Disclaimer: The PPC was created by Jay and Acacia, which is a good thing. The Abhorsen series itself was created by Garth Nix, which is also a good thing. The fic in question, ‘When Magic Collides’ was created by Astreals Ashes, which is not a good thing. My thanks to Moonbather, Pretzel, doctorlit and Rats for betaing.
PPC 01 – Books, Bells and a Newbie
Amy waited by the console, mentally preparing herself so that she wouldn’t jump if it made a loud noise again, wanting to make a good impression on her mentor, but suspecting that she hadn’t exactly got off to the best start with that. She would have felt more confident if she’d known anything about the continuum she was due to enter (the ‘Abhorsen-verse’ Skeet had called it), or if she’d had any kind of training before being expected to go on a mission. But then, the Daisy with the funny name had said that something like this might happen, and if she couldn’t trust a talking flower, who was she supposed to trust around here?
While she waited nervously, the other occupant of the room was in a flurry of activity, rapidly filling two backpacks that had been left half full next to the console.
Skeet checked the two ‘ready bags’ first, making sure that they still contained all the stuff that’s useful to Agents wherever they go and whatever their mission type: snacks, Bleeprin, sleeping bags, CADs, some universal weapons (knives are canonical virtually everywhere), and a Remote Activator were already safely packed, but some better continua-specific weapons had to be added before they were ready, and the CADs had to be calibrated.
Most of the PPC tech was transferred into one bag (Skeet’s), rather than being shared, on the basis that it was probably marginally less likely to explode or melt if handled by someone that actually knew how to use it. A small cupboard near the console relinquished the Gameboy-style cartridges that provided the right settings for the older model CADs that Skeet possessed. After a moment’s contemplation, more snackage was added, as was entertainment in the form of an MP3 player and an E-Book reader, and then he turned his attention to the weapons.
Skeet selected a Webley Mark 5 revolver and a cavalry sabre for himself, and passed a Gewehr 98 (complete with sword-bayonet) to Amelia.
Amelia received the rifle cautiously, almost as if she was expecting it to fire randomly. At a length of 1.25 metres from stock to barrel tip, and with a blade not much shorter than half a metre, the weapon was longer than she was tall.
Skeet skimmed through the Intelligence Report as he set their disguises, making sure there was nothing particularly out of the ordinary (as far as such things can be measured within the PPC), paying special attention to the section at the bottom marked ‘Special Operating Requirements’. Usually this was left blank, but this time a note had been left specifying that the remains of all Sues and related creatures had to be thoroughly destroyed, or removed from the continuum. No-one wanted to deal with the consequences of a necromancer reanimating a Sue.
His apparent random tapping of the buttons on the console had produced a portal up against the nearby wall, causing Amelia to jump back in shock. Through the portal was just blackness.
“Um… I’m not sure I know how to use this…” Amelia said, holding her rifle awkwardly.
“We’ll get to that later, for now just follow me.” Skeet said, as he stepped through the blue-edged portal.
Amelia noticed that Skeet’s clothing changed when he stepped through the portal. His black clothing had been replaced by a tan military uniform, and he looked a little taller and thinner too, which she put down to vanity. He still had his goatee and ponytail; the latter peeked out from under his newly acquired helmet, looking decidedly un-military.
For his part, Skeet had set the disguise generator to increase his height because height and authority/importance tended to be related (he watched a lot of anime), although making himself instantly thinner was pure vanity.
Looking down at herself once she stepped through, after using Skeet as an impromptu mining canary, Amy noticed that her clothing had changed too, and she frowned as she took in the distinct lack of stripes and bright colours. An experimental tug of her bangs showed that her hair had remained unchanged as a lighter shade of brown (Boring Brown as she thought it), and this received a further frown. She wasn’t any taller either, so she and Skeet were about equal height, which she didn’t think was fair. Although she hadn’t noticed that Skeet had tweaked her disguise settings slightly, and the heavy bag she was carrying was suddenly much more manageable.
“What is this place? I thought it’d be more interesting,” she said, taking in the utterly featureless ‘landscape’.
“Pre-fic space,” Skeet explained. “The story hasn’t started yet, although with luck I’ve portalled us in just after the-“
A/N: Was about to wait until after junior cert but i have ore then enough time to study. Anyway this is a completely new story new story so please review and tell me what you think.
Disclaimer: As much as I'd like to I don't own anything of Garth nixes.
With the echoes of the disembodied voice still reverberating in his skull, Skeet reached out and helped his partner back to her feet.
“What was that?”
“Author’s Note, try to avoid them whenever possible, it’s not something you ever really get used to.”
“Meow?”
Skeet looked at Amelia, while he wouldn’t put it past her to make random cat noises, she seemed just as puzzled by it as he was. He finally located a pair of green eyes at about ankle level when the blackness faded out into the start of the fic, and a jet black kitten was revealed.
“Kitty!” Amelia rushed forward to scoop it up in her arms, accompanied by the sound of her equipment hitting the ground. “Where did you come from?” she asked it, as the cat graciously accepted the attention as its due.
“Amelia, try to look after the rifle, and the rest of the kit. Some of that’s delicate equipment.”
“Oh, and where did you come from?” Amy exclaimed, as she noticed another cat by her feet.
While Skeet watched, a third cat popped into existence near the two agents, and he realised that they weren’t in fact real cats, but minis.
“Leave ‘em be for now Amy; we’ve got work to do.”
“But they’re so cute!” she protested.
“Yes, but they’re minis, and we’ve seen three of them before we’ve even seen any of the characters in this fic, so I get the feeling we’re gonna be quite busy. Your training starts now.”
Amelia stuck her hand up in the air. “Um, question. What is a mini, and why is it not a kitty?”
Skeet quickly checked the Words, focusing on the Authors’ Note that he hadn’t really taken in when he’d heard it. “They’re formed when a name gets misspelled in fiction, in this guy’s case, the ‘Garth nixes’ referenced in that disclaimer we just heard. And that wasn’t the only charge in it. Amelia, put him down, and start writing out a charge list. There should be a pen and notepad in one of the pockets of your pack.”
“Spelling mistakes make kitties?” Amelia asked, the far-away look in her eyes indicating that she was remembering some of the fics she’d read before, and no doubt imagining them being drowned in kittens.
“Just misspelled names. Each continuum has its own specific type of mini: Harry Potter has mini-Aragogs, Lord of the Rings has mini-Balrogs, and here we have... mini-Moggets, I guess?”
The mini in Amelia’s arms stopped basking in the affection being lavished on it long enough to give a very regal feline nod, before returning to the more important matter of being stroked.
As the other two minis strolled past him, no doubt using their feline instincts to detect that Amelia was a much better source of affection, Skeet noticed that the collars they wore had their names inscribed on them, in addition to a series of Charter Marks.
Skeet bent down to scratch under the chin of Anclisteire, who was most surprised to receive the attention, although the mini had judged the agent correctly, and he was just checking to see if they came with miniature necromantic Bells as well. A small copy of Ranna hung from Anclisteire’s collar.
“Look, the way this is going, I get the feeling we’re going to be collecting a lot more of these guys, so put that one down and start taking charges. You can play with them when we aren’t busy.”
All three of the minis gave Skeet fairly disgusted looks, and then proceeded to rub themselves against Amelia’s legs, purring loudly.
“Alright, so what are we charging for?”
Skeet counted the charges off on his fingers as he gave them. “Creation of minis, multiple counts, specifically ‘Garth nixes’, ‘Anclisteire’ and ‘old kingdom’. General SPaG abuse including lack of capitalisation and using ‘then’ instead of ‘than’. And finally, within the first note at least, unwarranted repetition of the words ‘new story’.”
By the time they’d seen the first character who, owing to a complete lack of description, appeared as a mannequin the same colour grey as the walls of HQ, Skeet had started skimming the Words, and was wincing every time he spotted a typo. Amelia thought he had a nervous twitch.
“All right Amy, time for your first lesson: the Character Analysis Device, or CAD.” Skeet said, as he pulled the device out from his pack. “One press of this button, and it’ll tell you if a character is canon or not, and if you have to bother dealing with it. Try it out on this guy.”
Amelia took the CAD and pointed at the approaching figure, her tongue stuck out in concentration.
[Harvey Goodmen. Non-canon. Bit character]
Up close, they could see that its only distinguishing features were a vaguely masculine appearance, and a nametag that read ‘Hi, I'm Harvey Goodmen’.
As Harvey walked past, he multiplied into a crowd of identical beings in front of them, because ‘He was a group in opposition of the latest plan about the old kingdom’, although they rapidly merged back into a single entity as the Words reverted to referring to him in the singular.
Under Skeet’s watchful eye, Amelia added this to the charge list without even needing prompting, adding a couple of dashes beside the ‘creation of minis’ charge to account for the addition of ‘corvere’ and ‘forwin mill’ to their group.
The two new minis seemed to think that Amy had her hands full with the others, and went to get some attention from Skeet, trying to trip him up in an affectionate sort of way.
“OK Amy, I'm promoting you from newbie to Chief Mini Wrangler. Your duties include: looking after all the minis we collect, and making sure none get left behind, as well as continuing to charge for anything obvious. I’ll let you know about any continua-specific charges we come across.”
Amy swelled with pride, and managed a clumsy salute in Skeet’s direction, very pleased that she’d managed to impress her partner enough that he considered her suitable to take on extra duties. She’d have been quite disappointed to learn that Skeet was simply off-loading some of his least favourite tasks on her.
With that bit of delegation done, Skeet took out his MP3 player and began selecting an appropriate playlist.
Amy stuck her hand up in the air again, waiting for Skeet to notice her. “Do I get music?”
“Depends, did you bring any?”
“Of course I didn’t! I didn’t have anything with me when I fell through that stupid plothole, apart from the clothes I'm wearing... well, not these clothes that I'm wearing, but the ones that I was wearing before they became these ones-“
“OK, I get it. Look, if we get enough loot from this mission we’ll be able to trade for some stuff. For now, this’ll have to do for your entertainment.” Skeet said, taking out his E-Reader and selecting a file. “Training manual,” he explained, as he passed it over to her.
“Urgh! A training manual... boring! How is that supposed to be entertaining...? Heeeey, this looks like a story.”
“It is. It’s Sabriel, the first book in the Abhorsen sequence, which we are currently in. So it’s sort of a training manual. You can read it when we’re quiet, but keep an eye out for mission stuff, OK?”
“OK!”
At Skeet’s prompting, they stepped back into a side street, out of line-of-sight of a second mannequin that was walking towards them. This one didn’t even rate a nametag.
Amelia looked to her mentor for guidance, who just pointed at the approaching figure as if to say ‘get on with it’. She held the CAD out in front of her with a considering look on her face, then jabbed at the button.
[Insert Name Here. Non-canon. Sue]
The two grey men walked into an alleyway which appeared as if by magic. A few seconds passed. A harsh silver light lit up the alley for approximately 10 seconds. A smell of burning meat wafted out of the alleyway, and Harvey walked out of the alley whistling cheerfully. A second Harvey Goodmen was dead in the alley not at all recognisable under severe burns.
“Make a note of probable non-canonical magic use. There are canonical ways of disguising your appearance, but they take a lot longer than 10 seconds, and I doubt they can be used to take on a specific individual’s appearance.”
Amelia scribbled in her notebook.
“Alright, the next scene takes place in a car, and I don’t fancy trying to portal into a moving vehicle. Least of all because even if we managed it, there’d be nowhere for us to sit that wouldn’t attract unwanted attention. We’ll skip to the scene after and wait for them to catch us up.”
Skeet’s actions suited his words, and he called up a portal, giving Amy a quick demonstration in the use of the Remote Activator.
The role of Chief Mini Wrangler was taken very seriously, with Amy insisting that Skeet kept the portal open while she counted up the five minis.
They had arrived at the Perimeter Garrison, the one point that allowed official passage between the technologically progressive country of Ancelstierre and the magical Old Kingdom. Skeet had been looking forward to seeing it ever since entering the ‘verse, and while the military base with its trench network and bunkers, not to mention the many, many, shiny weapons, did look impressive, he’d mostly been wanting to see the Wall. Sadly, this had been rendered as a mere common noun, and the three foot high drystone wall lacked the expected majesty of a magical barrier supposedly capable of stopping a swarm of undead plaguing Ancelstierre.
While waiting for the characters to arrive, Skeet managed to give Amy a crash course in basic PPC technology and procedures, which resulted in control of the RA being given over to Amy.
I can’t believe I'm doing so well, thought Amy.
I can’t believe I was able to offload another task. I like having a minion, thought Skeet.
“So, you got the hang of it yet?” Skeet asked, as the trainee agent stared cross-eyed at the sky.
“Yeah! I can see the Words!”
“Alright, what are our wayward canons up to?”
“Um... well, they’re still travelling in the car, and... are you sure we can’t charge them for this stuff?”
“We can only charge if we actually witness it, or see some evidence of it after the fact. Why, what have they done?”
“There’s a line here about Nick ‘winking his eyebrows’!”
Skeet looked for himself and found the relevant line. “And in a suggestive manner, apparently. Not quite sure how you’d manage that...”
The pair waited in near silence while the car approached. Skeet spent the time listening to his music, while Amy started off by opening and closing a few portals to make sure she’d got the hang of it. That got boring for her quite quickly though, so she soon switched to her borrowed E-Reader, and the next stage of her ‘training’, absentmindedly stroking the minis as they vied for her attention.
The car itself was undescribed, and flitted between various makes and models, although they all tended to be older style vehicles with running boards. As it got closer, the agents could see one more remarkable thing about it: it seemed to have been attacked by a lunatic wielding a hammer. No matter what form the car took, the bonnet and roof were covered in dents, although curiously the sides of the vehicle were fine.
Skeet skimmed through the relevant Words, but didn’t spot anything at first, other than the creation of several new minis. It was only on his second read-through that he noticed all of the dialogue was missing the ending punctuation. His theory was confirmed soon after as, in response to one of the characters finishing speaking, a small black blob fell out of the sky and landed on the car, putting a new dent in the bonnet and this time shattering the windscreen as well. The characters inside remained completely oblivious to this.
“Ballistic punctuation. As if we didn’t have enough to worry about.”
When the car finally stopped, four characters and six minis disembarked. The minis immediately flocked toward the agents, and Skeet checked their collars to see that they had just collected ‘Edward sayre’, Nicholas sayre’, ‘prince sameth’, ‘nick’, ‘paperwing’ and ‘white cat’, the last of whom (of course) was another black cat, with a miniature Mosrael on its collar.
“Hang on a minute, we’re missing one. Amy, scan Lirael with your CAD.”
She did so, and looked at the readout.
[Lirael. Cano... correction: target is designated ‘Lireal’. Non-canon. Character Replacement.]
“Oh yes, I suppose we couldn’t just stop with the occasional typos and misspellings, no, we had to make the same damn spelling mistake. Every. Single. Time.”
“So, we’re going to have to kill her?” asked Amy, remembering what Skeet had told her about the various foes the PPC encountered.
“Looks like it, and then find the original too. Lirael will be in a plothole somewhere.”
The three canon characters, and the unwelcome (and in all likelihood unintentional) OC looked around, talking amongst themselves.
Nick was driven away in the car, while the rest of the characters made for the crossing point. A scene shift dumped the agents back in Bain, although the next scene was so brutally short that neither of them found the time to prepare before the end-of-chapter Author’s Note hit.
A/N: Well i think this is better than my last story. I could of course be wrong. Please Read and review.
Disclaimer: Garth Nix owns it all
They’d been dumped on the floor of a generic hotel room with the start of the second chapter, it had a basic array of furniture (bed, bedside table, desk and a couple of chairs), and was occupied by Nicholas Sayre, who looked distinctly unhappy.
A ‘meow?’ from nearby the character indicated that Nick’s monologing had produced another mini. ‘hedges care’ joined the others in trying to get Amelia’s attention, swarming around her so closely that she’d likely step on one if she tried moving at all.
“Mr sayre.-
“Meow?”
-There is somebody here to see you” a voice from behind the door said.
The latest addition to their group joined the throng at Amy’s feet, and immediately began scuffling with nick.
“Really? Did he give a name?” Nick said as he opened the door.
“Yes as a matter of fact he did. Lieutenant Tindall or something”
“Is it just me, or was that last line particularly robotic? As much as I hate to say it, knowing full well that the Ironic Overpower will be listening, but I really feel that the dialogue in this fic needs more punctuation, some commas wouldn’t go amiss, or maybe just some more descriptive terms instead of ‘said’ all the time.” Skeet mused out loud.
“It was pretty monotonous, shall I check her with the CAD?” Amelia asked, in her enthusiasm she had got a reading on the girl.
[Manager’s Daughter. Non-canon. Bit character]
This was a habit that Skeet would have to stop, unless he wanted his partner to go through CADs even quicker than a normal Assassin.
“What does he want with me I wonder” Nick wondered aloud.
“Yeah, OK, that didn’t improve things.”
Skeet and Amelia were forced to listen to the ‘banter’ between Nick and the manager’s daughter as it continued for a little while, before salvation arrived in the form of an unmarked scene shift that pulled them, and their multitude of minis, far into the Old Kingdom, to the palace in Belisaere.
When they had climbed back to their feet (Amelia’s progress was severely hampered by several of the minis jumping on her while she was sprawled on the floor. Skeet had to move them before she could stand again), they could just make out a Paperwing coming in for landing.
Skeet watched as the glider momentarily hovered, before muttering something that Amelia didn’t quite catch about ‘basic physics’ and ‘not doing research’.
As Prince Sameth of the Old Kingdom and Lireal the Interloper got out of the Paperwing, Skeet took in the details of their new surroundings (Amy was busy trying to make sure each of the minis got the same amount of attention, while each mini was trying to make sure that it got more attention than the rest, so she was finding her self-assigned task quite challenging). The castle was quite a sight to behold, although Skeet was less impressed with it than Lireal was, as a lack of full description had led to it looking remarkably like a Disney castle.
It was colossal lireal thought to herself. Towers reaching to the heaven, statues incredibly detailed dooted the grounds and main entrance, a soft comforting glow radiated off it and the main door!
‘lireal’ appeared as a three foot tall clone of Lireal, with skin and hair that looked like it had been plastered in glittery make-up. Skeet drew his sabre and rushed forward. The mini-Sue saw the charging agent and tried to flee, but didn’t get far before being skewered. Fortunately the mini-Sue had fled away from the characters, so the execution hadn’t drawn any attention.
“I thought you said we had to read the charge list first?”
“We have to charge Sues: that was a mini-Sue, created by a typo in the name of a Sue or character replacement. Those we can kill on sight.” Skeet explained.
Before Amy could write down this latest charge the entire party was relocated slightly (passing through the outer wall at something like a fast jog, which was a somewhat unpleasant, although strangely painless process), so that Lireal could notice the statues.
Skeet hauled himself up from the grass using one of the pedestals the statues were sat on, and it went ‘Doot!’ at him. The unexpected noise was loud enough that it startled Amy, who lost her balance and was promptly swarmed by the minis, all of whom seemed to be under the impression that it was some kind of game. While Skeet helped his younger partner out, Lireal continued to stare at the unfamiliar surroundings.
The castles entrance door was huge. Easily thirty to fourthy feet tall. Designs of animals and mythological creatures of the Old Kingdom were so realistic she half expected them to walk out of the door, snakes flowing through the artwork with ruby's for eyes, beautiful men and woman at the ground level and charter marks moving through the door not obscuring it only enhancing it's beauty.
The overly florid description had led to the door being rendered in an array of eye/mind-bending suvian colours.
“Oh there is so much wrong with using description like that for a door, even if it is the door to a castle. And why would a door of all things get more description then any of the actual characters?” Skeet had long ago learned that trying to make sense of badfic was an exercise in futility, but it was a remarkably therapeutic one. He had to look away, almost overcome by the disturbing sight, and pulled out a bottle of Bleeprin from his pack. He dry swallowed a handful of the pills, then tried looking at it again.
“Amy, charge for...” Skeet suddenly realised that his partner was being uncharacteristically silent, not even cooing over the minis. “Amy?”
She was standing next to him, facing the door, with a slightly cross-eyed blank look on her face, almost as if she was reading the Words. When Skeet experimentally waved his hand in front of her face, she didn’t react at all. He took some more of the tablets out, crushed them up in his mess tin, and added some water from his canteen. He then carefully poured the medicine down his partner’s throat, and waited for it to kick in.
“Uuurggh, what is that?”
“The closest thing I’ve ever seen to an Inanimate Object!Sue.” Skeet said, as he risked another glance at the door. It glittered.
“Charge for... threatening the mental wellbeing of PPC Agents through the creation of a Sue!Door.”
Amy attacked her notepad with her pen, embedding the words of the charge deeply through several pages.
Sam and Lireal walked off into the castle, talking inconsequentially while the agents followed and collected the freshly spawned minis. The mini-Sue lireal appeared again, and this time was dealt with by Amy clubbing it with the stock of her rifle.
“It took a while to repair the palace” Sam continued as he fell in step beside her “when the reget burnt it there must have been some free magic used because no matter wat we did we could use charter sending's!”
“Charge for confusing dialogue, I'm assuming that Sam is meant to be saying that they couldn’t use Charter Sendings, which would make sense given the corruptive nature of Free Magic.”
“Stop boring our Aunt Sam!” a scolding voice sad from a woman who lireal recognised as ellismere fro forwin mill.
A comma crashed through the ceiling, and landed in between Skeet and Amelia, as another ‘meow?’ announced the arrival of ‘Aunt Sam’, followed soon after by ‘ellismere fro forwin mill’, a very aristocratic looking ‘Bond-villain’ style white cat, with a diamond encrusted collar, and a miniature Dyrim hanging from its collar. The mini-Sue reappeared again, and seemed to recognise the agents; at any rate, it ran off before either of them could react, and the narrow generic corridor they were in offered no way of giving chase that wouldn’t result in bumping into one of the canon characters.
“What do we do?” Amy asked, mild panic in her voice as the mini-Sue disappeared to who-knows-where.
“As much as I hate letting them run free to cause trouble, I expect we’ll be seeing it again soon.”
The mini-Sue was dragged back into the corridor a couple of times as Sam, Lireal and Ellimere continued down the corridor, and was despatched on the first occasion, but escaped again the second. This did nothing to appease Skeet, who was slowly losing patience even with the canon characters, although CAD readings showed that it wasn’t really their fault.
The conversation spawned several more minis, which even Amelia found to be a bit much, as she was now dealing with over twenty of them. A few more commas crashed through the ceiling, causing agents and minis alike to scatter whenever they appeared, although the ceiling was at least strong enough to stop the slightly lighter full stops from breaking through. The rather bland conversation continued, while in the background was a sound akin to very large, though infrequent, hailstones.
After enduring this for a little while, the agents found themselves back in Ancelstierre, accompanied by no less than twenty-four minis according to the Chief Mini Wrangler’s count, and Skeet found that he was rapidly running out of Bleeprin.
They’d been dropped in a bar at a train station, where Nick was monologuing, creating even more minis, and demonstrating such a lack of intelligence that Skeet was forced to check him with his CAD to make sure that Nick hadn’t been replaced while they weren’t looking.
[Nicholas Sayre. Human male. Canon. OOC 40% and rising]
When Nick thought about how much safer he’d be once he got to the Old Kingdom, after just thinking about the possibility of having a magic-using psychopath after him, Skeet’s CAD gave a beep and updated its display.
[Canon: Nicholas Sayre (a.k.a. Nick). OOC 50% and rising, subject displays a worrying lack of IQ]
“Yeah, you’re telling me.” Skeet said, as he put the device away.
Skeet checked the Words and confirmed that nothing else interesting was scheduled to happen, and Amy confirmed that they’d picked up all the minis, so they jumped ahead to the next scene.
They emerged in a street in front of an ornate building, and the only characters present were a bit guard and a new OC.
In corver outside the parliament one of the night shift guards were sneaking in a cigarette break. As per usual it had been a godforsaken, wet and windy night. He looked up as a boy no more than sixteen or seventeen walked up to him. He was plain in all respects except for his eyes which were bright blue and sparkling.
“Wow, I think that’s the first bit of description we’ve had for an OC.” Skeet commented, surprised and a little relieved that they weren’t going to start having to deal with multiple faceless humanoids.
“It’s not much though is it?”
“No, but at least it’s enough that he’s appearing as human, rather than a shopfront model. That’s something to be thankful for I guess.”
“Hello. How are you” he asked pleasantly.
A question mark plummeted out of the sky and landed in the street, both the guard and the boy failed to notice it.
“Get a life twerp” growled the not in such a good mood guard.
“Charge for convoluted sentences,” Skeet said, as he dodged out of the way of a falling full stop. “Get a reading on them both, would you?”
[Guard. Human male, Non-canon. Bit character]
[Insert name Here1. Non-canon. Supporting Sue. Assassinate/Recruit?]
The boy lunged forward with a knife and killed the guard. Skeet made a mental note to take the weapon as loot, and then they were assaulted by the end-of-chapter Author’s Note.
A/N: I really like doing these ominous endings. Anyway thanks to everybody who reviewed this. I'll try to have this one up quicker.
Hello anybody who is reading this fan fiction. Shortest chapter imaginable but anyway i just came to tell everybody the next chapter won't be up till March. I have tests and stuff that I have to study for so you will have to wait. Sorry
A/N: Oh I am so sorry! With tests and social stuff I didn't really have time to write or anything. I'll try to speed this up. Thanks to anybody who's reading this!
Disclaimer: I don't own anybody in this story.
“What!?!?” exclaimed Skeet, gratuitously abusing his punctuation. The length of continuous booming voice had cut through the shield of medication that he’d been gradually applying, and really hammered home an instant ‘why is someone playing a drum solo in my skull?’ level headache. He spluttered incoherently for a few moments, before downing half of his remaining Bleeprin and offering the remainder to Amy. She accepted it, and the agents both took a moment to allow their headaches to subside and their vision to clear, before noticing that they’d been dragged back to the palace in the Old Kingdom.
“What in the name of the Creator and his blessed Light was that? That wasn’t a chapter! I’ve seen characters with names longer than that! And you don’t get to call it a chapter, regardless of length, if it isn’t actually part of the story. Amelia, charge for...” his usual eloquence failed him as the headache launched a counter-attack. “... everything.”
“Umm... I-I think we might have to be a bit more specific than that, don’t you?”
“Fine. Charge for having the nerve to call a paragraph a chapter, for having said paragraph be nothing whatsoever to do with the plot of this mess, for annoying me personally, and making me consume all of my Bleeprin before even facing any of the main Sues,” Skeet thought for a moment longer, and checked the words before adding. “Oh, and charge for blatantly incorrect disclaimers too, I’m certain Nix didn’t include any characters that broke his own established rules for magic.”
The two agents were standing on top of one of the palace walls, looking out over the city of Belisaere, taking in the spectacular view while Lireal tried, and failed miserably in Skeet’s opinion, to provide some exposition on the city’s defences.
The aqueducts barely visible from the distance. If she concentrated she could just see the movement of the water. Strange how a practical means of bringing water around the city was the only thing that saved them during the integram. I wonder how it was made she tought to herself. She knew that theiur was a reservoir of water at the highest point in the city, protected itself by the circling of water, which goes to a second reservoir which then is led back to the first reservoir(backflow is stopped by a clever valves method) and was purified while passing through the valves by charter marks. Then the whole process started again.
“So… are you ever going to get to the actual explanation of that? Saying things like ‘clever valves method’ offers about as much insight as ‘it worked by magic’, which in this setting would actually make sense, although would still be kind of lazy.” Skeet continued to quietly rant as Lireal stared out over the castle walls, his reaction to Sues breaking simple technology or the laws of physics had been remarked upon by previous partners as akin to messing with any other agent’s LO.
While he was still ranting, the agents were dragged into a banquet hall, which failed to live up to the expectations of the description given, due to the fact that all of the colours appeared as washed out and dirty, rather than the gleaming white and gold that was stated. The ‘true’ colours bled through occasionally, while the Words tried to work out if they were in a flashback, or had just gone through a scene change. It was rather a disconcerting sight, and gave the impression that invisible creatures were waging a war on cleanliness, against equally imperceptible foes counterattacking with cleaning products. The cleaners seemed to be losing.
The family usually eat in a small room in the palace but there was some sort of festival on so they had eaten in the banquet room. Lireal had been amazed by the grandness of the room. The floor was pure white and seemed to glow, the walls were a light golden colour and ice sculptures were at every corner. They were so amazingly beautiful that lireal forgot about the banquet itself. When she managed to tear her eyes from them she noticed mouth watering food on tables between the ice sculptures. They were seated at a long table. The rest of the meal passed in a blur. Everybody was so happy to see her!
As the scene description was provided, ice sculptures (each one looking suspiciously like the Venus De Milo, obviously the default choice for Generic Statues) appeared in the four corners of the room. The table then split into four smaller tables, and each one zoomed out, apparently under their own power, to rest up against one of the walls, so that they were between the ice sculptures in each corner.
Amy was filled with a sudden, and confusing, sense of joy whenever she looked directly at Lireal. Skeet, meanwhile, was a little more experienced when it came to suefluence.
Oh I'm so happy she is here, though Skeet, it means that we’ll be able to kill her soon. It turns out that a Sue can make an Assassin happy just with her mere presence, although said Assassin will be even happier once the Sue has... departed.
Sam walked up to Lireal, and the scenery (and its colouring) wavered as the Words tried to work out if this was part of the probable flashback, or occurring in the present. Eventually they compromised by having the main banquet table and a couple of ice sculptures appear on the battlements, which were widened to accommodate the table.
The canon character and the OC began having one of their trademark dull conversations, in which very little inflection was used, misspellings were commonplace, and punctuation was not.
Skeet and Amelia took advantage of the confusion over the nature of the scene, and took cover under the table, grabbing some of the generic food in passing. They ate and played with the minis; even Skeet had to admit that they were kind of cute, as long as you were careful with their Bells. They didn’t have the full strength of a set of Necromancer’s Bells, but a swarm of them could easily have anyone nearby suffering from a number of compulsions, ranging from feeling sleepy to a desire to dance. Fortunately, the power of Astarael was greatly reduced, and seemed to only be capable of inducing headaches in those who heard it. There was very little to do while they waited for the conversation to finish so that it would be safe to walk around outside again, other than occasionally update the charge list.
Suddenly Lireal noticed a blue object from the palace come towards them. It had the soft insubstantial glow of a flame. It was gliding closer. It was small no bigger then a blackbird. A blackbird entirely made of blue flame but anyway. It skimmed over lireal who flinched as it passed. It landed on the battlements surface. It looked up innocently at sam.
“All royal blood should report to the conference room immediately and lireal the remembrancer “ the bird said in a voice that more belonged to a seven year old girl then a magical bird. It nodded at Sam and took off into the sky. Sam and lireal glanced at each other.
“Seems we've been summoned” Sam said
The words finally sorted out that the entire scene had been taking place on the battlements, and that the flashback in the banquet hall should have ended. The table disappeared, just as a pair of full stops came plummeting out of the sky, causing both Skeet and Amelia to dive out of the way.
Amelia landed near the mini-Sue lireal, who ran away from her, but in doing so was herded towards Skeet. He promptly picked the mini-Sue up and pitched her over the side of the outer wall, and both agents watched as a splash of glitter on the ground signified her temporary demise.
“Did we actually kill it this time?”
“No,” Skeet said, after scanning ahead in the words. “But it is getting to feel rather therapeutic. You can have the next turn, if you want.”
They portalled into the palace’s ‘conference room’, which unfortunately looked like a modern business meeting room, complete with bare functional furniture, whiteboards, and a projector set up on the table. The characters ignored these anachronisms, and began talking about some disturbing developments in the land, although as far as Skeet could tell, the conversation itself was far more disturbing. The mini-Sue lireal put in a brief appearance, Skeet allowing Amy to have her turn at dealing with it.
Several characters were present, including their first sighting of King Touchstone. Due to a lack of description, he’d defaulted to one of his more detailed appearances from the original books, which included a kilt, and leggings that highlighted his very muscular legs. This last fact was of far more interest to Amelia than Skeet, at least at first.
“Mmmm, he’s got nice legs...” Amelia had a slightly faraway look in her eye, and seemed to be drooling.
Skeet quickly recognised an agent about to go into full-on Lust Mode, and cursed everyone he could think of for not warning him that one of his new partner’s Lust Objects was from the continuum they’d been sent into in their first mission together.
“Um, yeah, I’d never really noticed it before, but you’re right.” Skeet said, trying to distract his infatuated partner while he searched for his medical kit.
Amy turned to face him, and gave Skeet a considering look, before her eyes narrowed in jealousy. “You can’t have him, he’s mine!” she exclaimed, before dashing forward.
Fortunately, Skeet had been expecting something like that, and was able to grab her and administer a dose of Anti-Lustin before she could draw attention to herself. The scene had carried on with a magical video presentation, apparently part of an emergency message that had been sent.
A couple of minutes later, the Anti-Lustin had returned Amelia to being a fully functional agent, and the ‘message’ had finished playing. Although since it seemed to have been told from the point of view of one of the soldiers, who was killed at the end, Skeet was unsure how it had actually made it to the castle.
To Skeet’s dismay, the agents hadn’t picked up the pair of new minis that he’d been expecting; Sabriel and Mogget had both received similar treatment to Lirael, so they now had the character replacements ‘Sabrial’ and ‘Moggot’ to deal with too.
The conference room was silent, and the mood of each of the characters present was summarised with a single word each: Touchstone was grim, Sam was shocked, while Sabrial and Lireal stood around with blank expressions on their faces. They were far luckier than the pair of mini-Suesthat got dragged into the scene (sabrial and lireal) who, looked saddened but with a professional determination on their face. Joined as they were at the neck, and sharing the single face, Skeet actually felt sorry for the creature, something he never thought he’d do. Amy, meanwhile, looked on in disgust at her first example of body-horror.
The creature was too close to the actual characters for the PPCers to do anything about it, but fortunately their minis came to the rescue. A swarm of multi-coloured fur, teeth and claws converged on the conjoined mini-Sue, quickly putting it out of it’s misery. The canon characters of course couldn’t see the minis, and suvian types always seem to be willfully blind to such things anyway.
Ellimere still hadn’t been mentioned, even in the summary, despite the summons of Sam and Lireal specifying ‘all Royal Blood’, so the Words decided that she hadn’t been there after all, and she promptly vanished.
“It is possible we can reach quire in time to save any survivors” Touchstone said “but there's only one paperwing and no near guardhouses. It will take six hours riding nonstop to get to quire. Anybody who goes will have to know that if you run into trouble we may not be able to help you in time”
This ‘logic’ ignored the fact that the news was already old by the time it had arrived, and so everyone was likely already dead. But they carried on planning and plotting a rescue anyway, and eventually had a plan that they were satisfied with, despite some fairly major flaws and plotholes.
Once the planning was over, the agents then found themselves back with Nick, in a posh looking restaurant that was filled with the sounds of murmured conversation, and a slight wheezing noise.
They were in a dining room that was almost suffocating.
The mannequin everyone else thought was Harvey Goodmen took to the stage.
“Ladies and gentleman! I am so sorry to interrupt you're dinner but we are at an important juncture in you're lives. The old kingdom nuisance is getting far out of line. Unfortunately all of you were about to make a wrong choice. Mind you i can't blame you. You are all politicians after all.” Harvey Goodman said to a confused and outraged crowd. A flicker at the corner of nicks eye made him glance. Black robed men had entered the room and silently locked the doors.
The two agents braced themselves for the upcoming end-of-chapter Author’s Note, while Not!Harvey performed a bit of non-canon magic, and across the old kingdom everything free and charter felt a moment of dread they couldn't explain.
“Well that kind of power level would pretty much confirm a Sue in any continuum.” Skeet said. “We can definitely kill it now.”
A/N: Again sorry for the wait. If you get sick of my slow updating you should read flawless evil by master of grey, Night child by ghogoti, and five charter by sanareylle. Actually anything by sanareylle. Sorry for misspellings.
A/N: Thanks for all the reviews master of gray. Btw anybody who's reading this is a two part thing. So expect a cliff-hanger.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything in this story. Except for some of the villains.
The agents found themselves unexpectedly outside the restaurant, the general building up of the plot fooling them into thinking that it was actually going somewhere. They were stood next to a car which was completely unremarkable but was obviously high quality.
“Charge for stupid descriptions, if you can tell that its high quality then that’s something to remark on, isn’t it?”
“Yup,” said Amelia, needlessly replying to Skeet’s rhetorical question as they both moved closer to the car.
It was occupied by four men, although they had to take the Words’ word for that, as only three of them were characterised. If ‘characterised’ is the right word. Skeet thought.
There was a young one, a large one, and one who sat just a little bit straighter then the rest and had just a bit more of an air of authority about him. The fourth member was only present as far as the numbering went, and received no description or dialogue whatsoever. Rufuis, the apparent leader, was actually deemed worthy of description, and as such was tall and slim with a slight scar running down his neck. He did have the misfortune to have ‘two pistol’ strapped to his waist, which was an odd artefact that couldn’t quite decide if it was one gun or a pair, and consequently flitted between both forms.
They were discussing Nick, and the details of their assignment to him, which seemed to be a classic ‘secret protective detail’ when they were called to action.
Just then an incredibly right light exploded out from the building. The glass shattered, the doors of the diner blew open, every window in a five kilometre radius shattered and the men in the cart flinched away from the light. There was then a silence louder than the loudest sound. Rufuis who was apparently the leader of the group glanced at the youngest of them who was staring shocked at the building.
“Well boys lock and load. I doubt that's it” Rufuis said as he stepped out.
Being a ‘right light’ the illumination was sort of vague and hard to describe, but it was definitely correct.
Due to the typo, the nearby car that the men had been in, which previously had looked like an old, black, Bentley, spontaneously morphed into a horse-drawn cart. Strangely, the road around it was still littered with broken glass from when it had been a car. The men didn’t seem to be too bothered by the transformation, as it meant that they could simply leap over the sides, which was undoubtedly a quicker way of getting to the action than fussing around with car doors.
The agents found themselves back in the restaurant, and safe in the knowledge that the mannequin had displayed truly game-breaking levels of power, began preparing for the assassination. Skeet left Amy with all their gear at one of the tables, taking only his weapons with him.
“That was a bit more dramatic than I thought it would” The psychotic supporting Sue said.
Amy’s CAD beeped for their attention, informing the agents that the psycho had now been given a name, and was known as ‘Barishka’ rather than ‘Insert name here1’.
As Nick’s uncle tried to deal with the supporting Sue, but found that his gun clicked ‘uscleslly’, Skeet stepped up behind the boy, a knife in his hand.
Skeet rushed forward and grabbed the supporting Sue’s hair, forcing his head back and the knife against his throat. “Don’t even think about it.” Skeet whispered into his ear.
Nick’s uncle gasped in surprise at seeing a sergeant from the Crossing Point Scouts suddenly appear behind the boy, while Skeet concentrated on holding the Sue in place, confident that none of the stray rounds that were about to come would hit him if he were standing where the boy was. He’d instructed Amelia to stay down until the gunfire stopped.
“Not!Harvey, also known as He Who Must Not Be Described, I am an Agent of the PPC, and you are hereby charged with the following crimes against canon.” Skeet announced, catching the attention of everyone, canon and original alike.
The mannequin known as Harvey stepped toward Skeet, but he just pushed his knife further into the boy’s neck and said, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, just stay where you are.”
Before Harvey could order his robed goons to surround Skeet, gunfire sounded from outside, and the brainless bit characters drew their swords (which had ‘strange marks’ on them), apparently going to engage the gunmen. A stray round took care of the mini-Sue ‘Mr goodman’, leaving its most probable intended target completely unharmed.
The goons and the gunmen were then promptly swallowed by a plothole as they disappeared from the scene, leaving Skeet to face the two Sues without distraction.
Despite having an armful of henchman, Skeet’s task was made slightly easier by two things, firstly Amy’s handwriting was stereotypically neat and legible, in contrast to his own handwriting, which was usually indecipherable to anyone else, and in sharper contrast to his former partner’s, which was often indecipherable to anyone. Secondly, the Sue didn’t seem to have much knowledge of the PPC, or DMS Assassins, and was under the mistaken assumption that as one of the ‘good guys’, Skeet wouldn’t be inclined toward cold-blooded slaughter.
“You are charged with the following crimes against the canon of the Abhorsen series, and writing in general: multiple SPaG offences, including the creation of dozens of mini-Moggets, and leaving off the ending punctuation in virtually ALL of the dialogue, leading to the physical endangerment of PPC Agents, creation of a Sue!Door leading to the mental endangerment of PPC Agents, having no physical description despite apparently being an important character, throwing Nickolas Sayre so far out of character that he actually thought fleeing to the Old Kingdom would make him safer from a magic user, messing with the established rules for magic, replacing the characters of Sabriel and Mogget, note the spellings please. And finally, above all else, being a Mary Sue. You are supposed to get last words, but I’m going to suspend that on this occasion because, quite frankly, I’m worried about the structural integrity of this ceiling if you get into a long rant.”
“And you,” Skeet continued, digging the point of his knife further into his hostage’s neck, “Are charged with aiding and abetting him on all counts, as well as being far too psychotic to be considered for recruitment.”
“The punishment for both of you is death.” Skeet pronounced, and at that, the Sues seemed to realise that he was serious.
The main, and still unnamed one, could do little more than glare angrily in Skeet’s direction (or at least, that’s what Skeet thought he was doing, having no facial features makes it quite difficult to project emotions).
The freshly christened Barishka however, decided that attempting to steal Skeet’s sword was a good idea.
That’s not the most sensible thing to do when said Assassin is holding a knife to your throat, but once you’ve ended up in that situation, all of your choices are bad ones.
His sabre actually cleared its scabbard, but by then Barishka’s short and unlamented existence had ended in a spray of glitter. The limp body fell to the floor, trapping his sword, as Skeet switched his grip on the knife.
As Not!Harvey looked on in (probable) shock, Skeet flung his knife at the offending Sue.
However, despite possessing a two-dimensional personality, and no discernible features beyond a silhouette, there was one important difference between the Sue and the paper targets that Skeet used for target practise: the targets never dodged.
This left Skeet in the unenviable position of facing an enraged sorcerer Sue, without a weapon in his hands, and no convenient hostage to use as shield.
On reflection, it was at this point that Skeet felt the mission, which had been going pretty well as a training exercise, began to fall apart.
Bugger. Skeet thought, as he dived behind a table. Not!Harvey obliterated the one he’d been standing in front of only moments before with a fireball.
He drew his pistol and braced himself against the table, knowing that Nick’s uncle hadn’t been able to fire, but figuring that it was better than his only other option of throwing Amy’s notebook and hoping that it would somehow decapitate his foe.
He pulled the trigger and the gun went ‘Sproing!’, and cogs and other pieces of clockwork on springs burst out of the cylinder. What the... that doesn’t even make any sense...
Skeet was so distracted by the egregious misfire that the next fireball almost caught him in the face, and he began to tactically reduce his vulnerability to incoming fire (a military technique which is in no way similar to running away and hiding under tables, although this may not have been immediately obvious to an outside observer). As he ran... erm... used tactics, he tried to come up with some sort of plan for salvaging the mission.
A table across from Skeet was consumed by flame, and further off he saw the terrified face of his apprentice, and the lumps of all their kit just behind her.
“Amelia, throw me the rifle.”
“But guns don’t work!”
“It’s got a foot of sharpened steel sticking out the end of it, even Harry Dresden’s magic couldn’t muck that up!”
Amy slid the rifle along the floor to him, but the strap tangled in her arms, and it only slid about a metre, right out in the open. Skeet facepalmed, and when he looked up again saw her flinch back from his gaze.
Flames burst over the tabletop, and burning fragments of tablecloth fell down onto the floor in front of him.
Skeet dived for the weapon anyway, expecting nothing more than a fireball to the face, and so was quite surprised to see nothing but burning furniture and cowering bit characters.
He walked forward slowly, scanning for any threat with the rifle at the ready. He found the body of the Sue, with a possible perplexed expression on its face, and a hole burned through its torso.
Skeet looked around to see Amy peering over the top of one of the tables, the RA clutched tightly in one white-knuckled hand. “Amy, did you do this?”
“Um... I panicked?”
“You panicked... and set someone on fire?” Skeet asked, wondering if she was due for a transfer to DOGA after finishing her internship. “Hold on a minute, how? You’re a World One mortal, like me, aren’t you? How’d you set it on fire?”
Amy blushed and waved the RA slightly, refusing to come out from behind her table. “Um... I... like at the end of Portal?”
“You redirected one of his fireballs? Hell, that’s impressive. Well done, newbie.”
Amy blushed with pride at the compliment from her mentor, then watched in horror as he proceeded to break one of the PPC’s rules, the importance of which had been impressed on her by the Daisy whose name she still couldn’t remember, shortly after she’d tumbled into his office.
“Excuse me...” Nick said, struggling to comprehend what he’d just witnessed.
“Ah, Mr Sayre. I'm sure you have questions, and I’ll be happy to answer them for you,” Skeet lied, “But before I do, can you explain that?”
Nick turned to see what the officer was pointing at, then collapsed into unconsciousness when Skeet hit him over the head with the rifle stock.
Amy gasped. “Oh my God, you just attacked a canon! We’regoingtogetinsomuchtroubleforthis...”
“No I didn’t.” Skeet said, in defiance of some pretty overwhelming evidence.
“You... but... I... no... you didn’t?”
“I merely rendered him into a state suitable for transport, and assisted with the removal of uncanonical memories without the aid of a neuralyzer.” Skeet explained.
“You hit him in the head! With a gun!”
“Well, yeah, that’s another way of phrasing it, but that’s a bad way of phrasing it. Particularly on things like official reports, if you get my meaning.”
“Um...”
“Look, did they give you a neuralyzer?”
“No...”
“Right, cos you’re a trainee, and they don’t give them to trainees. Well they didn’t give one to me either,” Skeet briefly wondered if he should explain that that was because he wasn’t allowed one, but decided that it probably wouldn’t inspire confidence, so glossed over that little nugget of information. “So, unconsciousness it is. Asleep works too, but I don’t know any way of making someone spontaneously fall asleep.”
“... I guess that makes sense...” Amelia said, still far from convinced.
Skeet could tell that she wasn’t happy with the situation. “Look, when you’ve been doing this for a bit, you’ll realise that there’s a difference between what Upstairs wants, and what’s practical and reasonable in the field. But... I guess I probably should be showing you how to do things properly, so you can find your own compromises and shortcuts. We’ll do the rest of this by The Book, OK?”
“Yeah.” she said with a smile.
“Great. Now, help me deal with those mini-Sues, and then I’ll need a hand with these bodies.”
The couple of mini-Sues that had been spawned, but not cut down by typo induced gunfire, were dealt with quickly, as the bit characters and walls of the room began to fade away.
“Can you give me a portal to...” Skeet paused to think of a suitably isolated canon location. “Cloven Crest. Do you know it?”
“Where Sabriel stopped to get directions?”
“That’s the one.” Skeet confirmed, as a blue-edged portal sprang to life.
Skeet hefted Nick’s limp form into a fireman’s carry. “So, what do you think of the book?”
“I like it.”
“Cool.”
In short order, the agents and their minis (most of whom found the unconscious Nick fascinating), Nick, and the two Sue bodies were through the portal and back into the Old Kingdom.
The Disguise Generator hadn’t just altered their clothing, but their accessories too, so the black backpacks that Skeet had packed back in their RC were now military bergens, complete with an entrenching tool (and other useful bits), which Skeet used to dig a firepit.
Amy helped by staying out of his way, and ensuring that the minis did too. She even managed to make tea for both of them, which proved to Skeet beyond a shadow of a doubt that she’d make a great partner (even if the tea didn’t have any sugar in, but the thought of Amy on sugar was enough to convince Skeet that this sacrifice wouldn’t be without reason).
By the time they’d finished their tea, the suvian remains were burning nicely, and Nick had been dropped off in his own bed.
Amy and Skeet (plus their mini entourage) arrived near the uncanonical town of Quire. Having travelled at the speed of plothole (which is even faster than the speed of plot), they arrived shortly before the Paperwing carrying the rescue party.
“Oh goody,” Skeet said sarcastically, on seeing another grey mannequin at the centre of a group of suspiciously familiar robed acolytes. “Another creature without a name, description, or in all likelihood, logic. I was kinda hoping they’d turn out to be the same thing, and we could’ve knocked off early. Scan ‘em.” This last was directed at Amy, who complied.
“Six bit characters, and one Sue.” she reported. “Do you have a plan?”
“Yup, but it’s a secret.”
“What?” Amy asked, not sure if she was being hazed.
“Didn’t the Marquis tell you about the Narrative Laws?”
“He said something about them...”
Skeet gave her the quick and dirty explanation. “Well, we’re in a work of fiction right? And there are certain conventions that are so prevalent in fiction that they become almost physical laws. One of these relates to the dramatic reveal, if someone explains a detailed plan you can pretty much guarantee that it’ll go wrong, cos otherwise there’d be no tension in the story.”
“So, by keeping it to yourself, you’re more likely to have it succeed?”
“That’s right. I will say this though, it’s deliciously poetic justice, and should make up for us having to hide under the table for the battlement scene.”
The two agents watched as the Paperwing came in to land, and then Sam, Lireal and Moggot got out and snuck up on the Sue’s group. The Sue and its minions were apparently doing something magical, which resulted in the excavation of a nine-foot-long sarcophagus, wreathed in Charter Marks.
Sam spoke in too loud a whisper, attracting some rather unwanted attention, and the situation deteriorated rapidly while Skeet watched for the right time to stage an intervention. A couple of minis were spawned, and they immediately homed in Amelia.
“Right, so we’ve got Lireal completely breaking character with Lirael by taking off Moggot’s collar as a first resort, rather than a last desperate hope. Moggot breaking even further from Mogget, by not trying to consume the nearest member of the Abhorsen bloodline... and the Sue has displayed magical abilities that one of the Nine Bright Shiners can’t explain, making it a perfectly legitimate target, excellent.” said Skeet, rubbing his hands together in anticipation.
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“Yup,” Skeet said with confidence, and then uttered the line that would actually allow him to pull off his ridiculous plan. “It’s a million to one shot, but it just might work.”
He stepped out from their hiding place, noticing that Lireal and Moggot were already down, which made things easier, and that Sam was about to fall, which needed to be avoided if possible.
“HOLD IT!” he yelled, in his best ‘drill sergeant’ voice.
Everyone stopped and stared, Sam because he couldn’t believe his luck at being rescued, the bit characters because they’d take orders from anyone, and the Sue because it couldn’t believe that someone was daring to interfere.
“He Who Cannot Be Named (For He Has No Name), I am an Agent of the PPC, and you are hereby charged with the following offenses against canon and writing: having no name or description, despite apparently being an important character, leading to confusion over to whether we’ve already killed you or not already, being a powerful user of noncanonical magic when there are already such cool magic systems in place, and daring to think that you would be able to ‘easily’ overpower Mogget, also known as Yrael, one of the Nine Bright Shiners, the beings who made the Charter. You do not get to be on the same power level as them, let alone above them. You’re also charged with the creation of minis, and failing to punctuate properly. If you have any last words, now would be an excellent time for them” Skeet said, deliberately leaving off the fullstop from his last sentence.
Far above them, a small black blob appeared, quickly gaining speed as it fell.
“You pathetic thing. You think you can bring charges before me? When I have in my grasp the untold power of this...” At which point, Skeet stopped listening.
The fullstop continued to fall, having reached terminal velocity some time ago, and Skeet saw the black blur zero in on the Sue.
Like a homing missile (or more accurately, like a ballistic punctuation mark guided by odds as close to a million to one as made no difference, the Narrative Laws , a strong sense of poetic justice and a helping hand from the canon) the fullstop hit, cutting off the Sue in mid-rant, and splattering pieces of mannequin and glitter around the nearby scenery.
During Skeet’s stand-off with the Sue, the bit characters had succeeded in battering Sam unconscious, but left it at that. Without further instructions from their master, and lacking sufficient personalities to act on their own, they simply stood still while Skeet despatched them. While doing so he noticed that they all had similar swords to the last batch of hooded mooks (apparently the Words weren’t totally certain that the Sues were intended to be different characters), so he looted them.
“So, do you want to scoop up that mess and set fire to it? Amy asked, indicating the scattered remains.
“No, I think we’re good here. Probably should burn the replacements though, just to be sure. And I don’t know what to do about that.” Skeet indicated the sarcophagus. “If a Sue went to all that effort to uncover it, I reckon it should stay buried.”
“Oh, do we have to?” Amelia asked with an exaggerated sigh, slumping her shoulders in anticipation of manual labour.
Skeet considered her attitude and found himself in agreement. “I suppose we could always palm it off on somebody else. Pass me the RA.”
Skeet called up a portal to the DMSE&R, and stuck his head through “Helloooooooo, field agents reporting in.”
No-one seemed to be there, although Skeet was pretty sure he’d got the right place, the standard drab grey walls had been replaced with gleaming white ones, and that only seemed to happen in the medical/scientific areas.
Determined not to have to deal with the thing themselves, the agents stuck a note on the sarcophagus and pushed it through the portal.
Before leaving the site, Skeet went up to the guardhouse that had been mentioned in the message and pinched a crossbow, on the basis that he didn’t have one from the Abhorsen-verse yet, but didn’t see anything else that caught his eye.
A quick portal hop and some minor heavy lifting later, and two more bodies joined those already in the firepit at Cloven Crest, and the unconscious Sam was taken back to the palace. More tea was brewed, and Skeet took advantage of the short rest and a copy of the D&D 4th Ed. Rulebook to identify the swords he’d taken as +1 magical longswords. Then plotting occurred.
“I think we’ll have to rescue the missing canons before going after Sabrial. She’s travelling with Touchstone and a company of Royal Guard. I don’t fancy trying to take them on in a straight up fight. With any luck, we’ll be able to swap Sabrial for the real one without anyone noticing.”
“You really think so?”
“No, but it’d be nice if it did work out that easily, wouldn’t it? Come on, let’s see what we can do.”
“OK, so where do we start looking? You said she’d be in a plothole, right?”
“That’s right, most likely in the palace. And I can think of one place that’s probably got a plothole in it big enough to have all of the canons trapped inside.”
Amy quickly caught on to what Skeet was thinking. “You’re gonna make us look at that door again, aren’t you?”
“’Fraid so.”
Another portal later, and Skeet found that by looking directly down at his feet, and using his hand to shield his upper peripheral vision, he was able to approach the door without it nauseating him. Amelia had refused to even look at it, and was sitting several metres away, with her back to the door and a lapful of minis.
“I hate plotholing.” Skeet muttered to himself as he prepared to climb in and search for the missing canons.
The plothole space was timeless and almost completely featureless; the only indication that Skeet was even moving around was the difference in texture of the floor. The process felt incredibly slow to Skeet, but within relatively short order the three wayward canons were lying in front of the door, which had reverted to a solid wooden barrier, finally looking like the entrance to a proper fortification rather than some fairytale palace.
The two humans were just regaining full consciousness, and were staring around bleary-eyed, looking like they were recovering from massive hangovers. Mogget looked like he’d fallen happily asleep, and was oblivious to the attention of the horde of mini-Moggets crowding around his form.
“How long was I in there for?”
“Only a few minutes.” Amy said.
“Alright then, next scene.”
Amy obliged by conjuring up a portal with the RA, and helped Skeet herd the disorientated canons through.
They arrived in a clearing in time to hear Touchstone’s announcement. “Gather the guard! Leave the tents! We must hurry!”
“Uh, excuse me, your majesty, but I just have two points,” Skeet said, catching the attention of everyone nearby. “Firstly, why in the name of the Charter did you stop to set up tents, when you’re supposed to be on a time critical ride? I mean, it’s good that you stopped to rest the horses, and you don’t always see that in badfic, but you’ve gone to the opposite extreme. Instead of galloping the horses non-stop for hours on end, you actually stopped to make camp! It’s not even night time, why exactly do you need the tents up?”
“And secondly, and probably more importantly,“ Skeet continued, before he could be interrupted, “This is your wife, Sabriel, and that thing over there, is just a shapeshifter doing what I think is a pretty poor job of impersonating her.”
Everyone’s attention turned to Sabrial, who was caught with an expression of ‘deer in headlights’, allowing Skeet to aim and fire his newly acquired crossbow without anyone doing anything really heroic (or, as Skeet would consider it, utterly stupid) like jumping in the way to try and save the character replacement.
With the ‘twang’ of the crossbow still echoing in the air, and more importantly a bolt sticking out of Sabrial’s chest, Skeet quickly found himself the centre of some rather unwanted attention, in the form of sharp metal objects.
“Wait, wait, wait! That’s not your wife, your wife is here next to me, she’s fine, she’s just a little dazed. As I said, that was a shapeshifter, just look at the body, it’s bleeding glitter. You married a human, and they are not generally known for doing that.”
By the time Skeet had finished speaking, he and Amelia were surrounded by the guardsmen, and Touchstone had a look of absolute horror on his face. It was swiftly replaced with one of puzzlement as the last traces of the Sue’s influence faded, which left Skeet facing down an armed mob led by a thoroughly confused man. Which was at least a step up from being surrounded by an armed mob led by an enraged man, although confused men have been known to make mistakes too.
“What’s going on here? Who are you?”
Skeet fell back on their disguises, and immediately began blending fact and fiction to give a believable explanation. “Crossing Point Scouts, Skeet and Renner, sah.” Skeet said, offering the King a salute. “We’ve been tracking a creature, powerful and dangerous, but neither Dead nor Free Magic.”
“And where is this creature?”
Complete amnesia: everything’s been dealt with, the only thing left to do is get out of here and the mission’s complete. “If you’d care to look behind you there...”
Touchstone’s shout of alarm on seeing a dead clone of his wife a few feet away brought the guards’ attention away from Skeet, which allowed him to shoulder his way through to the body by the simple expedient of sounding like he knew what was going on.
“It was a shapeshifter, and it was... sort of feeding off you. Like most parasites, it can ‘numb’ the host so that it doesn’t notice the feeding, although in this creature’s case, they seem to feed off emotions. The ‘numbing’ effect applies to your personality, and memory, which is why you can’t remember anything about it.”
Touchstone and Sabriel both looked as if they were about to ask for more details, but by then Amy and Skeet had reached the body.
“Amy? Take us out.”
By the time the portal to Cloven Crest had closed, the canons had forgotten they’d even seen the agents.
The final body was burned, the slightly glittery Bells were taken as souvenirs, and more tea was drunk.
“There, that should stop any necromancers being able to do anything with them. Mission accomplished.”
And that would’ve been the end to it, if it hadn’t been for the mini-Moggets refusing to leave until Skeet tried bribing them with the promise of fish.
A quick trip to a fishing village (hunting creatures as slow-witted as fish when they can’t even notice you until you’ve actually caught them is a trivial task) sorted them out, and once they’d had their fill they were quite happy to bound through the portal back to RC 1984, which they promptly started exploring by climbing over every available surface.
“So... can we keep them?” Amelia asked, as one of the few that hadn’t immediately disappeared behind, or under, a piece of furniture rubbed up against her legs, purring loudly.
Author’s Note: There are two major issues I have with this fic, the first is mucking around with the magic when it’s so cool already, and the second is how little effort would have been required to make this significantly better. Seriously, a spellchecker and a list of character names, it can’t be that difficult (and yes, I realise as I write this that Muphry’s Law [not a typo, I promise] means I’ve probably messed up at least one of the names myself, but if I did, I haven’t spotted it yet).
Agents Skeet and Amelia will return in ‘A Small Crimson Sue’.