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.))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.