Disclaimer: The PPC belongs to Jay and Acacia. The fic sporked in this story, Daughter of Fire, belongs to bloodyrose2014 of fanfic.net. The Lord of the Rings belongs to J.R.R. Tolkien’s estate. The Door Within, Alleb’s home continuum, belongs to Wayne Thomas Batson. Agents Alleb and Jesse belong to me. My utmost gratitude to Scapegrace, Silenthunder, Matt Cipher, and SkarmorySilver for being my patient betas. I hope you enjoy!
Agents Alleb and Jesse were an odd pair, to be sure. The former, a medieval knight from a parallel universe in which she had been obliged to fight a war against Satan himself, was chopping some onions with a teaspoon in her mouth. The latter was a slightly mad cowboy from the Civil War, currently figuring out how a shower worked.
“I’m telling ya, I moved something, and water shot right out at me!” Jesse said, poking his bedraggled blond head out of the neon pink bathroom and into the lime green front room. “Some kinda witchcraft, I say!”
Alleb smiled and continued to chop onions, leaning back to keep her eyes from watering. “It is likely one of their odd inventions, Jesse,” she said around the teaspoon, scraping her knife against the orange cutting board to get off bits of onion. “You said it was above the tub, correct? Perhaps it is meant as a secondary way to fill it.”
“But why put it so high?” The cowboy asked, gesturing widely. “It’s higher up than I am!”
Alleb shrugged, then dumped the chopped onions into a skillet on top of the range, listening to the appetizing sizzle. She started stirring immediately, glad one of their neighbors had explained how the device worked. Alleb and Jesse, despite having been in HQ for about a month, were still settling in. Both of them were having a hard time adjusting to this strange new world of indoor plumbing and surround sound, and the fact that HQ was, well, HQ, was not helping them at all.
Case in point:
“BEEEEEEEEEEP!”
Jesse and Alleb looked up excitedly. To them, missions were still new and interesting: Chances to experience far away worlds and foreign landscapes. Ah, the innocence of new agents. Alleb hurriedly moved the skillet off the heat and turned off the flame, while Jesse ducked back into the bathroom to towel-dry his hair. When he reappeared, Alleb was already in front of the console, reading the mission summary.
“How’s it look?” Jesse asked, walking over to their weapon’s table. “Back-earth or Narm?”
“Middle-earth or Narnia,” Alleb corrected, not looking up. “And it’s Middle-earth. Sort of.”
“Whaddaya mean sort of?” Jesse asked as he strapped on his broadsword—a parting gift from a Stu.
“You’ll see what I mean once we’re inside. Toss me Cer Fel, would you?”
Jesse didn’t like the sound of that at all, but he did as requested.
The swordmaiden caught her short sword and strapped the sheath onto her back, then programmed the disguises. Generic Men, as usual. She took the RA and opened a portal, only pausing to grab her bag and say farewell to her green fire-lizard, Mithe. Jesse picked up the secondary RA—they weren’t sure why they had two, but it seemed prudent to bring them both.
“Stay out of trouble while we’re away,” she said, stroking Mithe’s head. The fire-lizard purred in appreciation, eyes swirling blue just as her owner’s glinted the same color.
“You two done bein’ all telepathos and stuff?” Jesse asked in faux exasperation. “You can mind talk and have weird eye colors together when we get back.”
Alleb straightened, smirking slightly. “You know very well my eyes only glint one color, Sir Jesse,” she said, stepping lightly past her partner.
“Hmph,” Jesse snorted, following her into the portal. “I still say—agh!”
He uttered this last word as he found himself stepping from the dry lemon-yellow carpet and onto a raining, muddy street. Ahead, a garishly-colored figure ducked into a familiar inn: The Prancing Pony. The two dashed in after her, already soaked to the skin in the downpour.
“Why’s it always gotta be raining?” Jesse asked ruefully once they were inside the tavern. The two of them shook as much water as they could off their Mannish disguises, looking carefully around the room to assess the situation as they did.
The Words, unfortunately, hadn’t described any situation at all. There was a vague mention of locals, which resolved as a small mass of Generics making an indistinct murmur at the tables, but nothing else. The canon was trying valiantly to reassert itself, even managing to manifest a fireplace in one wall, but it did little good. Generic Food on Generic Surface tables populated by Generic characters took up the majority of the room; to Alleb’s dismay, everything had a light sepia tone to it.
“Wonderful,” she said as they walked to an unoccupied table. “Beige Prose. Just lovely.” She retrieved a notebook from her bag, which was thankfully waterproof. She scrutinized their quarry, the figure that had ducked in ahead of them, then let her eyes slide out of focus to read the Words.
Her name was Rowan Black the daughter of Smaug the Magnificent and Lenora Black. In her human form she had red hair that resembled the color of her scales, with golden streaks. Her eyes were a beautiful gold and when her dragon half was activated or awake the pupils would become slits. Rowan also had both wolf skin changer blood as well as a small amount of elf. Her paternal grandfather's grandmother had been an actual Sindarin Elf, and her mother had taught her the ways to speak the elfish language.
Alleb banged her head on the table with a groan.
“What’s it say?” Jesse asked, eyeing the Sue uneasily. He hadn’t yet mastered the art of looking at the Words; they always slid away, like raw bacon off a fork.
Alleb related the single paragraph in a low voice, not bothering to raise her head from the table. “I do believe this is our worst mission yet,” she said mournfully. With a sigh, she sat up and began scribbling in her notebook. The amount of charges in one paragraph was startling.
“I don’t suppose we have enough to kill her outright?” Jesse asked hopefully. Alleb sighed again, and shook her head.
“There are two more chapters, and likely several dozen more charges. Oh, and she has apparently already ensnared Legolas. Poor man; out of character without saying a single word.” She resumed her scribbling.
Jesse took a swig from his hip flask and watched the Sue. For a brief moment she seemed to shimmer, and be replaced by someone else without a clear description, but then the red-gold-black was back again. Jesse took another swig from his flask.
“She used the wrong name,” Alleb noted, already sounding resigned. “Mistook herself for her mother, who, I feel I ought to add, had a child with a dragon.”
“How does that wor—” Jesse began. Alleb cut him off with a hand.
“Do not think about it,” she warned. Then she grimaced. “Sweet Elbereth. Where is that Bleeprin?”
While she dug frantically through her pack, Jesse watched the Sue, who was now talking to that hooded fellow in the corner—what’s-’is-face. Argon? That sounded right. “You know,” he said idly. “you could try swearin’ like all the other non-knightly folk. Works fine enough for me.”
Alleb was too busy swallowing a handful of Bleeprin to respond.
Jesse continued to watch the Sue. She and Argon seemed familiar with each other, but the noise from the Generic Taverngoers made their conversation impossible to hear. Just as Alleb set down her waterskin with a sigh, the door to the tavern opened again, and the four hobbits came in. Jesse raised an eyebrow when all of a sudden three of them became blonde—the important one, Fido or whatever his name was, was now surrounded by three females, all with pretty golden hair.
"What charge do I even write for that?" Alleb groaned, her head having hit the table with a small thud.
Jesse shrugged. “I dunno. You’re the one who read all them manuals ‘n books ‘n such.”
“Manuals are books, Jesse,” Alleb said, her thumb and forefinger massaging her temple.
“Right.” Jesse nodded, sipping from his flask once more.
“I mentioned she has ensnared poor Legolas, yes? It gets worse. Apparently, this makes her immortal—somehow—but she still ages. Slowly.”
Jesse narrowed his eyes. “You mean, when she gets to be a hundred she’ll look one hundred, and then as the years go by she’ll just look and feel older and older but never die?”
The swordmaiden nodded, eyes distant. “If there were a place where time passed more swiftly, I would leave her there, and let her suffer the consequences of making such poor decisions.”
“Or we could just stab her,” Jesse said, rattling his sword. His partner nodded sagely.
“That would also work.”
The two lapsed into silence and watched the rest of the scene play out. It looked similar to the movie’s account of Frodo trying to stop Pippin from speaking, albeit much more bland. Alleb muttered under her breath as she wrote out a multitude of charges. “Oh, she knows what a Ring of Power is, of course… And obviously she can recognize the One Ring simply by being in the room with it, despite the fact that her father did not… No, of course she is not tempted in the least by the Ring at all, despite being half dragon, which, in addition to simply being evil beings, absolutely love shiny gold things…”
While she wrote, Jesse got a CAD reading on the Sue, Aragorn, and the hobbits. He forgot about the sound, unfortunately, and it let out a loud beep as he levelled it at Frodo. The Sue looked up sharply, and Jesse only barely hid the device in time. She surveyed the room for a moment, searching for the noise. The agents did their best to look Generic like everyone else in the room, staring ahead with glassy eyes. It worked, and the Sue went back to being a blight upon the canon.
Both agents breathed a sigh of relief. “Make sure to cut off the sound next time!” Alleb berated Jesse quietly. “Remember what happened with our last Narnia Sue?”
“Yeah,” Jesse drawled. He looked penitent for a moment, then burst into a grin. “That sure was fun, wasn’t it?”
Alleb smacked his shoulder, then went back to muttering over her charge list.
“Argon’s forty five percent out of character,” Jesse said, stowing his CAD. “Hobbits are at thirty five. Sue’s a Sue, of course.”
Alleb nodded and added this to the charge list. I will be surprised if there is not at least one character rupture in this mission, she thought.
Eventually, they got to the part where Frodo is hurried away by Aragorn, and, in true Sue fashion, Rowan went along for the ride. The two agents got up and followed discreetly. After pushing Frodo “gently” against a wall (why, the agents didn’t know) the Sue and an OOC Aragorn took them both up to Aragorn’s room. Alleb and Jesse waited outside, leaning against the Generic walls, and listened to the thrilling dialogue.
"What do you want?" Frodo demanded standing up from next the fireplace.
"Caution that is no trinket you carry" Aragorn replied first to the hobbit walking past him.
"I carry nothing" Frodo argued.
"Indeed you do" Rowan corrected. Frodo turned to Rowan and eyed her as Aragorn went to the window putting out the candles to avoid drawing attention.
"I can avoid being seen if I wish but to disappear entirely that is a rare gift" Aragorn then turned around and removed his hood from his cloak to reveal his handsome face.
"Who are you two?" Frodo demanded looking from Rowan to Aragorn.
"Are you frightened?" Aragorn questioned the Halfling.
"Yes" Frodo replied.
"Not nearly frightened enough I know what hunts you"
“Stealing lines,” Alleb said, marking it down in her notebook, which already had nearly a page of charges in a cramped, wandering hand. “That is the second time, actually. She stole another one of Aragorn’s lines when they pushed poor Frodo against a wall.”
“Aw, missed it!” Jesse said, with an overly dramatic snap. He put the back of his hand to his forehead and leaned heavily against the wall. “We must go back.”
Alleb snorted, shaking her head. “You are insufferable,” she said.
Just then, the other three hobbits marched up to the door from the common room. They looked almost like marionettes, their movements jerky and perfectly in sync with the others, their eyes glassy. Merry and Pippin were still female and golden-haired, while Sam had been transitioned back to “blond” rather than “blonde.” Jesse and Alleb stood back and let them get at the door, Alleb holding her notebook at the ready.
The three hobbits—all holding unidentified useless items—burst through the door. Sam cried in a voice that had only an ounce of feeling, "Let him go or I'll have you Longshanks!"
"You have a stout hearts little ones" Rowan said to the three blonde hobbits. "But that will not save you" she then placed Jura back into its sheath.
“Stealing lines again,” Alleb murmured, too quietly for the Sue to hear. Sam suddenly became Fem!Sam again, but both agents were already too desensitized to make much of it. “And that sword. Could she think of no better name?”
Jesse smirked to himself. Alleb had named her sword herself, and was extremely proud of it, but she wouldn’t tell him what it meant; he suspected it wasn’t actually a very good name.
"You can no longer wait for the wizard, Frodo they're coming" Aragorn said coming up to Frodo. The four hobbits, along with Rowan and Aragorn quickly grabbed their belongings and hurried across the street to another inn to avoid being caught by whatever was hunting Frodo.
The agents watched in bewilderment as the Sue and the hijacked characters moved at blazing speed, zipping over to a new inn that popped out of the ground like a daisy after rain just as they arrived. Alleb had to grab the sides of her head to keep it from swimming, while Jesse stayed himself with a hand on the wall. The CAD, which Jesse had forgotten to mute, chirped loudly as it sensed an increase in OOC levels.
“Ca-aall dibs-on-killing-’er,” Jesse said woozily, stumbling away from the wall with a hand pressing hard on his stomach. “Ooh…”
“I’ll duel you for her,” Alleb said. She shook her head once, then fumbled with the RA. After a moment of struggle, she managed to open a portal into this new inn, outside the Sue’s undescribed and undefined room. The agents once again listened at the door, Alleb busily scrawling out charges and massaging her hand every spare moment.
"I know who you are" Frodo said as Rowan lay her head against a pillow. She was tired and needed sleep. "You are Rowan Black"
“Of course he would know that,” Alleb said. She could feel her right eye beginning to twitch.
The other three blonde hobbits all turned to the skin changer their eyes widened. Rowan smiled at the dark haired hobbit.
"You're the offspring of Smaug?!" the hobbit named Sam exclaimed.
"Indeed young one" Rowan answered her eyes looking over to Sam.
"I heard Smaug was still alive but I didn't know he had children" another blonde hobbit this one named Merry added. "Where is your sire?"
“Now, I’m not the expert here,” Jesse said. “but wouldn’t they be a mite more suspicious of a half-dragon woman who looks like she fell in a vat a red paint, then stumbled blind for a few moments and accidentally fell in a vat a gold paint, then climbed out and found clothes so ugly even my sister wouldn’t wear ‘em?”
“Already marked as a charge,” Alleb said wearily, pointing out the particular entry. “I’m going to need another page.”
"He and my mother have a new domain in the south after they were driven out of the Lonely Mountain by the dwarves sixty years ago"
"And what of your siblings?" the other hobbit named Pippin asked after Merry.
"Each of them live in the west, east, and north few times a year I go to visit each one including my parents, father no longer wanted to be around the greed of humans and dwarves"
Alleb barely contained a splutter at that; thankfully, the Sue didn’t hear, as just then:
Rowan then yawned and she felt sleep call to her.
"Sleep Mellon I shall wake you later" Aragorn told the dragoness and she sent her friend a thank you nod before she finally was able to sleep. Rowan along with Pippin, Sam, and Merry slept for a few hours before inhuman like shrieks got her to wake up.
Both agents reeled at the sudden time shift. Jesse had been leaning against a wall and managed to catch himself, but Alleb fell to the Generic Surface with a thud. Beside them a Sleep Mellon popped into existence. It looked like a cantaloupe with pointy ears; neither agent decided to question it, and Alleb pulled the thing's blanket slightly further up as it snored.
After Alleb recovered from her fall, cursing all Sues to the darkest pits of Paragory, she portalled the Sleep Mellon into their RC, hoping Mithe didn’t eat it. Or that it didn’t eat Mithe. She wasn’t entirely sure which was more likely.
Unfortunately, just as Jesse and Alleb felt the effects of the first time shift beginning to fade, another one hit them at the speed of a professionally thrown fastball (though neither of them knew what that was). It was accompanied by a spatial distortion, and the two of them found themselves thrown to the ground a few dozen yards away from the Sue and the canons, now on a Generic Road with nothing in sight besides grass and uninteresting hills. Jesse had to help Alleb pull herself behind a tall bush, and then she promptly lost her lunch. It wasn’t much of a loss, really; it had been Cafeteria food, and tasted much the same going up as it did going down. Jesse inched away from her and offered her a handkerchief when she was done.
“Thank y—” she began, but she was cut off by yet another space/time distortion. It flung the agents forward to an unspecified part of the day on the same Generic Road; the scene was so thoroughly undescribed that it looked like they hadn’t moved at all. They crash landed a few dozen feet away from the Sue, throwing up blades of grass and a few clods of dirt. The Sue looked up sharply once again, but the Ironic Overpower was kind, and the agents had landed out of sight. This Sue, being one of the least intelligent beings to ever twist the canon, lost interest after a moment and went back to adding nothing to the proceedings.
Jesse was the unfortunate loser of lunch this time, and it was much more of a loss; he’d made himself a sandwich. A really, really nice sandwich. Alleb patted his arm when he was done, then tapped the notebook. “Two counts of space/time—”
Yet again, the agents were tossed forward to an unspecified “point” in the day, and were allowed only a fleeting moment to clutch their shaken-not-stirred stomachs before they were thrown forward again, feeling like a ball being passed between children in a game of dodgeball. This time, however, they were given the briefest of descriptions: “a marsh.” Jesse was fortunate, and landed on a sliver of dry ground. Alleb, however…
The swordmaiden, despite her nausea and disorientation, managed to splutter to the surface. Her Mannish disguise was covered in marsh muck, and smelled like the wrong end of the dragons in Alleble’s stalls. “Great galloping moonrascals!” she roared as she came up. Or, rather, she would have roared if her mouth hadn’t been full of horrible-tasting water. As it was, it came out like a cough and an angry squeak.
Jesse, despite feeling like a wrung rag, hauled her onto the ground beside him. The two agents then fell flat on their faces, groaning into the soil.
“I should never have left Alleble,” Alleb rasped after hacking out the marsh water she’d swallowed. “We have the good sense not to—”
WHUMP.
The next chapter began with a time skip, combining the effects of both, and both agents tumbled into the marsh, heads spinning. They dragged themselves back out, gasping for air and trying to remember which way was down.
“I’m gonna kill her!” Jesse snarled when he had enough oxygen in his lungs. He managed to push himself to his feet, stumbling often, and looked left and right for the Sue. “Where is she!” he said, words slurring in a combination of anger and lightheadedness. “Imma kill ‘er!”
“I hate spatial distortions,” Alleb gasped, only barely able to sit up. She felt like she’d just had a round of wrestling—Alleble wrestling, which had no pads, and no rules. “At least we weren’t dragged along this time.”
The two agents paused suddenly, both realizing that such wording was an invitation for disaster. The Ironic Overpower, however, realized that doing something unexpected in this situation was expected, and thus did the opposite: nothing.
The agents breathed a sigh of relief.
“Let us be off,” Alleb said finally, heaving herself to her feet. Thankfully, her notebook hadn’t followed her into the marsh. She picked it up, then began pawing through her soggy bag for the RA. The agents felt a distant rumble; another time distortion, but the Sue was too far away for the full effect to manifest. Alleb opened a portal to Weathertop, which the Sue and the canons were now occupying, and stepped through. Jesse followed her, grumbling under his breath about marsh water in places where marsh water shouldn’t be.
The portal deposited them behind a handy rock, not far from the canons. They were just stopping for the night, and the Sue was talking to Aragorn a little ways away from the hobbits.
"I must hunt Mellon" Rowan whispered coming up to Aragorn.
"Follow me" Aragorn told her and she followed him away from the ruins while the hobbits slept. Her weapons were being guarded by Sam.
Alleb was bemused when all the hobbits except for Sam fell to the ground in deep sleep, and Rowan suddenly held the equipment for hunting mellons. Jesse, however, was too busy glowering at the Sue to find anything funny.
“Can we kill her yet?” he asked, his voice still raspy from the combination of marsh water and throwing up. “I’m going to catch a cold.”
Alleb shook her head, spraying a few droplets of muddy water. She was chilled as well, but the fic wasn’t well-described enough to be very cold. “We can rest when she’s dead,” she said firmly. “And I’m sure we can find a moment to build a fire.” She patted Jesse’s arm comfortingly, then nodded towards the Sue; she and Aragorn were heading off of Weathertop towards some “nearby woods.”
Alleb narrowed her eyes, then scribbled on her pad. “Aragorn would not have let her do that,” she said.
“Least she’s out of our hair for a while,” Jesse said, glaring at the Sue’s retreating back. Alleb sighed.
“I’m afraid we have to follow, Sir Jesse,” she said. “Everything this Sue does is a charge at this point. Come, through the portal we go.”
Jesse groaned, a remarkably adolescent noise from the twenty-something Civil War veteran, but followed. The two agents came out behind a tree, fifty feet from the Sue and Aragorn.
The dragoness hurriedly removed her clothes and then stood nude ready for the change to come. Her pupils became slit like as her body began to smoke crimson red. She felt her limbs change and she embraced the phase.
“I will give this to her,” Alleb said quietly. “It would have been very easy for her to corrupt Aragorn’s love for Arwen in that moment, but she did not. Perhaps she knows that some things are sacred.”
Jesse snorted. “Sacred as my Uncle Randy,” he said. There was a beat of pause as Alleb looked at Jesse curiously. “He went crazy and tried to murder my aunt with an axe.”
“Ah,” Alleb said, nodding. “Mine once challenged me to a duel.”
The Sue finished changing into a dragon, complete with florid description, and then took flight. Alleb hissed angrily. “‘She made sure to keep low to the ground in order to avoid being seen by the Nazgul’!” she quoted mockingly. “As if the Nazgul could fail to notice a bloody dragon flying over their heads!”
Jesse busied himself with chugging some whiskey while his partner fumed. A cowboy has to keep warm, after all.
After seething for a few moments, Alleb turned and stalked back towards Weathertop. “She is just going to kill a deer and eat it,” she said. “Nothing special. Let’s get a fire built.”
The agents portalled to the other side of Weathertop and made a fire in a sheltered cleft of the hill. It only dried them out a little, but it still felt marvellous. Neither was in the mood for conversation, however; Alleb went over her charge list, eye twitching, while Jesse thought out, step by step, how exactly he would assassinate the Sue.
When the dragon!Sue was done hunting, Alleb stood wordlessly and opened a portal. Jesse kicked dirt over their tiny fire and followed her through. They emerged in the same place they had been previously, and watched the Sue descend gracefully (despite being a several-ton reptile)
into the clearing. Aragorn was waiting, and turned his back when the Sue resumed human form.
Alleb scoffed. “As if Aragorn would leave the hobbits alone to wait for this—this!” she spluttered, unable to think of a word that fully encapsulated her feelings. Jesse suggested a few; they were not helpful.
Alleb portalled them back to Weathertop just before a spacial distortion let the Sue and Aragorn get there almost immediately. More stunning dialogue and OOC hobbits (now awake, despite being asleep earlier) ensued.
"Where did you run off to Ms. Rowan?" Sam asked.
"I had to hunt young one" Rowan replied to the blonde hobbit and she ruffled his hair with her hand. Rowan heard Aragorn put something on the ground and she turned to see Aragorn had placed a cloak on the ground. Four small swords large enough for each of the four hobbits lay on the cloak. Sam walked over to get a better look.
"These are for you keep them close" Aragorn said throwing a sword to each hobbit. Frodo simply took one into his grasp. "I'm going to have a look around"
“They were daggers,” Alleb muttered.
"Be cautious Mellon" Rowan warned Aragorn in a serious tone. Aragorn nodded before he turned and left.
"Will he be alright on his own with those wraiths still stalking us?" Pippin asked looking to Rowan.
"He is a Ranger Master Pippin he can handle anything" Rowan reassured the blonde hobbit. Due to the meal she had just finished the skin changer felt tired. So she chose to rest and Frodo did the same beside her. The two of them slept until the smell of fire woke them both. Immediately both Rowan and Frodo sat up.
The time distortion only made the agents dizzy this time, but it still made them hate the Sue all the more. Jesse and Alleb sat calmly behind their rock while the Sue cursed, then sent the hobbits scrambling up the hill to get to the top—despite earlier description saying they were already among the ruins. What resulted was a mind-bending display of bizarre setting, in which the tumbled ring at the top of the hill split, bent, and existed in two places at once. Both agents immediately got splitting headaches.
“Oooh!” Alleb groaned, watching with one eye as five wraiths began climbing the hill after the Sue. “Killing her is going to be a pleasure…”
“You said it,” Jesse said grimly, wincing when he dared to glance at the hilltop again. “Can’t we kill her now? She’s like a rat in a stew.”
Alleb paused, trying to figure that out. “What?”
“Well, you wouldn’t want a rat in a stew, would you? She’s as annoying as a rat in a stew that you’ve been working on all day, picking your mother’s best vegetables and getting the meat from the fattest cow—even though you were told not to do those things, you knew the stew would be worth it. So you did them. And then there was a rat in it!” Jesse scowled, looking slightly petulant.
The swordmaiden blinked slowly at him, wondering if they were still talking about the Sue. “That is… one way to put it, I suppose,” she said slowly. “Um. To the top of the hill, shall we?” Keeping one eye on her frowning partner (and no eyes on the hilltop, which was still painful to look at) she opened a portal and stepped through. “Lovely.”
The Sue had spawned a “watchtower” in place of the tumbled ring of stones that should have been there, and she and the hobbits were on top of it, as well as the five wraiths. It was rather crowded. Thankfully, it was only about ten feet tall, and the agents could still see the action from the ground. If they unfocused their eyes a little, the double-hilltop disappeared, relieving some of the headache.
The scene went much as its canon counterpart, only with a flame-headed Sue standing nearby, ruining the effect. Sam faced the Wraiths for a moment, and was flung back. The agents watched cheerfully as the Sue got kicked in the gut by a Wraith and sent sprawling. Merry and Pippin, afterthoughts as always, were also brushed aside. Frodo backed away from the Wraiths and fell, coming to rest beside Rowan. Alleb tensed.
“She would not…” she said softly. “Surely, she would not!”
But she did.
Jesse had to hold his partner back from launching herself at the tower as the Sue dove in front of Frodo, taking the Morgul blade that was meant for him. The swordmaiden, however, had had enough; raging incoherently, she easily broke her partner’s hold and dashed for the Generic Tower, breaking through the door and flying up the ladder inside. “Rowan Black!” she roared as she burst onto the top of the tower, coming between the wraiths (who looked more like unimpressive Halloween costumes of black sheets than the menacing Nazgul) and the Sue. “You are charged with being a Mary Sue! Meet your judgement!” Alleb flashed out her RA and opened a portal beneath the Sue, jumping in after her. The wraiths looked on quizzically as, a moment later, Jesse whizzed past and dove into the portal as well. The hobbits were too relieved by the sudden absence of Suefluence to notice anything.
Alleb landed, feet first, on Rowan’s midsection, and her short scream of pain was the sweetest music Alleb had heard since Sir Oswyn had sung at her sixteenth birthday party. Jesse landed a moment later, but rather than feet first he slammed down directly, long-ways. He hopped off immediately, not wanting a second’s worth of contact, and the Sue was just dazed enough to let six feet of blond cowboy go. He scrambled to his feet and joined Alleb a few paces away, drawing his broadsword. The portal had taken them back to an earlier location; the Generic Road. A stereotypical full moon waxed overhead, giving ample light to see by.
“Rowan Black,” Alleb began, her sword pointed directly at the Sue’s throat. “I repeat myself: you are charged with being a Mary Sue. I substantiate my claim with the following list of misconducts.” With two fingers of her left hand, she plucked her notebook out of her pocket.
“What are you doing?” the Sue hissed, trying to sit up. She clutched at her left shoulder—the one that had been stabbed a moment before.
Alleb’s eyes narrowed. “You did not even have the originality to be stabbed in another place.” She shook her head, then looked down at her charge list. “You are charged with the following: throwing many esteemed canons out of character, including but not limited to: Aragorn, Legolas, Sam, Frodo, Smaug, Thranduil, Merry, Pippin, and practically everyone else—”
“Thranduil?” Jesse interrupted, frowning. “When’d he say anything?”
Alleb’s eye twitched for the thirtieth time. “He never said a word, but he would never let this—this abomination anywhere near his son.” She looked back down at the charge list. “You are also charged with ensnaring Legolas Thranduilion in an unlikely romance, pairing Smaug the Magnificent with a human female, being the offspring of Smaug the Magnificent, stealing lines from Aragorn, changing the mode of dress in Arda—women do not wear corsets here, and there is no such thing as ‘black mithril’—creating an uncanonical race, flippantly disrupting the plot by taking the Morgul blade for Frodo—do you have any idea how impor… No, of course you don’t—multiple counts of space and time distortions, creating a romantic liaison between a dragon and a part-human woman, being immune to the One Ring, being a shape-shifter, mangling the English language more times than I care to count, giving your mother an improbable name, dressing ridiculously, and annoying me and my partner beyond belief! Do you have any final words?”
The Sue grunted and tried to stand up, but a well-placed kick from Jesse knocked her back down. “You have no idea who you are dealing with,” she said, glaring at the two of them.
“At least your speech is not flowery,” Alleb said. She tossed her notebook aside and shifted into a better combat stance, inching towards the Sue. “Come, Sir Jesse, let us end this!” She flexed her knees and thought of how satisfying it would be to wipe this particular blight off the face of the earth.
The Sue struggled to her feet, and the agents let her. Alleb spun her sword around her wrist, the blade catching the moonlight hypnotically. Rowan glared at the two of them a moment. Then she began to shake. Jesse cursed as they stumbled back from the Sue, who was now changing, growing, morphing. Her clothes ripped into shreds and fell to the Generic Road, and now, rather than facing an average-sized woman, the agents were being stared down by a red dragon. Thankfully, she wasn’t as big as Smaug, but it was still a much fairer fight.
“Waiting to change into this form until we were no longer distracted, eh? Poor strategy! Another charge!” Alleb roared. Rather than being frightened by this strange new development, she seemed more comfortable. She spun her sword even faster, carving the air above her head in shining arcs, and began advancing towards the Sue.
“Um, Alleb?” Jesse yelped. His partner didn’t even slow. “Shouldn’t we do backhanded stuff with portals like we usually do? Y’know, ‘cause we could die fighting her?”
“Nay, Sir Jesse!” Alleb said, pausing only a few yards out of range of the dragon. “She has butchered the canon too badly for that! I will duel her myself, if you think yourself unequal to the task!” With a fierce battle cry, she charged the Sue, sword held high.
And then she promptly tripped and fell flat on her face.
Jesse stared in horror as his partner, the one who actually knew how to use a sword, was taken down by a stray rock. She wasn’t moving: She’d hit her head when she fell. The Sue hissed triumphantly, lunging forward. Jesse panicked. He went to his waist—not for the sword at his left side, but his right—old habits telling him to grab his six-gun and shoot. Instead, he found not his trusty gun, but the RA.
Which he had no idea how to use.
The Sue was nearly to Alleb, who still hadn’t stirred. With a strangled yelp, Jesse began mashing buttons frantically. The Sue was directly in front of Alleb now, mouth open and glistening with very, very sharp teeth, her horrible roar making Jesse’s bones rattle. Jesse mashed more buttons, and then, by chance, hit the trigger that actually opened the portal. Just as the Sue’s mouth was about to close around his partner, Jesse portalled her away.
To right next to him.
Jesse yelped and dove away just as the Sue closed her mouth around where he had been. “Alleb!” he roared, running away from the dragon as it pursued with thundering footsteps. “If I’m not dead by tomorrow, I’m gonna kill you!”
His partner didn’t even stir. Jesse cursed as the dragon, realizing she had an easier target on the ground, stopped chasing him. He cursed again, more vehemently, and then he was chasing the dragon. “Hey!” he shouted. “You big stupid lump of… stuff! Legolas doesn’t love you!”
Both cowboy and dragon skidded to a halt. The Sue carved grooves into the dirt as she slowed, stopped, spun, and then charged again. Jesse froze for a moment, watching with a detached sense of fear as the giant red beast barrelled towards him, teeth bared, eyes ablaze. She roared, the sound rattling his teeth—and he finally thought to do something. Hoping that through some stretch of dumb luck he might survive, he raised the RA, and clicked some buttons.
A portal opened. The dragon slowed too late and ploughed through, roaring helplessly. There was a deafening explosion. Glittery, red-and-gold blood shot out of the portal and splattered both agents. Jesse mashed more buttons, trying to get the portal to go away. He could barely see out of it—it was completely dark, but very loud, like some kind of battle. It formed an indistinct roar that put Jesse’s teeth on edge. Finally, he succeeded in accidentally pressing the button that closed the bloody thing. He groaned and rubbed his ears—the sounds were far too loud, far too familiar. He suddenly remembered Alleb.
Jesse rolled his partner onto her back. Her eyes were shut, and there was a large bruise already forming on her right temple. For a moment, Jesse feared the worst, but then Alleb’s eyes flickered open. “...Ehrm?” she groaned. She winced, and stroked the bruise on her forehead. “What happened? The Sue—” she gasped, then tried to sit up, looking every which way.
“Woah, woah, slow down!” Jesse said, laying a hand on her shoulder. “Sue’s dead, I think. Leastways we’re covered in ‘er blood.”
Alleb stared at him for a moment, then slowly looked down at herself. She grimaced. “That is a fairly good indicator,” she said faintly. She groaned suddenly, closing her eyes. “Oh, Sir Jesse, can you forgive me? I deserted you in the heat of battle!”
“Gotta admit,” Jesse said, slumping to the ground and letting his tired body lie beside Alleb’s. “not your best moment. S’okay, though. We’re not dead.”
Alleb kept her eyes shut. “But you could have been,” she said. “Foolish, foolish! I should not have charged. It was… arrogant of me. I am sorry.”
Jesse shrugged. They rested in silence for a moment, but then Alleb groaned again and managed to sit up. “Come,” she said, still sounding dejected. “We must see to it that the vile creature is dead.”
Jesse tried and failed to sit up, so Alleb braced herself and offered him a hand up. The cowboy clasped it, and she hauled him to his feet. He shook his hand when he was standing. “What’d ya do, squeeze rocks for a week?”
Alleb smiled slightly. “Very nearly,” she said. “Hand me your RA, Sir Jesse. I might be able to open the last portal it made.”
Jesse tossed her the device and went back to massaging his hand.
Alleb fiddled with the device for a few moments. She didn’t really know how they worked, only that they did, and that re-opening a portal was possible. Finally, she managed.
The wave of sound was incredible. Swords and shields collided, rock crumbled, men and Orcs screamed. Alleb clapped her hands over her ears, peering out into the inky darkness. “IT IS THE BATTLE OF HELM’S DEEP!” she called over her shoulder. She remembered the RA in her hand and closed the portal, then massaged her temples. “I believe you blew the Sue up, Sir Jesse,” she said. “A fine end for her.”
Jesse nodded. “Yep. We done here?”
Alleb sighed. “No, we still have to neuralyze all of the characters. And there’s that newly-spawned inn…”
Sometime later, after neuralyzing the poor canons—the Uncanon Inn, as they called it, had thankfully sunk back into the ground on its own—the agents stepped into their RC and found a scene of utter confusion. Several small pieces of furniture were upended, and the skillet of onions Alleb had started just before the mission was spilled on the floor. Mithe was perched on top of the refrigerator, hissing. The Sleep Mellon, which both agents had mostly forgotten about, was snoring aggressively at the foot of the fridge, glaring at Mithe.
Alleb and Jesse were slightly stunned, to say the least. Jesse recovered first, quickly picking up the Sleep Mellon and holding it far away from himself. It wiggled in his hands, its snore becoming an angry whistle, and Jesse was fairly certain it tried to bite him despite the fact that it had no mouth.
“Bad vegetable—er, fruit—er, Alleb, is a Mellon a fruit or a vegetable?”
Alleb managed to close her gaping mouth. “Does it matter? Get rid of the thing!”
“Bad vegetable!” Jesse yelled, running to the door of the RC. He scrabbled at the door while he tried to balance the Mellon in one hand, succeeding after a moment and tossing the Mellon out into the hallway. It rolled upright and started back towards the RC, but Jesse slammed the door and locked it. He slumped against the door and sighed in relief. The Mellon rolled against the door a few times, snoring irritably, before finally giving up. Its snores receded down the hallway, and just as they were lost to hearing, Jesse thought he heard a surprised shriek.
Alleb was already righting the furniture and speaking softly to Mithe, who was latched onto her shoulder. The fire-lizard’s eyes had calmed from a fierce yellow to a dull orange. “That sure was weird,” Jesse said, somewhat calmly considering he had just chucked a sentient melon outside. He ambled over to his favorite chair and sat, tossing back a gulp of whiskey. “Don’t know what was weirder; the snoring, or the pointy ears.”
Alleb picked up a lamp and put it back on its small table. “I would say it was the snoring,” she said. She walked over to one of their cabinets and got out a small box of treats, which were approved for fire-lizards. “The Sue was fairly odd as well, though.” She fed them slowly to Mithe and crossed the room to the well-worn couch, sitting smoothly to avoid jostling her passenger.
“Yeah, but she was the normal sort of odd,” Jesse said, turning in his seat so his long legs draped over one side of the chair, and his head rested against the other arm. “Most Sues are odd that way.”
“Hm.”
The agents lapsed into silence, the only sound a gentle hum from Mithe, whose eyes were now a slow spiral of blue. It was a peaceful silence. The only sound that could disrupt it was:
“BEEEEEEEEEEEP!”
The agents looked at each other and groaned.
Alleb’s notes: This story was rather fun to work on, even if it took me forever. Here’s to Alleb and Jesse’s first mission!