Title: The Helping Hand of VJB 6/7
Author: quew
Please see part one for disclaimers, archiving info, etc.
Notes: This episode is bought to you with the letter C (caffeine) and the number nine thousand, eight hundred and thirty seven.
#
Gizzmo stopped the mini with a screech, and after five minutes frantic pushing and pulling to get quew out of the sunroof, everyone headed toward the nearest turbo-lift.
When the doors opened, they found a member of VJB slumped against the wall while a man dressed in the most boring suit any of them had ever seen read at her from a big sheaf of papers he had pulled out of his briefcase.
'And so, due to paragraphs two, fifteen and thirty-six A, all of which I have explained to you in minute and excruciating detail�' The man was saying, and the group winced - he had the most monotone and expressionless voice they could have ever imagined. He was devoid of expression in face and movement, his every trait designed to melt the most inventive mind to mush with the shear overpowering air of boredom he projected.
The poor VJBer in the lift had already started to drool, having passed the screaming and whimpering phases many minutes beforehand, and Nicole pointed out scratches down the walls where the poor woman had tried to claw out of the confined space.
Sticking their fingers in their ears, the group pounced on the enemy. Unfortunately, it was extremely difficult to hold him down using only their elbows and since taking their fingers out wasn't an option, they had to be content to awkwardly drag the almost comatose woman out of earshot and send the 'lift on its way. The man didn't move as they did so, he simply seemed to content to drone on and on and on�
Wyrd shook her head to dispel his influence and tapped the VJBers cheek. 'It's no good�' She said. 'We're gonna haft ta take her ta sickbay.'
'It doesn't look like things are going too well,' quew said as they carried the poor women toward the medical facilities.
They got to sickbay in record time, piling through the doors and putting the woman down on the nearest bio-bed.
'Michael!' quew called, espying the man at the back of the room hunched over a bio-containment cylinder. 'Could you help us?'
'Sure, sure,' Michael agreed, smiling and tucking the cylinder under his arm. 'What seems to be the problem?'
'She got cornered by one of TPTB's troopers,' Nicole explained.
After he'd bustled out to find an antidote, an attractive woman wearing the VJB uniform - I.E whatever you wanted to wear - strode into the sickbay and put her hands on her hips.
'Michael, have you managed to get the doctor online yet?' She called.
'Not yet BT!' He called back.
'BT?' quew gasped. 'What happened to you?'
'Someone else discovered my feminine side,' BT said.
#
After Michael had fixed the woman they'd bought in, the group left to find RalSt and the others. A few static ridden transmissions told them that the main group of VJB were planning a final assault and were going to stage it in engineering.
They found Gizzmo's mini where they'd left it, with one worrying addition - a TPTB Trooper stood before it, reading from his papers.
'And as you are parked illegally as defined in footnotes forty-seven beta and chapters three hundred�'
The mini gave a metallic groan and Gizzmo and Wyrd gasped. 'They can't be /that/ strong, can they?'
The mini screeched again, the alarm half-heartedly turning itself on in a last ditch effort to drown out the droning man.
'Quick!' Gizzmo called. The five of them dived forward, quew and Tori tackling the man, Gizzmo and Wyrd sprinting for the car while Nicole started to babble loudly and valiantly, managing to match the monotone man word for word. She kept the balance even for a few moments, but then the shear weight of his dullness began to press heavily on the three not in the vehicle.
'This�is�so�blah�' quew managed, her eyes glazing over as he went into a detailed description of paragraphs four, fifteen and twenty-five, including footnotes and sub-clauses and�
Tori was looking shaky and Nicole was swaying by the time Gizzmo had backed the car off to a safe distance. The driver kept her hand on the horn, managing to blot out the man for the few seconds quew and the others needed to get to the mini-vehicle.
'To engineering!' Wyrdy cried when they were all inside.
#
When they arrived, they were astounded at the packed ranks of VJBers assembled at one end of the engineering room.
'Where on Earth have you lot been?' RalSt asked as Michael and BT appeared through the doors. 'And what are you two /wearing/?' She said, pointing at Wyrdy and quew, who looked at each other's attire - they were still wearing their muses' outfits, having forgotten to change in all the excitement.
'The muses�' quew began.
'Never mind,' RalSt said, waving at the collected ranks of readers and writers. 'Are you guys ready?'
quew and the others looked around them - whichever way they looked, VJBers stood ready to defend the fandom against the encroaching PTB
To their left stood several VJBers standing ready, armed with padds full of stories designed to confound the best droning of TPTB's troopers, and past that Michael was readying his insect army, backed by RalSt's personal hornets. AP was next to Michael, fully armed with stories, and next to them, Kyanite and DeeJay were at the head of an entire regiment of biker chicks, revving their engines and readying their shock-sticks.
To their right, BT stood with Bethany, working on some complicated looking machinery designed to fire compacted stories at the troopers. Beyond them stood a women holding several snarling beasts on very thin leashes.
'Excuse me,' quew hazarded, 'but are those�porcupines?'
The women nodded proudly and smiled. 'Yes, ninja porcupines.'
Quew grinned, 'Very cool.'
'Nice pajamas, by the way,' the woman said before bending down and turning her attention to her porcupines once more.
At the other side of engineering, they could see TPTB's troopers gathering, readying their papers and clearing their throats.
'Are we ready?' RalSt roared, now wearing Robin Hood's clothes, carrying a rather snazzy longbow and working the VJBers into a frenzy. 'Readers!'
And the readers roared, 'Ready!'
'Writers!'
'Ready!'
'Lurkers!'
This cheer was the loudest yet, seeming to come from the walls and shadows themselves. 'Ready!'
'I didn't know they were there,' quew whispered to Wyrdy.
'That's tha thing with lurkers,' Wyrdy replied. 'You can never see 'em, but they're always there when you need 'em.'
With an almost slow motion sense of momentum, the two sides began to converge, crashing together around the warp core. The tide flowed back and forth - sometimes, gray suits were prevalent, swamping the multi-coloured ranks of the fans. At other times, the VJBers pushed them back until they were nearly fighting in the corridors.
'It's not working!' RalSt cried as she readied another arrow. 'They're overpowering us!'
quew glanced around - Kyanite, Deejay and their team were making short work of the Troopers they encountered, but they could not be everywhere at once. The woman with the porcupines was holding her own, ordering her animals with military precision, and Gizzmo and Wyrdy were sailing round engineering in the Mini, a woman quew didn't recognize hanging out of the sunroof and throwing books with enviable precision. She looked left and watched as Rebelgirl hefted a white, ball-shaped object and lobbed it into the fray. quew watched as it hit a Trooper in the chest and he toppled over; a few moments later she saw him pop up and wave at them, a big grin bisecting his usually dour face. 'When does the next chapter get posted?!' He called.
'What are you doing?' quew asked as Rebelgirl threw another, with the same effect.
'Throwing 'Snow' balls,' Rebelgirl replied, grinning.
Suddenly, quew saw a VJBer being overwhelmed by a gray suited attacker, her hands pressed over her ears and her face clearly showing her torment as he educated her on the finer points of copy write litigation, up to and including doodles and post-it notes.
She grabbed a padd off the nearest console and sprinted over, reading as she ran and hollering the first few paragraphs of an Odon spoof as she did. The gray-suit backed away, the humour making him scrunch his face and cover his ears. Pulling the woman upright upright, quew helped her to the sidelines and sat her down, giving her the padd entitled 'The Madness of Odon.'
'That'll keep you safe,' quew said, 'they won't dare fight against something that good.'
BT and Bethany's gun was also a success - they were firing chapters of Weejee's stories and the Troopers didn't know what hit them�soon they were crawling around the base, transformed from emotionless robots and begging for more, willing to renownce their emotionless existence forever if they could just have the rest of the story.
Still, with the gray-suits clocking in at nearly three thousand, the VJBers were still losing by sheer force of numbers�