haired immortal murmured as he adjusted his grip on the boy, fingers knotting in his hair and pulling back, hard.  The boy was forced to crane his neck, exposing his throat.  Ice’s eyes, a beautiful and impossible blue, like a mile-deep lake set in a glacier, focused on that length of throat and dilated fiercely.

Gabriella grabbed the boy from behind and yanked him out of Ice’s grasp.  His fingers failed to uncurl and the poor human yelped as a fistful of silken black hair was torn from his head.  "ICE!  Cut it out, this is Makes-Things!" she protested, eyes flashing with anger as she dragged the boy to a safe distance and leaned him up against the consol.  "Goddess," she muttered, straightening his clothing.  "Are you okay?"

"Wonderful.  Fine.  Excellent.  Um…."  He stared wide-eyed at Ice, whose tongue had slipped out from between his lips and was now caressing his fully-extended fangs.  "You are… Gabriella and Irilisan?"

"That’s us," she muttered, moving to stand between Makes-Things and the vampire.  "But we all call him Ice.  It’s that Elemental Mastery thing… reformed God-Characters often have them.  Trust me, he won’t eat you, he just likes to be an asshole."  She let out a frustrated breath, took a moment to compose herself, and beamed cheerfully up at Makes-Things.  "Hi!  Did you come to turn our computer on?"

"Well, I… um… yes," he murmured hastily, sliding out from between Gabriella and the consol and inching around it, putting some distance between himself and Ice.  "It’s a new system with some… customizable features.  Apparently the Department of Sufficiently Advanced Technology got a substantial grant…."

Ice smirked.  "I wonder where that could have come from."

"Uh… and well, it’s a new system.  And…."

"And you said that already," she said soothingly, watching him with an almost motherly gaze.  "Look, I’ll tell you what.  I’m going to take the big bad vampire and we’re going to go explore a little, okay?  You do whatever you need to do here and we’ll be back in an hour.  Is an hour enough time?"

Makes-Things looked substantially relieved.  "Plenty of time," he assured her quickly, ducking behind the console.

She smiled.  "Great!  Come on, bad-ass, let’s go find the cafeteria or something and see if we can’t find you something less damning to eat."  She hooked her arm through Ice’s and headed for the door.  Unfortunately, he was stronger than she was and stood right where he was for a moment, smiling unsettlingly at Makes-Things.

"See you later," he purred, then turned and let Gabriella drag him away.

The door hissed shut behind them.

Makes-Things shuddered.

***

About an hour later, after a very unsuccessful attempt to locate the cafeteria, Gabriella returned to Response Center #8123 and poked her head in the door.  Behind her, Ice stood leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest, looking mightily bored and tapping his foot impatiently.

"Hello?  Makes-Things?  Yooooo-hooooooo!  Are you in there?"  She paused and listened at the door, then nodded in satisfaction.  "Looks like he’s finished.  Come on, let’s see if our console is working!"  With the exuberance of a five-year-old toward sugar candy, she bounded into the room.

Ice stepped in behind her and, knowing the Narrative Laws of Comedy as well as he did, covered his ears.

"Ooooh, wow, look at all this," Gabriella murmured as she ran her hands over the console.  "I just realized that I don’t know what half this stuff is for.  I’m sure I’ll figure it out, though…."  She looked up at the screen, moved her finger around the touch pad a little, checked the internet connection to make sure that it worked, and then settled into the chair.

A few moments passed.

Gabriella frowned.  "It’s not doing anything."

"Start doing something important," Ice advised.

For a moment, she looked confused, but then her lips spread in a wicked grin and she kicked back in the chair, crossing her ankles and reclining.  "Well, I guess I’ll just take a nap then," she murmured sleepily.  "I’m really tired."

Ice shrugged and, still holding his fingers in his ears, went to finish putting his things away in the much-smaller closet Gabs had left for him.  He picked up a rolled-up, white fleece parka by the end and began to flatten it.  As he did that, a glass Miami Dolphins football helmet he’d been keeping within the safety of the parka tumbled free, fell, and shattered on the floor.

Ice cursed in a language Gabriella had yet to learn.  "Broken glass alert," he grumbled, floating above the floor and toward the utility closet.  "Don’t move, I’ll get it cleaned up…."

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!

"Just what the storyline needed," Gabs teased, and Ice threw her a sour look.  She bit down on her lower lip and fumbled her way around the keyboard, testing until she finally managed to bring up a white screen covered in small black letters.  "There!" she announced triumphantly.  "From the Information Gathering Department."

Ice floated over to her and hovered there, eyes narrowing as he scanned the description in front of him.  "Nightworld, possible Marty Stu, Charged with causing canon characters to act in out-of-character fashion, utterly ignoring canon rules about vampiric society, upstaging canon characters, and being a Marty Stu.  Recommendation: Terminate."  He glanced down at Gabriella and gave her an unsettling smile.  "Sounds reasonably simple for our first time."

She nodded, having already brought The Words up on display so that she could scan them.  "This one’s not terribly bad," she murmured, eyebrows drawing together in concern.  "I’m not sure I’d even call it a Marty Stu…."

Ice joined her in examining it, then jabbed a finger triumphantly at the screen.  "Look there," he murmured with a self-satisfied smirk.  "Look how he reacts to Thierry.  Look how The Cat reacts to HIM.  He may not be the worst of offenders, but we’ve got ourselves a Marty Stu."

Gabs nodded. "All right then.  One portal coming up… what do you think we should be?"

"No clue," Ice told her dryly.  "I specialize in The Vampire Diaries and The Forbidden Game.  You know far more about the Nightworld Canon."

She considered that for a moment, then nodded.  "All right.  Since we’re going to be spending most of our time in…" she scanned The Words hastily. "A Black Iris club followed by Thierry Descouedres’s mansion, you’ll be a vampire and I’ll be a witch.  The better to blend in among Circle Daybreak’s numbers."

Ice hiked an eyebrow.  "And how, exactly, is that a disguise?  Seeing as I am a vampire and you are a witch?"

She chuckled.  "Well, a slight change in appearance might be in order.  You can keep your eye-color, but I’m making you dark blonde, like when you were human.  Fair enough?"

He shrugged.  "I can hardly bring myself to care."  He watched with distrust as a portal sprang into view.

Gabriella got up and retrieved her duffle bag.  "All right," she said with a note of hushed anticipation in her voice.  "Let’s do it."

The two fledgling PPC assassins leaped through the portal.

***

They appeared in what seemed to be a club, barely-lighted and filled with patrons, most of whom were eerily beautiful.  Rock music pounded from the speakers and most of those sitting at the bar or the surrounding tables were silent, neither socializing nor dancing.  Ice was again forced to put his fingers in his ears and speak to his partner telepathically.

~At least the author did a decent job of describing the setting,~ he sent her as he took a good look at the club. ~Not the type of place where I’d be caught dead, but it’s not bad.~

Gabs nodded as she fished through her duffle bag.  She hadn’t had time to put on make-up or dress appropriately before leaving, but luckily, the Disguise Generator did that for them.  Ice wore a white t-shirt and very faded jeans, a hemp bracelet set with ivory encircling his wrist, and she wore black jeans and a clingy t-shirt with a silver pentacle across the front. 

"Here," she murmured, pulling her Character Analysis Device from her bag and pointing it at various creatures in the bar.  Most of them were nothing but featureless gray blobs without any sort of articulation, and those did not even show up on the screen.  She pointed it to the clearest, best-defined patron, a punk vampire sitting on a barstool and tuning his guitar.  He was described as having once been nothing but a mere handsome young man, tall and far-seeing, but he had definitely changed. His hair was spiked, mostly jet-black, with a patch of deep purple over the left side of his face. He had a small black metal rod through his eyebrow, and rings in his nostril, lip, and ears. A thick silver chain hung around his throat, and one dangled from a belt loop in his black pants. He had six tattoos on his arms, shown off by the once-proud blue-gray button-down shirt with the sleeves torn off. On his right shoulder was a large black rose with blood dripping from its thorns, a pentagram on his inner bicep, and a band around his forearm. Opposite that, he had a Virgo symbol on his left shoulder, a fanciful "L", and a big, colorful Chinese dragon. He wore a spiked bracelet, and his fingernails were black.  He was Lucius Armand, a vampire punk. A rogue who loved little more than rock music and freedom.

The device let out a quiet beep.

>>>LUCIUS ARMAND, MALE, VAMPIRE…… MARTY STU

"Confirmed," she whispered as she slipped the device back into her bag.

~So, when can we kill him?~ Ice wondered as he took her by the wrist and led her to an unoccupied side table.

This close to one of the speakers, Gabs was also forced into mental speech.  ~We have to wait until he’s violated the canon,~ she replied, scratching at the nondescript table surface idly.  ~Once we’ve accumulated our own charge list, we can take him out.  It ought to be a short mission – the story itself is brief and it was never finished.~

Ice glanced up, eyes moving from side to side as he quickly scanned The Words.  ~He’ll be leaving soon and it’s storming outside.  That’s when he runs into Rashel and Quinn.  Do you want to skip there?  I may not be vulnerable to extremes of temperature, but you….~

~I’ll be fine,~ she told him negligently, watching Lucius as he tuned his guitar.  ~Yeah, let’s go ahead and skip.  He doesn’t do anything right this moment that helps us with our charge list.~

~Fancy a walk, my dear?~  He grinned at her and held out his hand.

Gabriella rolled her eyes.  ~I have a portal generator….~

~And I can teleport.  So why use it unless we absolutely have to?~  His grin turned feral and he beckoned with his fingers.

She gave him a dry look.  ~Through space, but you can’t time travel and we need to skip about thirty minutes.~  She unzipped the bag and pulled out the Portal Generator.  ~Come on, bad boy.  Concede the battle.  We’ll make good use of your bag of tricks some other time.~

He didn’t look much amused.  ~Fine.  Do it.~

She set the device and opened a portal and once again, they leaped.

***

Lucius didn't have a chance to get very far. Outside of his humble apartment,
there was a dark, parked car. He was smart enough to sense something suspicious. But
the passengers had very strong shields against their thoughts. He just stood completely still,
cold as a stone, and called mentally, (Who are you, and what do you want?)
Slowly, the car doors swung open. Lucius had never paid much attention to the
Night World fame list, but he was pretty sure the notorious Quinn got out of the driver's side,
and the hunter, the Cat came out of the passenger seat.
Now, he thought of running, but they'd just trap him. He wasn't sure quite what to
do because they weren't attacking. The pair simply looked him over doubtfully, then at each
other.
"Shall I repeat my question?" asked Lucius rather politely. Out loud.
"You are Lucius Armand." The ninja-outfitted girl intoned.
"Yes. I am." He shifted his grip on the handle of his guitar case, smiling slightly. "Have
you heard of me?"
"As a matter of fact, we're here to take you in," said Quinn, approaching him.
"And may I ask where?"
"Circle Daybreak."

"Okay," Gabriella grumbled, "since when are Quinn and Rashel sent to do basic retrieval?  They’re a pair of highly deadly, well-trained, and vicious assassins, not Labradors."

Ice, who’d taken out a spiral-ringed notebook and a mechanical pencil, was quickly scrawling down the first of the charges.  Ignoring canon by reducing the rank of Circle Daybreak operatives.

Lucius snorted, then tried to pretend he didn't. "Sorry, but why?"
"You're wanted," answered the Cat. Almost gently, she added, "We won't hurt you."

"GENTLY?"  She shrieked, and Ice dropped the notepad in the snow in favor of clapping a hand over her mouth before she could give them away.  None the less, the Marty Stu paused in his conversation with the two Daybreakers and looked around in puzzlement.

~GENTLY?~ she shrieked in his head, and he flinched as he thickened his shielding.  ~Rashel isn’t gentle, not to a vampire!  She had to WORK to be nice to most humans, even the gentle and fluffy Daphne bunny!  Doesn’t it say later in The Words that he’s supposed to be executed for crimes against humanity (not that Circle Daybreak even DOES such things, since it’s the job of the Joint Council)?  So why in all hell would Rashel be GENTLE with him?~

~Will you calm down so I can put this on the charge list?~ Ice demanded.  ~I know you’re excited about your first mission, but please, try to ACT professional.~

She heaved in a few more breaths, then wilted against him.  ~Okay,~ she muttered mentally, ~I’m sorry.  I’m okay now; you can let go of me.~

He did so and she sighed as she stepped away from him and rubbed at her arms, which had broken out into gooseflesh.  He stooped to pick up his notebook, shaking snow off of it and scowling at the dampened pages as he tried valiantly to write on it without tearing it.  Second Charge: interfering with the characters of ….

~What’s the vampire’s full name?~ he asked Gabrielle, who was holding herself as still as possible in the bitter wind.

~John Quinn,~ she replied, teeth chattering slightly.  ~And Rashel Jordan.~

He obligingly copied those names.  ….of John Quinn and Rashel Jordan.

Lucius apparently agreed to go along with the two Daybreakers, and as he ran upstairs into his apartment (leaving them standing there in the freezing cold, oddly motionless since he had left the scene) Gabs scanned The Words.

"Uh-oh," she hissed, elbowing Ice.  "Temporal Spatial Distortion coming up.  It shouldn’t be too bad, but hang on anyway…."

Reality seemed to fuzz and fade out around them and she flailed for balance as suddenly, they were on a plane bound for Las Vegas.

"So," Lucius asked casually, "What do you know about me?"
"Honestly," Quinn began. "Not much."
Rashel added, "Just that you were an old vampire who looked straight off a punk rock CD cover, and your address."
Lucius chuckled. "Huh." ~Do I really look straight off a punk CD?~
~Oh, yeah.~ Quinn replied, keeping his eyes on the road as they passed a McDonald's.
~So, how old do you think I am?~
"I don't know, maybe a few centuries," Rasel said observantly.
Lucious winked into the rearview mirror. "I was with Hannibal's troops crossing the Alps on elephants."
"Well, you certainly don't look it." Rashel, concealing her surprise, laid her head on Quinn's shoulder, evidently trying to sleep.

From her position a few seats behind the happy threesome, Gabriella shook her head quietly.  "Two more counts of screwing up Rashel’s character," she murmured to Ice, who was watching Lucius with a murderous gleam in his eyes.  "She’s a vampire hunter.  Quinn is almost four hundred years old and he looks like he’s barely twenty, so there’s no reason she should be surprised by a two-thousand year old vampire (as he later states that he is) looking that young.  Also, she’s a trained fighter, practically ninja.  She would not sleep if there was someone around she didn’t trust, especially not with her head in Quinn’s lap.  Showing affection is difficult for her because of all the people she’s lost.  Admittedly, she did it at the end of The Chosen, but she was really overwrought, and besides…."

"I believe you," he assured her, cutting off her spiel.  "And I’ll add it to the list.  Two more counts."

She grabbed his arm and when he glanced at her in askance, she explained, "Another Temporal Spatial Distortion coming up…."

Again the world spun around them and this time Gabriella felt distinctly ill as they came to a rough landing on the front stoop of Thierry Descouedres’s Las Vegas mansion.  Gabriella held her stomach for a long moment, groaning as her head threatened to split in two, but Ice stood quickly and took a look around.

"Black isn’t really my color, nor roses my style, but it’s not bad," he commented, sounding impressed.  Gabriella used him as a support pillar to climb to her feet and looked around, also making an awed sound.

"This place is gorgeous," she murmured, taking a few halting steps and fingering the silken petal of one of the black roses that grew along the sides of the building.  "And I’m so glad they described it fully in Soulmates, because I doubt that this wench would have done it justice."  She gave Lucius, who was heading into the mansion without looking the slightest bit impressed, a narrow-eyed glare.  They slipped in behind Lucius, only to be treated to the sight of him ordering around Thierry’s guards, who moved out of his way upon hearing his name spoken.

Gabriella rolled her eyes.  "This is Thierry Descouedres.  If anybody could hire decent guards who aren’t afraid of a couple millennia on a vampire, it would be him.  And it says later in The Words that he’s being held here as a prisoner, so why the hell are the guards letting him order them around?"

"Sounds to me like a plot hole," Ice said with vicious glee, adding that charge to the growing list.  They followed Lucius up to his room and watched as he took in the dark blue walls, and matching bed, the golden oak trim and rustic finish. He quickly set down his belongings, and reverently opened the brown leather case. Inside, lay his guitar, a black fender that shone like onyx. He loved it, that guitar and the liberty of obeying no one but himself. And he certainly wouldn't let Circle Daybreak take away his freedom.
Holding his guitar, he began to play a catchy melody, complex in its own, but simple to enjoy.  He sensed someone outside his door, listening in. ~Who is it?~ he asked.
The door opened. A young man sauntered in, no more than eighteen, Lucius's physical age. He was the same height, but thinner. His hair was glaringly bleach-white, picked into straight spikes.  The color of his hair made his skin appear darker, but he was actually fairly pale. His eyes were a sharp hazel, almost blue-brown. A silver stud gleamed under his lip.
"Hey," Lucius greeted.
"Hey. Dimitri Frost." The boy had a thick New Yorkers' accent.
"Lucius Armand."
"Pleased to meet ya. Gawd, ya know, they don't let us smoke in here." He glanced about, then stealthily withdrew a cigarette from his pocket and lit it with a stainless steel lighter. Taking a drag, he asked, "Ya want a smoke?"
"Nah, thanks." Lucius had smoked plently in all his millennia. The scent of tobacco reminded him of colonial times in the south.
"Don't hurt us at all," Dimitri commented. "We don't get the diseases, our lungs work just fine, and we don't even get the cough."
"Right on. So, what's a vampire like you doing in a goody two shoes place like this?"
"They broght me in cuz I killed my soulmate. The bitch was a whiny, obnoxious little girl
who was always hung all over me. So I told her I'd make her into a vamp, and I did, but I staked herwhen she woke up." Dimitri smirked as he remembered her shock and regret.
"Dude, I did the same thing!" Lucius exclaimed. He had been soulmates with a girl named Charlotte when he lived in France centuries ago. She had been mushy and in love, but was so naive. Lucius hated the idea of being eternally tied to someone, so he did away with her. Forever. "Maybethat's why I'm stuck in this lil joint, too."

"Broght?" Gabriella wondered as she pointed the Analysis Device at Dimitri.  "What is a Broght?  Let’s review for the record; Beta Readers are our FRIENDS."

>>> DIMITRI FROST, MALE, VAMPIRE, BIT CHARACTER

She sighed and put the device away.

"Do we need to kill him too?" Ice wondered.

She thought about it a moment.  "He says he killed his soulmate?  Yes, we need to kill him.  Killing one’s soulmate directly violates canon.  No one would do that on purpose, not even an utterly evil or insane individual, and if they DID, they would kill themselves immediately afterward because it hurt so much.  A soulmate is your other half, the perfect compliment to you.  Once you touch them, you know without a doubt that you will never be happy without them again.  And besides, if these two nimwits were really that evil, it stands to reason that their soulmates would be wicked and evil as well.  After all, a soulmate is supposed to be PERFECT for you."

Ice nodded and his pencil tip scratched against the crinkled paper.  Godplaying, two counts of disrupting canon…

"So what’s next on the schedule?" he murmured as he finished jotting that down.

Gabriella glanced up and scanned the words quickly, smiling softly at what she saw.  "As I said, this was never finished.  The end is coming up soon.  But before that, we’ll have to endure his on-stage performance."

Ice blinked.  "Isn’t he being kept prisoner here?  I mean, even though nobody but this Dimitri idiot has said as much?  Why would they give him a stage and let him perform?  And besides that, why would someone like Thierry, who has infamously excellent taste, have a stage in his home?  That’s what concert halls are for."

"Well, what mansion is complete without a concert hall?" Gabriella teased gently.

Ice snorted.  "It’s a waste of space and expensive engineering.  Besides, one of the points of performance entertainment is that one can get OUT of the house once in a while."

Gabriella chuckled and stood on her tip-toes to pat him on the head.  Since she was five feet, four inches tall in sneakers and he stood six feet, he generally towered over her, not that she ever seemed to mind.  "For you, maybe," she murmured, "though if I lived in your castle, I don’t think I’d ever want to leave it.  I would give the author the benefit of the doubt on this one, except that no stage is ever mentioned even when Hannah is exploring Thierry’s house, so go ahead and add ‘changing established canon settings’ to the list."

Ice did so.  "So we nab him after the predictably flawless performance?"

She nodded.  "It would probably be best.  We could catch him backstage, along with Dimitri.  You want to portal straight there and miss their cover of a Vast song?"

Ice nodded.  "I’m not particularly fond of Vast anyway."

She nodded and flicked on the portal generator.  An oblong hole opened in the very fabric of reality and the two agents stepped through.

*So I'm gonna hold on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on...*
*On and on and on and on and on and on and on...*
*Oh, on and on and on...*
*Oh, on and on and on and on*

The lights came back on. Lucius lifted his eyes to the crowd. The were applauding with
genuine appreciation. Whitsles pierced the clapping occaisionally. Finally, it died down.
Lucius Armand, the 2,237-year-old vampire said into the microphone, "Thank you."

"This is it," Gabrielle whispered to Ice.  "Ah, one of the lovely benefits of L.J. Smith realities; easy corpse disposal.  Granted, he won’t turn to ash, but mummies are so much lighter than human bodies…."

"You take Dimitri," Ice growled as he crouched behind the make-shift stage which had apparently been set up in the den.  Gabriella had muttered upon entrance that she hadn’t realized there was ROOM in the den for a stage, seeing as the description in Soulmates painted a picture of a cozy room filled with large and heavy furniture.  Not that moving furniture was a terrible strain on vampires, but she’d decided to leave changing canon settings on the charge list.  It never hurt to have extra charges.

~The self-proclaimed elder is yours then,~ she returned, slipping away and out into the hall where she would be able to catch Dimitri.  ~Good hunting.~

~Good hunting.~

~And remember, Ice, you HAVE to charge him before you kill him.~

She felt his mental nod and snuck off to lie in ambush for her own prey.

Meanwhile, Lucius sauntered backstage wearing the superior and self-satisfied expression of the terminally arrogant.  Ice suffered from this malady himself, and knowing just how pathetic this creature was in comparison to him, he sneered at the other vampire’s confidence as he closed in.  He was utterly silent, shielding his presence from the younger vampire’s mind, but Lucius still seemed to sense him and turned quickly, fangs bared.

Ice pounced and tackled him to the ground, toppling some nearby sound equipment with a crash.  They both snarled at each other and Lucius slammed a fist into Ice’s jaw.  Ice, however, shook off the blow and held Lucius down by the neck as he muttered as quickly as he could, "Lucius Armand, you are accused of gratuitous character and clothing description, causing plot holes, temporal-spatial distortions, and other mayhem, lowering the rank of Circle Daybreak agents, messing up the characters of Rashel Jordan, John Quinn, and probably Thierry Descouedres, changing a canon setting, creating a reality that makes no sense, crimes of grammar including, but not limited to, cruelty to the common comma, terrible spelling that could have been easily avoided with spell-check, godplaying, and most importantly, being a Marty Stu.  I’d offer you last words, but your face annoys the hell out of me.  Sweet gods, who finds that amount of tattooing attractive?  Can we say ‘overkill’?"  With that, he curled his fingers into claws and plunged them in around Lucius’s heart, clenching them on that motionless organ and tearing it free from the body with a sound like wet denim being ripped in two.  Lucius gasped as his skin began to yellow, and the light faded from his eyes as his body began to shrink and cave in upon itself.

The flimsy curtain was thrown aside and he found himself staring up into the angry green eyes of one Rashel Jordan, vampire hunter, who seemed to have regained the hostility she was supposed to have had as canon tried valiantly to slide back into place.  He tossed her a smile.

"Sorry dear, but I’ve got to run.  Don’t worry, you were planning on killing him anyway," he chuckled as she lunged toward him and he teleported away and out into the front driveway of Thierry’s mansion.  Sauntering off to the west, he circled the grounds until he fond a decent spot to burry the mummified body and sank his fingers into the dirt, humming to himself as he dug a pit deep enough to sink the corpse in.

Meanwhile, back inside the mansion, Gabrielle dug in her duffle bag yet again and came up with a sharpened wooden stake.  "Such wonderful things to have around when one is slaying vampires," she whispered cheerfully to herself, and pressed back against the wall next to the doorway she’d been standing guard over.  Finally, smoking a cigarette and looking stereotypically rebellious, Dimitri Frost emerged.  He did not see her, as she hadn’t done anything to make herself noticeable yet, but he sure as hell noticed her when she stepped forward and rammed the stake through his back.

"Dimitri Frost, you are formally charged with helping to create a reality that makes no sense, creating plot holes, changing a canon setting, making Thierry look like an idiot, and aiding and abetting a Marty Stu.  Any last words?"

It took a Nightworld vampire a little time to die from a stake through the heart, but by the time she asked him that question, his eyes were going flat and dull.  She smiled in satisfaction and picked up the mummified corpse, opening a portal to outside the mansion and stepping onto the driveway.

"Ice?" she hissed, eyes narrowing as she tried to see in a darkness her vision had not had time to acclimate to.  "Hey, Ice?"

~This way, Gabriella.~

Her head shot up and she followed that voice around the side of the house and through the landscaped bushed, only to find Ice kneeling in a large hole, covered in blood and dirt, and beckoning to her.  "It’s big enough for both if we scrunch them up a little.  Let’s cover them and get out of here as quickly as possible."

She nodded and they dumped the bodies in, working together to push the dirt down on top of them.  By the time they were finished, Gabriella was also filthy, and dreaming of taking a shower when she got back to response center #8123. 

"Done," Ice murmured in satisfaction, smirking as he stomped the last bit of errant dirt down.  "Now, all we need is a rainstorm to throw the werewolves off our scent."  Tilting his head back, he went still and reached up – Power stretching out from his body, taking hold of the clouds, twisting them, turning them to his will.  The sky darkened even further without the light of the moon and thunder rumbled in the distance, and within a few moments soft rain began to patter down.

"Very impressive, but let’s go before I’m filthy AND drenched," Gabs murmured, shivering.  "Thank the Goddess it’s so much warmer in Las Vegas than it was in New Hampshire!"

Ice tilted his head and looked almost disappointed.  "You don’t want to watch the storm?" he asked quietly.  "Desert rainstorms are a thing of beauty.  Awesome power and so much space for it to rampage…."

"I know it’s beautiful, but we need to get back," she told him gently.  "And then you can take a nice, long bath, relaxing in warm and scented water, or freezing cold and filthy water if that’s what you prefer.  But canon will be reasserting itself and we need to be gone."

He nodded, scowling slightly, and stood in a pout as she turned on her portal generator and set it for their response center. 

"Number eight-one-two-three, here we come!" she said cheerfully, and they stumbled through the oblong portal, spilling onto that cold cement floor.

The portal shrank to nothing behind them and Gabriella let out a sigh.  "Oh, MAN I need a shower," she whimpered as she headed for the bathroom.  "Clean.  Hot.  Forty minutes or more.  Mmmmm…."  She reached for the door to the bathroom.

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP! BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!  BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEEEEEEEEP!  BLOODY BEEP, ALREADY!  BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!  HEY, PAY A-BLOODY-TENTION, WILL YOU?  BEEP!!!

Snarling wrathfully, Ice stormed over to the space behind the consol and reached for the plug, only to have Gabriella take three running steps and tackle him away from the cord. 

"Don’t touch that!" she snapped, giving his hand a smack.  "We can’t unplug the console or we’ll lose the information!"

"What a tragedy," he sneered, and she made a disgusted noise as she shoved him away and climbed into the chair.  Her fingers danced across the keys and brought up the screen.  She went pale. 

"Um, Ice?  Remember how you told me before we started this job that you wanted to work in the Vampire Diaries canon?"

He gave her a bored look.  "Yes?"

"Well, we’ve got a hot one. Tell me, since when does Stefan have a twin sister?"

Ice’s eyes lit with a predatory gleam and his lips twisted into a barbaric grin as he fastidiously brushed some of the dirt from his arms and t-shirt.  "Since never," he growled, fingers flicking in anticipation.  "Let’s go."

THE END

Chapter 2: Shi Ne, Maria!

(( I do not own the PPC.  I do not own The Vampire Diaries.  That series is the property of L.J. Smith.  I do not own ‘Marie’, by Medusa Descouedres, the fic that is parodied in this chapter.  The chapter, "Shi Ne, Maria" is supposed to be a play on "Ave Maria", but I’m sure I’m the only one who understands it.))

Gabrielle Gregory, also know as Gabs to her friends, or Gabriella to the more formally-spoken of her acquaintances, tossed her long, dyed-black hair and let out a sigh. Well, that hadn’t been so bad for their first mission.  The Marty Stu had died easily, neither of them had gotten hurt, and none of the canons had caught sight of them.  Sure, they were both soaking wet and covered in mud from digging pits in which to hide the bodies, but she felt exhilarated and very self-satisfied.  Their first mission was a success!  And she hadn’t even needed to bring out the Bleeprin™ !

"Oh, MAN I need a shower," she whimpered as she headed for the bathroom. "Clean. Hot. Forty minutes or more. Mmmmm…." She reached for the door to the bathroom.

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP! BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP! BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEEEEEEEEP! BLOODY BEEP, ALREADY! BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP! HEY, PAY A-BLOODY-TENTION, WILL YOU? BEEP!!!

Snarling wrathfully, Gabrielle’s partner, Ice, stormed over to the space behind the consol and reached for the plug.  Gabrielle’s eyes widened and she took three running steps toward him, leaping and tackling him away from the cord.  They hit the poured cement floor with a crunch and she smacked his hand in reproach.

"Don’t touch that!" she snapped. "We can’t unplug the console or we’ll lose the information!"

"What a tragedy," he sneered, and she made a disgusted noise as she shoved him away and climbed into the chair. Her fingers danced across the keys and brought up the screen. She went pale.

"Um, Ice? Remember how you told me before we started this job that you wanted to work in the Vampire Diaries canon?"

He gave her a bored look. "Yes?"

"Well, we’ve got a hot one. Tell me, since when does Stefan have a twin sister?"

Ice’s eyes lit with a predatory gleam and his lips twisted into a barbaric grin as he fastidiously brushed some of the dirt from his arms and t-shirt. "Since never," he growled, fingers flicking in anticipation. "Let’s go."

"Not so fast, hot-shot," she chided.  "I’m sure we can squeeze in a shower first."

HEY, WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH YOU?  CAN’T YOU HEAR ME?  I SAID IT’S A FRELLING EMERGENCY, PEOPLE!  GET HOPPING!  BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!

Ice folded his arms across his chest, unnaturally blue eyes glaring up at the console from beneath strands of frost-white hair. "I have a hammer," he said, his voice deadly quiet.

The computer fell silent, but it would not be entirely dissuaded.  An oblong, black portal appeared over the section of the floor that seemed to have become the landing pad.  Ice gave it half a glance and rolled his eyes.  "Shower and change," he told his partner, "quickly.  I’ll read The Words and brief you in transit."

"Roger that," she called, shooting him a wink and a grin as she slipped into the bathroom.

Ice, meanwhile, was eyeing the computer with suspicion.  Machines were not generally telepathic, but he was receiving some very definite signals from this one, piggy-backed on a surge of emotion.  That emotion was annoyance.

"You can be still, be quiet, and wait patiently for our pleasure," he told the computer icily, and for a moment the screen almost seemed to shiver.  Satisfied that he had properly intimidated the cheeky machine, Ice stepped away from the console and eyed his clothing with distaste.  Mud stained his comfortable, faded jeans and was caked over his bare feet.  His formerly white t-shirt was no longer thus.  Fortunately, he knew a great many ways to take care of that particular inconvenience, and he twisted his fingers into arcane symbols, muttering under his breath.  It was only a small spell, the least of incantations he’d learned when he was just a fledgling sorcerer, but it would serve well enough for this purpose.  The dirt, grime, and water lifted free from his clothes and body and vanished in a golden sparkle, leaving him as clean as if he had taken a bath in bleach, and about as colorful.

Smirking in satisfaction, he settled into the glider/rocker and interlaced his fingers over his stomach, eyeing the console as though it was a particularly succulent meal.  "Now, then," he purred.  "Do fill me in on the details.  I believe I am ready to listen."

***

When Gabrielle emerged, having stolen twenty minutes for her shower instead of the eight she could have kept it down to, Ice was standing with his face inches from the screen, his sculpted upper lip curled back in a snarl, fangs extended as one of his eyebrows twitched.

She blinked.  "Is it that bad?"

"The … INSIPID… VAPID… SHALLOW…."

"It is that bad," she ascertained, padding toward him and wincing as her bare feet came into contact with the frigid concrete floor.  Her hair fell around her shoulders in dark tangles as she tossed the towel on the floor and went to take a look at The Words.  "Hmm.  Well, the writing style isn’t quite as bad as it could be.  She has some potential."

"That would be lovely," Ice growled, "if she had any skill."

"Pssht.  Skill is something you develop as you learn.  Cut her a break."  She rubbed at her stomach, where a droplet of water lingered in the dip of her navel, and patted his hand where it lay on the console, tendons standing out in sharp relief against his pale skin as his fingers remained curled into tense claws.  "We’ll go and kill the Sue and return Damon to his normal self, and then you can take a hot bath.  I’ll personally put together a chamomile and rose hip bath packet and hunt down some nice white pillar candles."

"It will take much bloodshed to placate me after this," he hissed, and she rubbed against his stiffened arm sympathetically.

"You can kill the Sue and her little boyfriend," she promised.  "You can drain them dry and read them all the riot act about how many PPC charges they’ve racked up, and how many Undead Bloodsucking Fiend Society laws they’ve broken, and how her sire was a stupid, selfish bint and her grandsire was a massive, idiotic prick, and how none of them is worthy of the title of ‘vampire’ except for Damon."

Ice considered that for a moment, then turned a heartrending, gorgeous, and unsettlingly hungry smile on her.  "Before we exorcise and neuralise them… I want Stefan.  Then and only then will I refrain from taking my ire out on this building."

She made an enraged noise.  "Ice!  You can’t have the canon characters!  The Sunflower Official would come down on you like a ton of bricks and…."

"And then," Ice purred, "I would come down on him like a literal ton of bricks.  And weed-killer.  I am not afraid of a plant, my dear, and I somewhat resent your insinuation that I should be."

"If you lose this job, you’ll go back to being bored.  Molest somebody else."

He chuckled.  "But he’s so delightfully innocent and pure.  He actually believes he can pretend to be human.  And shattering the illusions of such pretty children is like eating fine cheese.  The more they crumble, the better they taste."

Gabrielle took a deep breath, dug her nails into his forearm, and said slowly, "You may NOT…HAVE…STEFAN.  Understood?"

Irritation flashed in his features and then vanished, and he managed a smirk.  "As you wish, my dear."

She released his arm, not that her nails had had any effect on him worth noting, and went to pull on a sweatshirt over her bondage pants and t-shirt.  Ice watched her go with a stony expression and ran his fingers over the keys to bring the portal back.  "I suppose I’m ready when you are," he said flatly.  "I’ll carry the bag."

She pocketed a device or two and trotted back toward him.  "So, where do we start this one?"  Her tone was uncharacteristically grim, and rightly so – irritating Ice was hazardous to one’s health.

"Immediately after the end of the fourth book," he told her.  "As Damon is (wisely) walking away from the melodrama in the clearing."

She smiled wanly.  "He always was smart like that, ne?"

Ice didn’t respond, instead shrugging a frayed denim jacket onto his frame and straightening the cuffs.  "Ladies first."

Gabs’ head snapped around and she eyed him suspiciously.  Ice was not above petty revenge, and he had been the one to summon that portal.  But he couldn’t kill her and expect his own life to continue, so she gritted her teeth, shot him a glare, and strode through the black oval.

She stepped out onto crumbly, soft earth and tiny weeds that flattened beneath the thick soles of her boots, giving up the aroma of their fluids in a sharp, earthy, pungent smell.  She was surrounded in darkness and it took her eyes a moment to adjust, but she had good night vision and before long she could easily make out the darker forms of trees against the deep blue of the star-filled night.  They stood all around her, tall, old trees with arms that reached out and interlaced with other trees, blocking out most of the sky above her head.  Sounds filtered to her ears, night sounds of birds and squirrels and insects, and human sounds of laughter, celebration, and joy.  Another quick glance around didn’t reveal the position of the errant Salvatore brother, but she wasn’t terribly concerned with Damon at the moment.  Turning, she blinked into the darkness.  It was hard to tell, but was the portal still there?  Brow furrowing in confusion, she spread her hands and waved them back and forth.  She encountered nothing, no ripple in the darkness.  She hadn’t moved more than a step from where the portal had set her, so where had it gone?  And where was Ice?  She made a circle around the space between the nearest trees, searching by hand, and found nothing.

She stifled the urge to growl in irritation.  Irilisan, that bastard!  He’d deliberately disobeyed protocol!  No agent was to enter a story alone.  All missions were to be completed in the company of another agent, or a suitable replacement deputized for that purpose.  He was probably just being spiteful, letting her sweat while he waited a few moments before popping up.  Well, she didn’t intend to let him do that.  She reached for the duffle bag, only to find that she didn’t have it.

~No.  Ohhhhh, no.  No, no, NO,~ she pleaded mentally as she patted herself down and pulled from her pockets the few articles she had chosen to take for herself.  She had the Neuraliser, the Character Analysis Device, and a bottle of Bleeprin™.  No weapons, no Disguise Generator… and no Portal Generator.

This was SO not funny.

"Okay, Ice, you’ve made your point," she muttered, folding her arms across her chest and tapping her foot impatiently.  "I’m sorry, all right?  I have to obey the rules and make sure you obey them.  I don’t have a choice.  Otherwise, I wouldn’t care if you drew and quartered Stefan and left him for the sun.  Honestly.  Don’t blame me, I didn’t make the rules."

Her only answer was the chirping of birds.

Sighing, she took a glance up at The Words.  "Come on, Ice, the Sue is about to appear any minute, and I know you can hear me.  I thought you wanted to kill her!  Look, I’ll give you the Sue and her boyfriend.  You can torture them, dissect them, drain them, rape them, it doesn’t matter to me.  I’ll cover for you with the Plants.  They won’t know you didn’t go by the book.  Please, just don’t leave me here."

The little begging note in her voice should have done it.  Ice liked to lord it over others, and her petulance and submission should have brought him out of his tantrum.  But he didn’t appear, and Gabrielle began to feel truly angry.

He had left her.

He had left her.

Fingers clenching and unclenching, she took several deep breaths through her nose, shaking with fury, but unwilling to be a slave to it.  He wanted to play this juvenile game, did he?  FINE.  She would start the mission (since she really had no other choice) and whenever he decided to make an appearance, she would be ready with a charge list and one hell of a tongue-lashing.  Except that she had no pencil and no paper, and absolutely no way of killing the Mary Sue.  Since the Sue was a vampire, she’d opted for wooden stakes, but the stakes had been in her duffle bag.

All right.  Slow down, no need to panic, she told herself firmly, managing to feel a little wry amusement at the situation.  First, she needed to take stock of her assets.  She felt around in the pocket of her hooded sweatshirt and found nothing.  She then moved to the back pockets of her bondage pants.  Nothing.  Unhooking the front pockets to open them, she felt around.  Her fingers encountered the edge of something papery and her heart skipped a beat.  No, it couldn’t be.  She wasn’t that lucky.  She pulled the thing out and uncrumpled it.  It was a dollar bill, that was for certain, but as for the denomination… she stepped to the side and tried to use the moonlight, for there was a full moon (and it was Summer Solstice, a distant part of her mind remembered), and her knees trembled in relief.  It was a twenty.  A long-forgotten twenty that she had doubtless slipped into her pocket when planning to go clubbing with friends, and buy drinks and pay her own cover charge.  Apparently there had been a change of plans – it could have been any one of many incidents to that effect that she remembered.  What was important was that she had cash.  She was in a modern canon and she had cash, and that made things a whole lot less bleak, assuming that Ice planned to let her languish for a little while before rescuing her.  She would need a small notebook, she mused, and a cheap pen for writing down the charges.  She would also need a lighter, one of those Bic™ disposables.  Fell’s Church was large enough to have its own high school, so there should be a hardware store.  She could buy a dowel, but how to sharpen it?  Knives were very expensive.  She thought for a moment and then the solution became obvious to her.  She had taken wood shop in high school.  It was possible that there might be a wood shop at Robert E. Lee High School.  If so, she could simply slip in during the day and use the belt sander to smooth down the ends into points.  If there was no wood shop, well… she would deal with that then.

Smirking slightly and feeling much more in control of the situation, Gabrielle sat back and scanned The Words.  After the Sue found Damon, she would bring him back to the clearing so that she could show herself to Stefan.  Gabrielle could get plenty of material for her charge list just by being in that clearing.  Two slender fingers tapped against her lips as she considered how to get close enough to listen in.  The clearing was part of a plot of land belonging to the Old Francher Place, she thought she remembered.  There would be buildings.  Tall grass and overgrown weeds and bushes.  Plenty of hiding spots, especially if everyone but the Sue would be ignoring her.

Satisfied with her plan, and hoping that she knew enough about the books to assemble a charge list without having them to read off of, Gabrielle strode into the darkness, toward the sound of laughter.

***

Ice watched Gabrielle step through the portal and slung the duffle bag over his shoulder.  Not many people had the audacity to order him around, but she was his Creator.  There was, quite literally, nothing he could do save obey her or risk extinction.  To be fair, she very, very rarely exercised that power.  Unlike some Creators he could have named, she did not force her creations into sexual acts.  She let them choose their own mates.  She stuck up for them against other Creators even when they were in the wrong, defending their right to BE wrong rather than selling them out. She gave gifts often and almost never gave anything resembling an order.  Indeed, many of his brethren viewed her as something of a mildly annoying, but generally fun little sister, whom they would roll their eyes at in amusement, but happily tolerate.  As masters (or mistresses) went, she was a good one.

So, in all honesty, he shouldn’t have begrudged her this order.  He knew why she had to give it, and he didn’t fault her reasons.  But he simply did not like being treated like a lesser by anyone.  And so he was fully prepared to pout through the entire mission, or until she made overtures of apology toward him.  But as he stepped forward to follow her through the shimmering black gate, reality itself seemed to ripple and the shadows darkened and deepened.  He paused.  The Power that had caused the change had a familiar signature, but there was absolutely no reason for it to be here. What could the Final Darkness possibly want with the PPC?

"You might as well show yourself," he said dryly, stepping away from the portal and gazing around the room until he was able to pinpoint the nexus from which that Power radiated.

The shadows coiled and coalesced before his eyes, wrapping around each other until they had formed a vaguely humanoid figure.  They tightened, and arms broke away from the main mass just myriad strands of silken, black hair floated up toward the ceiling, propelled as if by an updraft.  The shadows over the face and arms withdrew, vanishing into inky black clothing and revealing pallid white skin and facial features so beautiful, so exquisite, that it literally pained the human heart to look upon them.  Black eyes danced with rainbow depths and that soft hair shone with highlights.

Ice was not impressed.  "Nice entrance," he said dryly.  "But make the exit quicker, would you?"

The creature ignored him entirely, taking a few steps forward and looking around the room.  "I know I sensed her here," he said softly, his voice the silken caress of seduction and the hiss of the lying serpent wrapped into one lilting tone.  "Where is she?"  He turned to Ice, delicate features emotionless.

Ice’s eyes narrowed.  "What do you want with her?"

"The same thing I have always wanted," he purred, tilting his head slightly back and favoring Ice with a sensual smirk.  "But now that I see you here as well, I might be persuaded to change… desires."  He swayed with sinuous grace, stepping closer to Ice and circling left.  Ice stayed between him and the portal, and the creature laughed.  "Don’t want me at your back, Isa-Born?  Funny.  As I recall, that’s your favorite position…."

"Same old song, same old dance," Ice said dryly, the corners of his mouth lifting in a smirk.  "Same old answer."

"It doesn’t have to be that way, you know.  We made such a magnificent team."  Those black eyes glinted with strange lights and the sparkle of a thousand hidden promises.  "All the world and even the gods trembled at the thought of what we might do together… Irilisan…."  The name rolled off his tongue in syllabant tones.

To Ice, it was like hearing crystal-clear water drip from an oil slick.  "You are pathetic," he purred in return, grinning ferally at the shadowed being as he circled.  "Always pining, always begging.  Just one more toss, just one more rampage, just one more romp between the worlds, flirting with death and the wrath of the gods.  Accept it, Fell.  You don’t have me, and you won’t have me unless I’m too drunk or drugged-up to know better.  You’re a dalliance, a pretty treat with no real value.  And you most certainly have nothing that I want."

Fell’s eyes narrowed and his smile was as sharp as a rapier blade.  "Well, if that’s how you really feel," he crooned, "then I suppose I should get on with my errand.  Where is the Lady Fate?"

"I’ll ask you again.  What do you want with her?"

"And I’ll tell you once again, my darling, because you so obviously do not listen."  Fell stepped in close to Ice, slender arms draping around his neck.  "I want," he whispered, lips brushing the white-haired vampire’s ear, "the same thing that I have always wanted."

For a split second, it didn’t click.  But Ice was no simpleton, and he had survived Fell this long by knowing him as he knew all his enemies, inside and out.  What did Fell always want?  As soon as he asked himself that question, the answer was simple.  And as he realized how Fell had decided to obtain that something, his eyes widened in shock.

Fell was laughing, a beautiful, mad sound that could put terror into the stoutest human heart, but while he was busy laughing, Ice was moving.  He gathered his Power into his body and then sent it exploding outwards, a burst of force aimed forward.  Fell, who was pressed against him, was caught in the Power surge and was knocked back, thrown across the response center and into the wall as if smacked by a giant fist.  He hit hard enough to crack the cement and dust rained down, adding a bit of color to his darkness.  But Ice didn’t wait to see what sort of effect the blowback had on his rival.  As soon as Fell’s body was no longer touching his, he spun and leaped for the console, fingers stabbing at the keys.  The portal shrank and then vanished.

Fell picked himself up and fastidiously brushed the dust from his body, eyeing Ice with cold, black hatred in his gaze.  "She went through a gate?" he ascertained, eyes flickering up toward the console.  He arched back, Power gathering and then flaring out to summon the very shadows to his call.  Thick tendrils of liquid darkness spewed from every wall and struck like snakes, wrapping around Ice’s limbs and torso and dragging him away from the console.  He struggled, but in this, at least, Fell was more powerful than he was.  His mastery over his element was superior to Ice’s, and his element was stronger, more plentiful.  Irilisan snarled as he fought to pull free of the tendrils.

"Where would you have sent her, I wonder?" Fell mused, sauntering lazily toward the console even as Ice snapped a tendril, only to have that hand immediately restrained by another.  "To what universe now, does our Mistress go?"  He began to read The Words and reached out to scroll the screen up, where he would be able to read the heading and notes from the Information Department.

Ice did the only thing he could think of at a moment’s notice.  All things considered, it was a brilliant move, if only for its simplicity.

Reaching out with the limited power he had over matter and energy, telekinetically compressing the tiniest of particles further than normal physics would allow, he threw up a shield around Response Center #8123… and drove a mental wedge down the center of an atom.

Fell was utterly unprepared for this sort of destructive assault.  The explosion began almost directly in his face and he had no time to react before the very air seemed to erupt with fire, light, and the dreaded electromagnetic pulse.  Ice, of course, had been expecting his surprise, and he measured his movements in fractions of a nanosecond, time seeming to slow to a standstill as he sped his perceptions.  The force of the explosion ripped into Fell, incinerating his physical form and shocking him into loosening his hold.

With the Final Darkness’s mental hold on him weakened, Ice willed himself away to another location, reappearing just outside the door of their response center, outside the telekinetic shields he had set up.  Bracing his hands against the wall to aid himself in any way possible, he envisioned that shield as a square box that contained only Response Center #8123 and as the explosion continued to ripple outward, he held that box, forcing it to contain itself within those boundaries, stopping the shock waves before they could go any farther.  His success was not complete.  The entire building began to shake and plaster rained down from the ceiling as the beams and struts creaked in protest.  He gritted his teeth and reinforced those barriers.

The EMP got past him.  The electronics in all response centers from #8000 to #9000 (most of which were, mercifully, not in use as the PPC was grossly understaffed) promptly failed as two floors lost power.  But it wasn’t as bad as it could have been, and that tactic would leave Fell incapacitated for quite some time.

Kill him?  Oh, no.  That couldn’t be done, not by Ice, as he’d learned long ago.  But incapacitated was still a good thing, especially if Fell was planning what Ice thought he was.

The walls stopped shaking.  The sound of the explosion died out.  Ice took a shaky breath and lowered his hands from the wall….

… and promptly passed out where he stood.

***

Trekking through the forest was not an activity for the out-of-shape.  Despite the fact that she had once been an athlete, Gabs had long since let her body go to seed and she was suffering for it now.  Since her student lifestyle was mainly sedentary, she had fallen into the habit of eating one meal a day, usually preservative-laden microwaveable fare.  She kept telling herself she would go to the YMCA and swim, like she used to, but never got around to actually doing it.  Now, she didn’t have the energy necessary for fighting her way through brambles.

She was, however, stubborn and she kept at it until she finally emerged from the trees and stumbled as the ground abruptly sloped downward, away from her feet.  Sliding on the wet grass (Elena had made it rain to put out the many fires Klaus had caused with his lightning strikes), she stifled a yelp as she fell on her ass and scrambled sideways, to firmer ground.  Fortunately, the canons took no notice of her.  The Francher Place itself was little more than scattered stones in the shapes of foundations, a piece of wall still intact here and there.  Flowering vines and brambles covered those pieces, and the chimney stood tall and mostly whole not so far from Gabrielle.  That was where Caroline had been tied, but she was not there now, and not even an indentation in the weeds was left to mark her presence.  Caroline stood now in the center of the clearing, along with Bonnie, Meredith, Matt, Elena, and Stefan, part of their celebration as they rejoiced over a miracle.  Gabrielle eyed them until she spotted Elena and her upper lip curled back.

Idiotic blond bitch.

Gabrielle did not like Elena.  Elena was the epitome of popularity, the kind of girl who had made Gabs’ life a living hell from fourth grade to twelfth.  She used people, she was selfish and manipulative and shallow, and she thought she was going to get married when she was seventeen.  She put her friends through hell without so much as the grace to say thank you, or apologize, at least not until the fourth book where she’d been a ghostly angelic figure with the wisdom only death could give a person.  And then she’d been resurrected for the sake of true love?  Most of Elena’s characteristics pointed toward one thing, in Gabrielle’s opinion: Sue.  Elena was a published Sue.  It had happened before a million times and would happen again.  Personally, Gabrielle had been satisfied with Elena’s death at the end of  The Fury.  She felt it had redeemed the girl somewhat to at least give up her life for others, in a meaningful way.  But her resurrection made the entire thing pointless.

She shook herself.  She was getting off-track.  Those broken pieces of foundation made perfect hiding places if she could sneak in, and since no one was paying any attention, that shouldn’t be too terribly difficult.  Moving with agonizing slowness, chanting the patience mantra in her head as her entire being protested her slow, measured strides, she crept up behind one piece of wall and made herself comfortable behind it, where she would be able to see and hear by peeking around.  There was movement on the far end of the clearing and then two slender figures emerged, one broad-shouldered and masculine, one curvaceous and feminine.

"And so it begins," she murmured with a wicked sort of glee, settling down to watch.

She had missed the Sue’s slaughtering of Damon’s character (he fluctuated back and forth between mostly IC and grossly OOC throughout the story) and her narrative.  The narrative had contained plenty of ripe material for the charge list, some of which was now being made apparent.

Jet black hair tumbled to her hips, silken and shining like that of her ‘brothers’.  Though her eyes were not visible in the dim light, Gabs knew them to be ‘some color between green and black’ which changed depending on the Sue’s mood.  She would have put that on the charge list, except for the fact that it would have been hypocritical.  Gabrielle herself had brown eyes that changed from near-gold to near-black, depending on her mood, and she was perfectly human.  So she refrained from using ‘amazing color-changing eyes’ as her first charge, and instead selected a much better one – being Stefan’s twin sister.

The Sue, accompanied by Damon who looked as though there were a million places in the world he would rather be, walked up behind Stefan and tapped him on the shoulder.  Turning, Stefan’s eyes widened.

"Marie?" he gasped.  And then he did something that had Gabrielle digging her nails into the unforgiving rock and struggling not to leap from her hiding place and strangle the Sue for her abuse of canon characters: he passed out.  Stefan, who had reacted with shock (but very conscious shock) and joy when at first seeing Katherine alive, who had dealt rather admirably with the prospect of ghosts and werewolves, who had faced down an Original without batting an eye, fainted at the sight of his presumed-dead sister.

It was pure Sue-power.  The mind boggled.

The Sue and Damon exchanged words, and then Bonnie thought to demand, "Who are you?"

"What do you want with my boyfriend?" Elena added.  Apparently, the fact that said boyfriend had just passed out didn’t bother her at all, but she felt threatened by the Sue’s beauty.  Despite her low opinion of Elena, Gabrielle gave her credit for being a bit more genuine than that.  It was difficult to aim the Character Analysis Device from a distance, but she pointed it at Elena and pressed the button.

>>> ELENA GILBERT, CANON, 32.8% CHARACTER BREACH

"That’s not terrible," she muttered as she aimed it a bit lower, at the dark-haired vampire who lay sprawled on the wet grass.  "Probably because she ignores Elena throughout most of the story."  She pressed the button again.

>>> STEFAN SALVATORE, CANON, 57% CHARACTER BREACH

Her eyes widened as she turned the device toward Damon, where he stood behind the Sue and a little further back, apparently trying to keep his distance while still allowing the Sue to hang onto his hand.  At least until Matt inquired as to the closeness between the siblings and Damon stepped forward, wrapping an arm possessively around the Sue’s waist and purring a reply.

"Yes, Matt.  We are very… close."

"I’m all for sibcest, but it’s Stefan you ought to be molesting, babe," Gabs grumbled as she winced and pressed the button.  Protective Big-Brother Damon:

>>> DAMON SALVATORE, CANON, 22.9% CHARACTER BREACH

She sighed, a little relieved.  "At least I can count on somebody behaving as they’re supposed to in this fic.  But the main reason behind the character breach is his protectiveness of the Sue.  Which means he won’t let me near her.  Kuso."  Damon was five centuries old, calloused and cruel, and incredibly Powerful for the relatively short amount of time he’d been alive.  If he got between Gabrielle and her target, he’d make short work of the PPC agent and probably scatter her pieces across the entirety of the Eastern Seaboard. 

Though she had already matched the Sue to several dozen defining characteristics from the Mary Sue Litmus Test Series, for the sake of procedure, she pointed the Character Analysis Device at the woman.

>>> MARIE SALVATORE, NON-CANON, MARY SUE!!! The device declared, letting out a shrill, warbling noise.

The Sue’s head shot up and Gabrielle quickly snapped the back panel off and dumped the batteries into her open hand.  The sound stopped and slowly, the Sue relaxed, though she still glanced around warily.  Somebody suggested that they take Stefan somewhere and wake him up, and Gabrielle quickly pocketed the device and got her feet under her, glancing up to scan The Words.  They were headed back to the boarding house.  They seemed to plan on walking, probably taking the path that Matt had used at the end of Dark Reunion.  That was fine with Gabs.  It made it easier for her to follow them.  Crouching behind her bit of cover until they all stood up and made their way into the trees, once the last dark silhouette had vanished, she slipped out from behind the stones and fell in behind them.

Gabrielle had no real training in how to move silently, so it was fortunate that the two canon vampires, whose hearing was undoubtedly sharp enough to hear a pin drop half a mile away in these woods, would ignore her unless the Sue pointed her out.  It was also fortunate that the four humans in the group were making plenty of noise that masked the noises Gabs was making.  Marie was carrying her unconscious twin, thus keeping her hands full, which meant she couldn’t hold hands with Damon anymore.

That was probably a good thing, for the sake of Gabs’ sanity.

The boarding house suddenly appeared before them and the canons, plus Marie, filed inside and upstairs.  Mrs. Flowers was apparently absent.  After a brief description of the way up to the attic level, which was stolen almost verbatim from The Awakening, chapter seven, the Sue laid Stefan down on a bed and they all froze for five minutes, doing and saying nothing, until he stirred.  Gabs didn’t bother chasing them up to the top floor, instead sitting down on the front steps of the boarding house and following along with The Words.

She read along with slight boredom as Stefan almost fainted again upon seeing his long-lost ‘twin’.  Damon referred to Marie as ‘baby’ and Stefan explained that this was because Marie was the baby of the family, despite the fact that ‘baby’ was not in use as a nickname during the early fifteenth century, the only period of time in which Marie had been alive.  ~Historical Inconsistency,~ she noted, making a mental note of that for the charge list.

Damon favored the Sue with a ‘real smile’, the kind which he apparently always gave to her, as she confessed that she had done nothing for the past five hundred years save follow her brothers around and spy on them.  "Because really," Gabs snorted, "brothers are such wonderful creatures, though I wouldn’t know, never having had them.  And I somehow doubt that this author has them, otherwise she would know better."  Siblings might ultimately love each other, but they did not view each other through rose-tinted glasses.  They fought, they disagreed, they got in each others’ way, and they annoyed the hell out of each other.  Look at Damon and Stefan, for crying out loud!

The Sue’s discourse on how she had spent her life, however, would prove to hold a wealth of material for a charge list.  So she kept reading, back pressed uncomfortably against the rust-red brick of the boarding house walls.

Apparently, the Sue had been born sickly and small and had suffered her entire life from a wasting illness.  Gabs rolled her eyes and put a mental checkmark next to ‘the character has some sort of disease or disability that causes the canon characters to feel sorry for her and cater to her, but does not truly hinder her in the long run’.  Katherine apparently made her a vampire, and Gabs paused for a moment, trying to work out the timeline of this.  Katherine had come to Florence with her father, and she and Stefan had shared a romantic summer together.  And then Damon had come back from the University.  Marie would have to have died after that, except that after that, things had gone by very quickly thanks to the competition between the two brothers.  And Gabrielle was very sure that had a sibling of Stefan’s died during that point in time, he would have mentioned it.  Especially if Katherine had turned her.  Not to mention that, according to Marie, both Damon and Stefan had seen her after she was turned, had watched her get up and run from her crypt, then grab a servant girl and drain her dry.  So why had either of them been surprised when she had shown up again?  It made no sense.

"I smell a plot hole," she grumbled.  "A huge, gaping plot hole.  It smells like sewer."

"The year was 1506," the Sue said.  "It had been twenty-five years since I last saw Damon and Stefan."

"Hold the phone," Gabs said, blinking.  "Elena said Stefan was born in the fifteenth century.  How can it be 1506 and yet only… oh, bugger it.  One more plot hole, and I’m putting ‘mucking up the timeline’ on the charge list."

The Sue went on to claim that she had faked her own death (which still didn’t excuse her from making Stefan faint) and had rampaged through the world, becoming famously known as the assassin Liona, "lioness".  She had her portrait done by Leonardo da Vinci and met Michelangelo. 

"So she stuck around Italy?  SO DID STEFAN!  How did he not know she was alive, if he can sense others of his kind?"

Apparently the Sue had gone from Florence to Venice to Milan, where she encountered Damon, who was operating under the pseudonym ‘Crow’.  Not ‘The Crow’, but simply ‘Crow’.

"Giving Damon a retarded nickname when he needs none," Gabrielle mumbled, still assembling a mental charge list.  "And ignoring his accepted fandom nickname, Damon ‘The Demon’ Salvatore."

She read a little longer, then snorted and added, ‘Making Damon behave like a weakling idiot who keeps human thugs and has a third-grade vocabulary’.

The Sue continued to talk (for three chapters.  When did it end?), spelling out her adoption of her male lover, Daniel, and her meeting with her female lover, Isabelle. How she had saved Stefan from himself without revealing her identity (unlikely), how she had learned magic and glamour spells (*snort*), and how this Isabelle had fallen in love with her, knowing she was a vampire and a vicious killer, after speaking to her for a mere few hours (*cough*slut*cough*).  Apparently, the author thought it would be new and edgy to make the girl bisexual, as though this somehow set her apart from the rest of the Mary Sues out there.  She went on and on about it in the ever-present author’s notes.

Gabs muttered under her breath and swallowed two Bleeprin™ tablets without the benefit of water.  "Being bi is nothing special," she muttered.  "I’m bi, for the goddess’s sake.  And the gypsies would not have named you something idiotic like the Black Death.  The Black Death killed twenty-five million people in Europe, and I somehow doubt you’ve matched those numbers in a mere five centuries, chit."

And then, of course, the Sue and her newfound lover fell immediately into bed and had a threesome with the Sue’s previously Turned male lover.  Just like before, the Sue Turned her female lover after knowing her for less than a day.

"Stupid bint."

Isabelle then died tragically, an outcome which Gabrielle could have (and had) predicted since the woman had first come up.  She responded by angsting and running into the arms of anyone who would take her, for comfort sex, coupled with a vicious killing spree that left rivers of blood in her wake.

"Oh, naturally."

And after her fiancé’ found out and understandably served her her walking papers, she turned instead to searching out her two beloved brothers, because surely they would pity her when no one else was nice enough to do it.  Her fiancé eventually took her back, on the condition that she never cheat on him again.  He didn’t seem to care whether she killed or not.

"Strange man," Matt observed.

"Hel-lo, vampire," Gabrielle hissed, smacking her skull against the bricks.

The Sue then seemed to realize how late it was getting.  Indeed, dawn would come before too terribly long, assuming the Sue didn’t bend time.  Given the amount of time spent in the clearing, and the fact that it was Summer Solstice and the shortest night of the year, and the fact that the Sue probably wasn’t paying attention to the passing of the light, it was reasonable to assume that after her painfully long historical monologue, the sun would soon peek over the horizon.  Which meant that stores would be opening and Gabrielle could start getting her supplies ready, but to do that, she would have to stop tailing the Sue as she took all the characters to her mansion which was, for some reason, in town. Gabs scanned The Words and shook her head.  A ‘tall black mansion’?  Shouldn’t be too hard to find.

Standing and stretching her stiff, sore muscles, Gabrielle brushed dirt off the seat of her pants and stepped onto the narrow, winding driveway that led up to the boarding house.  It was a long walk into town, but it was a warm Virginia night and she had time.

The gravel crunched too loudly under her thick-soled boots and she winced, glad that the Sue hadn’t emerged from the house yet.  She would get a blister walking all the way to town in these boots.  And, she remembered, Tyler Smallwood was still out there somewhere, in wolf form, having fled the Francher Place much earlier.  Walking alone, through the woods, in the dark, was a bad idea.

Gabrielle gritted her teeth, straightened her shoulders, and marched.  Screw danger, screw Tyler, and screw the dark, ominous woods.  She had a job to do.

***

[Paradise City, PPC District]

The room was quiet and peaceful. Said room was the headquarters of the Department of Random Assassinations: Paradise City Division, Response Center #Whatever. Well, they surely had a number somewhere, but it had never been concreted. There were a great many things about the Para-city crew that had never been concreted, the least of which being things far stranger than their number. In fact, the Department wasn't really sure they were actually under the orders of The Plants... but hey, they sure as hell weren't getting -paid- for this. It was volunteer work. And what did it say about them that they chose to murder people for community service?  THAT looked -great- on a college application.

These cynical thoughts belonged to Dorian, who was perched in the all-too-uncomfortable wooden chair with his lute in his hands. He was probably playing, but he didn't notice; if he was, it was very softly. Sarah was curled up in the other chair like a kitten, arms tucked between her chest and her knees, out cold. That last mission had taken quite a bit out of them; the Potterverse was -tough- these days. He shook his head, making a mental note to -never- get in the way of a killing curse again. Immortal or not, those things frelling HURT.

He was adjusting his grip on the instrument, contemplating actually playing something, when the computer piped up. "People, we've got an emergency in Response Centers 8000-8999. All the power’s out." He stood, setting the lute on the chair behind him as he sauntered closer to the console. It was flashing a grid at him, part of it blinking in red. "Electromagnetic radiation leaking from the 8000-block!" it shrilled. Dorian winced, but it was too late; Sarah had awoken.

She sat up with a lazy blink, one hand lifting to push long, thick, fluffy chestnut hair that was usually tamed by a braid out of her face. "What's the matter, Dori?" she asked, yawning.

"Not sure," he muttered tersely, "but it doesn't look good." The computer continued to talk at them, and she stood, hobbling over to peer over Dorian's shoulder. Once her fuzzy, contact-covered eyeballs focused enough to see, they widened, and she cursed under her breath. Then she froze, one hand halfway to Dorian's shoulder, breath stilling in her throat. After a moment, she managed to speak.

"Dorian, what's Gabs' number?" she asked, in a tonelessly low and all-too-emotionless voice. The blonde stared at the computer.

"Eight-one-two-three," he whispered.

The recliner exploded behind them, showering the room in chunks of wood and stuffing. The metal remnants were a smoking pile, charred, twisted and blackened, and the floor beneath was cracked and pitted. Dorian glanced up at Sarah with a look of barely-suppressed terror on his face, but still he spoke. "Sarah, you have to calm down. You own reality here. You'll tear us both apart, and then we won't know what happened."

Apparently that was the right thing to say, as Sarah shut her eyes and took a deep breath. The room twisted, and with a gut-wrenching twitch, the recliner was once again whole - even if the room did still smell of burnt metal.

She opened her eyes again, which were incredibly green at this point. It was an odd thing, but when she was upset or depressed, they tended more to green; it might have been simply because their bloodshot appearance made the green stand out by contrast, or something stranger. When she got pissed, they were decidedly more brown, but at this point, all she knew was fear. A growling feeling in her gut made her desperately want to cry for no reason whatsoever. Her intuition was usually not so vocal, and gods, what if Gabby was hurt? What if something really bad had happened? The computer was chirping about electromagnetic radiation. That would have -liquefied- Gabs. And -any- situation involving Ice was inherently dangerous. Gods be damned, if this was all his fault she'd KILL him, immortal vampire or not.

She gently pushed Dorian out of the way, knowing that he and computers were best kept separate. Fingers flying over the keypad quickly got her the most recent information, and she mentally thanked Topaz for updating their system and networking the consoles together.

Apparently, power was out in the 8000-block due to electromagnetic radiation. not much had changed, but there were already people there. The information was scrolling by on the screen, and Sarah's eyes locked onto it.

"...It appears that most of the damage is centered on Response Center #8123. The room itself appears to have suffered the effects of a large interior explosion, and cannot be entered at this time. One agent was found and taken to the infirmary; the other has not yet been located and may be KIA."

This time, it wasn't the chair that exploded. No, this time, the entire building shuddered, dust raining from the ceiling as Sarah lit up with a flickering dark energy, the outline of her wings showing up to plain sight as she struggled to control the rage and despair. She wasn't succeeding.

Dorian braced himself and stepped closer to her. The very air itself was thick, and it was like walking through Jell-o. He reached her side just as a great crack ran down the center of the floor, and rather than let her lose it entirely, he grabbed her by the arm and yanked her to her feet. "Sarah, STOP."

The eyes that looked up at Dorian weren't really green. They weren't really brown, or hazel, or any of their other usual colors, either. No, they were -glowing- with a verging-on-unholy sort of light. However, one glance up at Dorian's face, full of badly-hidden fear, and a great deal of her rage melted away, leaving a blackness that was far worse. The damage to the building stopped and the dark aura faded, her wings once again receding entirely to the astral plane as she regained control with a deep breath or three.

"You have to be calm, and you have to think. If one of them is in the infirmary, it's probably Gabs. Nothing could hurt Ice bad enough to land him in an infirmary. And that means she's alive, and probably complaining. As to where Ice is... well, it's -Ice-, he may very well be messing with everyone for fun and profit. Where else could they be than in the Response Center?" Dorian said calmly.

"Well, Kageshima, but I doubt it. They were on duty. Maybe it happened while they were out," she said hopefully, brightening. "Which means he's in a fic somewhere."

Dorian nodded. "Yes. In a fic." He winced. "There's a LOT of fics, you know."

Sarah frowned, pondering this for a moment. "Well, first I'll check the ones I know for a fact that the IGD had logged. She said she was gonna do those first, before any more came in, and I don't think she got through them all yet. And they should be in the computer yet," the girl said, looking vaguely more sane now that she had a mission, a way to make -sure- Gabs (and by association, Ice) were all right.

Dorian managed a grim smile. "Good. You do that - run 'em through the computer, see if any have had a portal programmed to them."

"Yes, and thank the -gods- that the network is real-time and anything they did would have been logged -before- they... well, before whatever happened," Sarah said hastily. "Now, go," she ordered him, pulling the chair - not the recliner, but the normal chair, which said a LOT as to just how agitated she really was - up to the console and calling up the database. Dorian nodded and walked to the door, ordering it to the infirmary in a low voice.

A moment later, he was gone, and the only noise in the room was the clacking of keys and the settling of dust.

***

The large double doors of the infirmary twisted with another of those reality-displacing wrenches, but Dorian stepped through the wavering portal with perfect balance, the doors reforming behind him. Up ahead was the front desk, but he strode right past, relying on instinct and intuition to take him to Gabby. At least, he somewhat hoped it was Gabby; he wasn't sure about -nothing- being able to injure Ice. And if something had laid Ice low, that gave room to the FRIGHTENING idea of just how bad it had to have been... and just what it could have done to Gabs. For a moment, he wondered if he'd return to the Para-city building to find it leveled, but he hoped that Sarah had more self control than that.

Apparently, the infirmary had some of the same qualities as the rest of the PPC, for as he walked along, lost in thought, he soon found himself right where he needed to be. He swept into the room, cerulean eyes instantly alighting on the body laid across a bed. He swallowed hard, eyes taking in the short white hair, the pale skin, the size. It was most assuredly not Gabs. The words that escaped his mouth then were too foul to translate, and he stared at Ice for a very long moment before he realized that something else was wrong. He slid closer to Ice, laying a hand on the vampire's shoulder.

Ice was, ironically enough, ice cold. Now, perhaps that wasn't so odd for most vampires, but Ice was usually lukewarm at worst. Dorian had intimate knowledge of this fact, and as his face lost expression, his hand moved to the vampire's chest.

No heartbeat. By now Dorian's face had banished any trace of emotion, and he was looking down at Ice with a dulled terror in his eyes.

He was dead.

Dorian cursed under his breath. What on earth could have killed Ice? Well, he couldn't be -dead-. He was an Original, and he was -here-, so he was obviously still alive. Just... what was the name for it... in torpor. He wasn't sure if Ice's variety of vampire -called- it torpor, but it was a sleep brought on by needing blood. It was only by wracking his brain for the hundreds of legends Ice had told him over their years together that he recalled this, and it took more searching yet to remember that Ice, being a particularly powerful vampire, needed particularly powerful vampiric blood to revive him with any sort of expediency.

This did not look good.

Well, to be honest, it looked bloody horrible, and Dorian really wanted to give in to despair, but he was simply not the type for despair. That was more Sarah's gig. And, he reflected, wincing, he'd have to go tell her just what was going on here. She wasn't going to like this, not at all, and Dorian knew it. In fact, she probably -would- level the building. He could only pray that maybe she'd found something and would be able to keep acting, even if his part of the mission hadn't gone well.

He turned away from Ice's bedside and nearly yelped with surprise. Somehow, with that silent, creepy skill that all doctors seemed to possess, the doctor for the infirmary had snuck up behind him, and was standing there staring at him.

"You a friend of this boy?" the doctor asked curiously. Dorian wasn't sure who he was, but he thought it might have been Fats-something. Falling back on old habits, the quarter-demon smirked coldly.

"More than a friend," Dorian purred, for the first time in his life wishing that he didn't have to cover himself up with bad innuendo.

"AH.  Splendid.  You might know a way to revive him, then?  The Plants are VERY interested in finding out what happened to his partner.  Word is, the hazard team isn't sure whether breaking into Response Center #8123 is even worth their effort, not if all they'll find is a corpse," Fats ( whose name was actually Dr. Fitzgerald) said, sounding vaguely excited.

Dorian, however, was nowhere near enthused by these words. "...Yairielnto," he hissed, not caring if the expletive was enough to peel paint back on Chankoria, nor that no-one here would know it. "I've got to go." With that, he spun, storming back out of the room and down the halls to those great double doors. The mental call to the Door back at headquarters was a long shot, and hurt, but soon the portal appeared with a sickening twist. He stepped through, and everything fizzled back to its semblance of normal behind him

The doctor, still staring at the space Dorian had been but moments ago, blinked and shrugged. "They're recruiting stranger people every day," he said lightly, turning back to his patient and checking the heart monitor one more time.  It was still silent, and showed absolutely no signs of activity.

***

The Door opened and Dorian stepped through onto the dusty floor of the Response Center. Sarah was still curled over the computer, and he stepped up behind her. "Sarah," he started, hesitating.

She stood, spinning to face him, eyes empty. "I know. It's Ice. They just logged it. And the hazard team is waiting for the proper equipment to break into RC#8123. Apparently, the damage the place suffered is most closely related to a high-powered explosion. They'd say it was nuclear if they didn't know better." She spoke in a voice that was surprisingly light and level. Dorian knew that this was a bad thing, and stepped closer to her.

"Sarah, come on, it can't be that bad. She's not dead," he said, praying he was right. "She can't be. You'd know. You'd feel it." She looked up at him and blinked once.

"I'd feel it? Is that what this is, then, feeling that she's dead? The wrenching in my stomach that tells me something is -so- wrong that nothing I can do will fix it again? Is that feeling her being dead, Dorian?" Surprisingly, her voice did not raise during this; it got quieter, colder with every word, and Dorian cursed at himself internally. This was nowhere near good. He couldn't let her retreat into herself.

"Sarah, Gabs is not dead. Ice is, or severely out of commission at the least. Did you check the computer? Is she in a fic?" Suddenly it became doubly important that Gabs be in one of the logged stories.

For a moment, sanity entered Sarah's eyes. "There was. A portal into that really bad one about Stefan's twin, a while ago." Could she be there? Gods, she hoped so, she -really- did. Because if she wasn't...

Ruthlessly, Sarah crushed any ideas of just what could have happened to her were she not in said fic. She looked up at Dorian, life starting to return to her visage. "Are you sure she's not dead?" the girl asked in a small tone, desperation entering her entire demeanor.

Dorian managed a tiny, strained smile. "Of course she's not. You -would- know, after all. You're in love with her."

A look crossed Sarah's face, but whatever was conveyed in the fleeting expression was lost. She turned away without a word, returning to the computer. "So we check that fic first, then, right?" she asked lightly, leaning over to prod at the keypad. Getting the coordinates for the fic, she programmed them up. She refused to think about the connotations of what Dorian claimed, or, even worse, what might have happened to Gabs. And asking her intuition, it didn't give her anything on Gabs, which was more good than bad. It was only when she concentrated on the response center itself that she felt she needed to retch.

Dorian nodded at her, smirking slightly. "Yes. Shall I start packing for a rescue mission?"

"No," Sarah said, shaking her head as she stepped back from the computer. "I need to make sure that's the fic she's in."

Dorian raised one fine golden eyebrow, eyeing her thoughtfully. "Alright, I'll bite. How do you propose to do that?"

Sarah smirked, a wicked little expression in its own right and all the more surprising for the usually almost-cute cast to her features. "I can feel her, can't I? All  need to do... is concentrate." With that, she sank into the recliner, shutting her eyes and dropping into a light meditative state that had taken her years to become so familiar with. Dorian just shook his head and started getting things together, knowing they'd have to go -somewhere- before this was all over. He had the foresight to pack a few stakes and other anti-vamp items, seeing as how the canon just might be dangerous, especially because they didn't have The Words.

He distracted himself with that for a while, and was just finishing as Sarah sat up with a little groan, nearly an hour later.

What the girl had done was a sort of vision-quest, but not. When Sarah looked within, she looked to her intuition, and asked it, quite specifically, if Gabby was 'here', here being a precise and rather concrete idea of the fic she suspected Gabby to be in. Her intuition told her yes. It also tossed in the niggling little opinion that she didn't need to think so hard to find someone so close to her heart, and the girl avoided that entire confrontation like the plague. She -always- lost arguments with herself.

"If she's not there, then my intuition's fired," Sarah said, hopping up from her seat. She paused, holding up her hands flat against an invisible wall before her and spreading them. She stared intently at the space that left between them for a moment before bringing them together in a clap. "And her thread's not in this reality right now, but it hasn't -ended-, so she -can't- be dead." She grinned, a bit sheepishly, and wondered why she hadn't thought to check The Weave -before- she panicked. Probably because she was panicking, but that was -logic-, and Sarah and logic... well, they usually weren't left alone together, as one was bound to emerge with bruises and lacerations.

Dorian smirked to himself and nodded. "So are we going in?" he asked.

Sarah hesitated. "Well... I'm not at all familiar with Smith canon beyond much, and I'll probably get us nearly killed half a dozen times just by being there, but... well... I can't just -leave- her there. I've got to know if she's okay, and just what the FRELL happened back there." She nodded with every word she said, seeming to be convincing herself as she went along, and Dorian just smiled, well-used to this aspect of her nature.

"Off with us, then," he said, gesturing to the Door and shouldering the pack full of rescue supplies. Sarah nodded and stepped forward, hands touching the lintel as she shut her eyes and sent it -there-.

Reality twisted once more, the door opening into what looked like a small cemetery, and Sarah stepped through, Dorian hot on her heels. The Door flickered back to its normal wooden state behind them. The response center stood empty once more, although now it looked as though it had suffered through a notable earthquake. The ceiling creaked and a large chunk of plaster hit the floor with a thud.

It would take a while for the dust to settle.

***

Several hours later (during which the Sue introduced Stefan to Daniel even though they should have already met, Damon growled and snarled like a mad dog at Daniel for showing affection to his ‘baby’ sister, and the entire, problem-ridden, poorly-thought-out and impossible plot of the story was revealed in four words [Bonnie is Isabelle reincarnated!]), Gabrielle was making her way toward the ‘tall black mansion’ with a hastily scrawled charge-list, a ball-point pen, a lighter, a serviceable spear (she should have just gone and gotten Klaus’s from the clearing.  He’d carelessly tossed it aside – too bad she hadn’t thought of it in time), and a bag of candy and snacks she’d purchased from the local Shell™ station.  She didn’t know how long she was going to be stuck in the story, after all, and some sugar would do wonders to replenish her energy.  She had already consumed the Chewy Sweet Tarts™ and was now eyeing the Twix™, but she had to save her food for when she really needed it. With luck, she would be pulled out of the story for sure after killing the Mary Sue.  If not… she had a contingency plan.  A very bad one, one she hoped to HELL she didn’t have to implement, but it was better than no plan at all.

Years of hiding from the world by keeping her nose firmly in a book had taught Gabrielle to walk and read simultaneously.  She engaged that skill, catching up on what she’d missed by reading The Words and adding charges to the list.  She certainly looked very odd, a goth girl walking down the street in a classy, Victorian town with a pointed staff tucked under her arms and behind her back, scribbling frantically in a tiny notebook.  So far, the author had committed the crimes of improper grammar, awkward sentence structure, cruelty to the common comma, inconsistent font changes, and unpredictable capitalization.  Bonnie had, apparently, taken the news that she was the reincarnated version of Isabelle with perfect grace and almost no surprise at all, and had immediately become comfortable with sleeping in Marie’s arms.  Given that the original Isabelle had SLEPT with Marie within a day of meeting her, this wasn’t very surprising… but it WAS out of character for Bonnie.  Gabrielle wrote that down. 

She had spotted the house in question after stopping several times to ask random people for directions.  There were no gates, and no discernable grounds, so she began to ascend the driveway.  The sun was overhead, and it was early morning….

…and then, suddenly, it WASN’T.  Gabrielle reeled and dropped to her knees as time sped up and the sun arched overhead, setting and allowing the gibbous moon to rise.  It did not, however, remain, and passed overhead just as quickly.  The sun rose again and froze, the temporal distortion corrected itself, and Gabrielle crawled to the side of the driveway before tucking her head between her arms and violently expelling what little there was in her stomach.

"Oh my god," she moaned as her stomach continued to heave, even after there was nothing else to throw up.  "Oh my GOD.  Ohhhhhhhhhh…"  She rolled away from the bit of spit, bile, and chunks of Sweet Tarts™ on the ground and flopped onto her back on a clean surface (it wasn’t necessarily grass or road or anything, as the author hadn’t deigned to specify).  She fumbled for the bottle of Bleeprin™ and read the label.

WARNING: TAKE ONLY AS DIRECTED.

Further down, it read, "WEIGHT: 110-130lbs, TABLETS: TWO".  Gabrielle weighed 125 pounds.  Popping the cap off the bottle, she removed four tablets and swallowed them down, one by one.

It would take a few minutes for the Bleeprin™ to kick in, so she lifted her head, pushed her hair out of her face, and checked The Words.  She immediately wished she hadn’t.

Bonnie had also remembered a great deal of her past life out of the blue, and instead of having trouble dealing with these memories and reconciling them to her natural ones, she was eating cornflakes and talking about recalling a past life as if it happened to her every day.

Damon continued to eye Daniel with hatred (now, if only he would treat the Sue the same way!), and soon he and Marie would step out of the house to have a sibling-to-sibling chat and do some hunting.

"Hunting in the middle of the day?" Gabrielle wondered, then stiffened.  "Oh, SHIT.  Damon thinks Daniel is the one who murdered Isabelle’s first incarnation, and they’re going to leave the two of them alone…."  She struggled to her feet.  What would happen if she allowed the death of a canon character?  Would Bonnie come back to life when the Mary Sue was dead or would canon be irrevocably damaged?  "It’d be better not to find out," she muttered, forcing her exhausted muscles into a jog.  Her head was still spinning – the Bleeprin™ had yet to take effect.  If only she’d had Bleepka™ instead.  That was vodka laced with Bleeprin™ and hit the system much quicker, carried with the alcohol.  Of course, she was a lightweight, so vodka would have been a bad thing to be drinking while trying to run toward the Sue’s mansion with a big pointy stick.

She stumbled up onto the porch and eyed the door.  It was Lignum Vitae, a fact that the author had apparently found more important than the style or size of the house and grounds. She could see if the butler would let her in, but he was a non-canon and unlikely to be cooperative.  Perhaps there was another way.

~It’s a mansion in Fell’s Church,~ she murmured to herself, closing her eyes and lacing her fingers together loosely as she tried to feel out along the strands of reality.  ~Logic dictates that, since the Sue did not establish a style, it must be Victorian.  This is a Victorian mansion.  It will, therefore, have windows on the first floor – most likely very large ones.  Some of the rooms behind those windows will be unoccupied, since there are not many servants in this house.  These are the laws of reality.  They will fill in the gap left by the Sue.~   At least, she could hope so.

She opened her eyes.  The house seemed almost glad to have someone more clearly define it.  It now possessed turrets and gingerbread trimming, as well as abundant floor-to-ceiling windows.  She favored it with a kind smile – after all, it wasn’t the house’s fault that it had to participate in this travesty of a story.  And actually, given her fondness for the color black, she now found it to be a very attractive house.  One she might have liked to live in, assuming she could have afforded it.

The porch was now gabled and extended all the way across the front of the house, making it very easy for Gabrielle to walk along it and peer in the windows.  Her view was somewhat stymied by delicate lace curtains, but inside she could see the dark gleam of hardwood floors and cherry wood furniture.

No one seemed to be around, and she began to try the windows, hoping for one that was unlocked.  The first three rooms yielded no options, so she turned the corner of the house and moved along toward the back, hopping the banister where the balcony ended and doing her best to sneak through the bushes. 

She peeked carefully around the next corner.  If Marie and Damon were going out to feed, she most certainly did NOT want to run into them.  She didn’t mind giving blood, but either of those two would kill her without batting an eye.  Eyes widening as something occurred to her, she stood her spear up against the side of the house and pulled out her charge list.

"Ignoring Stefan’s moral system by having him completely dismiss the fact that you’ve killed hundreds of people, and insulting Stefan’s intelligence by having him let you and Damon out of the house without extracting a promise from both of you not to kill anyone."

Even as she finished scribbling, she heard the peculiar sound of a well-insulated door swinging open and grabbed her spear, hunkering down into the bushes.

A few moments later, she saw Marie and Damon headed out away from the house, into the forest.  Scanning the words to see how much time she would have, Gabrielle noted with disgust that the two vampires had found a line of bushes and were now calmly waiting for prey to arrive.

"Insulting Damon’s intelligence by having him forget how to hunt, making Damon voluntarily hunt animal blood, saying your mansion was on one of Fell’s Church’s main streets and then putting a forest behind it," she scribbled.  Glancing ahead in The Words yet again, her blood seemed to turn cold.  "Oh, no," she breathed, abandoning caution and crashing through the bushes to swing around to the rear of the house.  Mounting the porch, she grabbed at the golden door handle.  Thankfully, the Sue had not bothered to lock the door behind her, and it opened easily for the terrified agent.  She found herself standing inside an undefined portion of the house, realizing that she had no idea where to find the canon characters.  A quick scan of The Words revealed that they had been last seen in the living room.  Living rooms were generally on the first floor and the Sue had not mentioned the elevator (yes, her house had an elevator) again, so she dashed through the winding hallway, pushing open doors and glancing inside before moving on.  The Sue, with Damon in tow, would attack a stag that had conveniently wandered by and both of them would drink their fill (again, the thought of Damon feeding on animals for any reason other than pure desperation was utterly WRONG to Gabrielle).  That gave the villain plenty of time to somehow overpower Stefan, Daniel, and the rest of the humans and whisk Daniel and Bonnie away.  And given this author’s penchant for angst, if Gabriella didn’t get to Bonnie before that happened, she might have a dead canon on her hands.

"Goddamned huge houses!" she cursed as she slammed another door and bolted across the hall, not caring who heard her.  "Thrice accursed, gods-forsaken, stupid, senseless, fucking MARY SUES!"

She finally burst into the living room and looked around hastily.  There was Stefan, sprawled on the floor, bound and unconscious.  Matt, Meredith, and Elena were scattered around like dolls, also bound and unconscious. They wouldn’t have noticed Gabrielle at any rate.  Canon characters ignored defenders of the plot continuum unless an OC or Mary Sue pointed them out, or the defender brought attention to him or herself.  Glancing around, Gabrielle noticed the envelope sitting on the table, the deceptive envelope that would lead the Mary Sue to believe that her lover, Daniel, was responsible for Bonnie’s kidnapping and cause her to swear in poor Italian.  Bonnie and Daniel, of course, were nowhere to be found which meant that Gabrielle was too late.  Cursing under her breath in Otaku Japanese, she turned and slipped back into the hall, casting a hunted glance in either direction before making a beeline for the front of the house and stepping out onto the porch to consider her options.  The Sue would take time to wake the canon characters, read the letter, dress herself in an overabundance of "Italian cut leather", all black of course, add a few unnecessary accessories, and then show off to the canons and prove once again her Amazing Sue Powers of Seduction.  By all counts, it had been late morning when she and Damon went out to hunt, and the rendezvous with the villain in the graveyard was supposed to occur at midnight.

Well.  That left Gabrielle some preparation time of her own, though not much.  She scanned The Words carefully and sighed as she realized that most of the twelve hours between noon and midnight passed by with unnatural rapidity due to another of the Sue’s Temporal-Spatial Distortions.  She wouldn’t be able to walk, or even run, to the graveyard in time.

But she could drive.  Marie was about to leave with the canon characters in a black jeep, but she had brought them to her mansion in a limo.  The limo which, thanks to lack of plot definition, was still sitting parked in the driveway.  The chauffer had ceased to exist upon the Sue’s exit.  Really, he was nothing more than a gray, humanoid smear where a person should have been.  Gabrielle took two running steps, slid over the hood, yanked the door open, and waved a hand through his shape to dispel him.  Sliding behind the wheel, she slammed the door and brushed her hand over the ignition.  The keys were still in it.

"Utsukashii na!" she hissed in glee, twisting the keys and adjusting the automatic gear shift.  "Yoshi!"

She had never driven a limo, and this was a stretch.  But she didn’t particularly care what happened to the car, or what she hit.  She had to get back to the graveyard, and given the route she had taken from the clearing to the boarding house, and from the boarding house to the mansion, with a fuzzy lay-out of Fell’s Church contained in her head thanks to the books, she had a good idea of where she was going.  Now, if only she could make it before the Sue, aided by Temporal Distortions, managed to get there.

***

"You got us lost in a graveyard."

This disbelieving comment was uttered by Dorian, who stood in the mists of the cemetery, hands on his narrow hips, cerulean eyes squinting into the gloom. He was -quite- irritated. It had been quite some time since they'd arrived, -complete- with gut-wrenching temporal-spatial distortions, and the fog made his beautiful, long, wavy golden hair heavy with dampness. His partner was in no better condition, her short frame slumped with exhaustion.

"You're -supposed- to get lost in this graveyard. It's one of those things. Now come on, even if we just pick a direction and -go-, it's got to end sometime," she said, somehow managing to still be optimistic despite being wet, filthy, tangle-haired and on the edge of a panic. "We've got to find Gabby. And we should go..." she trailed off, shutting her eyes. A moment open those green-hazel orbs flickered open again, and she pointed forward and to their left. "That way."

Dorian would have sweatdropped if this universe had held it within reality. "Wasn't it your intuition that got us lost to begin with?" he inquired delicately.

Sarah gave him a half-annoyed, half-pouting look. "Got a better idea?" she asked testily, setting off and being careful not to step on any graves themselves. It was disrespectful, and besides, in a place like -this- the dead would probably take quite literal offense and seek revenge. She was not looking forward to fighting undead. She had a holy sigil or two, but it had been a while since she'd been really friendly with any of the goddesses she knew, and so aid was iffy at best. And undead were notoriously hard to kill.

"No, not particularly," Dorian muttered, shaking his head and watching the headstones pass by them. Places such as these made his slightly pointed ears twitch back, and he would really rather not have been there. Sarah, however, seemed determined to ignore the deathly pall of silence hanging over the graveyard, and was singing softly, slowly, a tiny little thread to weave through the fog as they wandered along. Dorian resisted for a long time, but the music was soothing his nerves, and for a moment he resented being manipulated with music. That was -his- job. But, Sarah was just as much of a song-weaver as he was, and she was barely intending to calm him at all. So he let go of the anger and hummed a low descant, sauntering aimlessly along behind her.

It seemed as though the cemetery had some of the same qualities of Paradise City and the PPC complex, for the mist ahead of them seemed to be lightening.

***

She tore at some of her candy as she drove, trying to fuel herself for the fight that was coming.  She didn’t know how soon she’d need the energy.  She went through a Snickers™ and a bag of Reeses Pieces™, and was just cramming the remainder of a pack of caramel creams down her throat when she hit the Fell’s Church city limits.  She had been driving for over an hour, but fortunately, there was just enough description to give her that amount of time.  She broke all the speed limits going through town, not at all worried about police presence.  Ditching the limo on a random side street as close to the graveyard as she could manage, she gripped her spear in one hand and forced herself into a dead run.  Her heavy boots made it difficult, and the CLOP CLOP CLOP sound of the thick soles hitting the concrete made her wince.  No self-respecting HUMAN would miss her approach, let alone a vampire.  She could only pray that the villain wasn’t already there with Bonnie and Daniel.

But it wasn’t quite dusk yet.  She had time, and a distortion.  The villain probably wouldn’t even be up and about until the sun had set.  Vampirism had that effect.  She hit the sidewalk and crossed through the gates, gasping for breath as the sun dipped below the horizon just in time to illuminate the steeple of the old, ruined church in front of her.  It was the site of Honoria Fell’s tomb, the ghost of a Witch and wise-woman, and the place where Elena had destroyed Katherine and sacrificed her own life in the process, thus showing that she DID have a selfless bone in her body, even if her death was dramatic and angst-filled and rather Mary Sue-ish.

It was a summer night in Virginia, warm even if Gabrielle hadn’t been running.  As she slowed to a stop, feet aching from the abuse, she made a few mental resolutions.  First, she would produce an outfit specifically for mission use, and she would draw her guidelines directly from recommendations on the Hunter-net forum.  No more illogical shoes and bondage pants for her.  She needed pockets and sneakers.  Second, she would bring her own weapon in the future.  Get Griss to make one, maybe.  Third, she would bring energy bars and bottled water along on a mission to make sure she wasn’t in the exhausted, but hyper, state typical of a sugar high.  And finally, she would make certain that both she and Ice had every piece of necessary equipment so that she would never be caught without a portal generator again.  Grimacing at the pain in her ribs from running, she stumbled into the church.  She wanted to see the place where Honoria Fell had resided and Elena had died.  She wanted, in part, to touch the bloody smears on the floor where Katherine had tortured Stefan and Damon.  And besides, she had a little time to waste.

~This would be a great place to LARP,~ she mused as she let herself down slowly into the crypt, where it was too dark for her to really see.  She hadn’t brought a flashlight, but she flicked her lighter and took a good look around.  The place had been somewhat cleaned up after Elena’s death, with the forensics teams combing the stones for evidence.  She giggled to think of what they might have found, then straightened and looked thoughtful.  What they might have found…. Evidence….

A plot bunny latched onto her ankle with ferocious tenacity and she didn’t even bother trying to shake it off.  She was intrigued.  There were possibilities here, if she could just manage to avoid a Sue-ish main character.

She poked around a little, mourning the fact that she had no way to save any souvenirs, and then climbed back up the rusty ladder and sat down just inside the door to the church.  The Sue and the canon characters, who had been relegated to being her entourage, would arrive soon.  She was fairly certain that she would hear the jeep before they actually disembarked.

Resting her head against the cold stone at her back, Gabrielle settled in and gave the plot bunny a good work-out.

***

The mists were thick and heavy, but they seemed to have gained some sense of motion, for they eddied around the gravestones, turning every inch of the cemetery not completely fogged into a shifting, dancing land of shadow that baffled the eye and terrified the shit out of paranoids like Sarah. The girl was running low on her third or fourth adrenaline rush, and it showed, and Dorian really only looked marginally better. Every step they took, they were worrying, Sarah over Gabs, lost and ~please gods anything but~ perhaps dead, and Dorian over Ice, who lay cold and presumably dead in the infirmary, and it was wearing on their nerves, making every tangibly cold stroke of fog across some bared part of skin a torment. Sarah kept walking and Dorian kept following, though, because less was a sort of sacrilege. They were both perfectly quiet now, their boots silent on the damp, heavy grass, breath lost in the sigh of the mist. And when Sarah walked past a particularly large headstone, she kept walking for a moment before stopping with a yelp. "GABBY!" she screeched, leaping over the ground ahead of her and bursting through the door of a small, tumbled structure that had most definitely seen better days to stare at Gabs who looked, if not perfectly whole, then at least alive and... not bleeding, from what Sarah could see, which was more than enough for her. Dorian had hung back the moment he'd sensed another life form, standing just behind the headstone and -waiting- like the prig he was for Sarah to realize that the trace had indeed worked quite well. His voice drifted once more through her mind.  ~If you think hard enough about her, you'll find her.~ Apparently, there'd been some truth in that, and Sarah tried to keep from crying (again) at the revelation that Gabby was indeed quite living. And right here.

Gabrielle was snapped out of Reverie by Sarah's squeal and jumped, scrambling to her feet and clutching her pointy stick.  "Sarah?" she queried.  "What in all hells are you doing here?"  She let the stick waver and fall, glancing left and right with minor paranoia, not sure when a Temporal-Spatial distortion might hit and midnight might suddenly arrive.

Deflating with one twitch of her wings, Sarah stared at Gabs for a very long moment. Then, "Ice is clinically dead and RC#8123 is a gutted husk. And you were missing. We thought... we thought...."

"We thought you were dead," Dorian helpfully supplied.

Gabs felt her fingers loosen and the blood drain from her face as she processed that.  There was a dull clatter as the spear hit the flagstones and rolled a few feet away.  Her hands felt numb and clumsy, all of a sudden.  "... What?"

"Ice is lying in the infirmary, flat-lined and breathless. And the Hazard team has just about given up on RC#8123, which shows signs of what -can't- be a nuclear explosion, and the whole eight thousand block's been electromagnetically shorted. And we thought you were dead. In fact, I nearly brought down half of Paradise City thinking you were dead," Sarah supplied, seeming to have hit her third wind now that she'd found Gabby.

Gabby blinked.  She couldn't comprehend that. The parts about a nuclear explosion, she was forced to disregard out of hand.  Priorities being what they were, she focused on the most important thing.  Ice had abandoned her, or so she had thought.  But Ice was apparently in torpor.  Something terrible had occurred just after she had stepped through the portal.  "What happened?"

"We don't know. We hoped you would," Dorian said, trying not to look worried about Ice and failing quite miserably.

She shook her head slowly, dully, feeling dizzy.  "No, I.... I just got stuck here.  I didn't have a portal generator.  We argued and he made me go through the portal first, so I thought maybe he'd abandoned me, because he can be spiteful... y'know…."  Her shoulder was cold.  She realized that she had slumped in the doorway and was now being entirely supported by the marble architecture.

Sarah stepped closer to her, gently sliding an arm around her shoulder to offer her something a bit more yielding and compensating to lean on. "So you're okay?" she asked, concern plain in her tone.

Her immediate impulse was to say 'I'm coming down from a sugar high, I'm stranded, I've been walking everywhere and been thrown around by temporal-spatial distortions, I have no weapons except for a pointy stick, and I have to kill an Old!Vampire!Sue.  Of course I'm not okay!'  But if Ice was SO badly injured, or so drained, that he was comatose, then she had no excuse to complain.  "I'm still in one piece," she said quietly, sounding steadier and leaning briefly on Sarah before straightening up and going to retrieve her stick. 

"Yeah, that seems about all you've got goin' for ya at this point," Sarah muttered, -not- looking pleased with reality as a whole for this one. "I have food and painkillers, should you want some, and we have weapons, portal capabilities, and other stuff. Properly outfitted rescue mission!" She tried to smile, but it fell short. Dorian just hung in the door to the church, quite unwilling to walk on holy ground if he didn't have to.

Gabrielle nodded and brushed back an errant strand of hair or two.  "I don't need painkillers, thanks, but something to eat really quick would be nice.  We don't have much time.  The Sue will be here at midnight, which could come in two hours or two minutes given the instability of the space-time continuum, and she'll have a show-down with the villain.  We can't leave this story until the Sue is dead, but she hasn't been alone since she entered this story.  No matter what happens, it looks like we're going to have to face Damon, at least... possibly Stefan and Daniel, maybe even the villain herself."

Sarah paled at the idea of such a battle, but Dorian's mind was already spinning down the well-worn paths of treachery. "Can we trick the rest of them into killing off the bit characters while you kill the Sue?" he inquired, making Sarah glance up at him, looking like she -wished- it were that simple.

"Damara and Daniel shouldn't be hard," Gabrielle told him.  "Damara is the villain, after all, and she is threatening Bonnie and Daniel's lives.  And Damon hates Daniel rather passionately.  If you can convince him that there's a decent reason, he would probably handle Daniel for us.  However, he and Stefan will both drop everything to defend their little sister.  The Sue has them wrapped around her little finger.  I saw signs of potential incestuous threesome action, y'all.  We'll have to deal with them."

Sarah hefted the pack off her back, belatedly remembering the whole idea of feeding Gabrielle, who was really too skinny anyway. She opened the pack and shoved an arm in it to the shoulder, which should have been physically impossible, seeing as how Sarah was decidedly not Mary Poppins. She pulled out a small basket that held... apples. Several large golden apples. "I've got some other stuff in here, too, if you want," Sarah mumbled, offering the fruit to Gabs. She looked pensive as Gabrielle described the situation and bit her lip in thought. "So we... let the Sue kill her villain. And then... hmm... are we allowed to possess bit characters?" she asked, glancing at Dorian with a bit of a smirk.

"Possess?"  Gabs took an apple gratefully, dipping her head and murmuring "arigato" before biting into it. 

Dorian smirked. He -liked- the way Sarah thought. "I can possess Daniel, attack Marie, use up his body in an attack that will damage everyone, and then revert to this one unharmed and fully energized to do it again. And they'll kill Daniel in the process... and it'll make them jumpy and nervous.

Gabs sighed.  "Y'know, Ice wanted to keep Daniel to play with for a while.... but I guess that doesn't matter at this point."  Swiftly devouring that apple, she eyed Dorian.  "Last time I checked, you were a Defiler, and Defilers could not possess people.  Since, you know, *I* created the race."

Dorian laughed. "No, not because of demonism. Because of a Chankorian ritual," he said, looking rather smug. "A rather esoteric ritual, but seeing as how my mothers run a temple, I have access to all the books I’ve ever wanted to see on Chankorian magic. And besides, I've done this a dozen times. It's much easier to get away with a murder if you commit it in someone else's body."

"You mentioned an attack that would damage everyone?"

"Yes. I can use up his body's life-energies to power extra spells using blood-magic. And spilling the blood won't matter because once the body is dead..." Dorian shrugged carelessly. Sarah just looked a bit hopeful, like it might just do them some good.

"And it will damage everybody?" She verified, folding her arms across her ample chest and eyeing Dorian.

"Are vampires immune to a waterblast?" Dorian countered.

"She doesn't know what a waterblast is, Dor."

"Aquatic equivalent of a fireball," Dorian explained shortly, glaring at Sarah.

Gabrielle blinked.  "Well... I suppose it might sting.  Human teeth can't pierce their skin, so I'm not certain that spraying water, even really hard, would actually damage a vampire."

"It's an energy sink. And... hmmm... just what is this Daniel? How powerful?" Dorian wanted to know.

"He was turned in 1506, according to the Sue's long-winded recollections," Gabrielle told him, absently twirling her spear.  "So, he's approximately five hundred years old as well.  Of course, she screws up her centuries just a little, but it doesn't make much difference.  I'm not sure precisely how powerful Daniel is, but he has the POTENTIAL to be very powerful indeed, compared to us humans."  She shot Sarah a wry smirk.

Sarah raised an eyebrow. "Human? Please, Gabs, you know I'm anything but. And I wonder about you."

Dorian smiled darkly. "Oh, well, in that case, I can Chain Lightning the driyaln out of them."

"I'm human, believe me.  I'm something like what Yuka is, maybe - a  walking battery."  She broke into a grin, her first real smile since they'd arrived, and tossed her apple core aside.  "So, you want to set off an explosion in their midst and then chain lightning the hell out of them?"

"Yes. And once Daniel runs out of energy and they're milling like confused sheep, you two attack using the fun weaponry and I'll keep blasting. We -did- bring 'shiny sharp things' at Sarah's behest, after all." Dorian smirked.

Gabrielle nodded.  "So you meant to do it BEFORE I went in to kill the Sue."

"Unless you think doing it simultaneously would work better?" Sarah half asked.

Gabrielle eyed both of them for a moment, then sighed.  "Mina no baka."

"Hey, look, I never claimed to be a rocket scientist, just a wanna-be," Sarah said, trying not to sound as irritated as she felt. Dorian simply sighed, pressing a hand to his temple.

"The problem," she explained crisply, but with as much patience as she could muster, "is that we CAN NOT HURT THE CANONS.  Read The Words.  Damara and Daniel are standing right next to a human Bonnie.  The Sue is standing with Stefan, and Damon, and the humans, Elena, Matt, and Meredith.  Those humans won't be able to withstand that sort of damage if you set off explosions and lightning bolts in their midst, and I know I don't need to tell you what would happen if a PPC agent were to kill a canon character."  Her threatening gaze was sufficient to imply it.

"Awww, hells, well that takes half the fun right out of it," Dorian muttered, looking disgruntled. He glanced at Sarah, who looked like she was about to beat her head against the floor.

"I have a crappy memory, you know that," the girl said gruffly, folding her arms over her chest. "If only we could shoot them with silver bullets and have it -work-."

"Didn't you bring the stake gun?" Dorian asked, frowning at Sarah.

"Well, yeah, but... the sniper rifle is -so- much more fun..."

Gabrielle reached over and patted Sarah on the head.  "I do know that, sorry.  Sometimes I get too caught up in my own ego... anyway.  Silver bullets don't work on these vampires.  Wooden stakes work.  Vervain works.  But we won't be able to collect any Vervain in sufficient quantities before they get here.  As for stake guns, the Sue is fast, and I'd rather you didn't fire sharp wooden objects in Damon's general direction.  Our friends and our enemies are too intermixed, guys.  This is going to have to be close and dirty.  Sorry."

"At least we have all the stakes we might need," Sarah pointed out, pulling out handful after handful of sturdy, pointy sticks. "Raided Buffyville for these puppies," she grinned, tucking several of the stakes into the waistband of her jeans and one in her left boot. One even had a loop of leather for a handle, and that went around her wrist. "I am -so- going to regret this after the bruises," she sighed. Then she turned around, putting her back to Gabrielle. "Do me a favor and slice holes in my shirt over my shoulder blades?" she asked hopefully, offering one of many knives that had found their way out of the bag. "Might need to take... desperate... measures."

Gabrielle chuckled.  "Sure, but should I slice through the bra strap too?" she inquired logically as she took the blade and, far too tempted to let the opportunity slide, ran her tongue along the flat of the blade.

Sarah sighed deeply. "Yeah, might as well," she said, pulling her hair forward over her shoulder, smirking at Gabs as the knife was blessed with tongue.

Well, that settled it, Gabrielle mused as she savored the tang of metal and quickly, cleanly, sliced through Sarah's shirt back.  She was letting loose a battle cry to remember when they took on that Sue.  "You should just take the bra off," she said logically.  "It'll be useless if I cut it, and if you take it off, I won't have to ruin it.  And Dorian's already slept with you and I promise not to look."

"Yare, yare," Sarah muttered, arms vanishing into her shirt to twist around beneath it for a moment before one hand emerged with a pale green bra clutched in hand. "S'not like I'd mind too much." The bra was shoved to the recesses of the bag as the girl stretched, giving a little purr. The air behind her thickened and grew heavy as she pulled her wings to the edge of the astral and ever so carefully made certain that if they manifested physically, they would do so through those convenient slices. "Ahhhh... nothing like a good stretch."

Dorian just snorted at her, shaking his head.

"You wouldn't mind, but you'd blush something FIERCE," Gabs teased, snickering at her as she continued to spin her spear, looking entirely too eager to go to war.  "So, are we back at square one with battle plans?  Because we’re burning twilight."

"Spell-darts never miss," Dorian said, and Sarah nodded in agreement, well familiar with Magic Missile. "I can use those, and..." he smiled, stroking the dark green whip that had found its way out of the pack and around his waist with a little smile. "I don't miss, either."

Sarah snorted and clutched a stake tightly. "Right to the left of the spine, between the third and fourth ribs," she said with a bit of a smirk.

"Lovely."  Gabs thought that over for a moment, and her spear slowed in its spinning as she looked vaguely disappointed.  "Dorian, I think you should take the Sue.  Sarah and I can kill the other two.  They're weaker, though not by much."

Dorian smiled wryly. "I know you'd really like to dust her yourself, but considering the sheer difference in our fighting abilities, well, I hate to have to agree with you there. Although I -do- look forward to killing something that can put up a fight," he said, looking a bit dreamy.

Sarah nodded. "You want the villain or the bitch-boy?"

"I'll take the bitch boy.  Given this Sue's penchant for angst, it stands to reason that this Damara will have a chance in hell of standing up to the Sue herself, which would make her the more dangerous of the two."  Her voice was low and even, and she was watching the mists as she spoke, shoulders squared solemnly.  "And since I am human - and nothing but - you've got a better chance at getting the drop on her."

Sarah nodded grimly. "Yeah. Hey..." she paused, glancing at Gabrielle for a long moment before lifting a hand and pressing it to the other's cheek. "Be careful, ne?" Several strong shields were flung around her friend as she offered a strained smile.

"Oh, calm down, babe," Gabs said dryly.  "I'm only going up against a five-century-old bloodsucker.  What could possibly happen?"  She glanced around and then up at The Words.  "I'll think of something, don't you worry.  And if I disappear from the battlefield for a little, don't worry. I'll be back shortly."

"A lot," Sarah muttered, looking quite displeased at the thought. She took a moment to braid her hair tightly and tie it off to keep it out of her way, eyes following Gabby's up to the words for a moment. "You'd better be back, because I'm not leaving here without you, even if I have to track you elsewhere."

"I'm considering luring Daniel and Bonnie away on the pretense of putting Bonnie somewhere safe," she explained.  Having a secret plan of attack was all well and good, but keeping one's allies in the dark was bad.  "And attempting to take Daniel by surprise.  I don't know how skilled of a telepath he is, precisely, but I can veil, so I suppose we'll see."

Sarah nodded. "We've got a disguise generator if you think you can masquerade as Elena." She was rapidly going through and discarding plans, chewing on her lip. How to kill a five-century old vampire with a grudge whose abilities she knew -nothing- about? Piece o' frickin' cake.

"Elena is with them," Gabrielle pointed out.  "Two Elenas would be a little suspect.  No, I'll more likely tell him I'm a member of the PPC.... the Paranormal Protection Coalition."  She smirked darkly.  "And I've been hunting Damara because of her nasty eating habits."

Dorian snorted. "Yes, and that -might- work if a vampire could live to be five hundred without being -incredibly- paranoid."

Sarah elbowed him, glaring fiercely.  "It'll work," she muttered, still giving him the evil eye.  "'Cause if you'll remember, the author is an idiot; hence, all her characters are idiots, and she influences canons to -be- idiots. So it shouldn't be too hard."

Gabrielle gave Dorian a hard smile.  "Let me deal with that.  I still don't know why, but people are generally inclined to believe me, even when I'm lying through my teeth.  And yes, the author's vampires are idiots.  After all, Marie announces ‘Bonnie is Isabelle reincarnated’ and the canons just go ‘oh, okay’.  Bonnie included.  How hard can it be to convince Daniel that I have his best interests at heart, especially if I'm dragging him AWAY from the pointy wooden death?"

"It's part of being one of us. We're all smashing liars," Sarah said lightly, smirking cryptically as she glanced out over the mists. "I think I'll play dead, or something of the sort.  Or just let her drink my blood and watch her twitch and foam at the mouth..." Sarah added lowly, grinning at Gabby. "And you're right, there."

She nodded.  "Daniel IS a bit paranoid, but he seems to do whatever a strong female dressed in black tells him to do.  No worries there.  I'll handle it.  Sarah, you'd better go in first.  Damara is using Bonnie and Daniel as a shield when she shows up.  As far as I know, her back will be rather foolishly unprotected (not that it matters, because miss 'expert' Marie Sue brings her whole cadre in from the front) and you should be able to get decently close for the strike.  Dorian, you'll want to take the Sue out as hard and fast as possible.  Don't give Damon and Stefan a chance to help her, because then you'll be very much dead very quickly.  And don't underestimate Matt, Elena, and Meredith.  They did well against Tyler and stood their ground against Klaus.  Humans they may be, but they're not pushovers.  If you can, strike hard, kill fast, and run like hell.  Don't worry about me.  I can talk my way out of anything and I have a neuraliser."

"So strike and get the fuck outta dodge," Sarah nodded. "Where do we regroup? Behind the church here?"

Gabrielle considered that briefly.

Dorian looked from one of them to the other, marveling at the way their thought processes melded sometimes. He paid attention to what Gabrielle was saying, though. "I'm going to prowl around," he murmured, taking a step toward the door.
"And hopefully I -can- run right up behind her and plant the stake and be done with it," Sarah said with an all-too-optimistic smile.

She seemed about to say more, but reality lurched and Dorian flattened his ears back against his head and let loose a rather feral snarl, tensing his muscles against the roiling that meant his stomach was NOT happy with the tears forming in the Weave. No rolling ship's deck had the ability to unhinge him like this did, and he absolutely hated it. Sarah tolerated it remarkably well, being a mistress of temporal-spatial distortions herself... which was made quite obvious by the plain existence of Paradise City.  Gabrielle yelped and tumbled to the ground with a gasp.  Fortunately, an apple was a gentle meal and her stomach didn't immediately insist on purging.  She managed to swallow the heaves that wracked her body, and quickly popped a couple of her own Bleeprin™.  When the shifting stopped, she lurched to her feet, nails digging into her palm and upper lip curled back in a snarl. 

"No, here is where they’re coming!  We meet up at the boarding house.  Cross the new bridge and walk until you find a driveway... it'll be mostly fields on the way there.  The Sue's here... we're out of time.  We approach from different angles.  Go!" 

Dorian was out the door like a flash, silent as he vanished into the fog. Sarah tossed Gabrielle one last glance before ducking out the door herself, slinking around to flank.  She could -smell- the sickly sweet aura of Sue. She was quite quiet as she padded along, using the mist to cloak her movements and thinking of nothing but the empty grayness with a forced exertion of mental control.

Gabrielle let them get a little ways ahead of her before starting off herself.  She couldn’t move nearly as quietly, and she winced with every crunching footfall, hoping that the vampires would be too focused on each other to hear her circling..  She moved as quickly as she dared, darting from tombstone to tombstone.  The moon shone down upon them and through the fog, a gibbous drop of grayish-white against the deep backdrop of the stars. Gabrielle scanned the graveyard briefly and smirked as she spotted a familiar landmark – like a full moon hovering above the ground, the grave marker of the Smallwoods stood as a beacon in the mist-shrouded cemetery.  Tucking her spear under her arm, Gabrielle slipped behind a tombstone and settled down to wait.
Fortunately, Damon and Stefan were firmly under the Sue’s spell.  The Sue and her court spread themselves around the ruined church, settling down to wait.  They had arrived an hour and a half BEFORE midnight, for some reason, and for all that time, they didn’t make a plan, they didn’t get the lay of the land, they didn’t check their surroundings for traps, and they didn’t speak to each other.  Like dolls, they were scattered about, unthinking and unfeeling.  Gabrielle would have decided to go in then, but she needed the distraction of the villain to distract the heroes.  And she needed Daniel to show UP before she could destroy him.

At exactly midnight, according to the Sue, two figures appeared out of midair and began walking toward the ruined church.  They were alone as far as Gabrielle could tell, and she fought with the strong urge to leap forward and take Daniel out from behind now, while he was so terribly vulnerable.  And really, that was unfair.  Very little of this was Daniel’s fault.  He was fodder, a pretty boy toy for the Sue to wear on her arm, but he actually had the good sense to object to being treated that way.  Gabs couldn’t help almost liking him… maybe he could be redeemed.  But she didn’t have the time, nor the capability, to take him alive.  She shifted and got into position as the Sue reacted first with anger, then with rage to Daniel and Bonnie’s appearance.  She leaped forward and then another female voice rang out.

"Marie!"

The Sue stopped and looked around, and Gabrielle sighed and rubbed her temples as a blonde vampiress with green eyes phased into view behind Daniel and Bonnie, one hand around each of their throats.  "Why is evil always blonde?" she muttered as she pulled out a pen and scribbled down several more charges.  The Sue remembered, in the space of five sentences, tearing out this woman’s throat and turning both her and her ten-year-old son into vampires.  The son, being a child, apparently didn’t understand the importance of hiding his new nature and blabbed about it to the townsfolk.  The Sue killed the ‘demon child’ and staked the mother, apparently unsuccessfully.

"All right," Gabrielle growled.  "First, why do Stefan and the gang accept this heinous bitch?  She has done far too much evil for them to be so kind to her.  Second, what’s demonic about a child being too naïve to know to protect himself?  And YOU’RE the one who Turned a ten-year-old boy!  Third, Stefan nearly died from Klaus stabbing him in the STOMACH with wood.  Wood is deadly to vampires.  If you staked her well enough that you thought you got it through the heart, even if you missed, this woman would be dead.  You’re the true evil here, Marie Sue," she snarled as she capped her pen and slid the notebook back into her pocket.  "And I have to charge her before Dorian kills her.  Shit, shit, shit.  I wish Ice was here.  His plans never have huge gaping holes in them!" she muttered in despair.  Well, then, there was nothing she could do about it now.  They were separated and committed to their respective courses of action.  She would have to wait until Dorian made his move, and then she would see if she could manage the charge.  If not, the Sunflower Official would just have to understand that she had neglected the charges because she had been fighting for her life.

Chapter 3: Pirates don’t cry

(( DISCLAIMER:  I do not own Pirates of the Caribbean, Protectors of the Plot Continuum, or the Marty Stu fic used for this episode.  The PPC website can be found HERE, the original Marty Stu Songfic can be found HERE, information on Dylanae is HERE, and info on your hostess, the Black Messenger herself, can be found HERE.  Enjoy the adventure!))

"…And repetition serves as a useful composition device to help the listener to follow the ballad, thus helping to hold their interest.  One must, of course, be careful not to overuse such devices…."

"DYLANAE!"

"Whaaa!" the half-demon exclaimed as he almost fell out of his chair in surprise.  He managed to grab his desk, nearly toppling the precariously balanced candles, and straightened himself, glaring in the direction of the intruder.  "Most people," he said with silken irritation, "find it profitable to KNOCK before entering."  He scowled at the slender feminine form standing in his berth, barely short enough to be able to avoid stooping under the low ceiling.  Her hair was long, straight, and dyed black, and her eyes so dark a brown that they almost matched.  She was dressed oddly, in gray pajama pants with orange and black spiders all over them, and an off-white t-shirt that reached to her knees and featured a jaguar lounging on a tree branch declaring, ‘I don’t do mornings’.  "Just fall out of bed, Gabriella?" he inquired dryly, putting aside his quill pen and capping the ink.  "Not that your sense of style is anything to laud, but it is usually better than THAT…."

"I just got an urgent alert," she told him quickly, bouncing on the balls of her calloused, bare feet.  "Someone is massively screwing up the character of Jack Sparrow."

Dylanae blinked a single grey-green eye and stood up slowly.  "Can you be more specific?"

"You’ll need to come back to headquarters with me," she said, beckoning him closer and holding out her left hand.  Her right hand was curled tightly around her Portal Generator.  Suddenly, the ship beneath her feet gave a lurch and she yelped as she stumbled into the wall.  "Come on, Dyl, before I get really seasick.  I’ll explain everything once we’re there."

Dylanae sighed and shook his head, but truth be told, homework was incredibly boring and it had been a while since he’d seen Gabriella, so he agreed.  He took her hand and she fiddled with the Portal Generator until an oblong gateway opened in the small cabin berth.  He eyed it with curiosity and a little distrust, but before he had a chance to say anything, she yanked him through it and they stepped into PPC Response Center #8123.

Dylanae removed his hand from hers and settled it on his hip, taking a slow look around.  "I just love what you’ve done with the place," he said dryly.  "It has a certain ‘boiler room’ air about it."

She rolled her eyes.  "Hold out your tongue so I can whittle it to a point.  If we’d had time to do any decorating, trust me, we would have.  Souvenirs are massively appreciated, after all.  But we’ve been running our asses off lately.  Ice is off on a mission right now, and he was forced to take Dorian along because I was in class.  When I got back, I found this waiting for me."  She stepped over to the console and nimble fingers pecked at the keys until the screen turned white and words phased into visibility.

"Jack took the helm looking quite haunted. It was as if no life breathed in him. His crew passed him by, and it did not even faze him. It was a dream that brought the pirate captain to his senses. He was at Port Royale, standing on the dock in the midst of a foggy morning. Suddenly, a person cut through the mist, and ran to the end of the dock and looked him in the eye. It was Will. Jack was so happy he could not describe it. It seemed as if a weight had been lifted from him. He smiled in his sleep. Will told him how much he missed him and Jack replied the same. Everything seemed right. Nothing was missing. Will stepped closer and pulled Jack into a tight embrace. At that moment, he knew it was true. He cared for Will Turner deeply…" Dylanae read, and his single remaining eye began to twitch rhythmically.  "What," he inquired, his voice as sharp as a rapier blade and dangerously low, "…is THIS????"

"This is what we call a slash songfic," Gabriella told him.  "It’s Pirates of the Caribbean, which isn’t my jurisdiction.  But the assignment was up for grabs on the PPC board, and since you and I are such huge fans of the movie and the ride, I decided we should help out with this travesty."  She smiled expectantly at him, her expression knowing.  She and Dylanae had spent many a shared evening lounging on her parents’ leather couches and watching this movie over and over until they could both recite every line from beginning to end from memory.  Dylanae, being a pirate himself, had a certain fascination with nautical movies of any type and even though Jack Sparrow was a disturbingly altruistic good-guy type, Dyl couldn’t really help liking him.

Gabriella, of course, was neck-deep in Johnny Depp lust and thought that his characterization of Sparrow had made the entire movie worthwhile.

Dylanae was still reading the words.  "Sweet Umberlee," he muttered, slamming a fist down on the console and causing Gabriella to wince.  "What in the nine hells is this?  Pirates don’t cry!"

"You cried when…."

He whirled on her and one fine-boned, calloused hand reached out to wrap around the front collar of her shirt, tightening it until her face turned white and yanking her close so he could snarl in her face.  "We are not… bringing that up… in any conversation," he told her, voice thick with rage.  "EVER.  Understand?"

She looked startled for a moment, but then her eyes narrowed and her own upper lip curled back.  One small hand came up and found his face, thumb digging into the corner of his still-intact left eye.  "You wanna be totally blind?" she rasped.  "Then threaten me again.  I love you to death, Dyl, but you’re toeing the line."

He sucked in a breath through his teeth, an insane light flashing in the stormy depths of his eye.  But then he seemed to realize exactly who he was choking, and he released her abruptly, stepping back and tugging his leather three-corner hat down over the band of his eye-patch, to hide his face.  "Sorry," he murmured as he let out a sigh.

She rubbed her throat with a pained expression, but padded up behind him to put a hand on his back.  "I know, baby.  It’s still raw.  But we’ve been through this a thousand times already, so I didn’t think… actually, I didn’t think, period.  I’m sorry.  I’ll leave it alone."

She leaned against his back and he shoved his hands in the pockets of his plain sailor’s coat, face implacable.  His tone, however, was gentler.  "It’s all right.  I keep forgetting who I can and can’t trust," he said bitterly as he tilted his head back again and gazed up at the screen.  Silken black hair fell over the delicate planes of his face as his expression took on a hard cast, and he nodded.  "So what, exactly, do we need to do about this?"

She broke into a grin and threw her arms around him, cuddling him fiercely before stepping away and composing herself.  "It’s not really a case of a Mary Sue," she explained, fingers once again flicking over the keys and dials.  "Or, as it were, a Marty Stu.  At the PPC, we call this ‘possession’, just like a demon or a ghost possessing a human body.  In this case, it’s the ghost of the author taking over Jack Sparrow and making him act in ways that are a complete and utterly contrast to his true character.  Because you’re right – generally, pirates don’t cry.  They’re a rough and tough group of men who’ve seen death and bloodshed and terrible maiming accidents, and who make their living by bringing down terror and violence on others.  Not the most friendly lot, regardless of how the movie portrays them."

Dylanae rolled his eye.  "You don’t have to tell me that," he reminded her.  "I’m well acquainted with the pirate lifestyle."

"Aye aye, First Mate and Master," she teased, poking him in the side.  "So anyway, all we have to do in this case is exorcize the spirit of the author from Jack Sparrow and he should snap back to being his normal self, and you can get back to your ship and your homework.  Speaking of which, why are you still doing homework from Foclucan?"

"Boredom," Dylanae told her frankly, fingering the hilt of his cutlass as he stared up at the screen.  "That’s one thing they often neglect to point out about pirate life – you spend weeks, sometimes months, doing nothing but sitting on your ass and waiting for a decent mark to come along."

She chuckled.  "Maybe you should apply to PPC," she teased gently.  "You’d certainly never be bored."

"If there is ever a Pirates of the Caribbean subdivision, I’ll consider it," he replied.  "But for now, let’s get on with this exorcism business, shall we?"

She jumped up from the chair and nodded.  "Oh, absolutely.  Let me get some shoes on and get the supplies."  She flung her closet door open and, since they shouldn’t have to go anywhere but the deck of the Black Pearl, she slipped her feet into a pair of house shoes.  As she began to gather needed gadgets into her duffle bag, including her Pirates of the Caribbean Collector’s Edition DVD set, she straightened and made a dismayed sound, causing Dylanae’s attention to snap away from The Words, which he had been reading with a growing sense of nausea.

"Because he’s been acting so out of character," she explained to him, chewing prettily on her lower lip, "we’re going to need a neuralizer to get canon to go back to what it’s supposed to be."

"Is that terribly important?  The movie is over…."

"And they’re making a sequel," she told him.

He tilted his head back in understanding.  "Gotcha.  Where would we find a… neuralizer?"

"The company briefing said that we’d recently procured the technology from our friends in MiB," Gabriella told him as she pulled a jade-green, cropped sweatshirt over her t-shirt (making her outfit clash even worse) and slung the duffle bag over her shoulder.  "The Department of Sufficiently Advanced Technology should have one.  We should talk to Agent Dan."

"I’ll let you handle that," he said flatly.  "I’m still trying to digest this… this… I’d call it swill, but I’ve eaten swill, and swill is nowhere near as bad as this."

She giggled.  "You do that.  And while you’re at it, start mentally compiling a list of things we’ll charge the ghost of the Marty Stu with so we can do this as quickly as possible, okay?"

He nodded as she slipped out of Response Center #8123, distracting herself totally with memories of the movie so that she would be able to find the Department of Sufficiently Advanced Technology more quickly.  Fortunately, as Gabriella was highly adept at letting her mind wander (it was keeping it where it was supposed to be that gave her trouble), this didn’t take much effort at all.

***

"That is a neuralizer?" Dylanae inquired dubiously as she showed him the slender metallic cylinder topped with a red light.  "What does it do, precisely?"

"It erases memories," Gabriella told him, slipping it into the duffle bag as she hunted through her things for two sets of sunglasses.  "Dammit, I know they’re in here somewhere…."

He hiked a slender eyebrow and watched her rummage.  "So we’re going to erase their memory of this… puerile behavior?  That’s reassuring."

"Yep, and give them new memories afterward.  Although, I’m tempted to just tell them all that it was a very, very odd dream and now that they’re awake, an entirely ludicrous idea as well."

"It’s a ludicrous idea even in The Dreaming," Dylanae snorted.  "Sparrow was very obviously heterosexual, and showed absolutely no inclinations to the contrary throughout the entire movie.  Nor did he weep, whine, and fuss like this for any reason.  Threw a temper tantrum or two, yes, but he never whined.  He was never…." Dylanae glanced at The Words again and sneered.  "… pitiful."

"Found them!" she announced, pulling two pairs of rather unobtrusive, tasteful sunglasses from her closet and waving them at Dylanae.  "Here, take one.  And when I tell you to put them on, do it right away, okay?  I don’t want you losing the last few days of your memory."  She paused after she said that, eyes widening slightly as a strange, and very immoral, idea occurred to her.  It would be godplaying, but if it helped to fix three broken lives, then maybe….

Dylanae snatched a pair of sunglasses out of her hand, ruining her train of thought.  Tucking them into a pocket, he motioned to the console.  "Let’s go, before this gets much worse."

She gave him a look of wide-eyed disbelief. "Can it get worse?"

"You don’t want to know."

Shaking her head and grumbling about people who will imagine gay sex between any two attractive men that wander into their line of vision, she fiddled with the Portal Generator until it opened an oblong doorway for them, and set the Disguise Generator.  Dylanae, who was indeed a pirate and was therefore already dressed like one, needed no disguise, but Gabriella quickly programmed a pirate’s mismatched, soiled, and functional ensemble, complete with a Hanger (a popular eighteenth century sword) at her hip.  Thus attired, she led the way through the portal and onto the gently heaving deck of the Black Pearl.

Instantly, their ears were assaulted with Evanescence playing very loudly throughout the surroundings.  Dylanae winced, but Gabriella merely shook her head, pulled out a notebook, and added defiling the compositional greatness that is Evanescence to the charge list.

They glanced around, but having read The Words more carefully, Dylanae knew just where to find Jack Sparrow.  He headed aft, toward the wheel, and Gabriella followed along with him.

Because your presence still lingers hereAnd it won't leave me alone  "Let me be!" Jack cried to the sky. These wounds won't seem to healThis pain is just too realThere’s just too much that time cannot erase "Please! Leave me alone! I admit! I love Will, but please, I must be free of his ghost!" Jack sobbed. "If only I could see him, hold him in my arms. I know he is happy with Elizabeth, and he loves her, but what about me? I used to be near him. And he left… he’s gone." When you cried I’d wipe away all of your tears "I know, yes I know that when I comforted him, it felt right. Though, the one he was longing for was Elizabeth."When you'd scream I’d fight away all of your fearsAnd I’ve held your hand through all of these years "… and when he was scared I would always tell him: ‘Don’t worry, mate. Old Jack won’t let anything happen to ya.’ And he would feel better, even though I realize he did not trust me… well, I understand. I’m not a serious person myself, and when I am, it’s hard to know. William, you’re the only person that has made me straight-faced in my life, and I love you for that." Jack chuckled to himself for a second before realizing that for a short moment, he could see the vague image of young Will lingering in front of him.  He smiled and moved toward it, but alas, as he did, it disappeared and Jack once again was overwhelmed by depression. But you still have all of me  "Will you not let me live my life? I cannot go on like this… I need… I need to breathe again." Jack whispered. You used to captivate meBy your resonating lightBut now I’m bound by the life you left behind Jack got up and staggered to the deck, and sat, leaning against the starboard rail. He ran his hands through his hair and squeezed his eyes shut. 

Gabriella winced as her hand began to cramp from writing hurriedly on the charge list.  Causing massive tense shifts, Interfering with the character of Jack Sparrow, Refusing to use things like paragraph breaks and proper punctuation, Terrible Grammar, Improper use of spacing, Writing absolutely terrible slash, Obscene sappiness, and Abuse of a canon character.  She let out a sigh and exchanged a glance with Dylanae.  He nodded, and she didn’t even bother pointing her Character Analysis Device in Sparrow’s direction.  She didn’t want to break the poor gadget.

Your face it haunts my once pleasant dreamsYour voice it chased away all the sanity in me "I miss you Will. I…" he uttered. These wounds won't seem to healThis pain is just too realThere’s just too much that time cannot erase "I will always care for you, Will Turner."

"That’s it," Gabriella muttered as she yanked her copy of Pirates of the Caribbean from her duffle bag, stormed forward with Dylanae at her side, and brandished it at the fallen Jack Sparrow.  "Ghost of Marty Stu, I, the Black Messenger Gabrielle, servant of the Dark Mother and daughter of Hecate, hereby cast thee out!  The power of Walt Disney Pictures, Jerry Bruckheimer, Ted Elliott, and Gore Verbinski compels you!  Leave this body and this canon and never, ever return!"  She strode forth and smacked Sparrow on the forehead with the side of the DVD case.

The dark-haired pirate convulsed, kohl-lined eyes widening in shock, even as Dylanae drew his scimitar with a metallic ring.  Jack flailed, head slamming back into the railing as a writhing, gray spirit was torn from him, howling as it floated up above his body.

"Ghost of Marty Stu!" Dylanae called over its keening, his bardic training enabling him to easily make himself heard.  "You are hereby charged with defiling the compositional greatness that is Evanescence, causing massive tense shifts, interfering with the character of Jack Sparrow, refusing to use things like paragraph breaks and proper punctuation, terrible grammar, improper use of spacing, writing absolutely terrible slash, obscene sappiness, abuse of a canon character, i.e. making Jack Sparrow act like an idiot and a petulant child, of which he is neither, twisting canon to suit your own perverse whims, and of making me nauseas from reading your bullshit."

"Hear, hear," Gabriella echoed, brandishing the DVD at the Stu.  "For the Goddess’s sake, there is no indication whatsoever that Sparrow has a single homosexual inclination throughout the entire movie!  He flirted with Elizabeth, he got smacked silly by two bordello women and a female pirate, and he seemed absolutely thrilled by the prospect of Will having a girl."

"It’s creative license!" the Stu howled.  "I just like to imagine…."

"Then keep your imaginings to yourself," Dylanae hissed, stepping forward.  His cutlass glowed slightly along the blade, a deep, dark red, and he drove it forward into the Stu’s ghost, causing it to scream.  "And for the record, even your imaginings are in error.  Pirates are very seldom gay, and even when we are, we most certainly do not behave like that, and I am in a position to know, seeing as I do sleep with my male crewmates.  And finally, by all that is unholy… pirates don’t cry."

The Stu-ghost let out a final shriek and dissipated.

"Well, that was relatively easy," Gabriella said with satisfaction as she slipped the DVD case back into her duffle bag.  As she turned around, however, she noticed that the crew had gathered to watch the spectacle and was now staring at them as though they, themselves, were the ghosts.  "Sunglasses," she hissed, elbowing Dylanae, who fumbled hastily for them.  "Hurry up."  She backed up, around the wheel and away from Jack Sparrow who was confusedly shaking himself out and climbing unsteadily to his feet.  She and Dylanae retreated across the quarterdeck, and she donned her sunglasses while holding up the neuralizer.  "Dylanae?  Do the talking, please, and get them to look at the neuralizer."

Dyl tilted his head back and surveyed the crew, favoring them with a thin smirk.  "Arright, ladies and gents," he called, voice taking on a harsh quality more suitable to the rough audience.  None the less, he had been raised in the Bardic tradition and his voice was by far his best asset.  Their attention was caught.  "I know you’re for wonderin’ what’s in our heads, expellin’ a ghostly spirit from yer captain like that.  But we meant ya no harm and if ye’ll allow it, as a show of our… good will… we’re like to explain. Ye’r for seein’ this pretty thing here," he continued, pointing toward the neuralizer.

Gabriella pressed the button and there was a flash of red light that left the Black Pearl’s crew looking dazed.

"My friends, this has all been one hell of an odd dream," she announced, voice barely carrying over the wind as the sails lashed against their lines.  "That rum must have been tainted somehow, or else the moon just put you all in a fancy mood.  Either way, you’re going to shake it off and forget about it by tomorrow, and be happy as an improbably altruistic and good-hearted buccaneer crew.  All right?  Thanks, and smooth sailing!"  She waved hastily at them and turned on the portal generator.

She and Dylanae scrambled back into the response center.

"Well, that went really well," she said enthusiastically, turning off the disguise generator as her pirate duds faded back into her mismatched pajamas.  "I mean, aside from my stomach complaining about all the motion."  She looked up at Dylanae sheepishly.  "I guess I’m not nearly as acclimated to it as you are."

He smiled and ruffled her already-mussed hair.  "Understandable," he murmured, leaning in.  "I’d better get back before my watch.  But it was … a lot more fun than I thought it would be. We should do this again sometime… kiss for good luck?"

She smiled, slid her arms around his neck, and submitted to a long and slow kiss.  When he finally broke it, he gave her a wicked smirk and nuzzled her nose.  "See you later, gorgeous," he murmured  as he stepped back.

She shook her head, chuckling.  "Flattery will get you everywhere with me.  Seeya, Dyl."  She opened the Portal Generator and he stepped through, back to Faerun, where he belonged.

Gabriella sighed and collapsed back into the chair, letting it roll from the force of her movement as she sighed and let her eyes drift closed.  Ice would be back with Dorian any minute now and the computer would start to beep, but until she had a partner, she couldn’t go on another mission anyway, so she had full rights to ignore it if it went off.

Knowing that, she set the sound on MUTE and settled down to get a little bit of sleep.

THE END

(( I do not own Nightworld, Vampire Diaries, or Forbidden Game.  Those canons are the property of L.J. Smith.  I do not own Rocky Horror Picture Show.  I do not own the PPC.  I’m just an agent, doing my job.  I don’t own the Evil Overlord List, though I do recommend it as a must-read for any aspiring world-dominators.  I also don’t own "A New Light" by Midnight9, the Mary Sue on which this parody is based.  I DO, however, own Ice (Irilisan) and Gabs (Gabrielle/Gabriella).  If you want them to make a guest appearance somewhere, e-mail me.  As always, I can be reached at [email protected], Response Center #8123, Mary Sue Division.))

~BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!!  BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!!  BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!! BLOODY BEEP, ALREADY!~

"Eep!" Gabs squeaked as she was shocked out of her nap and jumped so hard that she slid halfway out of the chair.  She gripped the padded arm rests and stared at the console, eyes wide, as it continued to shriek… in her head.

~HEY!  HEY, ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION?  WE’VE GOT AN EMERGENCY HERE, YOU BRAINLESS BINT!  BEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!!~

Gabs let out a sobbing breath, tilted her head back, and screamed.  "ICE!  WHO GAVE THE COMPUTER TELEPATHY?"

Sighing irritably, having been summoned from the shower by the computer’s mental assault, Ice strode toward the console and eyed it balefully.  "Well, it wasn’t me," he said coldly as the computer seemed to wither under the strength of his glare.  "Oh, shut up, will you?" he said almost conversationally, still rubbing a towel over his frost-white hair.

~BEEEEEE-- ~

"Much better."  He eyed Gabrielle.  "This is what you get for putting it on mute, my dear."

She chewed her much-abused lower lip and harrumphed.  "I just wanted an hour of uninterrupted sleep.  A single hour."  She glanced up at the clock in the upper right hand corner of the view-screen.  "One hour, to the minute.  Apparently, it took me literally."

"I suppose I don’t have to tell you that if it continues to beep like that, I will turn it into scrap metal and reassemble it as a coffee-maker," Ice said frostily, and Gabrielle sighed.

"What do you suggest I do?  Makes-Things won’t set foot in here unless it’s an emergency, thanks to you trying to make a snack of him, and since the legends got around, the rest of DoSAT’s been avoiding us like the plague."

"You’re creative," Ice told her with a smirk, ruffling her newly-clean hair (she had made it into the shower first) and wandering back toward the bathroom to put his towel away.  "I’m sure you’ll think of something.  But in the meantime, you might placate the thrice-damned piece of machinery by finding out what the trouble is."  The door closed behind him, the lock clicking into place with a *snick* of finality.  Gabrielle sighed and pushed the gliding, swiveling, reclining, wonderfully comfortable, faux-leather (such a wonderful chair!) glider/rocker back toward the console.  She had tried turning the volume down.  She had tried putting the computer on mute.  None of it mattered.  The volume for the alert system was controlled separately from the settings for the rest of the sound effects and she had yet to locate the command file.  Now, she was seriously considering calling in a friend of hers to take a look at it.  Griss was a Demon of the Earth, and spoke the language of metal and machines.  He could fix the ornery console, but he was also very professional when it came to his work, and it would cost her.  She sighed as her fingers moved over the keys.  Well, Ice was rich.  Maybe for the sake of his own sanity, he would be willing to fund this improvement?  An hour of outside tech support?  Griss was not afraid of Ice.

She brought up the details of the anomaly, scanning first to see which canon they were dealing with.  And her hands froze.

It was a sort of pseudo-crossover, Nightworld and The Forbidden Game.  Just reading the first page of the story was enough to validate the mission in Gabrielle’s mind.  But The Forbidden Game… while she adored the trilogy, it caused a shiver to move up and down her spine.  Ice’s origins, as a vampire, paired the universe of The Forbidden Game and The Vampire Diaries, a melding that, while not necessarily canon, was not mutually exclusive like a Nightworld/Forbidden Game melding was.  Klaus’s "deal with the devil" extended to all of the Originals, making them demi-gods.  Nothing could kill them unless they truly wished to die.  Nothing, that is, except their creators – the Dark Elves of Niflheim.

It had been quite a while ago when Gabs had dreamed up that particular clause, and she was now ashamed of the plot holes involved in her thinking.  But, ever since taking this job and accepting Ice as her partner, she had been afraid of receiving a Forbidden Game assignment.  That sort of mission could take them into the realm of the Shadowmen, the Dark Elves, and they were the only creatures capable of utterly destroying her partner.

"You’re worrying for the wrong person," Ice said silkily from behind her, one strong hand resting on her shoulder and startling her out of her thoughts.  "So they could kill me.  They could much more easily kill you.  In fact, just about anything could kill you without too much trouble. I’ve fought the Dokkalfar before, and as a human, no less."  He leaned forward, scanning The Words quickly.  "This author doesn’t bring the Elder Shadowmen into it, aside from whatever mention Julian gives them.  I can handle Julian.  Not only is he a newborn compared to his peers, but in this story, he seems to be far below full strength.  And I sincerely doubt that he even knows how to hurt me properly."

She smiled wryly up at him.  "Let’s hope, baby.  You don’t have any insane old men with whom you exchanged blood hanging around in your past, do you?"

He chuckled.  "I guard that knowledge, my dear.  I do not exchange blood unless the individual in question is about to become one of my childer, or is completely trusted.  And as the Evil Overlord Rules wisely counsel, appointment to my list of Completely Trusted Friends is awarded posthumously."

She chuckled.  "So you’re saying you don’t even completely trust me?"

Ice shrugged.  "It seems a moot point, since you already know everything about me worth knowing, including my weaknesses.  But if you’re asking whether I would exchange blood with you, the answer would have to be a most emphatic ‘no’.  No offense, of course, but being what you are, I would hesitate to take the risk of giving you any of my blood."  He smiled wryly.  "Especially having seen what a touch alone can do to you."

She rolled her eyes.  "Yeah, yeah, point taken.  Go get dressed," she told him as she straightened up and scanned the rest of The Words.  The story in question was fifteen chapters long, but the chapters were short.  It was, she noted,  not badly written.  There were only a few spelling mistakes and the grammar was decent in most places, with a few very notable exceptions.  Despite the gross improbability of the events contained in the story ever occurring, it was relatively well-done and for the most part, Julian hovered, if not in character, then close to it.  But it was a Mary Sue.  There was absolutely no doubt about that.

She sighed and stood up, even as a portal appeared next to the console, oblong, about the height of a man, and unnervingly black.  Her bondage pants jingled as she brushed them off, then thumbed the shiny patch she had ironed and then stitched onto the right sleeve of a plain, black t-shirt.  It showed the black silhouette of  a cactus against an orange background, with the letters MSD printed at the base of the cactus.  ‘P.P.C. - Protectors of the Plot Continuum’, was written in blocky white letters across her shoulders.

The shirts had taken quite a bit of real-time to make, and she was proud of the effort.  Now, if only she could get Ice to wear his….

She was pleasantly surprised when he emerged from his closet in black jeans and no t-shirt, his new black canvas jacket draped over his shoulders.  Because he didn’t much like the color black anyway, he’d let her modify it, so he got to show off his tattoos (of which he was inordinately proud) and look professional.  And he was catering to her.  The fact that he bothered at all made her happy.

"Aww, don’t you look precious," she teased, and he hiked an eyebrow.

"You’re not encouraging me to wear it more often," he said pointedly.

She hiked a brow and lowered her voice slightly, to an alto croon.  "Oh, baby, don’t you look sexy?"

He gave her a dry look.

She broke into giggles and jumped up to snatch her bag.  "Come on, grumpy.  Portal’s waiting.  Impatiently, I might add.  Who’d have ever thought a computer could be impatient, anyway?"  Slinging the bag over her shoulder, she grabbed his wrist and tugged him toward the oblong gate.

"Disguises," Ice advised before she could get to it.  "What are we going to be?"

"That’s the beauty of working in a modern canon," she told him, giving his wrist a sharp tug, to which he relented.  "Nightworld and Forbidden Game alike, we can just go as ourselves."

"And the fact that Julian and I strongly resemble each other won’t cause any difficulties?" he pointed out.

"Oh, for god’s sake, you’re good at illusions.  Just throw one up.  Can we GO already?  This Sue needs to die."  She stopped tugging and looked up at him, dark eyes glinting dangerously.  "She tackled Julian, knocked him down, threw him into a wall, bit him… and got away with it."

Ice blinked.  "…A Shadowman?  What does she think he is, a push-over?  The only reason Jenny ever got the drop on him is that she didn’t think first…."

"I know," Gabs insisted, reeling him in by the jacket.  "So are you coming or not?"

Ice rolled his eyes and stopped resisting, even giving his partner a little push.

Gabs fell with a shriek into the portal.

***

"Itai," she groaned as she landed on asphalt, gravel scraping a layer of skin from her palms and digging sharply into her knees.  She quickly rolled to the side, letting softer flesh absorb the roughness of the surface as she tried to use her forearms instead of her hands to push herself to her feet.  "Shimatta, Ice…."

"Hush," he told her, stepping out of the portal gracefully as it sealed shut behind him and stooping to haul her to her feet, one hand closing around her bicep, the other looping around her stomach as he picked her up with ridiculous ease and set her on her feet.  She caught her balance quickly and stepped away, glaring daggers at him as she brushed dirt and bits of gravel from her clothing and picked grains of sand out of her palms.  "It looks like we came out right at the beginning.  Our target should be coming this way in a moment or two."  He held out his hand.  "Character Analysis Device?"

Gabs sighed and nodded, unzipping the duffle bag and searching through it.  Her eyebrows drew together in frustration as she seemed to lay hands on absolutely everything in the duffle bag except for that particular device, and with an exasperated exhalation, she sat gingerly on the side of the pavement.

She and Ice were at the edge of a road, where the asphalt degenerated into gravel and from there, into nothing.  The landscape outside of the road was gray and flat.  Only the road, which was narrow and winding, appeared in any real detail.  Ice eyed the terrain with distaste.  "Gabriella, didn’t you recently post the first chapter of an original story at fictionpress.com?"

Gabs nodded, still searching for the Character Analysis Device.  "Yeah, why?"

"Wasn’t the main thing your reviewers complained about the fact that you included too much setting description?"  Ice’s eyes narrowed as he spotted a figure coming toward them along the road.  Her hair was red and black, she was dressed in black grunge clothing, and her lips were painted black against her pale skin, an effect that Ice frankly found disgusting.  He’d brought his own pen and spiral notebook along, and his neat, back-slanting cursive quickly began to cover the small pages.  Possessing dual-colored hair.

Gabrielle rose to her feet and pressed the Character Analysis Device into his chest, glancing at his writing in the meantime.  "No can-do," she told him regretfully.  "She states later that her hair is black and she intentionally put red highlights in it.  Since it’s a modern canon, that’s perfectly reasonable."

Ice rolled his eyes and drew a neat line through the charge.  He accepted the squarish device from his partner and aimed it at the girl, thumb holding down the mute button.

>>>ORCHID LYNX, ORIGINAL CHARACTER – MARY SUE...

He nodded absently, having been expecting this, and tucked the device into his inner jacket pocket, where it would be more readily at hand.  "If you’re so determined to alter my clothing," he suggested dryly, "you might consider something a bit more utilitarian, such as a belt or backpack with Velcro or zipper compartments, so that we can keep our equipment organized.  Or jackets and pants with a few more appropriately sized pockets."

She nodded, actually considering that, and they leaned together to watch as Orchid knelt and picked up a shining golden ring that just happened to be lying there, in the road.

"Should I ask how it got there?" Ice muttered.

"Plot hole," Gabs whispered back.  "And a gratuitous one, at that.  You can add that to the charge list."

He plucked the cap from his pen and held it in his teeth as he quickly wrote down the charge.  As he did so, the Sue slipped the ring onto her finger and walked off down the road.

"Temporal-spatial distortion!" Gabs warned, sliding her arm through his and squeezing.  "Hang on!"

"You mean, that was the only thing of worth that happened in this chap--"

Ice’s words were swept away with the scenery as the entire world turned to gray.

***

Ice’s back hit a hard surface with a metallic crash, and he rubbed his temples, trying to reorient himself as hundreds of gray figures swarmed around him.  He pushed away from the wall of lockers (for that was what he had slammed into, a wall of featureless, gray lockers), and stood like a bulwark in the midst of those figures, practically daring any of them to jostle him.  None of them seemed willing to take that dare, and Gabrielle took advantage of the calm space around Ice to pull herself back together.

"A high school," Ice said with obvious distaste.  "This is the one thing I truly detested about The Vampire Diaries.  A five-hundred-year-old vampire, if he wished to continue his schooling, would attend a university.  He would not go to high school.  High school is a circle of hell which I am eternally thankful for never having to endure.  The only people who want to return to high school once they have experienced college are shallow, vapid prom queens who are suddenly no longer popular and do not manage to fall in with an appropriate sorority."

"Be that as it may," Gabs said cheerfully, "this is where the Sue is, so this is where we are."  She brushed herself off and glanced up, eyes glazing over slightly as she scanned the words.  "In a minute, these halls will empty and we’ll have a clear shot at her.  Or we could go out to the courtyard.  She’ll be headed out there to angst about how humans are vermin and she hates the whole world in a few minutes."  She scanned a little further, then smiled bitterly.  "Oh, look, we get to learn her eye-color.  Red-brown.  Of course, she’s Lamia, so we can’t put that on the charge list either.  However, you can write down ‘mixing canons’… Nightworld canon and The Forbidden Game canon are not the same, and are not compatible."

"Are you sure about that?" he inquired, adding it anyway. In all honesty, Ice couldn’t have cared less whether the charge were fair or not.  His work ethic was not particularly strong.

She nodded.  "If the Nightworld existed in The Forbidden Game, we would have seen clues of it.  There’s simply no way Julian wouldn’t have known about it, and he makes references to vampires and werewolves at several points, and clearly states that they don’t exist."

"Then The Vampire Diaries isn’t compatible with The Forbidden Game either," Ice pointed out.  "Which makes me one giant, raging plot hole."

She smiled affectionately and elbowed him.  "Not anymore.  Now you’re a PPC agent," she said proudly, "and your plot-holeness has been pardoned by virtue of good behavior."

Ice blinked at her.

"Um… well, beneficial behavior.  Since ‘good’ is kind of… a subjective term.  Especially with you."

He smiled fondly and patted her patronizingly on the head.  "You’re cute," he said simply, then stepped out into the suddenly-empty hallway.  "Are we counting finding the discarded ring as a breach of canon, or do we have to wait even longer to kill her?"

Gabrielle thought about that for a moment, fingers pressed to the roughness of her lips.  "Well, she apparently decided to cut class because it’s near the end of the year, and thus she doesn’t have anything to lose… I mean, aside from exams, which make up who-knows-how-much of her final grade… but that’s not a canon breach, per se.  Put it on the charge list, though – disregarding the laws of logic."

He chuckled and wrote it down.  "Picky," he accused fondly, smirking at Gabs as she tossed her hair imperiously.

"I’m just hoping the author is in high school by now.  If she isn’t, she’s actually an exceptional writer.  She just needs to work on some better OCs."

"That was you in eighth grade," he pointed out.

She nodded.  "Yep.  Which is why I plan to CC this sucker after we’ve killed the Sue.  She could go far if she’d broaden her horizons."  She glanced up and nodded at him.  "We should get moving.  She’ll finish angsting in just a minute and then Julian will step in and we’ll have our first major breach of canon."

Ice also looked over The Words and grimaced.  "He can’t just take the ring back?" he muttered.  "It does belong to him.  He could argue claim if anyone complained."

She patted him.  "You know the rules of Niflheim much better than most of these authors.  Cut her some slack and let’s go watch her kick the crap out of Julian."

"I assume that’s the aforementioned canon-breach?" Ice said dryly as they headed toward the exit.

Gabs chuckled.  "A Lamia vampire taking Julian off-guard?  Yep.  I’d say that’s definitely anti-canon."

"Lamia are the weakest vampires Smith created," Ice grumbled, shielding his eyes as they stepped out into the sunshine and hissing at the late-spring warmth.  "Even if he’d somehow been turned into a human, with all his experience, Julian should stand a decent chance against one.  This is inexcusable.  Can we kill her yet?"

Gabs shook her head.  "No.  OOC!Julian would likely interfere, as most lust-objects do when a Sue is threatened.  But we’ve got the perfect opportunity coming up."  She stopped and put a hand out to stop him as well.  Ahead of them, Julian in all his spine-tingling glory was speaking to the Sue.

Ice pointed the Character Analysis Device at Julian and hiked an eyebrow at the results.

>>> JULIAN, DARK ELF, CANON – 12.2% CHARACTER BREACH

"Well, that’s not bad."

She shook her head, lips pursed as she folded her arms across her chest.  "No, in the beginning, it’s not bad," she said earnestly.  "But it gets worse, particularly where he doesn’t immediately kill her for tackling him, which is coming up in a minute."

They watched, Ice listening in on the conversation with his far superior hearing, as Julian and Orchid chatted about school, then about the ring she had found.  She let him see it, and he promptly made as if to walk off with it.  As he did so, she growled, jumped up, and leaped over a bench and a table to throw herself at his unprotected back.  They went tumbling to the ground and Julian lay stunned as the Sue yanked the ring from his hand, threatened him, and stomped off in a huff.

Ice blinked.  "Gabriella… do you happen to have The Forbidden Game Trilogy on you at this moment?" 

She dug through her duffle bag and tossed the one-volume collector’s edition at him.  He caught it easily without looking and flipped through the pages.  "I just need to check.  Ah, here it is, 'It was possible to take him by surprise, but he didn’t stay nonplussed long…' and here, '…even his snake-quick reflexes couldn’t save him.' Right here, Jenny does manage to push him into his own portal, but within the span of a single second, he’s back on her tail.  He doesn’t just sit around with his jaw hanging open, waiting…."

"I know," Gabrielle placated.  "You can write that up on the charge list, if you like.  But it’ll have to wait a minute.  We’re about to be time-warped again."

"Where to?"  He wrapped an arm, stronger than steel, around her waist.

"The Abyss," she told him, "also known as calculus.  And right after that, we’ll get to see Julian struggling to plot revenge against her rather than moon, and then we get to skip a whole week while Julian apparently sits on his ass and does nothing…."

"Find the portal generator," he snapped, and then the world went black.

***

They landed in Mrs. York’s Calculus class, Ice holding Gabrielle against him and reaching out to support them both against the wall at the rear of the classroom.  Orchid was sitting low in her desk, so low that her chin dipped below the writing surface.  When his head cleared, Ice found it odd that neither the students nor the teacher seemed to notice this odd behavior, but he dismissed it, eyeing Gabrielle with impatience.  "Pull yourself together," he said crisply.  "And get that Portal Generator.  I can afford to miss her thinking about how she can’t stop thinking about a Dark Elf."

With numb fingers that didn’t seem to work exactly right, Gabs unzipped the duffle bag and pawed through it.  Ice was right, she mused.  They needed clothes with pockets and utility belts.  She’d get started on that as soon as they got home.

"While it’s very flattering that…"  The Sue sat up as his voice reached her sensitive ears, and he dragged them both down behind a desk, switching to telepathic communication.  ~…that you take my advice seriously, I’d rather you concentrated on finding the damned generator,~ he admonished.

She whipped it out and waved it in his face.  ~Here, asshole,~ she growled.  ~Take it!~

He plucked it from her hand and quickly programmed it, glancing up to check The Words.  "Find the Disguise Generator.  I know just how we can get her, assuming we can get past Julian."

Gabs smiled, but it was a faltering smile.  "Niflheim?  Ice, isn’t that really risky?  Especially since Julian hasn’t, apparently, taken any pains to keep the rest of the Dokkalfar out of his playing field?  If they smell you…."

"Which is why we need to be disguised.  If we’re supposed to be there, the canons won’t bat an eye, now, will they?  And these ridiculously fragile minions Julian’s spawned to harass the Sue will be perfect.  Besides… it’s not Niflheim.  It’s an in-between place, like the More Games store, or the cafeteria from The Chase.  We should be safe enough.  Now, hurry before we’re in the Shadow World prior to our consent."

She sighed, still eyeing him uncertainly, and dug the Disguise Generator out of her duffle bag as he pressed the button and opened the portal.  "Through," he commanded.  "Before she time warps us again."

"Let’s do the Time Warp again!" Gabs sang as she scrambled through the portal.

Ice broke into a grin as he somersaulted through after her, coming up in a crouch and eyeing their surroundings.  A long shudder went through his body and he gritted his teeth, steeling himself.  He hated Niflheim passionately.  The last time he had been here… no, he wasn’t going to think about that.  He wasn’t going to give them fear or suffering to latch onto.

Gabrielle, meanwhile, stood up and looked around, rubbing her arms as goose bumps sprang up on her skin.  Her chocolate eyes widened and she let out a cry of terror, twisting to look behind her, and out to both sides, taking a stumbling step and beginning to pant.  "What is this?" she snarled at Ice.  "What is this?  What the Hell?  Irilisan!"  Ice surged up from the ground and wrapped his arms around her.  Without even meaning to, this Sue was playing on their worst fears.

They were standing on an endless plain of wispy fog that stretched on forever in every direction.  They couldn’t see their own feet.  The only light seemed to be seeping up from the ground, giving them only the vaguest visibility to work with.  To Ice, the terrain itself resembled some parts of Niflheim, and seeing the fog, and the darkness, after so long made all his muscles quiver.   Gabs, however, had a slightly different fear.  Ever since she had been a little girl, watching cartoons, one animation device had bothered her in particular: sometimes a character, usually Daffy Duck™, would be stranded by a cruel artist on an endless page of white.  All the scenery, and all the other characters, would be erased.  There was no up or down.  There were no markers to determine distance.  The character could run in circles, but would see absolutely nothing and no one, and hear nothing but his own voice.  For some reason, the prospect of being alone and stranded in endless nothing, on stark white, terrified the living daylights out of his partner and though this wasn’t quite that, it was damned similar.  She’d had a few dreams to this effect, and the fact that it was real now seemed to have shocked her into a panic attack.

Ice had never bothered to hone his skills of calming females, so he just held her tightly where she was, hoping she would come down all on her own.  Her mind was whirling, throwing out fears such as, ‘What if we can never leave?  What if we’re stuck here?  What if the Shadowmen get a hold of us?’

That last one, he had to admit, was a damned good thing to be afraid of.

However, one of the things he admired about Gabrielle was her ability to stay logical in every situation.  Despite her creativity, and her psychosis, certain parts of her mind just would not bend to their surroundings.

~We have a portal generator,~ she told herself.  ~We can leave here any time.  What if it gets broken? Ice can use every piece of machinery known to man.  He can fix it.  What if he can’t? He escaped this place once.  He could escape it again.  If worse came to worse, I could convince Julian to let us out.  Oh, PLEASE.  Julian wouldn’t listen to me!  Yes, yes he WOULD.  People listen to me.  I can be convincing.  I can also spot loopholes with the best of them.  I can deal with him.  Deal with a Shadowman?  You’re insane!  We came here of our own volition.  He can’t keep us here.  Wait, I know the spell to get back home!  We can leave if we can find a surface to carve the rune circle in!  Where are you going to find a surface on this endless plain of nothingness??~

He squeezed her and her breathing slowed, stuttering as she got a grip on herself.  ~It won’t come up,~ she told herself calmly.  ~And if it does… we’ll think of something.  We’ll think of something.~

"Can you stand on your own now without passing out?" Ice’s smooth, cold voice inquired in her ear, and she nodded.

"Yeah.  I’m okay."  She pushed away from him slowly, taking deep breaths and tightening her jaw stubbornly.  He smiled.  When her jaw tightened that way, there was absolutely no shaking her.  "Daijobu desu."

"Good.  Let’s take this one step at a time, shall we?  We can’t afford to waste time.  Julian’s about to bring his future love here, and he’ll notice our presence if we’re not disguised by then.  There are apparently trees, and caves, and boulders scattered throughout the grid.  We can hide there if we can find them, and join the hunt once it gets going."

She nodded and scanned The Words, searching for the description of Julian’s minions before programming the Disguise Generator.  She pressed the activation button and she and Ice were swathed in dark cloth, turned into featureless, black, humanoid shapes.  Pocketing the disguise generator, she shifted her mask until she could see out of it.  Ice did the same.

"Let’s get going," he said shortly as she fell into step at his shoulder.

"Once the Game gets started," Gabrielle told him, "we’ll have to be careful.  Besides just the regular plot holes, there will be other holes around – portals to the real Niflheim.  Fall in, and things will go very bad, very quickly."

Ice nodded.

They walked.  And walked.  And walked, and walked, and walked some more.  Gabrielle was beginning to wonder if they were going in circles, or if there really was any actual cover anywhere in this bizarre demi-world, when Ice straightened and stopped her.  "There’s a cave," he murmured, pointing.  She squinted, but though her night vision was exceptional, her human eyes couldn’t pick out anything against the darkness.  "I think the Sue takes refuge in it at some point."

Gabrielle turned her face up toward him, her eyes narrowing dangerously.  Her voice was cheerful.  "Oooh, ambush."

He patted her and they set off again.  After a few more moments, Gabrielle could see the grayness of a rocky mound against the ebony curtain that surrounded them, and she made for it gratefully.  Ice followed, twitching periodically and looking around.  "She’s here," he said just as they were coming up on the cave.  "Julian’s explaining the Game to her."  He waited a moment, head cocked, then laughed melodically.  The sound was not unlike the shattering of crystal against a marble floor, and it sent a shiver up Gabrielle’s spine.  "Fool of a girl.  She didn’t demand to know his prize.  So confident that she’ll win, though of course, the author has her lose.  And then has Julian release her.  Can I put that on the charge list?"

"You can put a lot on the charge list that we skipped," Gabrielle told him.  "For instance, she manages to read Julian’s mind and somehow does not go insane from the experience.  I know L.J. didn’t really clear that little part up in her story, but she did point out over and over that the Dokkalfar are an intelligence so alien to Midgardians that it seems like insanity.  Nice, how she implied a tie-in with the Cthulu mythos, dontcha think?  Anyway, apparently all that’s going on in Julian’s mind is Jenny, so she suddenly knows everything about him.  Which is questionable, at best."

"Julian would be obsessed with Jenny," Ice pointed out with mild disdain.

"Yes, but she wouldn’t be able to read a coherent history from him, I don’t think.  What kind of mental shields do you think he’s developed, being what he is?  And anyway, even without that, there’s lots more – she lost a human soulmate to cancer.  Oh, tragedy, angst!  She made Julian mistake her for a human.  As old as he is, I somehow doubt that he’d ever make that mistake.  Julian is observant.  Her inhuman grace, her slow breathing, and her eye color most of all, would have tipped him off.  Instead, he’s acting like he doesn’t even know what a vampire IS.  And if she’s trying to say that the Nightworld and The Forbidden Game took place in two different worlds, that’s fine, but Julian wouldn’t have access to the Nightworld through vision or shadow because it’s in an entirely different UNIVERSE…."

Ice rubbed his temples.  "I’m aware of the many, many plot holes, my dear.  Please, get on with the actual charges?"

She looked mildly sheepish.  "Um, right.  Uh, well, she manages to go one-on-one with Julian and hold her own for a whole minute before he takes her seriously.  If I’m not mistaken, Dee tried the same thing and he took her out hard before she could try more than one hit.  There’s no way he’d let the Sue get in several before he reacted.  So, I guess you could call it toeing the line of god-playing.  She is not afraid when he vamps at her.  That is god-playing.  She bites him.  That’s just stupid.  Then, she offers to give him the ring for free and he insists on playing a game for it.  Julian cuts his losses when he has what he wants.  That much is proven from the first book in the trilogy when he lets the others go.  But we’ll be able to come down on her like a ton of bricks when she gets in here and starts using Witch powers because Julian bound her Lamia ones."

"You can be a Witch/Lamia," Ice pointed out.  "Hunter Redfern’s daughters with Maeve Harman spawned a whole line of genealogy that allows…."

"Do you see Lily Redfern using magick?" Gabs asked him dryly.  "Do you see Thea Harman drinking blood?"

He smiled.  "No, but they could have chosen that.  Poppy North, after becoming a vampire, still had her prescience."

She paused.  "True.  I suppose that means that the only reason there aren’t more Witch/Lamia is that they’re so irritable toward each other, so they choose which half of their nature they want to nurture, so technically they could have both?"

"This is an argument for another time," he pointed out, almost gently.  "I heard the Sue scream.  She’s not far away."

"Oh, FINE.  Well, wait, she can’t be a Lamia with Witch blood.  She’d have to be descended from Roseclear, and if she was, she’d be a Witch, not a Vampire.  So go ahead and put that down – impossible relation to a canon character."

Ice snorted and wrote it down, eyeing their charge list.  "It doesn’t seem like enough.  Should we wait until Julian actually lets her go of his own free will, after winning the Game, and her? He wasn’t even willing to do that for Jenny."

"Yes, he stays mostly in character until it comes to actually hurting or inconveniencing Orchid," she grumbled.  "Funny, that."

"She’s coming this way."  Ice scanned the words.  "Hmm.  There’s a part up ahead where he tells her she has the same inner light as Jenny had.  Which is pure bullshit, in my most humble opinion.  That would be a very good thing to have on the charge list – killing and upstaging a canon character."  He wrote it down and she nodded. 

"So we can kill her now?"

"Yes.  Hush."

They huddled in the blackness of the cave as the Sue came stumbling in, panting and looking very tired, though neither her clothes nor her hair seemed out of place, thanks to the magic of Sue-ness.  She took off Jenny’s ring (Gabs would have thought she’d have thrown the damned thing away by now, since it was the cause of all this trouble), and began to focus, trying to cast a Light spell into it.  Of course, despite the fact that she had no training in magick OR martial arts, she managed to sink into meditation perfectly on the first try and call forth her ‘inner light’.  Gabrielle clenched her fists, wanting desperately to hurt the girl for that, but she managed to remain calm.  Ice’s hand on her shoulder helped.

The ring began to glow and the Sue began to rejoice.  Gabs removed a thin, wooden stylus from her duffle bag.  It should be strong enough to puncture the Sue’s chest and skewer her heart, or so Gabrielle hoped.  ~I’m getting some lignum vitae,~ she thought ruefully.  She zipped her bag shut and started to creep toward the Sue.

Orchid’s hearing wasn’t terrible.  She jumped up from her seat and peered into the shadows where the two PPC agents hid.  Even as Ice faded into thin air and reappeared behind her, one hand snaking around her stomach and the other covering her mouth, Gabrielle stalked toward her with the stylus clenched in one fist. 

"Orchid Lynx," she said darkly, "You are accused of creating plot holes, of merging two incompatible canons, of interfering with the character of the Dark Elf, Julian, of making Julian fall in love with you, a Lamia whom he’s only barely met, and of claiming to have the same Inner Light as Jenny when Jenny was a sickeningly sweet girl who wouldn’t harm a fly, and you are a Lamia punk who despises the human race and is quick to perpetrate violence on those who have barely wronged you. For making Julian do completely illogical things, for causing massive Temporal-Spatial distortions, for being an impossible relation to a Nightworld canon character, for meditating and casting a spell correctly on your first try when it takes the REST of us years to learn to do it, for bending the laws of logic, killing and upstaging a canon character, and making Julian a wimp, for reading the mind of a Dark Elf and not going insane, making Julian give up his prize, annoying PPC agents, and lastly for being a Mary Sue, you are hereby condemned to die.  Wow, that was a longer list than we thought it would be.  Any last words?"

The Sue struggled against Ice’s grip, kicking and flailing at him and spitting out curses that were muffled beyond recognition by the hand he held over her mouth.  She snarled and bit down on Ice’s hand.  Ice hissed.  If she drank any of his blood, who knew what Power it might give her?

"Kill her!" he snapped at Gabrielle.

She lunged forward, placed a hand on the Sue’s chest, and stabbed the stylus in between her ribs.  It was the length of a new pencil and she forced it all the way through until the flesh closed over the end of it and the tip scraped against the shoulder blade.  The Sue let out a whimper and went limp, and Ice dropped her in disgust.

"What shall we do with her?" he snarled, giving the body a good kick.  Like a punted football, it flew up into the ceiling of the cave, then landed with a sickening crunch.  Gabrielle ducked the flying corpse and eyed Ice warily, edging toward it as he folded his arms and bared his fangs.

"Well," she said ponderously, "I’ve got an idea…."

***

"This is a bad idea," Ice muttered under his breath as he followed Gabrielle through the darkened, candle-lit hall of a Victorian house, the odd, creepy wallpaper absorbing the light in such a way as to cast weird shadows across the walls.  "This is a very bad idea.  This is Julian’s realm.  He’ll know we don’t belong here!"

"Relax," she hissed.  "I put us here near the end of The Hunter.  He’s upstairs with Jenny, making with the smoochies and totally distracted.  She’s about to shut him in the closet.  All we have to do is attract some predatory attention and we’ll be all set."  She crept forward, feet making quiet scuffling noises on the thin carpet. 

One of Ice’s hands was engaged with the Sue, holding her like a sack of potatoes over his shoulder.  The other snapped out and grabbed Gabrielle’s shoulder hard enough to bruise, causing her to yelp in surprise.  "It would have been infinitely wiser," he growled, "to have gone to the little stream Tom found near the end of The Chase and buried her withered corpse beneath it.  Now, we have company."

"What do you smell?" she asked, pulling away and rubbing her shoulder.

Ice lifted his head and scented the breeze, much like a cat would, nostrils flaring and eyelashes lowering.  "Wolf."

"Put her down, then," Gabs told him, "and lets go.  Here, Lurker, Lurker, Lurker!  Who’s a good boy, den?  Come have a snack!  We’ve got a little treat for you!"

"It’s a mummy," Ice said in exasperation.

"And he’s a crinos.  He’ll eat anything.  Here, wolfy, wolfy, wolfy!"

There was a shuffling step and the sound of something very, very large breathing in the darkness ahead of them.  "Portal," Gabs hissed.

Ice didn’t need to be told twice.

They tumbled back into Response Center #8123 just as the sound of ripping, tearing flesh reached their ears.  The portal dwindled to a dot behind them and disappeared, and Gabs picked herself up, brushing her uniform off in relief. 

"Well, a lot that could have gone wrong, didn’t!" she said cheerfully.

Ice eyed her from the floor.  "And a lot of risks that didn’t need to be taken, were taken."

She stuck her tongue out at him.  "Do you want those fancy-shmancy uniforms with many pockets or not, smart-ass?  Be nice to your seamstress."

"There are professional tailors who, for the right amount of money, would be more than happy to--" Ice began, but before he could finish that sentence, the Narrative Laws of Comedy came crashing down on his head.

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!!

Gabs looked up at the console in annoyance.  Honestly, the thing was as irritating as those people who didn’t turn their cell phones off in restaurants and movie theatres.

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!

She froze. 

"Ice," she shouted over the console.  "I have an idea!"

"Please share!" he returned, fiddling with the volume controls uselessly.

Gabrielle grinned, reached over, and pressed the ‘receive’ button to accept the file.  Ice glanced at her.

"Ring tones!" she announced.

He groaned.

~OWARI~