"See plant, kill plant."
More PPC missions! Rez and Flip return! This time, they're in Freakazoid! And it's two parts again! Exclamation points!
Title: Not Such A Freakalicious Time, Day 1
Fandom: Freakazoid / Protectors of the Plot Continuum
Summary: Agents Rez and Flip are lost in hyperspace with a busted transport pod. What else could go wrong? Besides, of course, being pulled into a Freakazoid badfic, full of anachronisms, extra OCs, and a really stupid Sue. Oh, fun.
Disclaimer: I am responsible for neither Freakazoid (more's the pity) or the fic, 'A Freakalicious Time' (thank god). This is a work of fiction, intended for comedy, et cetera et cetera. Troll not, ye masses.
Rating/Warnings: Eh, this one's pretty PG. Fictional swearing and badfic-logic, but nothing worse.
The Julia Vigilant careened through the shifting strangeness of hyperspace. It struck the side of a dimension portal, rebounded, and catapulted off at an obtuse angle, trailing a plume of eye-smartingly multicolored smoke.
It would probably be over-generous to call the little craft a ship. What it really was was a repurposed transport pod from the Farscape ‘verse, with a name painted on the side. If you looked closely at it- which would be hard to do, with the pod moving as fast as it was- you would see numerous soldering marks and patches of different metal, where it had been kludged with various bits of jury-rigged multiverse technology.
Some bits of which, currently, were doing their very best to fill the internal cabin with more smoke.
Flip coughed and tried to wave some of it away, in between frantically reconnecting circuits. “Auxiliary generator’s ruptured,” she called. “Half of the power cells are blown, hyperspace stabilization core’s overclocking like anything. Rez, we have to land!”
“I can’t!” Rez shouted back. “Manual controls are shot too, the navigation system’s in full auto-override!” She stabbed frantically at the control console, pressing buttons and flipping levers seemingly at random. “Come on, JV, don’t do this,” she muttered.
Next to her, a little round robot, something like a yellow Roomba with eyestalk-antennae, nudged her foot and beeped.
“Not now, Deirdre,” she said. “I’m a little busy trying not to explode. Flip,” she called back to her partner, “can you patch the override circuits into something else?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t care,” Rez shouted, “anything!”
Flip muttered something unintelligible- but probably not complimentary- under her breath and yanked a wire. There was a shower of sparks. On the control console, a section flipped up.
“Aha!” Rez cried. “Got it!” Her fingers flew over the console. The pod’s trajectory stabilized, even if it didn’t slow down much.
Flip turned around to look at the viewscreen, and her eyes widened. “Rez, pull up,” she shouted, “we’re headed right for a-”
There was a flash of bright light, and the air fizzed. Sparks danced through the smoke. Then there was a horrible grinding crash, and gradually, the pod came to a halt.
“Portal,” Flip finished, anticlimactically. “Great. I told you the Time Lord tech was a bad idea. But no, you insisted you knew how to fly it.”
“I do know how to fly it,” said Rez. “I just don’t know how to land.”
“As evidenced,” retorted Flip. She waved away some more of the now-clearing smoke. Then she paused, blinking at her hand in front of her face. It had gone… animated. So had Rez, and the rest of their surroundings.
“Where the hezmana are we?” she said.
The DRD- Deirdre- beeped again, in an I’ve-been-trying-to-tell-you way. His eyestalks lit up, displaying a little holographic screen.
Both agents clustered around to read it. Flip grinned. “Oh excellent,” she said, pumping a fist, “Freakazoid! Yes!”
Rez blinked at her. “Uh, okay?”
“Dude,” Flip said, “it’s Freakazoid! I’ve always wanted to visit this ‘verse!” She did a brief little dance of joy, then started collecting the scattered contents of her satchel. “Let’s go check it out! Hey, maybe we’ll get to meet the Freak himse- augh augh aaargh-”
She doubled over, clutching her head. Rez rushed over to her, with Deirdre scooting behind.
“Flip! What’s happening, are you all right?”
“Badfic,” Flip managed. “There’s- badfic starting- canon warping-” She knocked her head against the floor of the pod a few times, then shook it violently and sat up. “We’re just in time,” she said, rubbing her forehead and wincing.
“That must be what the navigation system locked onto,” Rez said. She sighed, resigned. “One gorram thing after another. Okay, Deirdre, can you get us the Words?”
Deirdre nodded his eyestalks and scooted over to a console set into the wall.
While he hummed quietly, patching into the pod’s improvised meta-sensors, Flip went back to picking up her things. “Notepad,” she muttered, “pen, pen, painkillers- whoops, almost out of those- weapons. Uh. What are we killing?”
Rez peered at the mini-holo-screen that Deirdre helpfully displayed. “Pretty standard Sue,” she said. “High school student. Some kind of fire-related power, badly defined, could be anything.”
“Freeze ray?”
“Do we have a freeze ray?”
“It’s a superhero ‘verse,” Flip pointed out, with the beginnings of a manic grin. “We can get a freeze ray.”
“Sure, if you say so.” Rez grabbed her pulse pistol. “I’m bringing this, just in case.”
“That’s not canon.”
“It could pass for canon. You want to argue?”
“Not really,” said Flip. “Oh- crap.”
“What oh crap? We haven’t even left yet, why oh crap?”
“Disguises. No way we’re going to pass for high school students, not in these.” She gestured at the Peacekeeper uniforms they were still wearing, mostly black leather. “And I bet you don’t have anything else.”
Rez grinned. “That, my dear Flip,” she said, “is where you are wrong.”
She opened a door that, earlier, had led to the tiny sleeping quarters. Now it opened on a fair-sized room, crammed with racks and racks of clothing. Flip gaped at it.
“Not a patch on the wardrobe room in the TARDIS, but it’s enough to be going on with, I think.” She smirked. “And you said the Time Lord tech was a bad idea.”
Flip stuck out her tongue at her partner as she went past. “I’d make a snarky remark,” she said, “but clothes!”
Rez was pulling on a pair of jeans, and Flip was surrounded by a small mountain of clothes, when music started to play from nowhere. It was the Freakazoid theme song, which the author had- for some reason- copied into the beginning of the fic.
“Zark, it’s starting already,” said Rez. “Come on, Flip, just pick something!”
Flip rolled her eyes and threw on the closest shirt, grabbed her satchel from the pod proper, and they scrambled down the hatch stairs.
The fic had, helpfully, landed them right behind Harry Connick High, just under the fire exit stairs. “Uh oh,” Flip said, automatically looking around, “somebody’s going to notice that.”
“Got it covered,” said Rez. “Time Lord tech, remember?” She looked behind them. The stolen chameleon circuits had disguised the Julia Vigilant as… a dumpster. Rez facepalmed.
Flip cracked up. “Yeah, good job there,” she laughed. “Thank you, Gallifrey.”
Rez scowled. “Shut up and let’s find the Sue.”
The Sue- a ‘pale girl with long blood-red hair’- had found Dexter already, in his first-period classroom. No one else, apart from the teacher, was there yet. The agents claimed desks in the back of the room, trying to be as unobtrusive as possible. “I think we missed her introduction,” Flip said quietly, pulling out the notebook and a couple pens.
“The horror,” Rez deadpanned. “However will we survive.”
The Sue, who had for some reason taken a seat behind Dexter to talk to him, pulled out a laptop. “Does the school have free Wi-Fi?” she asked him.
“Considering you’re in a ‘verse where the internet runs on DOS,” Flip muttered, “I’m gonna guess no.”
Rez found a blank page in the notebook and, resignedly, started writing.
They watched the Sue pull out a wireless mouse- Rez made an annoyed note on the charge list- and start playing music from the Bleach soundtrack. Another annoyed note. Then Dexter explained to the Sue that the school was comprised of ‘nerds,’ ‘preps,’ and ‘jocks.’ Complete with air-quotes.
Rez made a third annoyed note and sighed. “This is going to hurt, isn’t it?”
“Oh yeah,” said Flip. “This is gonna suck.”
The Sue put her laptop back into her bag- which had Death Note on it, for some reason- just in time for some jock bullies to come in so she could take them down a few pegs. Then the teacher came in. Again. It was an impressive feat, considering that she was in the room already. “Ouch,” Flip muttered, rubbing her eyes.
In an ‘annoyingly high-pitched voice,’ the teacher called the Sue up to introduce herself. The Sue ‘did a theatrical bow as everyone gawked at her hair’ and introduced herself as Onyx Analya.
“Your name is stupid and your hair is stupid and you are stupid,” Rez said under her breath, scribbling away on the charge list as the teacher quizzed Onyx about her family and where in Oregon she was from. Then class started, leaving Dexter and Onyx free to pass notes in incomprehensible leet-speak.
Flip thunked her head into the desk. “Ow, ow, it’s written out in the text,” she said, “I can feel it.”
Rez patted her partner on the shoulder and watched Dexter zone out, talking to Freakazoid inside his head. She couldn’t hear Dexter’s side of the conversation, but Freakazoid’s half echoed through the fic in boldface italics. From what he said, they were debating dumping Stephanie in favor of Onyx. Something about how it was just based on hormones, and she was only dating Freakazoid because he was a superhero. Rez fought the urge to beat her head against the desk as well.
You can't cheat on her until after you dump her! Freakazoid exclaimed. Flip looked up at that, covering her mouth to stifle a laugh.
Rez blinked at her. “What’s funny about that?”
“Dude, think about that line for a second,” Flip giggled. “That is not how that works.”
“What- ohhh, I get it.” Rez snickered too. “Yeah, that… is one hell of a logical fallacy. It’s almost in-character. Almost,” she added, seeing Flip’s expression, “I said almost.”
The rest of the class passed uneventfully. Afterward, the agents tailed Dexter as he escorted Onyx to her next class- band, apparently she played the clarinet- and then watched him head off to art class, of all things.
“Thank Zarquon,” said Flip, “that feels like a chapter end. Break time!” But she’d spoken slightly too soon. The author’s notes boldfaced their way through the fic. Flip winced and sank down against the nearest wall, hands over her ears.
Rez fished the portable comm out of Flip’s satchel and hit a button. “Hey, Deirdre,” she said into it, “give me the Words. How much time do we have here?”
A little screen on the unit flickered, showing the Words of the fic. Rez scrolled through it, skimming them. They had until lunch- plenty of time. She hauled Flip to her feet. “Come on,” she said, “let’s get you back to the pod.”
---
“It’s just lunch, then another break,” Flip said, scanning the Words on Deirdre’s holo-screen. “Almost nothing actually happens. Do we have to go?”
Rez considered. “How many obnoxious pop-culture references?”
“Uh- four,” said Flip, counting. “Five if you count the unspecified ‘vampire books.’ Six if you count Hamlet.”
“Hamlet? Really?”
“Only tangentially.”
“Then yes, we have to go.”
“Aw, nutbunnies. Okay, well, I’m going to work on the generator until then. Look sharp, Deirdre.”
“He can’t,” Rez said, half to herself, “he’s round.”
“What?”
“Nothing. I’m going to look for some earplugs.”
---
Lunch, as Flip had claimed it would be, was fairly uneventful. Dexter apparently sat at the ‘theatre table,’ with all the ‘rejects of the popular cliques.’ Onyx joined him, met another OC called Ruby and still another- briefly- called Ariel, who, since she wasn’t named after a gemstone, the agents assumed wasn’t going to be friends with them.
Ruby was annoyingly crazy, in the lol-random-statements way, and Onyx didn’t help by singing Napoleon XVI while ‘randomly coloring a strand of her hair’ with a green Sharpie. Inside Dexter’s head, they could somehow hear Freakazoid singing the rest of the song.
“He would know that one,” Rez sighed. “Kind of ironic, considering he’s the one about to dump somebody.”
“Bleh,” Flip said, at the same time, “green Sharpie on blood-red hair. Pass me the charge list. Why don’t Sues ever understand color theory?”
At least lunch, as specified by the fic, was tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches- Flip yoinked as much as she could carry while the lunch staff weren’t looking. They nommed happily while they watched Onyx and Dexter agree to meet up after school so he could show her around town- “How big does she think DC is?” Rez grumbled- and then have a completely irrelevant conversation about the logistics of the school elevator.
“I think the Suethor’s just copying the layout of her own school,” Rez said, watching Onyx disappear into her computer class.
“I think you’re right,” said Flip. “Whoops, chapter end, brace for author’s note.”
Rez passed her a pair of the earplugs she’d managed to find, just in time for the endnotes to go thundering through the fic.
“Whew,” Flip said, once the notes were finished. “Man, I hate in-fic notes.” She sighed. “Oh well, back to work on the ship.”
---
Annoying as they were, the author’s notes did give them a warning system of sorts. When the next set went through, Rez dragged Flip away from the pod’s inner workings and toward the school’s parking lot.
“But I think I’ve figured out what’s wrong now,” the shorter agent protested. “We installed too many externals and it’s overloading the central guidance systems. If I could just-”
“Shut up, will you,” said Rez, “we’re coming into range and they’ll hear us. Deirdre, you ready?”
Flip blinked. “Why did we bring him, again? He could be working on the ship.”
“If you had been listening,” Rez said with exaggerated patience, “you would remember that I explained that we can’t tail the Sue in her sister’s car without them noticing us. But he-” she gestured at the little yellow robot- “can.”
By way of response, Deirdre made a little affirmative noise.
“Huh,” said Flip, “I guess you’re right.”
Rez threw up her hands and sighed.
They beat Dexter to the car, which, for want of a capital letter, from some angles looked like an upper-middle-class white guy instead. Flip facepalmed. “A white suburban instead of a white Suburban,” she muttered. “I hate this fic.”
While they were all distracted with introductions- the sister’s name was Clera, which, in the agents’ considered opinion, was even stupider than Onyx- Rez passed the DRD in through an open window. He hid under a seat, just in time to avoid being spotted by the two OCs clearing a space in the back for Dexter.
“And now,” Rez said, as the car-or-maybe-man sped off, “we make our way to the next location at leisure, while Deirdre does our listening.”
“Aha,” said Flip. “Good plan.”
“I know.”
“Er- where is the next location?”
“Sue’s house. Some of us did research, while other some were busy poking around with wires and things.”
“Some of us are trying to make sure we can get out of here again,” Flip said, making a face. “And I suppose you know where the Sue’s house is?”
Rez blinked. “Damn,” she said. “Well, I bet it’s got a… narrative beacon on it, or something. Can you find it? With your character-blip powers?”
Flip sighed dramatically. “Some of us should not be condescended to next time.”
They had a bit of a head start finding Onyx’s house, since the car party had to take Dexter home to drop off his stuff and get beaten up by Duncan a little. That segued, once he was safely back in the car, into a long monologue about Freakazoid and his rogues gallery. His entire rogues gallery. The agents started to zone out, but the OCs perked up when Dexter mentioned Gutierrez.
“Wasn't he the guy that created the pentacle chip?” they heard Onyx ask, over Deirdre’s comm link.
“Pinnacle chip,” Flip said, flailing her hands at nothing in particular, “it’s the zarking Pinnacle chip! How do you know the entire zarking rogues gallery but you can’t get that right?” She crossed her arms and fumed through the rest of the recitation of villains.
“Wow, big monolog,” Onyx said. Rez twitched at the spelling she knew was there. “You wouldn't think that there were any good villains anymore.”
“There aren’t any good villains, no,” said Rez. Flip snickered, in spite of herself. She was in a slightly better mood by the time they found Onyx’s house and hid themselves in the bushes.
Clera dropped Onyx and Dexter off and sped off again to run errands. “Yeah, because leaving your kid sister alone in your house with a boy you both just met is an awesome plan,” Flip said, rolling her eyes. Inside Dexter’s head, Freakazoid expressed a similar sentiment, but without the sarcasm.
But, it turned out, all they did was play Mario Kart. Which would have been fine if it had been the SNES version, but no, Onyx had a Wii. “Anachronistic technology,” Rez muttered as she wrote.
Clera’s fiancé came home, was scary at Dexter for a bit, and grabbed a controller to play with them. Onyx introduced him as Taylor.
“Okay, how did he get a normal name?” Flip said, frowning. “Not that I’m complaining.”
Rez shrugged. “By not being related to them? I hope?”
It was another hour- the agents amused themselves playing Sue Hangman in the back of the notebook- before Clera returned with groceries. Then the OC crew and Dexter made pizza and watched Deadliest Warrior. Which, Rez pointed out, counting on her fingers, postdated Freakazoid by fourteen years.
“I’m getting really tired of anachronisms,” she said, making a particularly dark underline on the charge sheet.
“I mean, apart from the time factor, you could argue that the constant pop-culture references are kind of appropriate to the show,” said Flip. She considered that statement, then sighed. “No, no, you’re right, it’s still terrible.”
She peered in the kitchen window, watching the OC crew clean up and argue about the results of the show. “I’m pretty sure, for boring-factor, this is the worst fic yet,” she said. “I’m officially declaring that this has nothing to do with Freakazoid. He hasn’t even shown up yet.”
Rez hit the comm link. “Hey, Deirdre, give me a Words scan. How long until Freakazoid actually shows up?” Whirring sounds came over the link for a few seconds, then the little screen lit up. “Chapter six,” she read. “But it’s just to dump Steph.”
“What chapter are we in now?”
“Three.”
Flip groaned and sank down against the wall. “I hate this fic,” she said.
“Whoops, heads up,” said Rez. “Sue incoming.”
They ducked around the corner of the house. A second later, Onyx and Dexter emerged, fleeing some teasing comments about Onyx being ‘still virgin.’ Deirdre followed them out, unnoticed, and scooted around to where Rez and Flip hid.
“They’re on foot now, we can follow them from here,” Flip told him. “You go on back to Julia. And don’t let anyone see you, okay?” Deirdre nodded his antennae and scooted away again.
Onyx and Dexter headed ‘uptown’- a pretty vaguely defined direction, since even the fic put it in quotes. The agents were just starting to follow them when the endnotes began.
“Ow, zarking fardwarks, I forgot about those!” Flip wailed, trying to cover her ears and find her earplugs at the same time.
“Hang on,” Rez shouted over the notes, “listen to what they’re actually saying.”
…I have devised a small contest, the notes boomed. I urge you, as a reader, to make a review to this chapter, of yourself delivering a death threat to me in the form of a written report. Please cover the full details of your plan to kill me, as necessary: 1. How you will find me, 2. How you will capture me, 3. What methods of torture you will inflict upon me (if applicable), 4. How you will end my life, 5. How you will dispose of my body (if applicable), and 6. How you imagine you would feel, having killed me.
“Don’t tempt us,” said Flip, glaring in the general direction of the sky.
Rez grinned a distinctly evil grin. “Or, y’know, do.”
The endnotes ran right over into the beginning notes of the next chapter, where the author admitted she had never been to DC and was making locations up.
“Oh, for-“ Rez said, throwing up her hands. “Google Maps, Suethor, it isn’t difficult!”
“That contest’s looking better and better,” Flip said.
Dexter and Onyx spent a short chapter making a pit stop for papaya slushies, then headed for ‘the park.’
“Which park?” Rez shouted after their retreating backs. “It’s a big gorram city! There’s more than one park, you-”
She was cut short by another set of author’s notes thundering through. When it was over, they realized the comm link had been beeping at them. Rez frowned at it. “What’s up, Deirdre?”
The screen lit up again, displaying the visual feed. Instead of the pod, it showed the interior of the Lobe’s lair.
“Ooh,” Flip said, “maybe this thing’s growing a plot! Good work, Deirdre!”
But of course, it wasn’t a plot. The Lobe was busy pacing around, ranting and angsting about how Freakazoid always foiled him. He shouted at his henchmen a bit, then stormed out of the lair.
“Keep an eye on him, Deirdre,” Rez said into the comm. “And keep us posted. We’re losing the Sue.”
They caught up to Dexter and Onyx at ‘the river,’ which geography dictated ought to be the Potomac. The fic, however, insisted that it was much lower than usual, because it was made of snowmelt from the mountains, and there hadn’t been much snow that year.
“Of course there’s no snow,” Rez shouted, “you said it was hot earlier! And what mountains? The closest mountains are a hundred miles away, did you even look at a-” Flip clamped a hand over her partner’s mouth to shut her up.
Onyx had been looking around, distracted by Rez’s outburst. Another second, and she went back to what she had been doing. Which was, apparently, sneaking up on Dexter and pushing him into the river.
Rez flailed, making muffled sounds of outrage.
“Something to share, Rez?” said Flip, trying to keep a hold on her partner.
Rez glared and flailed more. “Mmph mmph rrh mmph!”
“Can you share it quietly?”
“Mmph.” Rez stopped flailing, although her glare stayed at full force. Carefully, Flip let her go.
“You pushed him in the Potomac!” Rez shouted, as soon as she was free. “Do you have any idea what’s in there, you psychotic-“
Flip sighed and put her hand back over Rez’s mouth.
Onyx pulled Dexter back out of the water, somehow not getting herself soaked in the process, and wandered around collecting sticks. Dexter picked up one of them. “Umm, what are you going to do with these? Beat me till I'm warm?” he said, ‘sarcastically.’
“Of course not silly,” said Onyx. “If I was going to do that you would be chained to the wall and I would be using a scourge.”
Both agents stared.
“Uh?” said Flip.
“Don’t look at me,” Rez said, “I have limits.”
“I won't ask where you got your knowledge of torture,” Dexter muttered.
Flip sighed. “You and me both, Dex.”
Onyx proceeded to build a campfire in the middle of the park, completely and blatantly ignoring how illegal that was, so Dexter could ‘warm up and dry out.’ While they huddled around it, Rez spotted movement a little farther down the riverbank. Someone had stood up from a park bench, and was now beating feet away from them. Someone, as far as she could see in the growing darkness, with a labcoat and an outsize head.
She hit the comm link. “Hey, Deirdre,” she said, “give me a visual. Where’s the Lobe?”
The view on the little comm screen was, albeit from a perspective closer to the ground, the same thing Rez was looking at. She sighed and passed the unit to Flip. “You wanted plot,” she said.
Flip looked at the screen and sighed back. “Great.”
Still another set of author’s notes, endnotes and beginning notes, rolled through the fic. Wearily, they both fished out their earplugs again. “Is it just me, or are these getting longer?” said Flip. Rez responded by thunking her head into a tree.
In the wake of the notes, they almost missed Onyx sticking her hand into the fire. Dexter almost missed it too. But the Sue withdrew her hand unharmed, and somehow convinced Dexter that he was seeing things.
“Okay, what the frell,” said Flip.
“Told you,” said Rez. “Badly-defined fire-related powers.”
“This is stupid.”
“And the Understatement Award goes to Flip Finley.”
Onyx and Dexter started to put out the fire, by the expedient of tossing the burning branches into the river.
“Well, it can’t make the water quality much worse,” Rez said, rolling her eyes. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
“You go on,” said Flip. “I’ll meet you back at the pod. I have an idea.”
Rez raised an eyebrow. “Do I want to know?”
“Probably not,” Flip said with a shrug. “It’s technobabbley.”
“Then I leave you to it,” said Rez. “Try not to get arrested?”
“I always do.”
Day 2 continues here!
Title: Not Such A Freakalicious Time, Day 1
Fandom: Freakazoid / Protectors of the Plot Continuum
Summary: Agents Rez and Flip are lost in hyperspace with a busted transport pod. What else could go wrong? Besides, of course, being pulled into a Freakazoid badfic, full of anachronisms, extra OCs, and a really stupid Sue. Oh, fun.
Disclaimer: I am responsible for neither Freakazoid (more's the pity) or the fic, 'A Freakalicious Time' (thank god). This is a work of fiction, intended for comedy, et cetera et cetera. Troll not, ye masses.
Rating/Warnings: Eh, this one's pretty PG. Fictional swearing and badfic-logic, but nothing worse.
The Julia Vigilant careened through the shifting strangeness of hyperspace. It struck the side of a dimension portal, rebounded, and catapulted off at an obtuse angle, trailing a plume of eye-smartingly multicolored smoke.
It would probably be over-generous to call the little craft a ship. What it really was was a repurposed transport pod from the Farscape ‘verse, with a name painted on the side. If you looked closely at it- which would be hard to do, with the pod moving as fast as it was- you would see numerous soldering marks and patches of different metal, where it had been kludged with various bits of jury-rigged multiverse technology.
Some bits of which, currently, were doing their very best to fill the internal cabin with more smoke.
Flip coughed and tried to wave some of it away, in between frantically reconnecting circuits. “Auxiliary generator’s ruptured,” she called. “Half of the power cells are blown, hyperspace stabilization core’s overclocking like anything. Rez, we have to land!”
“I can’t!” Rez shouted back. “Manual controls are shot too, the navigation system’s in full auto-override!” She stabbed frantically at the control console, pressing buttons and flipping levers seemingly at random. “Come on, JV, don’t do this,” she muttered.
Next to her, a little round robot, something like a yellow Roomba with eyestalk-antennae, nudged her foot and beeped.
“Not now, Deirdre,” she said. “I’m a little busy trying not to explode. Flip,” she called back to her partner, “can you patch the override circuits into something else?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t care,” Rez shouted, “anything!”
Flip muttered something unintelligible- but probably not complimentary- under her breath and yanked a wire. There was a shower of sparks. On the control console, a section flipped up.
“Aha!” Rez cried. “Got it!” Her fingers flew over the console. The pod’s trajectory stabilized, even if it didn’t slow down much.
Flip turned around to look at the viewscreen, and her eyes widened. “Rez, pull up,” she shouted, “we’re headed right for a-”
There was a flash of bright light, and the air fizzed. Sparks danced through the smoke. Then there was a horrible grinding crash, and gradually, the pod came to a halt.
“Portal,” Flip finished, anticlimactically. “Great. I told you the Time Lord tech was a bad idea. But no, you insisted you knew how to fly it.”
“I do know how to fly it,” said Rez. “I just don’t know how to land.”
“As evidenced,” retorted Flip. She waved away some more of the now-clearing smoke. Then she paused, blinking at her hand in front of her face. It had gone… animated. So had Rez, and the rest of their surroundings.
“Where the hezmana are we?” she said.
The DRD- Deirdre- beeped again, in an I’ve-been-trying-to-tell-you way. His eyestalks lit up, displaying a little holographic screen.
Both agents clustered around to read it. Flip grinned. “Oh excellent,” she said, pumping a fist, “Freakazoid! Yes!”
Rez blinked at her. “Uh, okay?”
“Dude,” Flip said, “it’s Freakazoid! I’ve always wanted to visit this ‘verse!” She did a brief little dance of joy, then started collecting the scattered contents of her satchel. “Let’s go check it out! Hey, maybe we’ll get to meet the Freak himse- augh augh aaargh-”
She doubled over, clutching her head. Rez rushed over to her, with Deirdre scooting behind.
“Flip! What’s happening, are you all right?”
“Badfic,” Flip managed. “There’s- badfic starting- canon warping-” She knocked her head against the floor of the pod a few times, then shook it violently and sat up. “We’re just in time,” she said, rubbing her forehead and wincing.
“That must be what the navigation system locked onto,” Rez said. She sighed, resigned. “One gorram thing after another. Okay, Deirdre, can you get us the Words?”
Deirdre nodded his eyestalks and scooted over to a console set into the wall.
While he hummed quietly, patching into the pod’s improvised meta-sensors, Flip went back to picking up her things. “Notepad,” she muttered, “pen, pen, painkillers- whoops, almost out of those- weapons. Uh. What are we killing?”
Rez peered at the mini-holo-screen that Deirdre helpfully displayed. “Pretty standard Sue,” she said. “High school student. Some kind of fire-related power, badly defined, could be anything.”
“Freeze ray?”
“Do we have a freeze ray?”
“It’s a superhero ‘verse,” Flip pointed out, with the beginnings of a manic grin. “We can get a freeze ray.”
“Sure, if you say so.” Rez grabbed her pulse pistol. “I’m bringing this, just in case.”
“That’s not canon.”
“It could pass for canon. You want to argue?”
“Not really,” said Flip. “Oh- crap.”
“What oh crap? We haven’t even left yet, why oh crap?”
“Disguises. No way we’re going to pass for high school students, not in these.” She gestured at the Peacekeeper uniforms they were still wearing, mostly black leather. “And I bet you don’t have anything else.”
Rez grinned. “That, my dear Flip,” she said, “is where you are wrong.”
She opened a door that, earlier, had led to the tiny sleeping quarters. Now it opened on a fair-sized room, crammed with racks and racks of clothing. Flip gaped at it.
“Not a patch on the wardrobe room in the TARDIS, but it’s enough to be going on with, I think.” She smirked. “And you said the Time Lord tech was a bad idea.”
Flip stuck out her tongue at her partner as she went past. “I’d make a snarky remark,” she said, “but clothes!”
Rez was pulling on a pair of jeans, and Flip was surrounded by a small mountain of clothes, when music started to play from nowhere. It was the Freakazoid theme song, which the author had- for some reason- copied into the beginning of the fic.
“Zark, it’s starting already,” said Rez. “Come on, Flip, just pick something!”
Flip rolled her eyes and threw on the closest shirt, grabbed her satchel from the pod proper, and they scrambled down the hatch stairs.
The fic had, helpfully, landed them right behind Harry Connick High, just under the fire exit stairs. “Uh oh,” Flip said, automatically looking around, “somebody’s going to notice that.”
“Got it covered,” said Rez. “Time Lord tech, remember?” She looked behind them. The stolen chameleon circuits had disguised the Julia Vigilant as… a dumpster. Rez facepalmed.
Flip cracked up. “Yeah, good job there,” she laughed. “Thank you, Gallifrey.”
Rez scowled. “Shut up and let’s find the Sue.”
The Sue- a ‘pale girl with long blood-red hair’- had found Dexter already, in his first-period classroom. No one else, apart from the teacher, was there yet. The agents claimed desks in the back of the room, trying to be as unobtrusive as possible. “I think we missed her introduction,” Flip said quietly, pulling out the notebook and a couple pens.
“The horror,” Rez deadpanned. “However will we survive.”
The Sue, who had for some reason taken a seat behind Dexter to talk to him, pulled out a laptop. “Does the school have free Wi-Fi?” she asked him.
“Considering you’re in a ‘verse where the internet runs on DOS,” Flip muttered, “I’m gonna guess no.”
Rez found a blank page in the notebook and, resignedly, started writing.
They watched the Sue pull out a wireless mouse- Rez made an annoyed note on the charge list- and start playing music from the Bleach soundtrack. Another annoyed note. Then Dexter explained to the Sue that the school was comprised of ‘nerds,’ ‘preps,’ and ‘jocks.’ Complete with air-quotes.
Rez made a third annoyed note and sighed. “This is going to hurt, isn’t it?”
“Oh yeah,” said Flip. “This is gonna suck.”
The Sue put her laptop back into her bag- which had Death Note on it, for some reason- just in time for some jock bullies to come in so she could take them down a few pegs. Then the teacher came in. Again. It was an impressive feat, considering that she was in the room already. “Ouch,” Flip muttered, rubbing her eyes.
In an ‘annoyingly high-pitched voice,’ the teacher called the Sue up to introduce herself. The Sue ‘did a theatrical bow as everyone gawked at her hair’ and introduced herself as Onyx Analya.
“Your name is stupid and your hair is stupid and you are stupid,” Rez said under her breath, scribbling away on the charge list as the teacher quizzed Onyx about her family and where in Oregon she was from. Then class started, leaving Dexter and Onyx free to pass notes in incomprehensible leet-speak.
Flip thunked her head into the desk. “Ow, ow, it’s written out in the text,” she said, “I can feel it.”
Rez patted her partner on the shoulder and watched Dexter zone out, talking to Freakazoid inside his head. She couldn’t hear Dexter’s side of the conversation, but Freakazoid’s half echoed through the fic in boldface italics. From what he said, they were debating dumping Stephanie in favor of Onyx. Something about how it was just based on hormones, and she was only dating Freakazoid because he was a superhero. Rez fought the urge to beat her head against the desk as well.
You can't cheat on her until after you dump her! Freakazoid exclaimed. Flip looked up at that, covering her mouth to stifle a laugh.
Rez blinked at her. “What’s funny about that?”
“Dude, think about that line for a second,” Flip giggled. “That is not how that works.”
“What- ohhh, I get it.” Rez snickered too. “Yeah, that… is one hell of a logical fallacy. It’s almost in-character. Almost,” she added, seeing Flip’s expression, “I said almost.”
The rest of the class passed uneventfully. Afterward, the agents tailed Dexter as he escorted Onyx to her next class- band, apparently she played the clarinet- and then watched him head off to art class, of all things.
“Thank Zarquon,” said Flip, “that feels like a chapter end. Break time!” But she’d spoken slightly too soon. The author’s notes boldfaced their way through the fic. Flip winced and sank down against the nearest wall, hands over her ears.
Rez fished the portable comm out of Flip’s satchel and hit a button. “Hey, Deirdre,” she said into it, “give me the Words. How much time do we have here?”
A little screen on the unit flickered, showing the Words of the fic. Rez scrolled through it, skimming them. They had until lunch- plenty of time. She hauled Flip to her feet. “Come on,” she said, “let’s get you back to the pod.”
---
“It’s just lunch, then another break,” Flip said, scanning the Words on Deirdre’s holo-screen. “Almost nothing actually happens. Do we have to go?”
Rez considered. “How many obnoxious pop-culture references?”
“Uh- four,” said Flip, counting. “Five if you count the unspecified ‘vampire books.’ Six if you count Hamlet.”
“Hamlet? Really?”
“Only tangentially.”
“Then yes, we have to go.”
“Aw, nutbunnies. Okay, well, I’m going to work on the generator until then. Look sharp, Deirdre.”
“He can’t,” Rez said, half to herself, “he’s round.”
“What?”
“Nothing. I’m going to look for some earplugs.”
---
Lunch, as Flip had claimed it would be, was fairly uneventful. Dexter apparently sat at the ‘theatre table,’ with all the ‘rejects of the popular cliques.’ Onyx joined him, met another OC called Ruby and still another- briefly- called Ariel, who, since she wasn’t named after a gemstone, the agents assumed wasn’t going to be friends with them.
Ruby was annoyingly crazy, in the lol-random-statements way, and Onyx didn’t help by singing Napoleon XVI while ‘randomly coloring a strand of her hair’ with a green Sharpie. Inside Dexter’s head, they could somehow hear Freakazoid singing the rest of the song.
“He would know that one,” Rez sighed. “Kind of ironic, considering he’s the one about to dump somebody.”
“Bleh,” Flip said, at the same time, “green Sharpie on blood-red hair. Pass me the charge list. Why don’t Sues ever understand color theory?”
At least lunch, as specified by the fic, was tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches- Flip yoinked as much as she could carry while the lunch staff weren’t looking. They nommed happily while they watched Onyx and Dexter agree to meet up after school so he could show her around town- “How big does she think DC is?” Rez grumbled- and then have a completely irrelevant conversation about the logistics of the school elevator.
“I think the Suethor’s just copying the layout of her own school,” Rez said, watching Onyx disappear into her computer class.
“I think you’re right,” said Flip. “Whoops, chapter end, brace for author’s note.”
Rez passed her a pair of the earplugs she’d managed to find, just in time for the endnotes to go thundering through the fic.
“Whew,” Flip said, once the notes were finished. “Man, I hate in-fic notes.” She sighed. “Oh well, back to work on the ship.”
---
Annoying as they were, the author’s notes did give them a warning system of sorts. When the next set went through, Rez dragged Flip away from the pod’s inner workings and toward the school’s parking lot.
“But I think I’ve figured out what’s wrong now,” the shorter agent protested. “We installed too many externals and it’s overloading the central guidance systems. If I could just-”
“Shut up, will you,” said Rez, “we’re coming into range and they’ll hear us. Deirdre, you ready?”
Flip blinked. “Why did we bring him, again? He could be working on the ship.”
“If you had been listening,” Rez said with exaggerated patience, “you would remember that I explained that we can’t tail the Sue in her sister’s car without them noticing us. But he-” she gestured at the little yellow robot- “can.”
By way of response, Deirdre made a little affirmative noise.
“Huh,” said Flip, “I guess you’re right.”
Rez threw up her hands and sighed.
They beat Dexter to the car, which, for want of a capital letter, from some angles looked like an upper-middle-class white guy instead. Flip facepalmed. “A white suburban instead of a white Suburban,” she muttered. “I hate this fic.”
While they were all distracted with introductions- the sister’s name was Clera, which, in the agents’ considered opinion, was even stupider than Onyx- Rez passed the DRD in through an open window. He hid under a seat, just in time to avoid being spotted by the two OCs clearing a space in the back for Dexter.
“And now,” Rez said, as the car-or-maybe-man sped off, “we make our way to the next location at leisure, while Deirdre does our listening.”
“Aha,” said Flip. “Good plan.”
“I know.”
“Er- where is the next location?”
“Sue’s house. Some of us did research, while other some were busy poking around with wires and things.”
“Some of us are trying to make sure we can get out of here again,” Flip said, making a face. “And I suppose you know where the Sue’s house is?”
Rez blinked. “Damn,” she said. “Well, I bet it’s got a… narrative beacon on it, or something. Can you find it? With your character-blip powers?”
Flip sighed dramatically. “Some of us should not be condescended to next time.”
They had a bit of a head start finding Onyx’s house, since the car party had to take Dexter home to drop off his stuff and get beaten up by Duncan a little. That segued, once he was safely back in the car, into a long monologue about Freakazoid and his rogues gallery. His entire rogues gallery. The agents started to zone out, but the OCs perked up when Dexter mentioned Gutierrez.
“Wasn't he the guy that created the pentacle chip?” they heard Onyx ask, over Deirdre’s comm link.
“Pinnacle chip,” Flip said, flailing her hands at nothing in particular, “it’s the zarking Pinnacle chip! How do you know the entire zarking rogues gallery but you can’t get that right?” She crossed her arms and fumed through the rest of the recitation of villains.
“Wow, big monolog,” Onyx said. Rez twitched at the spelling she knew was there. “You wouldn't think that there were any good villains anymore.”
“There aren’t any good villains, no,” said Rez. Flip snickered, in spite of herself. She was in a slightly better mood by the time they found Onyx’s house and hid themselves in the bushes.
Clera dropped Onyx and Dexter off and sped off again to run errands. “Yeah, because leaving your kid sister alone in your house with a boy you both just met is an awesome plan,” Flip said, rolling her eyes. Inside Dexter’s head, Freakazoid expressed a similar sentiment, but without the sarcasm.
But, it turned out, all they did was play Mario Kart. Which would have been fine if it had been the SNES version, but no, Onyx had a Wii. “Anachronistic technology,” Rez muttered as she wrote.
Clera’s fiancé came home, was scary at Dexter for a bit, and grabbed a controller to play with them. Onyx introduced him as Taylor.
“Okay, how did he get a normal name?” Flip said, frowning. “Not that I’m complaining.”
Rez shrugged. “By not being related to them? I hope?”
It was another hour- the agents amused themselves playing Sue Hangman in the back of the notebook- before Clera returned with groceries. Then the OC crew and Dexter made pizza and watched Deadliest Warrior. Which, Rez pointed out, counting on her fingers, postdated Freakazoid by fourteen years.
“I’m getting really tired of anachronisms,” she said, making a particularly dark underline on the charge sheet.
“I mean, apart from the time factor, you could argue that the constant pop-culture references are kind of appropriate to the show,” said Flip. She considered that statement, then sighed. “No, no, you’re right, it’s still terrible.”
She peered in the kitchen window, watching the OC crew clean up and argue about the results of the show. “I’m pretty sure, for boring-factor, this is the worst fic yet,” she said. “I’m officially declaring that this has nothing to do with Freakazoid. He hasn’t even shown up yet.”
Rez hit the comm link. “Hey, Deirdre, give me a Words scan. How long until Freakazoid actually shows up?” Whirring sounds came over the link for a few seconds, then the little screen lit up. “Chapter six,” she read. “But it’s just to dump Steph.”
“What chapter are we in now?”
“Three.”
Flip groaned and sank down against the wall. “I hate this fic,” she said.
“Whoops, heads up,” said Rez. “Sue incoming.”
They ducked around the corner of the house. A second later, Onyx and Dexter emerged, fleeing some teasing comments about Onyx being ‘still virgin.’ Deirdre followed them out, unnoticed, and scooted around to where Rez and Flip hid.
“They’re on foot now, we can follow them from here,” Flip told him. “You go on back to Julia. And don’t let anyone see you, okay?” Deirdre nodded his antennae and scooted away again.
Onyx and Dexter headed ‘uptown’- a pretty vaguely defined direction, since even the fic put it in quotes. The agents were just starting to follow them when the endnotes began.
“Ow, zarking fardwarks, I forgot about those!” Flip wailed, trying to cover her ears and find her earplugs at the same time.
“Hang on,” Rez shouted over the notes, “listen to what they’re actually saying.”
…I have devised a small contest, the notes boomed. I urge you, as a reader, to make a review to this chapter, of yourself delivering a death threat to me in the form of a written report. Please cover the full details of your plan to kill me, as necessary: 1. How you will find me, 2. How you will capture me, 3. What methods of torture you will inflict upon me (if applicable), 4. How you will end my life, 5. How you will dispose of my body (if applicable), and 6. How you imagine you would feel, having killed me.
“Don’t tempt us,” said Flip, glaring in the general direction of the sky.
Rez grinned a distinctly evil grin. “Or, y’know, do.”
The endnotes ran right over into the beginning notes of the next chapter, where the author admitted she had never been to DC and was making locations up.
“Oh, for-“ Rez said, throwing up her hands. “Google Maps, Suethor, it isn’t difficult!”
“That contest’s looking better and better,” Flip said.
Dexter and Onyx spent a short chapter making a pit stop for papaya slushies, then headed for ‘the park.’
“Which park?” Rez shouted after their retreating backs. “It’s a big gorram city! There’s more than one park, you-”
She was cut short by another set of author’s notes thundering through. When it was over, they realized the comm link had been beeping at them. Rez frowned at it. “What’s up, Deirdre?”
The screen lit up again, displaying the visual feed. Instead of the pod, it showed the interior of the Lobe’s lair.
“Ooh,” Flip said, “maybe this thing’s growing a plot! Good work, Deirdre!”
But of course, it wasn’t a plot. The Lobe was busy pacing around, ranting and angsting about how Freakazoid always foiled him. He shouted at his henchmen a bit, then stormed out of the lair.
“Keep an eye on him, Deirdre,” Rez said into the comm. “And keep us posted. We’re losing the Sue.”
They caught up to Dexter and Onyx at ‘the river,’ which geography dictated ought to be the Potomac. The fic, however, insisted that it was much lower than usual, because it was made of snowmelt from the mountains, and there hadn’t been much snow that year.
“Of course there’s no snow,” Rez shouted, “you said it was hot earlier! And what mountains? The closest mountains are a hundred miles away, did you even look at a-” Flip clamped a hand over her partner’s mouth to shut her up.
Onyx had been looking around, distracted by Rez’s outburst. Another second, and she went back to what she had been doing. Which was, apparently, sneaking up on Dexter and pushing him into the river.
Rez flailed, making muffled sounds of outrage.
“Something to share, Rez?” said Flip, trying to keep a hold on her partner.
Rez glared and flailed more. “Mmph mmph rrh mmph!”
“Can you share it quietly?”
“Mmph.” Rez stopped flailing, although her glare stayed at full force. Carefully, Flip let her go.
“You pushed him in the Potomac!” Rez shouted, as soon as she was free. “Do you have any idea what’s in there, you psychotic-“
Flip sighed and put her hand back over Rez’s mouth.
Onyx pulled Dexter back out of the water, somehow not getting herself soaked in the process, and wandered around collecting sticks. Dexter picked up one of them. “Umm, what are you going to do with these? Beat me till I'm warm?” he said, ‘sarcastically.’
“Of course not silly,” said Onyx. “If I was going to do that you would be chained to the wall and I would be using a scourge.”
Both agents stared.
“Uh?” said Flip.
“Don’t look at me,” Rez said, “I have limits.”
“I won't ask where you got your knowledge of torture,” Dexter muttered.
Flip sighed. “You and me both, Dex.”
Onyx proceeded to build a campfire in the middle of the park, completely and blatantly ignoring how illegal that was, so Dexter could ‘warm up and dry out.’ While they huddled around it, Rez spotted movement a little farther down the riverbank. Someone had stood up from a park bench, and was now beating feet away from them. Someone, as far as she could see in the growing darkness, with a labcoat and an outsize head.
She hit the comm link. “Hey, Deirdre,” she said, “give me a visual. Where’s the Lobe?”
The view on the little comm screen was, albeit from a perspective closer to the ground, the same thing Rez was looking at. She sighed and passed the unit to Flip. “You wanted plot,” she said.
Flip looked at the screen and sighed back. “Great.”
Still another set of author’s notes, endnotes and beginning notes, rolled through the fic. Wearily, they both fished out their earplugs again. “Is it just me, or are these getting longer?” said Flip. Rez responded by thunking her head into a tree.
In the wake of the notes, they almost missed Onyx sticking her hand into the fire. Dexter almost missed it too. But the Sue withdrew her hand unharmed, and somehow convinced Dexter that he was seeing things.
“Okay, what the frell,” said Flip.
“Told you,” said Rez. “Badly-defined fire-related powers.”
“This is stupid.”
“And the Understatement Award goes to Flip Finley.”
Onyx and Dexter started to put out the fire, by the expedient of tossing the burning branches into the river.
“Well, it can’t make the water quality much worse,” Rez said, rolling her eyes. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
“You go on,” said Flip. “I’ll meet you back at the pod. I have an idea.”
Rez raised an eyebrow. “Do I want to know?”
“Probably not,” Flip said with a shrug. “It’s technobabbley.”
“Then I leave you to it,” said Rez. “Try not to get arrested?”
“I always do.”
Day 2 continues here!