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