Agent Mara reporting with a record of our second mission!
Feel free to comment on this LJ, as the entry isn't hosted anywhere else yet. I can't bother to make many notes on this mission; I'm really exhausted after PPCing that fic. It'll be awhile before I regain my wits.
*shudder*
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Gabrielle174 contributed a lot to this installment, and I used a few ideas with her permission; for her take on this urple fic, go here. (Site contains mature content.) Thanks also go to Nenya Culariel for helping with Agent Quen’s cameo. And, as always, thanks to WfR (who is NOT WtF) for betaing.
Well, this does indeed have Will’s ghost and a crying captain, but I was thinking of another fic when I advertised a 2500 word paragraph. Still, this one was bad enough, with a gigantic block of text of more than 1000 words. The story id is 1449509.
For those of you who don’t know how my PPCing works: I choose stories whose writers don’t seem to have any regard for their work and/or don’t hold any respect for the story of Pirates of the Caribbean and are more interested in how they can twist it to suit their own ends. I give constructive criticism and at least two weeks’ notice (unless I'm PPCing by request). If I get an unfavorable reply or am ignored, then I PPC.
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"I comma square bracket Isaiah square bracket comma do solemnly swear to wipe out the un-canon wherever I encounter it comma to kill any and all Mary Sues I encounter square bracket unless they can be recruited square bracket comma and to protect the Plot Continuum at all times semicolon also not to stampede comma drool over comma or otherwise attack Lust Objects comma and not to moan about Upstairs too much if I value my life full stop This I swear by Eru full stop," the new recruit recited nervously.
It was Isaiah’s official swearing-in at Headquarters. Normally, it was a private affair, performed by an agent after a week’s trial PPCing and witnessed by the head of department. Unfortunately, since Isaiah and Mara had decided to found the Department of Technical Errors, Isaiah didn’t yet have a head of department. Instead, the Sunflower Official, the head of his previous department, was present, along with Mara herself. The addition to the oath that Isaiah was next going to swear had been his idea.
"Addendum colon said agent belonging to the Department of Technical Errors comma he shall kill or deal out unpleasant punishments specifically to the un-canon elements possessing an inappropriate number of grammatical comma orthographical comma linguistic comma logical and slash or historical mistakes full stop."
The S.O. gave a curt nod.
Very good, Agent. You and your partner may now proceed to the Department of Personnel in order to acquire staffing and management for your department and file your department in the listings.
"Thank you." Isaiah joined Mara, who was leaning against the gray doorway, and together they exited the office. "That was fairly simple, wasn’t it?"
"The Flowers that Be are never hesitant about adding more departments. The wider range of bad fan fiction we can tackle, the better. Speaking of which, where are your quarters? Roughly, I mean. We can’t share office space like most agents, but we need to be situated in proximity to one another so that when the console goes off, we don’t have to wend our way through the corridors to meet up."
"My room is on the ground level. Next to the cafeteria." Isaiah grimaced. "I didn’t realize agents could be so loud during mealtimes-aren’t assassins all supposed to be stealthy?"
"Only when on duty. Here-in here." His partner motioned towards yet another monochromatic doorway with a sign bearing an interesting inscription:
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Department of Personnel
Room 221b
Marquis de Sod - Department Head
Br ti Quen a - Secretary
No Raises
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"Why are there so many scratched out names?"
"Let’s just say the job has a high turnover rate," Mara said lightly. "I have to go and see about fixing my console. It’s not loud enough."
Isaiah was going to ask how that was possible, as his nearly burst his eardrums every time it went off, but Mara had already turned round the corner.
Shrugging, the new agent turned back to the door and rapped three times.
"Come in," said a cheery female voice.
Isaiah poked his head through the doorway. "Is the Marquis de Sod in?" he inquired.
The young woman at the desk shook her dark green hair. "No, I’m sorry, it’s out soaking its roots in the Fountain of Bleepka. Apparently, a particularly horrid fic’s just come in." She winced. "I had to finish sending it to the appropriate department. I’m Quen, the secretary. May I help you?"
"Yes," said Isaiah, growing inexplicably fidgety. "Er… my partner and I have started the Department of Technical Errors, and the S.O. sent us here to recruit staff and a head of department. We were thinking of having two divisions, a grammar division and-"
"You don’t have to stand in the doorway, you know." She grinned as he turned red, then motioned for him to come inside.
"Sorry."
"No need to apologize. You needed staff for a grammar division and…"
"And a linguistics division."
The young woman nodded and rapidly began typing. "Fandom?"
"We’ll be multi-fandom. Mara and I are going to do Lord of the Rings PPCing as well as PotC, at the very least."
"Pirates of the Caribbean?" Quen looked up in alarm. "Wait…you’re not waiting for a mission, are you?"
Isaiah frowned. "Not that I know of."
She sighed in relief. "Good, because that’s where we sent the badfic." Her pleasant expression soured a bit when she considered. "One moment. Aren’t Jira and Shmuckleigh already doing ‘The Corsair Affair’? And Robin and Evelyn have their own problems with…disturbingly independent anatomy."
Isaiah decided he’d better not ask what that meant. The notion that he and Mara were most likely up for the badfic was enough to contemplate. "Any other information you need to know?"
"Oh, sorry, yes. Erm…do you PPC smut or NC-17 fics?"
"No."
"Crossovers?"
"Only if the Department of Implausible Crossovers agents aren’t available."
"Bad slash?" At this, Quen looked up from her typing and regarded him with something like trepidation.
"I’m not sure. If it’s not explicit, I guess so." Isaiah had no particular liking for slash of any kind, but Mara was fairly tolerant of it.
"All right, I’ll see what I can do." Quen’s head bent low over the machine as she pulled out a memo. "Here," she said, beginning to fold the piece of paper skillfully. "Your new head of department should be along shortly, and I’m pretty sure your Grammar Division will be staffed by a rather…enthusiastic…employee." She grinned mischievously. "Wait until after your next mission. I think you and she will get along splendidly. There." She fashioned it into a tiny paper airplane and launched it at Isaiah. It flew across the spacious room and ended its flight right at chest level, where he caught it easily.
"Interesting method of dispatching notices," he commented merrily. "Do you hand out PPCing applications that way, too, or is it just memos?"
"Mostly just-"
At that moment, Mara burst into the room, looking uncharacteristically flustered. "Console’s fixed," she panted. "It beeped. Man, did it ever. And then…"
She glanced at Quen deprecatingly. "Why did it have to be us? Why did we have to be saddled with that monstrosity?"
Quen raised her eyebrows. "Because you were the only ones available?" she offered helpfully.
"It’s the badfic," Isaiah groaned. "The one that sent the Marquis de Sod straight to the Fountain of Bleepka. There are too few PPCers now," Isaiah sighed, "too few left to manage them."
Quen suppressed a grin. "LotR fan? Have you read the Silm?"
Mara, by contrast, looked at him balefully. "Steal another line, and your head will be through that wall. I’ve had ENOUGH of phrase robbing. Enough, I tell you! And you, my wonderful partner," she said in a sickly sweet voice, "are about to have more than your fair share, as well. Take a look," she thrust a computer pad into his hands, "at our next assignment."
"Modern-day self-inserts, with a lot of lines siphoned from the movie?" Isaiah questioned as he scrolled down.
"A songfic. A sap-happy songfic. A sap-happy songfic rendered in a single paragraph, featuring Evanescence’s ‘My Immortal.’ And someone’s impersonating Captain Jack."
"How’s that?"
"He’s gushy."
"Gush-" Isaiah squinted at the words, not having his glasses on. What he could decipher was still too much information. "I’m not reading this right…I can’t be," he said plaintively.
Mara responded by grabbing his arm and marching off with him. "Come on," she urged. "To your quarters, so you can prepare. The sooner we get rid of this, the more peace I’ll have tonight. Maybe I’ll actually get some sleep, for a change."
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This story began, promisingly enough, with eight tildes. Why eight, with a space in the middle? It would ever remain one of life’s not-so-great mysteries.
The agents huddled against the ship’s railing, disguised as pirates and invisible to the captain who looked, at least, like the legendary character captaining the Pearl.
"What’s wrong with a series of three asterisks, as is usual in published literature when introducing a new section of narrative?" Isaiah questioned Mara. "Authors in this fandom come up with the oddest combinations of tildes, ampersands, asterisks, and circumflexes to show breaks in the story. They could even do a simple line break or a hyphen-line, as opposed to ^_^*#*#*# ^_^ or whatever else they put down."
"But that wouldn’t be pretty enough," Mara said knowingly. "They like to be creative."
"Which is why they always create the same character types and plotlines over and over again."
"Mmm…" Mara thought hard, then shook her head. "Nope. I can’t explain everything to you, Isaiah, least of all the mind of a Suvian."
"Is this a Suefic?" Isaiah wondered. "As far as I looked, there’s no original character here."
"There doesn’t need to be. It’s very likely that this is a canon Sue."
Taking a deep breath, Isaiah waded into the main block of text-a block that happened to be over a thousand words long.
Captain Jack Sparrow finally had it. He had his ship back. No, it wasn’t just a ship. It was his freedom, all he needed.
"Do you hear that, Suethors?" Isaiah said loudly. "The Black Pearl is ALL HE NEEDED. All. He. Needed. Not a woman. Not a one true love. Got that?" He didn’t have to trouble to keep his voice down, since no original character had made an appearance so far.
It was supposed to make him feel content. Though, then why did his heart feel so empty? Why did the pirate feel like he was missing something? As if a piece of his soul was torn away from him.
Isaiah’s forehead went straight to his palm. Hard.
"Lovely. Angst," he moaned. "And Jack’s always missing some part of himself in sapfics. His breath, his soul, his heart…as weak as he’s portrayed here, seems like what he’s really lost is his nerve. Mara, want to give the CAD a go?"
Mara assented reluctantly, lifting the Canon Analysis Device and pointing it at her favorite character.
[Captain Jack Sp-p-p-arrow???] the CAD flashed tremulously, uncertain. [Out of Character 87.2%]
"And here come the first of the song lyrics."
Right then, a band Isaiah knew to be Evanescence appeared on the scene and, to the agents’ horror, burst into song, completely oblivious to the scene taking place around them.
"I’m so tired of being here" Amy Lee crooned.
"Shouldn’t there be some sort of punctuation after that?"
"And a paragraph break. And someone please tell me why they’re here in the first place."
Captain Jack, quite ironically, began to wonder what was wrong with him. The agents, too, were wondering why the sardonic and clever captain had been replaced with a rather squishy and angst-ridden man. As he announced his thoughts out loud to the wind, Mara’s brow furrowed.
"Whatever happened to ‘he plays things closer to the vest now’?" she asked acidly. "He must be out on deck to be crying out to the wind, so nearly everyone on the ship has to be hearing this."
Jack resolutely proclaimed that he needed no help, his voice going ‘soft’ (unforgivably mushy was what Isaiah would have called it). As in the previous PPCing, Jack filled an empty space in his heart by turning to drink.
"Why are so many authors convinced that CJS has a hole in his heart that he can’t fill?" he wondered vainly, knowing that Mara was the last person who could provide him with an answer. "It makes him sound like he has some sort of coronary defect."
"Well, whatever it is must be affecting his brain as well. Now he’s grieving that his crew must think he’s ‘inescapably mad’."
"But…but…that’s what makes him Jack. His crew thinks he’s brilliantly daft. He likes it that way. That’s the point-"
"-of all of his mannerisms," Mara finished. There was a definite air of resignation in her voice. "So, would you like to hazard a guess as to how much of his personality is actually left?"
"Suppressed by all of my childish fears" Evanescence cried out, still without punctuation. Isaiah saw Mara take note of the band with interest. Was it his imagination, or was the lead singer beginning to sound faintly strained?
What happened next, however, completely took away his interest in any problems the band might have been experiencing.
Jack was now looking haunted-"as if no life breathed in him". Isaiah flinched. How he wished the narrators would watch their figurative language-so that he didn’t have to. Jack’s skin turned ashen, his eyes deadened, and he underwent the first stages of rigor mortis.
"Heaven help us…hey. Hey! You can’t use ‘faze’! It’s not a word yet! And some paragraphs would be really nice right about now."
The formatting, predictably, was unwilling to oblige.
Jack Sparrow then had a very special dream, despite the fact that he had just been described as taking the helm.
The captain…dozing off while steering his ship? Isaiah thought, flabbergasted.
Jack Sparrow dreamed that he was at Port Royal, surrounded by mist, when a figure ran up to him and caught his gaze. Isaiah’s eyes grew wide when he saw the figure. He mouthed the word, "Will?" to Mara in confusion. His heart sank when he saw her hand go to her weapons belt, mouth in a grim line.
Jack was so happy he could not describe it. It seemed as if a weight had been lifted from him. He smiled in his sleep. Will told him how much he missed him and Jack replied the same. Everything seemed right. Nothing was missing. Will stepped closer and pulled Jack into a tight embrace-
Isaiah turned away from the painfully sentimental scene, reeling from the sheer un-canon. With sudden clarity, Isaiah recalled Quen’s anxious glance at him when she had asked if they PPC’d bad slash.
"Mara?…I said yes to PPCing improbable or poorly written same-sex pairings, as long as it wasn’t too explicit."
"So I have gathered."
He looked at her nervously. "Am I a dead man? I mean, we wouldn’t have had to go through all of this if I had said-"
Mara shook her head. "I’m glad of the opportunity to tackle this fic."
"You’re welcome…I suppose." Peering at the vision, Isaiah perched the reading glasses on the end of his nose so that he could still see the scene clearly and yet could read what he was writing when he looked down at the charge list. Mara would have had a private snicker, had her eyes not been glued to Jack Sparrow’s very disturbing dream.
At that moment, he knew it was true. He cared for Will Turner deeply. Though, soon, Will faded away and before the dream had ended and Jack was brought back to the pain he had come to know well, he murmured, " I love you Will ..."
"Nhhh…bleaugh!" Isaiah stood up and leaned over the side of the ship, stomach rebelling. Fortunately, he was able to regain control of his nausea before he threw up.
Mara was right beside him in an instant, pounding his back. "Are you all right?" she asked soberly.
He nodded, somewhat breathless, then immediately turned back to the charge list. "Causing a possessed character to dream while captaining the Black Pearl. Causing Jack to be in love with Will Turner. Causing Jack to admit to such a feeling in an extremely exaggerated way."
"Possessed character’s right. So," Mara said, as the horror began to sink in, "we have canonical corruption by Bad Slash demons-several, I think-centering on Captain Jack, since Will was only out of character in Sparrow’s dream. Ugh." She made a motion as if to brush the stickiness of Jack’s maudlin vision off of her. "There is no way in Hades that he would have acted like that!"
"I can’t watch." Isaiah looked down at the Words rather than see the unpleasant images that they were creating.
Mara jabbed him none too gently with her clipboard. "Yes you can. If I have to experience this terrible shredding of a satirical and cunning character, so do you."
"And if you have to leave"
There was an audible difference in the singer’s voice now. It sounded like she was struggling to get the words out.
"What’s wrong with her?" Mara wondered, finally drawing her eyes away from the terrible slash.
Isaiah cracked his first smile of the fic, having glanced ahead at the Words. "Ah. That, my friend, is the result of no end punctuation or anything to signify line breaks. She hasn’t gotten to draw a breath yet."
"So…they’re just going to sing until they turn blue in the face?"
He nodded agreeably. Mara promptly tangled her fingers in her curly hair and yanked. Watching her fit of anger, Isaiah couldn’t help feeling glad that Captain Jack Sparrow wasn’t his favorite persona.
Next, Possessed!Jack attempted half-heartedly to get rid of his love for Will. Isaiah could see some semblance of the old canonical pirate fighting to break out. Inevitably, he lost the struggle and was drowned in the overwhelming sap.
"Because your presence still lingers here And it won't leave me alone"
The lyrics were coming out with great effort. The last word was actually vocalized as a grunt. Even the instrumentalists weren’t able to pause for the beats. Evanescence now sounded like its members were having very uncomfortable bathroom experiences.
Mara made an exclamation of disgust. "At this rate, we’re going to have to resuscitate them. Do you know CPR?"
"Fortunately, no. You can handle that happy task," Isaiah said at once. He fully expected a glare to come, but she inhaled sharply and her countenance stopped all other thoughts in their tracks.
"Mara?" Isaiah asked gingerly. "Are…are you all right?"
"Let me be!" Jack cried to the sky. These wounds won't seem to healThis pain is just too realThere’s just too much that time cannot erase "Please! Leave me alone! I admit! I love Will, but please, I must be free of his ghost!" Jack sobbed.
The agents knelt there as still as stone, jaws slack. They had never seen Jack show any sort of sentiment apart from his loving glances toward his Pearl, and now this. He had turned into a baby. He was crying.
Mara’s mouth worked, as if she were trying to say something, when Isaiah broke the silence with an abrupt bark of laughter.
"Look!" The agent indicated a spot a tad to the left of the sorry wreck that had been Captain Jack Sparrow. "Will’s ghost!"
Indeed, the narrative had described Will’s spirit as haunting Jack earlier in the story, and this added image of Jack being subject to his ghost caused a shaky apparition of Will to float by the captain, arms outstretched.
"Woo-oooooooo!" Will’s ghost wailed.
Mara and Isaiah exchanged glances. In spite of herself, the female agent had begun to smile, then giggle. Isaiah gave in with a chuckle, then a full-out belly laugh.
"If only I could see him, hold him in my arms," the pirate wept brokenly, Will’s ghost still hanging by him.
Mara and Isaiah clung to the railing of the ship, sides aching as they guffawed. The fic had passed across the realm of rational, if terrible, writing and had entered the realms of parody.
Either that, or the breaking of the captain’s spirit had stretched the agents’ mental tolerances a little too far. Possibly it was a combination of both.
"I know he is happy with Elizabeth, and he loves her, but what about me? I used to be near him. And he left-he’s gone."
"S’ blood! What’re the demons doing to him?" Isaiah relinquished his hold on the Pearl and scrabbled for his pen. "Causing Will’s ghost to haunt Jack. Causing Jack to proclaim his love for Will to his whole crew. Causing Jack to ask the sky to let him be. Causing Evanescence to sing an entire song in one breath."
"And making Jack sob." Mara italicized the word, underlined it twice, and circled it. "There," she said, satisfied. Then she happened to glance down. "He-what?" She squinted. "Jack comforted Will? When did he do that? And THIS!" She shook her fist at Possessed!Jack. "You did NOT tell Will, ‘Don’t worry, mate. Old Jack won’t let anything happen to ya.’"
Isaiah’s eyes widened. "Whoops. Seem to have missed that. Where-" he scanned the Words. "Ah, yes, right along with another charge-Will being scared when he and Jack were sailing together. You know, I’m not an Orlando Bloom fan, but I wish they wouldn’t turn Will into a wuss."
"Ah, you just don’t want a wimp being paired with your ladybird."
Isaiah scowled. "At least Miss Swann is only paired with canonicals in fanfiction. When your favorite guy isn’t off ‘comforting’ Will, he’s spending his time falling hopelessly in love with adolescent girls whom he’s been silly enough take on as crew members."
To deflect attention from that particular pronouncement, Isaiah took out his Character Analysis Device and leveled it at the apparition of Will.
[Will Turner’s ghost. Non-canon. Origin: badly-fashioned metaphor. Male. Out of Character 54.5%]
"Hmm. Definitely not as bad as Jack’s."
"I assume that’s because he’s still in love with Elizabeth, instead of running to Jack with open arms."
Mara stuck her finger down her throat. A moment later, she was leaning listlessly against the side of the Pearl. "This is dragging on and on."
"We haven’t even finished half of it, and it’s a one-shot!" Isaiah countered.
"Then why do I feel so weary?"
Isaiah didn’t need to glance back at the text to answer. "No paragraph breaks," he said, assessing his own fatigue for the first time. "Not a stopping point until near the end."
Mara nodded, head drooping slightly as she did so. "What’s next?"
Isaiah checked the handheld computer. "Jack says something completely incoherent, about Will feeling better even though he didn’t trust Jack, and then Jack understanding…something. I wish I knew what he was comprehending, because I’m completely lost. Then he says how much he loves Will for being ‘the only person that has made me straight-faced in my life’."
"Straight-faced? I got the impression that Captain Jack gleaned a lot of entertainment from making fun of Will’s uptight personality and heroics during the film."
"And, do you know, there was this vague sense that he didn’t quite think of Will as a one true love. I know that’s a terribly obscure thing to say, but can you see where I’m coming from?"
"Yes, faintly. He seemed to be much more interested in Elizabeth than Will, strangely enough. And then there was the fact that he got slapped by two strumpets…You know, Isaiah, I have a theory, radical as it may seem, that Captain Jack might be a bit…heterosexual."
Isaiah gasped exaggeratedly. "You can’t be serious! I mean, look at the fanfiction statistics! There are far more Jack/Will fics than there are Will/Elizabeth fics, most of them not labeled AU!"
"Oh, I stand corrected, then. Making Jack act really stupid," Mara added, motioning at the next portion of the story.
Jack laughed briefly to himself and then stared dreamily at the image of "young Will" in front of him. Giving the hallucination a dopey, lovesick grin, he sashayed towards the figure.
"Alas," the narrator lamented, "as he did, it disappeared and Jack once again was overwhelmed by depression."
"Finally. Ghostly!Will was starting to bug me."
"Depressing an incorrigibly ebullient captain," Isaiah added, his pen ticking off the charges. "Oh, look. Jack can’t go on like this. He needs, dramatic ellipses, to breathe again."
"So does Evanescence," Mara remarked. "Line breaks. Line breaks, Quetzalcoatl curse you!" The lead singer’s face began to sport an unhealthy bluish tinge.
"You used to captivate meBy your resonating lightBut now I’m bound by the life you left behind"
"While we’re at it, charge him for having song lyrics that have ABSOBLOODYLUTELY NOTHING to do with the subject at hand! How is Jack bound by the life Will left behind? And what life did Will leave behind?"
The faces of the band members were now bright purple, as the prose was fast becoming.
"I miss you Will. I--" he uttered. These wounds won't seem to healThis pain is just too realThere’s just too much that time cannot erase"I will always care for you, Will Turner." Jack said lightly as a tear streamed down his left cheek, the trail it left glistening in the moonlight.
"Ah, the Single Tear. Can’t have suet-pudding melodrama without that, can we?"
Mara didn’t answer. She was looking warily at Captain Sparrow. Isaiah tensed as he saw the captain frown in their direction.
"He couldn’t have heard me…he’s canon, isn’t he? Even though he’s possessed?"
Mara merely held her Character Analysis Device out in front of her. "Aha, I thought so."
[Captain Jack Sap-arrow. Imposter. Sniveling fool.]
Isaiah peered over her shoulder. "Imposter?" he said. "Then…that’s not CJS? At all?"
"No. The real pirate captain has been totally replaced. He must have fallen down a plothole. We’ll need to retrieve the true captain, then get rid of him." Mara jerked her head towards the Jack Sparrow facsimile with no small amount of dislike.
Isaiah motioned for her to keep quiet.
"We have to whisper again," he said, "since it’s a fully original character wearing his name."
Mara nodded. Then she yawned. The interminable paragraph-less story was taking effect, even with all of the adrenaline-based anger that had coursed through her. It didn’t help that they hadn’t been able to move for the entire fic.
"When you cried I’d wipe away all of your tearsWhen you'd scream I’d fight away all of your fears"
"Defiling the compositional greatness that is Evanescence. Making them wheeze-gah! Look at that, she’s about to fall over!" Mara made a mad dash for the lead singer just as Gibbs came on deck.
Fortunately, Gibbs was in character, having just decided to let Jack be, and the pirate captain was, for the moment, too wrapped up in his own melodrama to notice the pirate that had bounded forward and propped up a being that was, to the imposter, not really there.
Amy Lee was trying desperately to get the last few lines of "My Immortal" past her lips. Mara wasn’t having much luck stopping the lead singer from fainting. The situation was getting desperate.
Jack toasted to Will and his future "beautiful family," as another tear ran down his cheek.
"I’m this close to breaking down, myself." With that, Isaiah rose swiftly to his feet and signaled to Mara.
And though you're still with me "I will never truly be at peace, nor will I find comfort in any other person. I have nobo-"
The singer collapsed to the floor, unconscious after holding her breath through that line. At that moment, the two agents sprang into action, one tending to the unfortunate musicians, the other hooking the back of Gibbs’ vest and pulling him gently towards the forecastle.
"Sorry about this, mate," Isaiah said quietly to Gibbs. "But we can’t have you in the way when things start to get messy." He tugged, sending Gibbs reeling backwards, released the grapnel hook, and ran over to the captain.
His steps hastened as he approached, trying to reach the imposter before he got his guard up. Captain Jack Sparrow was not one to be crossed-in canon, he was a quick and cunning fighter. Isaiah would have felt better if Mara, with her pistol, were accompanying him. But there was nothing to suggest that Captain Sap-arrow was going to draw a weapon on him anytime soon. In fact, the imposter was still consumed by his melancholy.
Isaiah tapped him on the shoulder with the barbs of the grapnel hook.
As Captain Jack Sap-arrow turned around, Isaiah put a hand on the hilt of Jack’s sword, which spun from its sheath as the imposter faced Isaiah. Puzzled, the captain looked at the weapon this strange young man was brandishing at him, as if struggling to recognize it. Finally, he turned his gaze back to the horizon, tears welling up in his eyes.
"Ah-ah-ah," Isaiah chided. He brandished the blade, somewhat theatrically, at the imposter. "Step away from the Pearl. Now."
The captain blinked back his tears and moved away from the helm.
"My Pearl!" he wailed loudly, pouting. "First Will, now my ship! Alas! Alackaday! Woe! I now have nothing!"
Gibbs, still somewhat in character, had made for Isaiah as quickly as he could, but stopped as the captain began crying.
"Sakes alive…" the sailor looked thunderstruck. He looked from Isaiah to the captain. Suddenly, there was a flash, and Gibbs blinked slightly.
"Not true, Captain." Isaiah smirked as Mara came forward, having revived Evanescence and neuralized Gibbs with her sunglasses. She pushed him gently forward, murmuring some sailing instructions to him. "You are the lucky owner of a short but rather unusual charge list," Isaiah informed the imposter.
"Wh-what?" The false captain blinked stupidly at them.
Mara rolled her eyes. "This is too easy," she said. "And I thought we’d have to worry about getting shot at."
The captain, as he slowly got a clue, began to struggle, and the male agent was forced to hook his grapnel around the captain’s right arm to hold him in place. Mara had retrieved the scroll and was reciting it with a vengeance.
"Captain Jack Sap-arrow. You are hereby charged with being a Marty Stu, having a hole in your heart that you fill by drinking, defiling the compositional greatness that is Evanescence, causing massive tense shifts, interfering with the character of Jack Sparrow by dreadful impersonation, refusing to use things like paragraph breaks and proper punctuation, having bad grammar, improper use of spacing, writing absolutely terrible slash, obscene sappiness, abuse of a canon character, i.e. making Jack Sparrow act like an idiot and a petulant child, of which he is neither, causing Jack to dream while captaining his ship, causing Jack to be in love with Will Turner, causing Jack to admit to such a feeling in an extremely exaggerated way, causing Will’s ghost to haunt Jack, making Will out to be scared when he and Jack were sailing together, twisting canon to suit your own perverse whims, and," she looked up from her reading, "making me nauseated from reading your drivel."
"I second that," said Isaiah. "There is no indication whatsoever that Sparrow has a single homosexual inclination throughout the entire movie! He flirted with Elizabeth, he got smacked silly by two bordello women and a female pirate, and he seemed absolutely thrilled by the prospect of Will having a girl."
"It’s creative license!" the Stu howled. "I just like to imagine…"
"Then keep your imaginings to your self," Isaiah berated him. "And finally, by Elbereth and Lúthien the Fair…pirates don’t cry."
With that, Isaiah struck the imposter on the head with the pommel of the sword. The captain slumped to the deck. The out-of-breath Evanescence vanished.
"You watch him." Mara nodded towards the senseless figure. "I want to think up something creative for him while I try to find the real Captain Jack."
Mara searched for any wavering in the scene in front of them. There were several, indicating multiple plotholes. She sighed and stepped into one.
"Nope," she said as she hastily backed out. "That’s the Will’s ghost one. Let’s see…"
She found a wobbly patch of space aft. "This must be it." She stepped inside and was engulfed in darkness. She listened carefully to see if she could hear the sound of breathing. There was total silence.
Cautiously, she stepped further in. Wow, this is a big one, she thought to herself as she traversed the silent aperture.
"Jack?" Mara called tentatively. She took another step. "Captain J-"
The next second, a gun was pressed to the side of her head.
"Oh-"
An arm wrapped tightly but not painfully around her midriff, pinning her arms to her sides.
"Hello there, darlin’," a dangerously pleasant voice said. "Come to take me back to my ship, I expect?" He tapped the gun lightly against her temple.
"Actually, yes," Mara replied in as calm a voice as she could manage. "If you’ll be so kind as to release me, I’ll get you back to the Pearl posthaste. The person impersonating you is in our custody."
"Terribly sorry, but I’m afraid that’s not possible. You see, I’ve recently lost consciousness, been robbed of the Pearl, and been stowed away in here like a bilge rat. My temper’s stretched a bit taut, savvy? Then you step in here sounding like you know exactly what’s happened and why, and for some reason you want to rescue me, or at least pretend that’s your aim, when for all I know you could have aspirations to commandeering my ship and dumping me into the deep at the first opportunity."
Mara sighed. "Then what do you propose to do about me?"
"Ah. Well, I haven’t made up my mind yet…I suppose if I find out that you are, in fact, conspiring to oust me I ought to feed you to the affable little fishies down below-there are plenty o’ sharks hereabouts. Or, perhaps I should hang you up by your hair from the mizzenmast. Right now, I’ll settle for having a somewhat intriguing hostage to show me crew." He began to push her forward. "I assume you can get us out of here."
"Yes," Mara answered duly, moving in the appropriate direction.
Together, they stepped forward out of the plothole, Jack Sparrow being careful to keep Mara in front of him. When she saw an open-mouthed Isaiah greet them, she cringed.
The captain narrowed his eyes at her partner.
"Weapons down, if you please, sir."
Isaiah jerked his head over at Imposter!Jack. "But I can’t let him go-"
"And you’ll not need to. I’ll handle him later."
He motioned pointedly at the sword. Isaiah carefully set both the sword and hook down, biting his lip and looking at Mara. She knew what he was thinking: Should I chance opening a portal back? It was doubtful that Jack would really harm Mara as long as she played along and gave him the story of what had really happened. They could worry about memory wipes when they had back-up.
She nodded and then looked apprehensively at the prone form of Captain Jack Sap-arrow. He was beginning to revive. If Isaiah was going to try to head back, the least he could do was rid the fictional world of the imposter.
Isaiah, seizing the opportunity, jabbed him awake, whereupon the imposter began bemoaning his fate as he stumbled to his feet.
"My Will!" he moaned piteously, sobs wracking his frame. "Please, I can’t stand being without him!"
"Will…?" The real captain sounded a bit bewildered. "Bloody hell! Will Turner?"
"That’s the one," Mara affirmed.
"He-he looks just like me, but-" The grip tightened. "Just what game are you playing, Missy?"
"He’s not one of ours," Mara said, beginning to be annoyed. "He’s an opponent! We’re trying to kill him and bring you back to where you belong!"
"Then I’m sure you won’t mind if I rouse the crew and get them to apprehend this rather unusual reprobate." Without waiting for an answer, he called, "Men! And Anamaria," he added. "This coxcomb has decided that he would make a better captain than meself. Do you agree?"
Sap-arrow was now whimpering quietly.
"Nay!" the pirates shouted in unison.
Captain Jack made a sweeping bow in thanks. "Splendid. Moises and Tearlach, please provide an escort for our guest of honor. See to it that this fine gentleman has a snug berth below decks-one that’s firmly latched, mind you. We wouldn’t want to deprive ourselves of his esteemed company too quickly."
The two members of Jack’s crew each took hold of an arm of the impersonator and carted him off to the brig.
"But you don’t understand!" Mara said, rather contentious by this point. "Isaiah and I are Protectors of the Plot Continuum! We have to apprehend him, pronounce his sentence-"
In one fast shove, Jack Sparrow released Mara, keeping his gun trained on her. The other hand had gone to his sword belt as Isaiah came up next to her.
He eyed them both askance, his voice unyielding.
"His punishment will be quite effectively carried out if you’ll kindly remove yourselves from my ship. Go back where you came from, or I’ll let you down at the nearest inhabited island if you’d like."
There was nothing to be had by arguing.
"No need," said Mara, glaring at Jack. "We have our own methods of travel." She retrieved her own bag, heedless of the many weapons now pointed in her direction, and drew out the portal generator. Jack Sparrow narrowed his eyes suspiciously.
"It’s not a weapon, don’t worry. Headquarters," she pronounced.
"Mara, w-" Isaiah’s sentence got cut off as he and Mara both disappeared.
The gray of Headquarters materialized in front of them.
"Beautiful. Just beautiful. Who knows what he’s going to do with the imposter?" Mara stowed the activator in her bag and turned to Isaiah. "Sorry. What was it that you were going to say?"
Isaiah fingered the material of his shirt pocket. "I was going to pull out my neuralizer," he said. "Normally, they only work on one or two people at a time, but in this case-every eye was trained on us."
Mara gave him an unreadable glance.
Then she balled a fist and slammed it against the wall. The echo reverberated down the empty corridor.
_______________________________________________
"Rough day?" Quen asked knowingly when Isaiah staggered into the office late that afternoon.
"You would not believe."
"I would. I read the fic."
"Oh, right."
"At least I don’t have to analyze every single detail," she pointed out, partly to assuage his pride. PPCers, especially new ones, liked to think that there was no fic tougher or more grueling to tackle than the one in which they had been forced to participate. When they found out that it could always get worse, most of them stopped competing. And a few simply stopped caring.
"So…about this memo. The head of the grammar division…I think it must be wrong."
"Oh?" The secretary raised her eyebrows. Quen didn’t like her work being criticized.
"I mean," Isaiah added hastily, "It’s just the word-Grammar-on the piece of paper. And it’s, er, well, misspelled. With an ‘e’."
Quen grinned somewhat wickedly. "Oh, that’s not a misspelling," she said lightly. "That’s Grammer."
"Grammer?"
"Oh, yes. It’s one of the most common mistakes out there, the misspelling of ‘grammar’. This adding insult to irony has spawned a rather unique creation. Isaiah, meet Gram."
In stepped a short, feeble-looking old lady. Her hair was curled and pinned, and she wore a checked gingham dress with the word "spell" in each square of red. Two long exclamation marks were poised like knitting needles in her hands. Her beady eyes glittered with something that Isaiah couldn’t place far from malice.
"It’s nice to meet you, Grammer," Isaiah ventured. "Do you mind being called Gram?"
Grammer shook her head, still retaining that killer smile.
"She doesn’t like to talk much, but she’s always willing to help."
"I’m sure she is." Isaiah resisted the urge to back away, or better yet, go into a headlong sprint. "What exactly does she do?"
"She sticks narrators with extra exclamation marks, causes punctuation downpours, and gives visualizations for all of the less coherent figures of speech. You watch. It’ll be a blast, working with her."
Isaiah couldn’t quite bring himself to believe it. "What about our Head of Department?"
Quen grinned. "Should be here any second…aha, perfect timing."
The door creaked open and the visitor entered.
"An…apostrophe?" Isaiah cocked his head towards the punctuation.
I am a comma, it said testily. The Uncommon Comma, it added primly. Notice that I do not hover, but rather glide across the ground.
"Glide" was stretching it a bit. The gigantic piece of punctuation pushed off and forward from the floor with its tail-like lower half acting as a foot. This hopping motion was executed with as much grace as the comma could muster. On its round "face" two almond-shaped eyes blinked and narrowed in scrutiny.
I shall be glad to head your department.
"We’ll be glad to have you," said Isaiah, looking to Quen for direction. How do you speak to a piece of punctuation?
The secretary merely shrugged in his direction. "Sorry that a leader for Linguistics Division isn’t available yet. Don’t worry, we’ll think up something. I trust Mara will approve?"
"Oh, she’ll think it’s fabulous," Isaiah assured her. "Is there any further business we need to take care of?"
"Not as far as your department is concerned." Quen all of a sudden became interested in shuffling papers. "However…there is the small matter of you being a new recruit. There’s some other information-"
"Can it wait?" Isaiah interrupted. "I think I need to see Mara. The mission went a bit awry. She’ll probably need consoling. Or at the very least, some Bleeprin."
At that, Quen waved him hastily away.
"Off you go then," she said. "Report back here first thing Monday."
The male agent idly wondered why Quen was so interested in getting out of jotting down whatever information she had to extract from him next. With a heavy sigh, Isaiah wished the PPC didn’t give its agents so many feelings of impending doom.
______________________________________________________
"That scoundrel!" Mara thundered. "That irritating, undependable…"
"Pirate?" Isaiah suggested calmly as he watched his partner pace up and down the length of his quarters. "He is your favorite character, Mara."
"We were trying to help!"
"He didn’t know that. The only thing he knew that was that he had been abducted by some strange force and thrust down a dank, dark hole. How would you have reacted? I thought it was refreshing that he actually tossed us off."
"But he wouldn’t even let us explain, he just…" Mara threw her hands up helplessly. "You would think he would listen to reason. And you’d think he’d want that man off his ship."
"I’m quite sure that Captain Jack Sap-arrow won’t be around much longer, Mara. And if Upstairs complains about us leaving him, we’ll pop back in and see if canon is back in order."
"What about the memories of us?" Mara looked at him belligerently.
Isaiah, unperturbed, walked over to his sink. "Fortunately, Jack’s memories of the PPC coexisted with those of Jack Sap-arrow, unlike the last time when we interacted with the captain after the Sues were taken care of. Once the imposter’s gone, both canon and the captain’s memories will return to normal. You shouldn’t get so worked up."
She sighed. "I was just mad at myself, I suppose. I should have realized that he’d try to take me hostage."
"I should have thought of the MiB sunglasses, but I was a bit distracted by the motley crew at hand. Mara, it happens." Isaiah rummaged through the medicine cabinet. "Here," he said, tossing the bottle of Bleeprin to her. "One for me and one for you. We’ll wash it down with some cider, aye?"
Mara nodded. As she took her dose of brain bleach, she relaxed noticeably. "I’m at least glad that Captain Sparrow can look out for himself, even after he’s been hurled down a plothole. It’s reassuring, somehow."
"Even if he’s as aggravating as ever while doing it," Isaiah had to put in.
Mara shrugged. "That’s Captain Jack for you."
Isaiah poured the cider into two wine glasses. "A toast," he offered. "To Jack, the best pirate we’ve ever seen!"
"To the real Captain Jack Sparrow," Mara amended.
"May your slanderers find themselves on the receiving end of your creative vengeance."
"Aye, I’ll drink to that."
The clinking of the glasses was drowned out by the ear-numbing beep of the console.
"Flaming Denethor!" Mara rapped out the PPCer epithet. "Not again!"
_______________________________________________
Meanwhile, on the Black Pearl…
"Why won’t you let me go?" yodeled Sap-arrow loudly. "What did I ever do to you? I was only trying to show my love for W-"
While Anamaria was busy gagging the dubious individual in the cell, Captain Jack Sparrow peeled a green banana thoughtfully.
"Bit of a talkative chap, aren’t you?" he remarked, keeping up the pretense of camaraderie, for the moment.
Eagerly, Jack Sap-arrow nodded.
The captain flipped the peel idly away. It landed between Sap-arrow’s feet.
"Y’know, lad, if you have a mind to impersonate the most fearsome pirate in the Spanish Main, it’d be a good idea not to make me out as having half the spine of a cooked jellyfish."
"Mff!"
The imposter sought to push the gag down. It didn’t work.
"Struggling won’t do you a scrap of good-Anamaria really knows her knots. Although I admit, I suppose I should be kinder to you. Even the worst imitator in recorded history has to be good for something, and I’ve come to the conclusion that you do have your uses."
Jack’s eyes were flinty, but he grinned, teeth glinting in the sallow torchlight.
______________________________________________________
Author’s addendum: Some time later, the Uncommon Comma revisited the fic to make sure that canon was back in place. During that time, it was discovered that a spectacular heist had been initiated by a certain infamous pirate captain. Apparently, a remarkable Jack Sparrow look-alike had been seen running for his life, crying something about a lost true love. While this diversion was in place, the real captain and crew had sneaked in and plundered most of the prestigious mansions. This, however, did not account for the end of the mystery man, who seems to have wound up tangled in a net full of ghost crabs and sent down as shark bait to the ocean floor (sailors arrived upon the scene too late to save the pretender from his extraordinary fate).
The End
Continue to Mission 3
Fountain of Bleepka = a fountain that many PPC agents and heads of department search for because it alleviates the pain of even the most hideous of badfics. Bleepka is Bleeprin mixed with vodka - very helpful for agents who are old enough to drink, as it’s stronger than Bleeprin.
Flaming Denethor = Begun by Artemis, a.k.a. Agent Talia of the Bad Roleplay Department, this expression is used as an interjection, usually of dismay, as many PPCers were…surprised…at Peter Jackson’s portrayal of the demise of Lord Denethor in Lord of the Rings movie!verse.
Quetzalcoatl = one of the Aztec gods, portrayed as a feathered serpent and with too many legends associated with him to summarize his occupation in a brief footnote. Mara likes to invoke the wrath of the Aztec deities on the badfic stories in Pirates of the Caribbean--she finds it so very appropriate.
Thanks for reading. Please sidestep the crustaceans scuttling about on the floor and review. The gold doubloons (see last chapter) are being dutifully hoarded. Oh, I almost forgot: coming soon are Infernal Author’s Notes, Will’s long-lost twin, and Sponge Bob Square Pants. Bonus author’s flame included.