“Is this it?”
The question was not an unusual one
for the halls of PPC Headquarters, but the speaker was. She was out of uniform,
and stood staring at an unmarked door as if it held the key to the salvation of
the universe. Since almost all the occupied doors were marked, this was
noteworthy in itself. The difficulty, generally, was with finding the rooms,
not identifying them. So the girl was earning some odd looks as she regarded
the door. The fact that she was engaged in conversation with herself was a
comparatively minor point. This was, after all, the PPC.
“I mean, it looks like it,” she was
saying to herself, “but everything in this place looks the same, so how am I
supposed to know? Well, Cygna, I don’t know how you’re supposed to know! Just
knock, for crying out loud. But what if I'm wrong? Oh, well. Do it anyway.
Fine, fine, I’m knocking, I’m knocking.” Accordingly, she tapped once on the
door. “Um, excuse me?” she said.
The door was promptly opened to
reveal a young woman in the uniform of the Anime Department. “Yeah?” she asked.
“You the new kid?”
“Possibly,” admitted the girl. “Are
you Janet?”
“Yeah, I am.”
“Then yes, I’m the new kid. Cygna,
at your service. Can I come in?”
Inside the
“Argh! The
stupid shelf’s too small! Stupid annoying stupid furniture of stupidity!”
* * *
About an hour later, however one
measures time in Headquarters, an unpacked and uniformed Cygna rejoined Janet
in the main room.
“Done,” she groaned. “Finally. I
hate cleaning up, really I do. So, what’s up?”
“Did you get the lecture?” Janet
asked. Cygna shook her head, so Janet continued, “Welcome to the PPC. You get
used to it. We’re in the
“Um, yeah. Why isn’t the door
labeled?”
“Got me. There’re supposed to be
plaques on all the full Centers. C’mon, let’s go look.”
When they looked, however, a shiny
new plaque was already in place.
“Oh,” said Cygna, “guess they fixed
it.”
The plaque read:
Agents Janet Ackerly and Cygna Hoshiko
Cygna stared at it for a moment,
then let out an, “All right!”
Janet blinked at her. “What?”
“We’re 1996! The Apocalypse is now!”
“Riiiight…”
Janet chose to pretend her partner had not spoken, and went back inside. “You gonna stand outside and stare at that thing all day?”
"Nope!" Cheered for some
reason by the appearance of the plaque, Cygna all but bounced into the
[Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!!!]
Startled, Cygna jumped and fell out
of her chair. Janet, being already used to the console's direct line to the
Narrative Laws of Comedy, did neither, but leaned over her partner's groaning
body to read the submission.
"All right, what's--Oh. Say,
Cygna, what's your favorite character in Sakura?"
Cygna sat up and grumbled,
"Touya. Why?"
"I don't think you want to see
this, then."
As human nature dictates, Cygna
immediately pulled herself up on the console to get a better look. "Does
she go after Touya? She does, doesn't she? Who does she--Holy something!" The assassin immediately fled back to her room, grabbed a
bag, and started shoving things into it apparently at random. Janet couldn't
recognize half of the things Cygna flung into her pack, but they seemed to
include daggers, copies of the manga, and...a poker?
In less than a minute, she was back, carrying her bag and looking none too
pleased by the story. "I get this one," she snarled. "No one,
but no one messes with Touya."
Janet shrugged. "Suits me just
fine. What disguises d'you want? It's kinda vague."
"Let's see." Cygna turned
reluctantly back to the fic. "There aren't any
crowd scenes or bit parts. They never even leave their houses! I'd say our best
bet is to be Generic Evil Minions (TM)." Somehow, she managed to pronounce
the trademark symbol. "That gives us an excuse to kill her."
"Works for me. I've got the CAD
and Remote Activator; let's go."
"Do we have to?"
"Hey, sooner we start, sooner
we kill."
* * *
The portal dropped the two Agents in
pitch darkness.
"Ow,"
said Cygna. "You're on my foot. Get off!"
"Sorry," said Janet.
"Where are we?"
"Author's notes, I think."
"Oh. Ohhhhhhh,
crud, I don't like the sound of--"
Due to my nature
readers my fic's are mainly love stories.
The booming of
the author's note echoed around the void. Cygna and Janet groaned and covered
their ears.
"Ow. Wait, did she just say what I think she said? Her
romance writing is caused by nature readers?" Cygna risked the din to pull
out her notebook and a pencil. "Wouldn't nature readers cause nature
writing? One sentence, one charge of Suvian logic.
This bodes no good. And look!" Cygna gestured at the Words as still more
author-blather floated by. "She uses "'s" for plurals. Get her
for cruelty to grammar. And to us."
"Right.
Confusing plurals and possessives. Oh, crap. Here comes the fic!"
With a wrench,
the two assassins were pulled from the pre-story void and dumped
unceremoniously into the bushes beside the Kinomoto house. This was just as
well for them, since the Sue was standing on the steps, and their Generic Evil
Minion disguises were not proof against non-canon eyes.
"Okay,"
Janet began, "what's--Woah!" The entire
setting blurred with speed as the fic rushed through
a vast amount of exposition in about five sentences. "Get her for temporal
distortion, please. And implausible whatsit,
background. She appeared on their doorstep and they took her in? What is she, a
cat?"
"They'd
probably take her to, you know, the police," agreed Cygna. "Civic
authority always gets ignored in badfic. Hey, she got
rid of Yukito!" She scribbled frantically. "Moving Yukito to
"Okay."
Janet took the notebook and started to write. "She makes the Cards react
to her. She's got an all-new set of Cards. I hate that; there were either 53 or
19, no more. Looks animeverse, so 53. There cannot be
any more without a bloody good explanation."
Cygna giggled
unexpectedly. "You shall count to fifty-three, and fifty-three shall be
the number of your counting. Do not under any circumstances proceed to
fifty-four. One hundred and six is right out," she paraphrased. "I
can't wait until Clow starts Numerology for Dummies. Gods know the Sues need
it."
Janet nodded
absently and continued. "She's got a Magical Cute Animal Friend, Kia, who
is--oh, blast--another guardian. What're we going to do with Kia? She's just an
exposition device, doesn't even appear after this. No, take it back, she does.
Flaming Balrog guts! We've gotta charge and kill her,
too. What else in the paragraph of accelerated exposition?"
"Gah!" Cygna, who had been looking at the Words, jumped
bolt upright in horror. "She's made herself the third reincarnation of
Clow Reed! And created a whole new villain-type person! And,
"whilst"? There is a correct way to use Shakespearean English, and
this is not it. And then...oh, Eru! Give me my
notebook, so I can write this down myself." She grabbed the item in
question from a still-motion sick Janet and stabbed her pencil at it violently.
"Needing to identify Touya via in-text author's notes, having strong
feelings for said Touya and suppressing it...She does say he's in a
relationship, though. That could be a good sign. No, wait, Yukito's away. Crud.
I pray, I pray that she remembers the canon. Dear sweet Eru,
Varda, Verra, and whoever
else is available, let her remember the canon romances."
The paragraph
came to an abrupt end with the arrival of a letter from Yukito, and the two
dizzy Agents followed the Sue inside to observe more closely. Not that they
wanted to be any closer, but missing a charge was one sure way to get yourself
in trouble with the S.O. Surprisingly, the paragraph had passed without any
physical description, an effect that manifested in the Sue looking, for no
reason the Agents could fathom, like a blurred copy of Nadeshiko Kinomoto.
"Hey there's
a letter here from away" said Marita coming in with the morning's mail, no
sooner had she spoken Touya and Sakura rushed to see.
"As opposed
to what? A letter from right here?" snarked
Cygna. "Aren't all letters from 'away'? That's another count of Suvian logic, plus grammatical weirdness. Again."
"It's not gonna stop any time soon," said Janet. "Get used
to it."
"But I hate
bad grammar! Oh, wait. Argue later. Fic now."
Marita-Sue
proceeded to watch Touya tease Sakura ("An in-character moment!"
gasped Cygna. "Praise the lord!"), then steal the letter out of
Touya's hand and read it. Yukito was "wrighting"
to say that he was coming home because Yue was insisting, and would need to
stay with them for a bit ("Didn't he have a huge house all to
himself?" Janet asked. "How many guest bedrooms do the Kinomotos have?" added Cygna.). The letter ended, and
Cygna had just time to scrawl, "Reading other people's mail," on the
charge list before the paragraph unaccountably failed to break for a new scene.
The Sue had
"ambled into the kitchen on her way there," although where she was
going was unspecified. Touya was asleep on a couch that had, somehow, appeared
in the dining room so as to be visible from the kitchen. Cygna and Janet rolled
their eyes. Marita (Cygna recollected herself and added, "Having an
improbable name," to the charge list)...well, it wasn't nice.
he just looked so
peaceful she thought coming toward the chair "why can't you be mine"
she whispered pretending to caress her hand across Touya's soft cheek then whisking
away a stray hair from his face, her heart nearly leapt from her chest as he
moved slightly to her touch but he did not rouse from his sleep.
"Gah!" Cygna
screamed, as quietly as she could manage. She began weaving through improbably
placed furniture to attack the Sue, until Janet caught her in an armlock.
"Don't kill
her yet," she whispered. "We need the rest of the charges. Just write
it down." Cygna sighed, but acquiesced.
"Failure to
capitalize, cruelty to punctuation, complete and utter over-sugary sap..."
Her ramblings were cut off by the sudden appearance of Sakura "literally
out of thin air" to tackle Marita away from a sudden explosion. "Ack! When did Sakura learn to teleport? And causing her to
say an entire sentence in capitals. This Sue's really racking up the
charges."
"Did Sakura
tackle Marita or the storm of rubble?" asked Janet, with some
justification since the Words had been so unclear that Sakura had just shoved
both the Sue and a heap of rock to the ground. "And where the heck are the
paragraph breaks?"
Touya instantly
sprang to his feet at the sound of the commotion "!!!SAKURA,
MARITA!!!" he cried frantically trying to free them from the rubble, a
devilish laugh suddenly filled the air, Touya spun round to see a guy about his
age standing casually by the gaping hole in the house.
"Owowow, run-on of evil doom!" Cygna squealed.
"Run-on sentences, causing Touya to use three exclamation points both
before and after his sentence, thus proving him to have a diseased mind, and
creating a stupid villain."
"Look at the
villain's description." Janet gestured. "Yellow eyes, yellow
hair...is that Kero?"
"Who the
hell are you"
The monotone,
unpunctuated sentence echoed through the air, victim of failure to indicate a
speaker. Janet groaned. As the generic villain, who introduced himself as Rei Jin Tai and claimed to be the descendant of the fic's Official Villain, Kodu Tai,
started attacking Touya with a knife, she groaned louder. "He's got enough
power to blow in at least two walls, right? So why is he using a dagger, not
magic?"
"It's on the
list," replied Cygna.
On seeing this Rei Jin began to kick him around taking in much pleasure in
seeing his pain, suddenly from the pile of rubble where Sakura and Marita lay a
huge light emanated so intense it moved the loose concrete aside. Rei Jin spun round with a start but before he could see
what it was he was engulfed by the light and destroyed, Touya carefully lifted
his head to see what had happened to his great shock there floating before him in
a beacon of sparkling glory he saw his mothers angelic apparition in Marita
cradling the injured Sakura
"Flaming
Denethor!" Janet proceeded to pick up a convenient piece of rubble and hit
herself with it. "Light can't move concrete. Photons just don't do
that."
"Janet, did
that last sentence make any sense to you?" asked Cygna. "The one
with--Touya's mothers?!" And
indeed, there were a whole host of chibi-Nadeshikos
holding Sakura. They all seemed to be looking like Marita as well.
"Run-ons and more run-ons. By the by, why are you using LotR-slang?"
"Most people
do at HQ, and I picked it up. Good books, but the fic
is rotten."
"True."
Cygna returned her attention to the fic. The noise
she made could best be described as "Omgftngah?!"
Once again, Janet had to physically prevent her from eviscerating the Sue then
and there.
"Cygna, no.
We haven't charged her, and she hasn't done half the stuff yet, and--no!"
"But-did you
see? She turned Marita into Nadeshiko's reincarnation! She made Sakura into
Clow's reincarnation rather than Fujitaka! She's
going to write Touya into a relationship with his mother's reincarnation,
for crying out loud!" The red-headed assassin was literally foaming at the
mouth. "I mean, people make jokes about his mother issues, but this-! I'm
going to kill her! I'll hang her to within an inch of her life, and then I'll
cut out her guts and pour salt on them, and then I'll really get creative! I'll--"
"Yes,
yes," Janet said as soothingly as she could manage. "You can kill her
as painfully as you'd like once we finish. But not until then, okay? Just.
Calm. Down." Fortunately for their remaining undetected, Cygna did relax,
at least a bit, and sat through the long exposition, only commenting that,
"Well, now we know why the Sue ended up looking like Nadeshiko-san. The
Words tried to make the best of a bad job." At least, she did until
Nadeshiko mentioned that 'Eriole' was a fellow
incarnation of Clow.
"Look, a
mini!" she squealed, in happiness this time. "I need to register him,
and bring him home. C'mere, Eriole."
The small Spinel-reproduction fluttered over to the
two Agents and perched itself on Cygna's shoulder, where it remained for the
rest of the Eternal Paragraph of Expository Doom. Marita-Sue created two new
Cards to fix everything up, and then...the paragraph continued with Yukito's
arrival. The week had passed “unbelievably quickly”, giving the tired assassins
no time to rest. The spinning of the sun passing across the sky made Cygna
motion-sick, so it was Janet who noted down subject-verb disagreement, which
manifested in fusing Sakura and Touya temporarily into a single being, before
they got to what was arguably the best part of the fic.
Yue, being a
recent arrival and thus still in character, correctly deduced that Marita was
there to destroy them and attempted to do unto her as she was planning to do
unto them.
"Yesss!" said Janet, watching from the window.
"Go, Yue!" Unfortunately, Sakura stopped him, and the Sue's mind
control took over. Cygna whimpered as the expression of righteous anger left
his face, to be replaced by one of contrition and...love? She scrabbled for her
notebook yet again.
"She's being
inconsistent about name spellings, though both are technically correct, she
took over Yue's mind and made him fall in love with her, and she made Yukito
angst about frightening her. She is so dead." She yawned. "Ack. This extra-long paragraph is getting to me. How much
longer? And can we get an OOC reading?"
"Not much
till the chapter ends, and sure." Janet pulled the Canon Analysis Device
out of her pack, and aimed it at the groups outside.
[Marita. Human
female. Noncanon. Mary Sue.]
[Kia. Magical
construct. Noncanon. Cute Animal Friend.]
[Sakura Kinomoto.
Human female. Canon. Out of character 25.5%. Genetic warping.]
"Yeah, she
looks okay from here. Guess the genetic bit is the whole incarnation thing
sending her OOC. She's not too bad though."
“Hey, how’d you
get the new edition of the CAD? I didn’t know anyone outside of the SIELU had
them.”
“Did my
apprenticeship in Sufficiently Advanced Technology. One of the perks is getting
all the new gadgets.”
[Keroberos. Magical construct. Canon. Out of character
69.9%. Nonentity.]
"Cygna, d'you know what the nonentity bit is?"
"Well, he
didn't show up to save Sakura, and he didn't say a word to Yue even though he's
there. That's pretty OOC for him."
"Makes
sense."
[Yukito Tsukishiro. Human male/magical construct. Canon. Out of
character 10.1%. Circumstances.]
"Wow, that's
really low. I think the only problem is that the Sue changed the ficverse enough to distort him a trifle. Good. I like him
in character."
"I thought
you were a Touya luster."
"I am. But
Touya needs an in character Yukito. This is fact."
"Well, I'm
not sure you'll like this next one..."
[Touya Kinomoto.
Human male. Canon. Out of character 21.2%. Suemance
rising.]
"That wasn't
bad at all."
"It'll get
worse when the romance kicks in, you know."
"I know.
Don't remind me. And here it comes."
Marita had, for
some reason, stayed up late "to examine her new cards". For no given
reason, Yue showed up to talk to her. Their conversation, aside from repeated
offenses against spelling, grammar, punctuation, and the like, was at least
marginally in character, and the tired Agents started to relax. Then...
Marita giggled a
bit and continued talking, unknown to them Touya had just walked in but he
ducked back against the wall and watched them from the distance, he observed
how she smiled and flushed even though Yue hadn't said anything funny he felt a
surge of anger swell suddenly then he climbed calmly back upstairs to his room,
as he closed the door the feeling subsided "What the hell is wrong with
me" he exclaimed scratching his head in bewilderment "I can't like
her like that."
"Oh no, no, noooo," Cygna moaned. "She's taking him over! And
the Sue-slut is going to be stringing on both of them. No, no no!"
"Ah..."
Janet thanked her lucky star that her partner hadn't read the whole printout.
"It did say Touya/Mary Sue on the printout. That’s the job."
“I know, but—argh! Poor Touya! At least he’s still fighting it, sort
of.” Cygna glared at the air where Marita-Sue had been. “Stupid bint.”
Fortunately, the
chapter and, at last, the paragraph, ended with Touya's heartfelt denial, and
the Agents could get some rest.
* * *
"Y'know," said Janet speculatively, "We could
probably skip chapter 2. There're no new charges, except that Marita has a
"Clow staff", and it's about half a page long. Well, she uses
"whilst" and "cardcapting" and
has Marita rather than Yukito make Touya shut up about Sakura's monstrosity,
but it's pretty IC even so. Let's get some sleep, that chapter made me
exhausted."
"Works for
me. Let's portal to the park and wait there. She'll be showing up to have an Angsty Battle in chapter 3."
"'Kay."
Janet opened the shimmering portal, and they stepped through into
The Agents were
awoken by the thundering of the end-of-chapter author’s note, which put them in
the ideal frame of mind to wreak havoc upon the Sue, who reappeared as soon as
the fic restarted with another clumsy note. The fact
that King Penguin revolved on its axis to face Marita only added insult to
injury, and resulted in Janet having to quickly fall over backward to escape
notice. Fortunately, Marita had other things to think about.
" What's the
matter little Clow something scare you" a female voice called out to her
" Who's there show yourself "
" Do you really want to know?" The voice whispered to her in her ear,
Marita spun round and came face to face with a slender woman with demonic
yellow eyes, she grasped Marita's neck with such
force Marita nearly blacked out
" I am Yuri Tai, murdering bitch you will pay for killing my
brother," she screeched
"Wait, she's who?" Cygna poked her
head out of her alcove in time to see the poorly punctuated dialogue. "Yuri?
Does she look like a lily to you? And why does she have an actual Japanese name
when the rest of the villains don’t?”
“Ah, let her have
that one. Making more sense isn’t a charge.”
"Fair
enough."
"Ack. Bad fight
scene, right now. Help." Janet wrote down several new charges as Marita
escaped from her enemy's stranglehold by hitting her on the head with the Sue's
"Clow staff", then proceeded to send bullets out of the Shot card.
"Remind me. Is stupidity and complete lack of survival skills a
charge?"
"Not
unless--Oh, now it is. My poor dear Touya." The character in question had
just implausibly appeared in front of Yuri Tai and been hurt by Shot. "No,
wait. Tooya. I'd say that counts as a mini,
considering. Poor mini." And indeed, instead of the character it was a
small yellow mini-Guardian who fell into Marita's
arms and got blood all over her blouse. "I guess it's better than Touya
falling into her arms. Get her for implausible injury to a canon character,
gratuitous angst, and suicidal tendencies of an idiotically heroic
nature."
Janet blinked
when Yue appeared, also out of nowhere, to rescue Marita and the unconscious
mini. "Where'd he come from? Oh, hey, Lady Contrivance. Tired of PotC?" The puppet nodded as she cartwheeled
through the scene. "Making Yue a cold-blooded killer...Wonder how the OOC
reading is?" She pulled out the CAD and pointed it at Yue.
[Yue. Magical
construct. Canon. Out of character 58.8% and rising. Bipolar.]
"Yeah,
figured. He's going back and forth from psycho to-" she looked ahead in
the Words and winced, "-sappy, angsty idiot.
Ouch."
Yue returned them
home, after tending to Touya's wounds he carefully carried Marita to her room.
Placing her on her bed he sat at the edge of her bed and tenderly caressed her
cheek, his normal cross outlook was replaced by tender admiration. He could
feel the burning desire he once had a long time ago for his former master
return out from the depths of his soul,
“Yue, that’s horrible!” said Cygna.
“I thought you liked Clow! How could you ever feel the desire to rip his eyes
out, tear out his hair by the roots, and cut off every appendage beginning with
the fingers?”
Janet blinked at
her. “No homicidal rage?”
“I cope by snarking. And writing down charges.” Cygna pulled out a
second sheet of paper, as the first was already full of charges, and began
writing yet again. “Skipping scenes of particular interest—I wanna see Yue tending Touya’s wounds, dangit!—in
favor of yourself, causing complete Character Rupture in Yue, unless I’m much
mistaken—“
“Guess what?
You’re not.” Janet pointed the CAD at Yue and was rewarded with a deafening
beep. Thank goodness for soundproof walls! The Sue didn’t even stir.
[Yue. Magical
Construct. Canon. Out of character 80.2% CHARACTER RUPTURE! Sappy fool.]
“’Fraid he’s the worst off of them all at present. The Sue’s
influence is taking him over completely.”
“Drat. I’d hoped
he’d help us out. So, causing Yue to be sappy, paying lipservice
to canon while completely destroying it, comparing Clow in any way to a Sue,
creating implausible romance, and making no sense. ‘Return out from his soul’?
Huh?”
When “unable to hold back anymore Yue leaned over and placed a soft kiss upon
her tired lips " I love you Marita I wish I could really tell you but I am
just a servant unworthy of thy heart" he whispered before leaving her to
sleep,” Cygna said,
“Janet?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you hold down the fort for a
minute? I need some Bleeprin, and I need it now.”
“Sure.” Janet took down a charge or
two, including ‘feigning sleep in order to hear confessions of love’, ‘using
the word “thy” in a modern setting’, and ‘confusing the possessive with the
third person transitive’, while Cygna dug a bottle out of her pack and
swallowed one of the pills therein. Dry. Which wasn’t much fun, to judge by her
expression, but it did the job. Her face relaxed, and she lost some of her aura
of barely-contained fury. Not all of it, of course. She would hate to deny the
Sue the full experience.
* * *
For the fourth chapter in a row, a
horrifically loud author’s note bounced around inside the two assassins’
skulls. Cygna, headphones over her ears in a protective measure, barely
flinched.
“If she owned CCS, she would live in
a condo in
“Figure of speech,” Janet groaned.
“She says she’s going to end it soon…”
“That’s good, because we are going to end her soon, are we not?” Cygna was smiling cheerily. Janet felt it
necessary to point this out.
“…Is there some bright spot to this
that I should know?” she asked, even a brief apprenticeship having made her
aware that, when an assassin is suddenly happy, that is the time to be very
careful of a psychotic break.
“We-ell,” Cygna said, still
inexplicably cheery, “I think I know how to kill the Sue. And it will not be
pleasant for her. It will be painful. And I will be happy, and canon will be
restored. That is good. Also, I did some research, and out of four reviews for
this thing, all four have some kind of criticism, mostly about the paragraphing—or
lack thereof. That is reassuring: it shows that public opinion is on our side.”
“Yeah, I guess. Here comes the
chapter!”
With no flash of light, and, in
fact, no apparent break at all, the two Agents were hovering in a thick, misty
blackness. Cygna coughed as quietly as she could manage.
“Bloody dream sequence,” she
grumbled, “Sues have no consideration for the respiratory systems of others.”
“And you were expecting…?”
“Good point.”
Janet winced as ‘a deep crusty
voice echoed in the darkness.’ “Crusty?
That’s not a voice, that’s a pie! And where did the punctuation go? One charge
of ignoring basic punctuation. Periods: They’re not just for women anymore!”
“Janet? Bad joke.
Just, you know, to keep you informed.”
In the usual
course of events, the conversation could have gone on for hours—or paragraphs,
whichever was the more convenient scheme of measurement. Unfortunately, or
perhaps fortunately, the Sue didn’t give it the chance.
"WHOSE THERE ANSWER ME!!" she
cried out running blindly in the last direction she had heard the voices
“My there!” Cygna
squealed. “It’s mine! Mine, I tell you! My own! My…Precioussss!”
She did a passable Gollum impression, complete with strange gulping sound. Then
she began laughing in malicious triumph as the Sue collapsed in defeat and
began whimpering and crying. “Oh, dear, if you can be beaten by just a little
dream, just you wait and see what I have in store for you…”
Janet sweatdropped, a convenience of the Anime Department that
she had a feeling she would be making use of more and more. It wasn’t on the
badge for nothing. “According to her dreams, she shouldn’t exist. Sensible
dreams.”
“True. Even the Uncanon fights her. Hold on to something, leaving the dream
sequence!”
With a jolt, the
two assassins appeared in the Sue’s room. They would have speculated on where
in the house this mysterious room was, but they had to duck under the bed to
avoid being seen by their victim-to-be.
They snuck after her down the stairs (no easy feat, in the
well-lit, empty hallway of the canonical house), noting charges in an
undertone. It was time, apparently, for another romance scene.
Sure enough, they
had to suffer through Touya sneaking up on Marita, teasing her (“Is she his
girlfriend, his mother, or his sister?” Cygna asked in an irritated whisper.
Janet shrugged.), and listening to her describe her dreams.
“Drawing out a
bad confession,” Janet noted mechanically, grabbing her partner around the
waist to hold her still. “Don’t kill her yet. Having a random attack of shyness.
Causing Touya to be arrogant. Further abuse of punctuation. Further
semi-incestuous oddness. Really, really annoying PPC Agents. Stupid,
pseudo-mysterious jealousy, although…” she glanced at Cygna, who was certainly
watching in a green-eyed monster kind of way, “…you might not be so far off, at
that. Cygna, breathe. And prepare to hide behind something. We’re almost done.”
With a whirr, a
week’s worth of high-speed narration flew by, leaving the assassins to crawl,
disoriented and ill, behind a couch. Apparently, it had become Christmastime.
“Did the Kinomoto
family celebrate Christmas with a tree?” Janet asked. “I don’t remember.”
“We can’t get her
for that—they might have done, and it’s the sort of thing they might well do.
But the uncalled-for secrecy is definitely a charge. Suvian
logic—on the other hand, mother/son incest is generally frowned upon, so maybe
not. But, confusion? What? It’s a charge now.”
“Suit yourself.”
“I will, thank
you. Ack, badness! Flee!” Cygna skittered outside
after Touya, too caught up in the idea of leaving the scene of the badfic to even think about stalking him, and went to hide
in the bushes for a while and try not to look at the Words. Janet, sighing,
stayed to watch Yukito and Marita have an Important Confidential Discussion
with Special Advice. Suffice to say, Cygna was not missing anything.
[Yukito Tsukishiro. Human male/magical construct. Out of character
33.3%. Angst.]
“Shouldn’t be
asking her advice anyway, seeing as how he got Sakura’s before, but ‘snot too bad,
all things considered. Hate to see Touya’s, though. Gaah!”
With an unattractive squelching noise, a temporal distortion passed by,
bringing the time to
Groaning, Cygna
dragged herself back inside and up the stairs. “Here it comes…” she growled. “I
will get her the instant this is over, I just want you to know that. Oh, and
add ‘Sprinkling stupid evil quotations through the story at random’ to the
charge list.” She was not so distracted by her plotting agains
the Sue, apparently, that she had not read enough ahead in the Words to know
what was coming. At any rate, a small disposable camera was in her hand as she
skulked in the stairwell with her partner, spying on the bathroom door.
She went so far
(“In the interests of completeness!”) as to sneak up into the hallway to watch
as Yukito ‘burst into the bathroom.’
“Don’t they have
a lock on that door?” she wondered aloud. Apparently not; where a lock would
have been on any other bathroom door in any world was just a hole, directly
under the doorknob, where logic had been forced to bow to the Sue’s evil spell.
“That’s cruelty to architecture, that is. And complete defiance of all logic.”
Her muttered complaints did not stop her from snapping pictures of a damp,
shirtless Touya, her eyes gleaming both evilly and happily. “On the plus side,
this fic may just have the best eyecandy
available at a PG-13 rating. Yum. In a purely platonic way, of course!” she
added hastily, for the benefit of any watching Flowers That Be. She was not lusting, but it couldn’t hurt to
make sure.
Yukito was just about ready to turn and walk
away when he remembered what Marita had said to him, he mustered up all his
courage and pulled Touya into a soft embrace kissing him deeply.
“Yess!” Cygna squealed, stabbing her fist in the air, and
Janet was forced to tug her back into the stairwell before the canonicals
noticed her. She still kept snapping pictures of the pair, humming happily. It
was beautiful: canonical romance finding a way, even in the midst of a Suefic.
Unfortunately,
Marita-Sue did not share Cygna’s taste.
A small gasp suddenly caught their attention
there standing by the door stood Marita both angry and horrified, " Marita
hold on there's an explanation for this" Touya said pulling himself away
from Yukito but she just backed away then ran off with tears streaming down her
face, Touya raced after her but just as she came within a yard of her room her
Clow book leapt up from the bed into her arms.
Janet sighed and
collared her partner for the last time. “Thou shalt
not!” The redhead was squalling. “Not! Never! Thou shalt
not make the Sue more important to Touya than Yukito! Most important person!”
“Cygna. Calm.
We’ll get her good. We just have to time this right…” Janet watched the scene
carefully, waiting for the chance.
" Marita! Wait!" he cried out to
her but she refused to listen with a flick of her wrist she summons the loop
card behind her and disappears out into the snow.
“Bingo!” Leaving the befuddled canonicals to their fate—actually,
to nothing, since the Sue’s influence was such that the plot stopped as soon as
she left—Agent Janet grabbed her partner, took one last CAD reading on Touya,
for the sake of completeness [Touya Kinomoto. Human male. Canon? Out of
Character 95.3% COMPLETE CHARACTER RUPTURE Mr. Jelly!], and jumped out the
window, past the disorienting tense shift, and into the
* * *
It was cold, it was wet, it
was snow. Presumably there was Tomoeda somewhere around, but considering the
powers of the unSued
Cygna grinned. It
wasn’t often that the Sues would put themselves out of reach of any help. She
loved the misunderstanding plot device, sometimes; it made her job so much
easier. She ran after the Sue.
It was Janet,
taller than either of them, who caught Marita by the collar and pulled her in.
“Right,” she said, “I’ll charge her, you kill her. Fair?”
“I suppose.”
The Sue was
looking at them with green eyes like plates of pea soup, only less appetizing.
“Who are you?” she quavered. “What do you want with me?”
“Well, since you
ask…” Janet grinned. “Marita, you are charged by the Protectors of the Plot
Continuum with the following: Annoying author’s notes, multiple charges of Suvian logic, relentless cruelty to possessives, other
grammatical offenses to be named never, because there are too many,
simultaneous over- and under-use of punctuation,” She took a breath, “temporal
distortions, implausible background, creating a Cute Animal Friend, one Kia by
name, creating extraneous Clow Items, to whit, the Cards, Staff, Book, and
Guardian you seem to possess, confusing family trees as regards reincarnation,
creation of multiple mini-Guardians, including but not limited to Eriole,” The mini hissed at her from Cygna’s shoulder,
“cruelty to the English language, use of transparent plot devices, causing
over-sugary sap, mulitplying and merging characters,
use of bad physics, cruelty to architecture, employing multiple dei ex machinae—how the hell do
you pronounce that?, having an inappropriate name, avoiding scenes of interest
in your own favor, creating run-ons almost as long as this one, having stupid
dreams, and creating a stupid villain.
“Further, you are
charged with causing an incestuous relationship between one Touya Kinomoto and
the reincarnation of his mother, which is to say you, causing multiple
implausible attractions between yourself and canonicals, being Yue and the
aforementioned Touya (Cygna, do you have a law degree or something?),
engendering jealousy, causing the previously mentioned characters to act like lovestruck fools over you, causing pointless injury to a
canon character, having gratuitous angst, attempted suicide by stupidity,
discounting canon relationships as unimportant, by which we mean minimizing Touya’s feelings for Yukito and Yue’s for Clow and,
arguably, Touya as well, employing melodramatics, being stupid and engendering stupidity
in canon characters, really, really
annoying PPC Agents, hitting on agents’ Lust Objects, and, finally, being a
Mary Sue.”
Cygna smiled like
a knife. “Any one of those charges warrants death. You have over thirty. Any
last words?”
“You can’t do
this to me!” Marita sobbed, melodramatic to the end. “If I am killed, then Kodu Tai will take over the world and—“ She broke off
abruptly as Janet’s CAD hit her over the head.
“I think the
thing’s broken anyway,” the assassin said with a shrug. “I’ll fix it when we
get back. Now, what were you planning?”
Cygna was still
smiling, more cheerily than she had smiled since they had begun the mission. “I
think judicious application of these lovely new cards might give Marita-Sue all
the time she needs to freeze to death in the snow, don’t you?”
“And you plan to
do this how?”
“Observe.” Cygna
rummaged on the Sue’s unconscious body for a moment, then came up triumphantly
with a heavily gilded urple and breen
(the color between blue and green that would be turquoise if it wasn’t so
inherently wrong) book and a similarly colored key. She flipped through the
book. “Perfect copy, of course—not a creative Sue, this.”
“Doesn’t she need
an incantation for that?”
“Yes.” Cygna
glared at the card. “You can work,” she said in a calm tone of voice, “or I can
use my matches. Are we clear? Give us enough time to freeze her a bit, will
you?” Accordingly, a green glow spread over the area encircled by the Sue-Loop,
and the Agents experienced the unusual sensation of being completely still.
“Thank you. Now, for some effects.” She flipped through the book again. “Let’s
see now, Freeze, and you too, Windy, if you’ll work for me properly I’ve got a
good job for you back home. Fair?” The Sue-cards glowed briefly in apparent
acknowledgement.
“Cygna?” Janet
inquired. “Is this allowed?”
“Sure. It’s
poetic justice, isn’t it? Hoist with her own petard, sort of thing. Besides,
I’m still not sure what canonical weapons are around here, if not magic.”
“Good point.
Here, I’ll tie her up and gag her. Don’t want her running or, worse, talking
more urple prose.” So saying, Janet dropped on her
knees in the snow and started working loose various unnecessary aspect of the
Sue’s clothing, like her coat and socks. They made admirable bonds, twisted up
tightly, and the socks went in her mouth, “Though,” Janet said, “they can’t
possibly taste worse than what usually comes out.”
When all the
preparations had been made, the two PPC Agents stepped back and watched the
cold awaken Marita. She struggled, and seemed to be trying to speak through her
gag. They ignored her.
“Freeze,” said
Cygna calmly, “Windy. Release.”
The last thing
Marita the Mary Sue ever saw was blue ice and pale golden wind rushing toward
her. The last thing she felt was cold. And the last thing she heard was Cygna’s
voice, saying, “There, now that’s
over with.”
Cygna looked over
the body of the Sue, completely encased in ice, and snarled at her. “I hate
them,” she said. “I really do. Oh, that reminds me!” She rummaged busily in her
pack, before holding up a long black iron poker, one that looked not unlike the
Clow staff, only black and with no frills, feathers, or jewels whatsoever.
Cygna held it out over the Suesicle.
“Return to the
shape that you were meant to be in,” she chanted, “Sue Card!”
With a crack, the
Sue vanished, dissolving into a small piece of cardboard that Cygna picked up
with a satisfied smile.
Janet blinked at
her. “What was that?”
“My Sue Staff,”
Cygna answered. “I use it at OFUTomoeda to keep
order, and thought I might as well add some more Sues to my collection.
Besides, we’re in Sakura. What else is there?”
Janet sighed. “You’re
gonna get in trouble for that.
“You have a
better idea for disposal?”
“Not really. Do
you want to portal back to HQ?”
“No! We still
have to get Kia—she’s not one I care about rescuing. Besides,” Cygna grinned
sheepishly, “I want to see how things will be going back at the Kinomoto house
without the Sue around.”
“’Kay. You be
your happy fangirl self, I’ll take care of the CAF.
Are we keeping the Sue Cards?”
“Got to—noncanonical material, they can’t stay here. We can collect
them. I gather most of the other groups collect loads of souvenirs.”
“Works for me.
Shall we?”
* * *
The two Agents, after
dispelling the Sue Field, returned to the house through the door, the
mysterious window having vanished as soon as it had come. Inside, Janet went to
the kitchen to catch Kia, the Cute Animal Friend of the late Marita. She had
fallen into a stupor from boredom, and without the presence of the Sue to
support her, was an easy kill. Janet portalled the
body into a local volcano.
Back in the
upstairs hallway, however, Cygna was enjoying herself as the canonical
characters realized that a)they had spent the last few weeks in a daze, b)they
were no longer in a daze, and c)they had just been kissing. Unsurprisingly,
they were using the opportunity presented by b) to focus on a) in an attempt to
avoid talking about c). Cygna disapproved, but watched anyway.
“What just
happened?” Touya asked the world at large. “Who…was that?” He obviously remembered what he had been doing with the
Sue for the last week, because he was looking more repulsed with every minute.
“Yue says he is
very, very sorry for you, but is glad she liked you better, because he thinks
he was writing her poetry. And it was very bad poetry.” Yukito was attempting
not to blush. It was a losing battle, since both of his selves were feeling
rather embarrassed. “He swears he didn’t mean it.”
“No, neither did
I.” Touya looked like he was doing his level best not to throw up. “She said
she was—Okaasan’s—and I was kissing her!”
“Oh.” Yukito’s
canonical kindness was reasserting itself; he took a step closer to Touya and
patted him on the shoulder. “I’m sorry, To-ya. I know
you would never—what kind of a thing was
she? She seemed so nice, and the things she said seemed friendly, but then, she
didn’t seem to mean them.”
“Things she
said?” Touya, in a desperate attempt to forget about the second-to-last person
he had been kissing, was willing to focus on c) at last. Cygna watched with
approval. And a camera.
Yukito blushed
lightly. “Just—things. I asked her advice about something, and she acted like
she understood, but it didn’t look like she really did. Could she have been
that naïve?”
“About what?”
Touya asked, beginning to blush himself.
“Um, well,
about…” Yukito cast about for something else to say and, finding none, settled
for the truth. “About just now.”
“Oh. I…” Touya
was also looking for something to say. “Yuki, I…”
“Oh, good grief!”
Cygna exclaimed, a little too loudly, as it turned out. “Just kiss him again,
you know you want to!” She met the gaze of the canonicals, and whimpered. “Meep.”
“Who are you?”
Touya asked, not in the mood to be polite.
“A friend,” she
said. “I was just getting rid of that Mary Sue for you.”
The canonicals
relaxed marginally. “Oh,” said Touya. “Thanks, I guess.”
“Yes, thank you
very much.” Yukito smiled politely, and Cygna briefly reconsidered adding
another Lust Object. She decided against it. Shirtless Touya was occupying
enough of her time and, if it came to that, film.
“Cygna!” Janet
stood on the stairs. “What are you up to?”
“Nothing, I
swear!”
“Suuure. We are leaving now, but first, we have to neuralize them. C’mon, glasses on.” They both put on their
reflective sunglasses, and Janet grinned at the canonicals. “Look here, please.
You too, Yue.” They did, some vestiges of the Sue’s obedience lingering, and
the flash did the rest. “Right. We were never here. Go back to what you were
doing. And, Touya? It’s cold; put some clothes on.”
The last vestiges
of Uncanon vanished, and the assassins vanished from
canonical eyes once more. Cygna permitted herself to be dragged back to the
* * *
“You’re probably
going to get into trouble for lusting, you know,” said Janet, as she spread out
a heap of what the non-technically minded Cygna thought of as ‘gadgets’ on her
worktable.
“Lusting? I was
not lusting,” said Cygna with a huff. “I was…appreciating. They gave me a
single spot of light in a horrific Suefic, they can’t
expect me not to take advantage of it. It’s not as if I became incoherent, or glomped him, or even drooled much.”
“You did drool,
you know. I saw you.”
“I did not!
Anyway, he was only partly clothed and dripping wet! What kind of machine can
they expect me to be?”
“…Point.”
“As if you’d be
any better if you saw your Lust Object in that state!”
“Well, no, I
wouldn’t. You did pretty well, considering.” Janet gave a glare to the console.
“And don’t think that, just because we’re having a conversation, we’re ready
for another fic. We’re not going out again until I
get the CAD fixed, ‘cause if I have to go bother Dann
or MT for another, they’ll ask me why I didn’t fix it myself. So no beeping.
Not yet.”
Apparently, the
console paid attention. There was time for Cygna to arrange the late Sue’s
Cards, Book, and Key in the least tasteless possible way, considering their
color and style, while her partner was working. She even took the time to send Eriole off to OFUTomoeda, where
he belonged, and give very specific instructions about training in her absence.
When she got back, Janet was just screwing the back of the CAD back on.
“Ah, fixed!” she
said. “A job well-“
[BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!!!!!!!!!!]
“-done.”
Cygna walked over
to the screaming console and pressed the button idly. She looked at the screen.
She looked at the screen. She blinked. She looked again. She groaned.
“I knew we'd get
one of these sooner or later...."
-to be continued-
[Cygna’s Note: I
liked killing this one. There is no excuse for knowing the canon and walking
all over it anyway. For those wishing to read this excrescence for themselves,
it is archived here and
belongs to one ‘Animage1’. Rest assured, we do not want her or her works.
Except maybe a few pictures of the decent content. Officially, it ended with
Marita-Sue running out into the snow—and what assassin worth their pointy
objects could resist that? And what fan could resist a scene waiting to be
finished? I am, yes, a Touya luster. Sort of.]
[Janet’s Note: I
think I’ll be having to hold my partner down a lot. Joy. Disclaimer, late but
valid: CardCaptor Sakura and all its associations
belong to CLAMP, not to us. The original PPC belongs to Jay and Acacia, ditto.
Any Agents, Departments, etc. which are not ours belong to their original
creators. We, however, belong to us. So does the
Coming up on
PPC:CCS—Our intrepid
heroines' first encounter with that horrendous beast, a Possession Sue! Music
has charms to soothe a savage breast--but not this music! Janet's Lust Object
revealed! And other exclamations!