"One of what?" Janet asked as she walked over to read
the screen over Cygna's head (not a difficult thing, considering the height
difference).
"We-ll,
it's a Possession!Sue," Cygna said slowly,
"and--"
Janet
squawked, having caught up with her partner on the report. "She
what?!!"
"--it
features Tomoyo. Only not, because I don't think this tattoo-having, Good
Charlotte-singing creature could possibly be Tomoyo. I hope. So, um, do you have
a canon preference? The manga are the only things I've got on me--I got most of
the series on VHS, and they pack really bad, besides
getting ruined if they get wet, so I didn't bring them."
"Cygna.
You're babbling. Quit it."
"Yes'm," said Cygna meekly,
electing to take the path of least resistance.
Janet banged the console,
accidentally hitting the "Print" button. The machine proceeded to
spit out copies of the report with what Cygna would have sworn was active
malice. "Damn! Can you get this, Cygna? I've gotta get my stuff
together."
"Sure,
sure." As she did so, gathering up the papers and shoving them in
her room with the vague idea of using the blank sides for scrap, Janet burrowed
under the console in search of the various objects she had managed to scatter
in the course of repairing the Analysis Device.
"Damn. I think I lost the brass
knuckles somewhere." She yanked open the door to her room, then slammed it
shut again when a wave of dark magic rolled out of it. "Mary! What the
hell are you doing in there?!"
"Sorry!" Called a voice from the other room. "Bakura-kun and
Touzoku Ou had another bad fanfic experience, so I had to bring them back here
until they calmed down. Unfortunately, Touzoku Ou reacted with more violence
than usual." The two assassins could hear her talking quietly to someone.
"Bakura-kun, it's okay, no one's going to hurt you, I promise. If you're
looking for your blackjack and the rest," she said, raising her voice
again, "they're in here, on the shelf, but I'm afraid I can't let you in
here to get them. It might set him off."
"S'okay, I'll do without,"
Janet said. "See you later, hon."
"Take care."
Janet turned around, grinning, into
the face of her partner's interrogating look.
"I was unaware," Cygna
said as deliberately as possible, "that they made three-person Response
Centers."
"They don't. Mary's
with Character Protection. She deals with the mental health of those two
from that show with the weird monster card things, what'sitcalled..."
"Yuugiou?"
"That, yeah, so the
"Sort of.
Why didn't you tell me you had a girlfriend?"
"It didn't come up. After she
gets the Bakurae cleared up, and we sort out this...thing," Janet grimaced, "I'll introduce you properly. For
now, though, we'd best just get this over with."
"Right."
Cygna's grim expression was nothing on Janet's, but it was a start.
"Anywhere in particular we should go to start? Oh, yeah, and which
disguises?"
"We can probably get away with
being students since a lot of stuff happens at school and get away from that!" Janet forcibly dragged Cygna away from
the console. "I do tech. You don't. I will set it up. You won't."
"But--" Cygna started to
protest, then thought better of it. "Oh, okay. Seijuu
High?"
"That's what it says, so I
guess we don't have much choice. I hate uniforms with miniskirts."
Nevertheless, Janet set the disguise generator to "Students (Seijuu
High)". "And, yeah, it starts in class. We should probably skip to the
hallway after. No one else can see us, and we'll look enough like students
that...she...won't notice. Plus, we
get to miss the pre-story author's notes."
"Sounds good
to me!" Cygna agreed, more or less cheerfully. "So, we done? Lessgo."
"'Kay."
Janet still looked far from happy, but she stepped through the portal after
Cygna all the same.
* * *
Sure enough, the pair arrived in the
hallway outside the math class where the canon characters were sitting. Almost
immediately, the bell rang as loud and obnoxiously as it could manage to signal
the end of the day. Cygna, who was used to school bells, barely flinched, while
Janet, who was not, clapped her hands over her ears.
“Ow! Why does it have to be so
bloody loud?”
“International
educational law. C’mon, here they come.” Sakura waited outside of the
door for Tomoyo, giving Janet enough time to recover and Cygna enough time to
get out her notebook. “I’ll write down the charges for now. You just try not to
get run over; remember, we’re invisible to everyone
except the Original Characters.”
She found one almost immediately.
“Put a comma inside the quote, please.” The comparatively small offence barely
annoyed her. The next sentence she got a good look at, though, was worse. “Wait—Sakura’s
friends won’t recognize Tomoyo? Did Erase happen to her or something? Last I
checked they all knew each other. I think that qualifies as ‘Causing
inexplicable amnesia’, don’t you?”
“Sure,” Janet said, watching the
hallway. “Original Character alert! Look
inconspicuous.” She strolled closer to Cygna and looked over her shoulder at
her notes.
"Hey Sakura, how's it going?"
Mika said.
"Great. Where's Eriol, Syaoran, Chiharu and
Yamazaki?" Sakura asked.
"I'm not su - oh, there she is!" Mika pointed to a Red-head running
toward them.
Cygna glowered. “Chiharu is not a
redhead. Kaho is a redhead. Hikaru is a redhead. Chiharu?
Not a redhead. This is red.” She
tugged on the end of her braid. “Sakura’s hair is not red, Syaoran’s hair is
not red, Eriol’s hair is even farther from red, and, unless Chiharu has
recently had a dye job, her hair is not red either!” She added “changing
canonical hair color” to the budding charge list, than turned back to watch
Chiharu knock Tomoyo over “unfortuanately”. “Making up words,” she added, and
then, almost immediately, “Reckless endangerment.”
“Um, Cygna?” said Janet, still
watching the words with one eye and her partner with the other. “Knocking
someone down isn’t exactly dangerous.”
“It could have been! Besides, if she
hasn’t done anything to deserve it now, she will soon.”
“Suit yourself.”
“I will,
thank you.”
Meanwhile, Chiharu yelled at Tomoyo,
whose name she apparently could not remember. Cygna slammed the heel of her
hand into her forehead.
“I may not know much about
teenagers, despite personal experience, but I do know that most of them can
remember the names of their best friends of five years before. Or even their
acquaintances. You can know people by sight without knowing them personally. So
that’s one charge of implausible stupidity, then?”
“I’d say so, yeah.”
“What’s with you? You’re all quiet.”
“Ah, s’nothing.”
“If you say so.”
Janet, being without Cygna’s obsessive need to have the last word, didn’t
reply.
"Her name is Tomoyo, Chi, and it was
your fault" Sakura said, helping her best friend off the ground.
“Write that down,” said Janet.
“Isn’t ‘really stupid nicknames’ a charge? It better be.”
“Oh, definitely.”
Cygna wrote it down accordingly. The scene ended with Tomoyo deciding, when
faced with Chiharu’s disgust, to go home instead. “Portal to the Daidouji
house, please.”
“With pleasure.”
Sure enough, Janet was grinning as they jumped into Tomoyo’s bedroom. A freak
bout of temporal logic meant that the two assassins were alone in the room until
Tomoyo arrived on foot. Although her rising Sue possession would cut some time
off the trip, they probably had at least a quarter of an hour.
“That’s it, I need rest,” announced
Cygna to the world. “We’re finally in a story with a few minutes of peace and
quiet, and I’m using them.” So saying, she curled up on the sofa in Tomoyo’s
video room (the room itself remained as it had been in canon, thanks to lack of
Sue-description) and
shut her eyes.
“If you’re sleeping, can I borrow
the camera?” Janet asked. “It’s not my thing, but Mary would want pictures of
the house.” She looked at her feet. “BesidesIwasgoingtowantitlateranyway.”
Cygna parsed this. "Ohhh. Tomoyo luster?"
"Of sorts.
She's gorgeous. And sweet, and smart, and..." Janet drifted off.
"Right.
Here, camera. Wake me when she gets back." With that, Cygna dozed off.
Janet spent a few minutes taking
pictures of the outside of the mansion, Tomoyo's room, and anything else that
looked interesting.
All too soon, at least from Cygna's
perspective, Janet heard Tomoyo's feet on the stairs and shook her partner
awake. "Get up, she's coming. I don't think she's Sued-out yet, but she'll
notice if she trips over us."
"Mmmph?
Hokay. I'm up."
For no reason except narrative
convenience, Tomoyo went straight to her mirror and stared at her reflection.
Janet started snapping pictures.
“Damn, but she’s gorgeous. I don’t
see what’s wrong with her looks.”
“That’s the point. Sue!makeover stories tend to be visited on characters who
really, really don’t need them. Tomoyo’s fine as she is. However, if the phrase
‘curves in all the right places’ isn’t a charge, it should be.” She noted it.
The two of them stayed upstairs, listening to the words, while Tomoyo ran down
again to talk to her mother.
“Right, what’ve we got?” Janet
returned to her usual professionalism (such as it was) as soon as Tomoyo had
left the room. “She’s using the exchange trip cliché, and are
those normal American names?”
“Not by a long way, though we should
be grateful she’s not trying to pass them off as Japanese.” They were
fortunately far enough away to avoid being deafened by the in-text Author’s
Note, though Cygna wrote it down anyway. Cygna cocked her head to one side as
she eavesdropped on Tomoyo and Sakura’s cell phone conversation. “Tomoyo is
leaving in three days, which is not likely. She forgets to put commas inside
the quotes, too. Poor punctuation, tsk.” She wrote it
down. “Cruelty to the ellipsis, space bar failure, wanton destruction of the
comma…”
Janet glanced at the words and
gaped. “Tomoyo had to be told that three months is a quarter of a year? Write
that down, uncanonical stupidity. I’m portalling us to next morning, at the
school. I don’t see any more charges here. Wait, what kind of shoes are
‘sketchers’? Do they draw?”
“No, that’s an American brand. Not
capitalized, though. Two charges; one for failing to
capitalize, and one for cultural anomaly.”
They reappeared in the school, still
in uniform. Tomoyo was running up to the door, where Sakura was waiting. Janet
poked Cygna.
“How come we have to wear these
stupid uniforms when she doesn’t?”
“Because she’s a
Mary Sue. Yet another charge of cultural anomaly.”
“She’d look good in a uniform,” said
Janet. “Wearing clothes that baggy with a body like that is just wrong.”
“Janet. Drooling.”
“Oh, shut up.” Janet watched Tomoyo
and Sakura talk. “That was almost canonical for a minute there. Let’s get a
reading.”
“You’ve got the whosywhatsis.”
“Right.”
Janet pointed the CAD at the two canonicals.
[Tomoyo Daidouji. Human
female. Canon. Out of
character 38.4%. Invisible.] [Sakura Kinomoto. Human female (magical). Canon. Out of character 13.2%. Sarcastic.]
“That’s not bad at all,” said Cygna,
reading the display upside down. She had practice at reading in odd situations.
“It’s mostly the rest of the world that’s off right now, not noticing Tomoyo
exists. This could be not too bad.”
“I think you spoke too soon,” Janet
said, as Syaoran appeared and asked who Tomoyo was. “He spent two years of his
life around her; how could he not know her name?”
[Syaoran Li,] read the CAD. [Human male (magical). Canon. Out of character 58.8%. Amnesiac jerk.]
“Making Syaoran an idiot,” Cygna
recorded. “Making the characters use the words ‘whatever’ and ‘totally’. Making Sakura not take Syaoran to task for not remembering Tomoyo.”
While she wrote, Janet looked ahead
in the Words. “Look out for the—woah!”
The
day went by fairly quickly and was soon over.
The entire school day, compressed
into one line, shot past them in a blur of color and sound. When it was over,
Cygna wobbled, looking green. “Urgh. Hate distortions.
Need a line break or something.”
“C’mon,” Janet said, “she’s going to
have a music lesson. Let’s follow!”
“Do you really want to listen to
Sue-song?”
“She’s not a Sue yet, and you’ve got
to admit Tomoyo can really sing. She’s so wonderful…” Janet drifted off,
looking dreamy.
“Ahem. Charge list?”
“Sure.”
“Bringing Eriol back from
“How do you know she wouldn’t?”
Janet asked. “It’s the kind of thing she’d do.”
“Fine. I’ll
strike it out. Ooh, song!”
Possessed or not, Tomoyo could still
sing. The song wasn’t bad, either: one neither of them had heard before, not
particularly angsty, and far from the usual range of Evanescence and
* * *
The section ended in an unattractive
row of brackets that Janet said reminded her of barbed wire, and the unwary
assassins were dumped from their relaxation into Tomoyo’s farewell to Sakura at
the airport. It was more or less in-character, and not even Cygna could find
any charges.
“Portal to
“No,” said Janet, “portal to
She didn’t bother to wake Janet when
the plane landed, and Tomoyo was introduced to her host family: Jordyn, her
parents Eleanor and George who asked Tomoyo to call them Mom and Dad (“I don’t
think that’s normal,” said Cygna. “Tomoyo already has a fine mother, thanks
ever so.”), and Jordyn’s twin brother and sister, Bailey and…Volkers.
If Cygna had been drinking anything,
she would have done a spit-take. “Volkers?”
she said, only barely quietly enough that the Original Characters didn’t hear
her. “You have got to be kidding me.
How much did these people hate their kids?”
With that, the chapter ended. The
loud Author’s Note at the start of the next jolted Janet awake. “What
happened?” she asked, then the words she was hearing
registered. “It’s summer, but when she gets back it’ll
be spring? What?”
“The Author is confusing
“Sure.” Janet portalled them to the McAllister house, where Jordyn had just woken
Tomoyo up.
"You know what? I'm gonna bring you
out of your shell. When you get back to
“What’s tryhard?” Janet asked.
“Stupid, Sueish, and painful,”
replied Cygna. “Get her for failure to add a comma at the end of dialogue, will
you?”
“And the bad plot devices, body
piercings, and tattoos? That better be a charge.”
“If it wasn’t before, it is now. Do
you want to watch them get poked full of holes? I’d as soon stay here and
read.”
“I’m with you. I brought an old CAD
that needs fixing. I’ll take the charges through the Words. I really, really do
not want to see this.”
“Nor do I.”
Cygna pulled a volume of the Card Captor Sakura manga from her pack and started
to read. Janet dug through her own for her tool kit and the old CAD.
Tomoyo had gotten her bellybutton
pierced. As if that weren’t enough self-mutilation for one day, she had also
gotten a rather tacky tattoo. The decription made Janet cringe.
“It says you could just see the top
of it when she wore hipsters. If those are cut the way I think they are, that
sounds like a very, very painful place to have a tattoo. Ow.”
“So charge it,” said Cygna,
deliberately ignoring the Words. “Causing unnecessary pain and suffering. You
might want to get her for presuming that Sonomi would ever let Tomoyo get a
tattoo, while you’re at it. And your/you’re confusion.”
Janet looked ahead in the Words.
“Ooh, they’re going to go ‘hop in the spa’. I’m going to go watch that. So I
can get all the charges!” she added to no one in particular.
“Right,” said Cygna, raising her
eyebrows. “It’s just coincidental that Tomoyo’s going to be in a bathing suit.”
“You should talk, after last time!”
“Just don’t let Jordyn see you—or
Tomoyo, either. She might not be fully possessed yet, but then again, she might
be. Enjoy yourself, and don’t get the charge sheet wet.” Cygna curled herself
up on the McAllisters’ couch again. The Uncanonicals, not under direct
Authorial influence, had frozen in the dining room.
Janet snuck into the ‘spa’, which
looked from the description more like a Jacuzzi, to watch Tomoyo talking to
Jordyn. They were exchanging life stories. Jordyn’s would have passed for
‘typical teenage girl’ if the names had been more normal. As
for Tomoyo’s…
"I don't have a boyfriend,
obviously, and I only have one friend, which is Sakura. She, and one other teachers are the only people in the whole school who know my
name. I love playing the piano and singing and I dance and go to my gym to keep
fit" Tomoyo replied.
"Your gym?" Jordyn asked.
"Yeah. My mother is very rich, so she used one of
the rooms to make me a private gym and dance studio" Tomoyo said meekly.
She hated talking about her family's wealth.
Jordyn whistled. "Wow, I never knew you were THAT rich!"
Janet blinked. “Her family has a spa
in their house and she’s surprised that Tomoyo has a private gym? And since
when does Tomoyo dance? She might, though, so no charge there. One for wangst. Sorry, hon, but not even a girl as gorgeous
as you can get away with a sob story like that.” Fortunately, there was no
dialogue for the next half an hour, so Janet amused herself by watching Tomoyo,
who was still showing some signs of canon.
It didn’t last. An unattractive line
break later, Tomoyo had been dressed up by her Suefriend in clothes that Janet
declared were a waste of good fabric. “Not even she can make that look
sophisticated,” she said to Cygna. “I mean, look at it! Eurgh.”
“Weird clothing,” Cygna noted down.
“Ladies and assassins, I think we’ve just seen the last of Canon!Tomoyo. Check up for me, will you?”
Janet muted the CAD before pointing
it at Tomoyo, which was just as well.
[Tomoyo Daidouji. Human
female. Canon. OOC 99.4%.
Bad girl.]
“Nope, she’s still there…well,
six-tenths of a percent of her, anyway. But that won’t be for long.”
Cygna looked ahead in the Words.
“Hey, she’s ditching this whole bunch of OCs right after this. We’ll need to do
the whole bunch. House fire?”
“Sounds good to
me. You got matches?”
Cygna smiled widely. “Ohhhh, yes, I
have matches. Lots and lots and lots of matches.
Mmmm…fire…”
Janet looked at her strangely. “Right. No more charges for this bit?”
“Rampant and persistent comma
neglect, total destruction of Tomoyo, fashion crimes, stupid e-mail address,
and abuse of technology,” said Cygna promptly.
“I got the technology one already,
but I’ll do the rest.” In the background, Tomoyo left
It took the two assassins some time
to get everyone back to the McAllister house and torch the building, so they
missed Tomoyo’s return and Sonomi’s joy that Tomoyo had become more outgoing.
Oh, and Eriol had dumped his OC girlfriend, and somehow this meant that Tomoyo
should try out for the cheerleading squad. Cygna, reading the words, banged her
head repeatedly against Janet’s shoulder. “Can we charge her yet?”
“No. We haven’t gotten to the really
bad stuff yet.”
“Did you read ahead?”
“I don’t have to. Look at the Words.
She’s got Eriol checking her out. Back to Tomoeda?”
“If we must.”
On their return to Tomoeda, Cygna
looked thoughtfully around. “You know, this is going to go on for a while.
We’ll never finish at this rate. What say we pick up the charges from the Words
and skip around a bit?”
“Sounds good to me,” Janet agreed.
“We’re less than halfway through!”
“We could probably sit around Seijuu
High for a while. Tomoyo-Sue is too busy with her romantic life to notice us.
Besides, what would she notice? We’re just students.”
Accordingly, the pair set themselves
up in a deserted classroom to observe the fic. The first scene they watched was
Tomoyo and Eriol skipping school after having a singing practice together.
“Making Eriol and Tomoyo skip
school,” Cygna noted. “Making Eriol into an idiot. The ‘word’ ‘dan’t’. You’re/your confusion again. Making Eriol have been in
Janet took over as Sakura, Syaoran,
Eriol, and Sue!Tomoyo talked after a soccer game. “Giving Eriol a habit of going out with cheerleaders. Obsessive descriptions of clothing. Making
Sakura OOC. Making Eriol OOC. Creating a clingy ‘other woman’ stereotype. That reminds
me,” she said to Cygna, “do we have to get Mika too?”
“Probably.
And dig Kaho out of whatever plothole she’s fallen into. Hey, look!
Tomoyo-Sue’s breaking and entering!”
“At least that’s in character.
Remember the Silent?” Janet looked at the Words. “Uh-oh…Gary
Stu at
“Lovely. Now we’ve got to deal with
this Kei Azumi as well as all the rest. Toss you for it.”
“I’ll do him,” said Janet with a
sigh. It’s a pity we’ve gotta kill him and Mika. It’s not their fault a Sue
with delusions of canon created them for no purpose. Oh, look. Sakura’s telling
Tomoyo about boys. I’m portalling ahead.”
“Can I come with you?”
They arrived just as Eriol was
telling Tomoyo that he couldn’t understand ancient history. Cygna flailed.
“But he was Clow Reed! He lived half
that history! Fujitaka became an archaeologist because of that, for crying out
loud!”
“Charge it,” Janet said simply. Then
she looked at the words. “Oh, ew.” Eriol had just said he loved Tomoyo. “That’s it, I
can’t take this anymore. We’re going straight to the finale.”
“Must we?”
“Yes.”
* * *
There was a concert going on. For
some reason, Good Charlotte was there. Cygna tried to poke herself in the eyes
with her pencil. Sue!Tomoyo was going to sing with
them. Of course.
“Tell me you brought headphones,”
she muttered to Janet. “Please, tell me you brought them.”
Janet shrugged. “Sorry.”
“Great. Just…great. Do you have anything I
can use to stab out my ears?”
“Not on me, no.
Why don’t you go find Kaho? She’s probably in
“Excellent!” Relieved, Cygna
vanished, on a quest for the missing love interest.
Of course, this left Janet alone in
the concert hall, forced to listen to Sue!Tomoyo sing,
first alone, then with Good Charlotte. It wasn’t, she was forced to admit, all
that bad. Unlike most Sues, Tomoyo’s singing abilities weren’t exaggerated.
There was some strange formatting to the Words, though, that had given her a
splitting headache by the time the song was over and Tomoyo was kissing Eriol.
She was not in a mood to watch it.
“That’s it,” she said, jumping up
onto the stage. “I’ve had just about enough
of this! You two, get out here. We need you for something important.” She
stepped up to the microphone. “Sachiho Mika and Azumi Kei, please come to the
stage. Thank you.”
The four people—Possession-Sue,
victim, and cardboard Original Characters—did as they were told. It figured
that someone as hungry for attention as the Sue would, and none of the others
was in any state to disobey orders.
“What’s going on?” Sue!Tomoyo said. “I was busy!”
“It is my duty as a Protector of the
Plot Continuum to charge you, Sachiho Mika and Azumi Kei, with the following
crimes: aiding and abetting a Mary Sue, causing sappy romance, being a clingy
stereotype (in Mika’s case), having no character development, and being plot
devices and nothing more.”
“What?” They both said.
“Try to keep up, can’t you? You’re
being used to destroy canon characters, and for that you deserve to die.”
“What?” said Kei.
“It’s not a crime to be pushed aside for no reason!”
“He’s right,” Mika agreed, although
true to her described character, she was beginning to cry. “We’re victims here!
That cow took my boyfriend away!” she pointed at Tomoyo.
Janet sighed. “He’s not your
boyfriend, Mika. He never was, or he never should have been, anyway. But I
guess you two have a point. You actually haven’t assembled that much in the way
of a charge list, even between you. Go stand over there for a bit, will you?
And keep out of the way.” They obeyed. Something in Janet’s voice compelled
them to, or possibly the fact that she was pulling a long knife out of her
pack.
“Now.
Hiiragizawa-san, please step away from the young woman.”
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Eriol started to demand, but the sudden appearance of a portal directly in
front of him startled him into silence.
Cygna popped out, pulling a
confused-looking woman by the hand and talking earnestly to her. “No,
everything is under control, Mizuki-sensei, I promise, it will all be taken
care of—ah! There you are!” She grinned at Eriol. “Recognize her?”
Eriol’s eyes went blank for a moment
as he fought the Sue’s influence. Janet helped him to do so by hitting Tomoyo!Sue lightly on the head with the pommel of her knife,
distracting her. Then Eriol blinked. “Ka…ho?”
“It’s about time!” Kaho said, but
she was smiling. “I was worried when you vanished just like that.”
“Sorry,” he muttered. “I didn’t
intend to.”
“I can’t let you go anywhere alone,
can I?” said Kaho affectionately as all traces of the Suefluence left Eriol.
“Come along, I’ve booked us plane tickets home.”
As the reunited couple started to
leave, Cygna called after them, “Stay here a minute, would you? We might need
help. So,” she said as she turned to Sue!Tomoyo and
the others, “where were we?”
“I was thinking about recruiting
these two,” said Janet, gesturing at Mika and Kei. “They haven’t done anything
really bad, and we can always use more people.
“Works for me.
So, to business. Have a volume of manga. Have two. New
kids, you want to help?”
“Um…help what?” asked Mika timidly.
“Take these.” She tossed them each a
volume of manga. “Now do as we do.”
She and Janet stepped up on opposite
sides of Sue!Tomoyo, who was looking understandably
out of her depth, and whacked her on the head with the manga. “Get thee gone,
Sue! The power of CLAMP compels thee!”
With a wail, the misty form of the
Sue Spirit appeared in the air, driven out of Tomoyo’s body by the proximity of
canon. “What’s wrong?” It moaned. “My story is good!”
“No, it isn’t,” said Janet. “You
two, take over for me. Just keep the manga near her head, so the Sue can’t take
possession again.” Mika and Kei, too shocked to disobey, did as she said. “Right. Sue formerly known as Daidouji Tomoyo, it is my duty
as Protector of the Plot Continuum to charge you with the following: causing
inexplicable amnesia, making up words, changing canonical appearances, creating
an exchange student plot, using weird names, possessing Tomoyo, giving Tomoyo a
piercing, giving Tomoyo a tattoo, making Tomoyo dress like a slut, really
stupid nicknames, reckless endangerment, acute comma neglect, you’re/your
confusion at least three times, bad songfic, possessing a PPC Agent’s Lust
Object, creating secondary OCs, half a dozen cultural anomalies, abuse of
diction, and several other grammar and punctuation charges besides.
“Also, you are charged with bringing
Eriol to Japan when he was in England, you idiot, making all the characters
stupid, causing character ruptures in Eriol, and probably some other characters
as well, bringing Good Charlotte to Japan, singing with Good Charlotte, using
bad romantic clichés, sending everyone hugely out of character, redhead abuse,
breaking up a canonical romance, to whit, Eriol and Kaho, ignoring Tomoyo’s
previous romantic interest, to whit, Sakura, making Kaho disappear, making
Tomoyo vastly unattractive, and, finally, with being a Mary Sue. These charges
warrant death. See ya.”
She threw her knife through the Sue
Spirit’s forehead, and the misty figure began to disperse. Before it did so
fully, however, Cygna dropped her volume of manga and yanked her poker out of
her pack. “Return to the shape you were meant to be in, Sue Card!” she shouted.
The Sue vanished, and a slip of
cardboard fluttered into Cygna’s hand, She grinned. “I
wasn’t going to miss this one. It’s a perfect sample of its type, too.”
“I still say you’re going to get in
trouble for this.”
“I disagree.” With canon restored,
all the characters were staring at them, probably wondering who they were. The
amount of noise they had been making would have attracted the attention of
anyone for a mile around.
Janet grinned. “New kids, eyes shut.
You too, Cygna. I’m sorry about this, folks. There’s
been a bit of a problem, but it should be fixed now, if you’ll just look right
at me—“
FLASH!
“Hiiragizawa-kun, Mizuki-sensei, you
just decided to come for a visit because you missed seeing everyone.
Tomoyo-san, you just sang a wonderful song of your own composition. Everyone
else heard her,” Cygna explained quickly as Janet stuffed the neutralizer back
into her pocket. “And we were never here.”
Janet opened a portal back to the
Headquarters, and the two Agents herded their recruits through it.
* * *
Recruits? The Sunflower Official
sounded like it would be smiling, if flowers could smile. Excellent! And just in time, too. You two will be sent to preliminary
training immediately. A new continuum is about to be overrun. You will be
useful.
Kei and Mika left, still in shock,
and the Sunflower turned its attention to Cygna and Janet.
Reports
have reached me that you two have been engaging in behavior inappropriate for
an agent of the PPC. Drooling was mentioned. Now, the customary sanction
involves No-Drool Videos—
“No, no, please, no,” Cygna
whimpered.
But
as most of the available ones feature Maeluiawen, it was felt that you might
enjoy the experience too much.
Janet flushed.
An alternative penalty will be sent
to your console. I would advise you to catch up on your sleep, Agents. You will
need it. Dismissed.
“Somehow,” Cygna said as they walked
back to their
“It can’t be as bad as the No-Drool
Vids, can it?” asked Janet. “Mary, we’re back! I got you pictures!”
“Really?
What of?” A young woman came out of Janet’s room, running a brush through her
short, wavy brown hair.
“Tomoyo’s place.
It was really nice. Sorry, have you met? Mary, this is Cygna. Cygna, Mary.”
“A pleasure,” said Mary with a
smile.
Cygna grinned back. “Likewise. Look, I’m going to take advantage of a little
quiet to go get some food and take a serious nap. If anything happens that isn’t
absolutely time-critical, don’t wake me for it. If it is absolutely
time-critical, still don’t wake me for it.”
“Will do,” said Janet.
It was six or so hours later when
Cygna finally lurched Igor-like out of her room to see Janet looking at the console
in horror.
“What is it?” she asked.
Janet turned to look at her, eyes
haunted. “I think I’ve just found out what the SO’s special punishment for
drooling is.”
-to be continued-
[Cygna’s Note: This was really, really
bad. Be glad we spared you, the reader, most of it. It’s also longer than what
I personally like to do—I’m a nit-picker, me, and this just had too many bad
scenes. Tomoyo should never have a tattoo. That is all.]
[Janet’s Note: Yes, I am a Tomoyo Luster.
So what? I am an Equal Opportunity Luster, and proud of it. Besides, she’s
gorgeous. I really hate it when people take away all the good things about her
to make her more like them. Especially the clothes. I
may never forget the clothes., Oh and this awful thing
is here. It belongs to
Little Wings, which is fine by us. We wouldn’t have it if she paid us.]
Coming up on PPC:CCS—A
mission into the Fandom that Spawned a Thousand Sues! Bad slash of the worst
possible kind! Our heroines may never be able to lust again! Frankly, they’ll
be lucky if they can ever look at the canon! And worse!