Chapter 3: Pirates don’t cry

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

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

"DYLANAE!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You cried when…."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You don’t want to know."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She and Dylanae scrambled back into the response center.

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE END

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

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

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

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

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

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

~BEEEEEE-- ~

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He gave her a dry look.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gabs fell with a shriek into the portal.

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ice blinked at her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Well, that’s not bad."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ice nodded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"So we can kill her now?"

"Yes.  Hush."

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

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

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

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

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

"Kill her!" he snapped at Gabrielle.

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ice didn’t need to be told twice.

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

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

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

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

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

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!!

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

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!

She froze. 

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

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

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

"Ring tones!" she announced.

He groaned.

~OWARI~