Mission #10: The Monkeys of Doom
Summary Miss Vixen Doom can captain a ship, but apparently she can't remember the names of the canon characters very well. The agents deal with a bad case of word replacement, a very strange ship, and the annoyance of furry misspellings.
The room was cold and dark. Vague shapes in the middle distance were visible thanks to a long, luminescent panel that ran perpendicular to the medical beds. The most the agent could see from his supine position was a metal cart topped with a tray of spiky instruments that beeped innocuously.
Isaiah wondered why he bothered to open his eyes. Every bone in his body ached, and it felt like his cerebrum was sumo-wrestling his cerebellum. It was a typical Pink Stuff hangover-not that Isaiah would have known what one felt like before now. Disoriented and queasy, Isaiah didn't feel like he knew much of anything, including where he was.
Then it came back to him. Quen.
Isaiah forced himself into a sitting position, using his arms to keep himself upright while his spine decided whether or not to support his weight. His head lolled to one side. Agent Quen. The kiss. That awful grammasite. He must still be in the medical ward.
Isaiah turned to his right, thumbing the elbow imprint that she had left on his cot. She had obviously nodded off, woken up, and left not long before he regained consciousness.
He shook his head. She shouldn't have lost sleep for him! After the way he had behaved, he was surprised she still thought enough of him to stay by his side all night. Maybe the food had gone to his head...it would explain his grogginess...but Isaiah had surprised even himself with the kiss. Before yesterday, he would have been too nervous to attempt anything of the sort, even on the cheek. The two were both shy, not having had much experience with dating. Had she been very displeased? What would she say when they next met?
The panic wasn't helping him recuperate.
In an effort to get his mind off his symptoms, Isaiah combed his hair with his hands. He was ready to swing his legs over the side of the bed when the sick bay doors opened.
Please don't be Quen, please don't be Quen, please...
It was Mara.
"Whew," said Isaiah, a little too loudly. Trying to cover up his sigh of relief, the agent cleared his throat and said, "I'm feeling alert enough to go on a mission, if that's what you need me for."
"I don't need you for anything," said Mara, observing him calmly with her dark eyes. "Agent Quen, however, staggered back to her quarters in the wee hours of the morning, muttering your name under her breath. She's still snoozing."
"How do you know?" demanded Isaiah.
Mara smiled. "She walked into my quarters by mistake."
"I see." Isaiah carefully kept his tone neutral. The last thing he could stomach this morning was teasing. "W-what should I say to her?"
"Depends." Mara took a red pen out of her shirt pocket and twirled it. "What happened between you two?"
At that moment, the doors opened a second time.
A comma-shaped silhouette regarded them.
The first order of business, it said, is a careful assessment of Agent Isaiah's health.
"I'm fine," called Isaiah.
That's good enough for me. The second is that there is a meeting of the Department of Technical Errors scheduled for two hours and twenty minutes after you finished your next mission.
Isaiah stood up. "I'm PPCing again?"
The Uncommon Comma bounced up and down in what was presumably a nod. You are fit to return to duty, Agent, provided you report to me if you ever go after a Lord of the Rings story in the near future.
"Yes...uh, sir," said Isaiah, feeling awkward. After all of this time with the Comma as his department head, he still didn't know if it was male or female. It seemed impolite to ask.
As the doors closed automatically behind the Comma, Agents Mara and Isaiah looked at each other.
"So?" said Isaiah tentatively, guessing that she had already taken note of the story they would be PPCing.
"You'll love it," said Mara brightly.
"Insincerity doesn't suit you."
"Oh, fine." Mara handed him the computer pad with the Words on it. "I didn't make it past the title."
"'A Pirates Life for Me,'" Isaiah read. "No apostrophe, I see. Well, at least it has a title, unlike some fics we've gone into. Lend me a hand getting through the portal, will you? My legs are still a bit stiff, and I won't risk having breakfast for fear of vomiting."
_______________________
A group of women stood at the front of a hotel two of the women walked from the other 4 and stood there whispering things….
The fic began in the middle of a conversation, which took place in the middle of nowhere. A hotel stood in the background, but there were no other surroundings. The agents couldn't even tell which century they were in. A hotel really shouldn't exist in the late 17th century Caribbean-it should be an inn or tavern-but most Suethors weren't above creating anachronistic lodgings.
Forgetting three times to leave periods at the end of their sentences, the women talked about Jack Sparrow. At least, the agents assumed it was Jack Sparrow.
"Why are they calling him Capitan?" Mara wrinkled her nose. "Is he Spanish now?"
"I think I'd count that as a Misspelled Monkey," volunteered Isaiah. "The woman's name is Sharlot, which isn't a Spanish name."
"Then we have two monkeys already, and we're not even out of the scene," Mara said.
Isaiah looked at her incredulously. In response, she pointed to the other woman, who was apparently named Gisselle. "Whoops. Forgot to check the end credits on the DVD, didn't we, Suethor?"
“And what? May I askis so funny ladies?” a soft but strong voice said from behind them. There a striking Woman stood listening to the women giggling.
"Soft but strong." Mara tapped her clipboard with her pen. "I smell a feisty and annoying original character. Ooh, look, she's striking!"
Isaiah rolled his eyes. "We'll do some striking of our own, once we're through with this fic. Typical Sue. She wants to make a good entrance, and bungles it all with bad grammar. There's one unnecessary question mark, and the words 'ask' and 'is' smashed together."
Isaiah ticked off the charges with his quill, which left Mara to study the Sue's appearance. Ironically, Mary Sue's desire to appear extra special in every fic resulted in her being nothing special before the eyes of the agents. If she had been fat, ugly, or just ordinary, she might have piqued Mara's curiosity, but as the DTE agent stared at the heavily-armed beauty in front of her, she found that she was bored.
"So what if she has black and red striped pants and a long black coat?" Mara asked rhetorically. "Do we really need to hear about her hat and bandana? Really, she's not wearing anything that a generic pirate wouldn't wear, and as for dying her black hair red at the bottom...heh. That'd have to be red paint in this era. Black hair doesn't dye easily-"
"Kind of like Mary Sue," Isaiah joked.
"-She'd have to bleach her hair before dying it red. Silly Sue."
To the average eye she looked like a man but to everyone else SHE was something more.
"Something more than a man?" Isaiah cocked an eyebrow in Mara's direction. "She's a hermaphrodite, then?"
Mara's mouth twitched.
Isaiah leaned closer. "Mara?"
Gasping and desperately trying not to burst out laughing, Mara answered, "Look. Just look. Technical errors..."
"What about them?"
And then he saw.
The Sue was wearing a long black cote and a Wight puffy shirt.
Isaiah knew full well what a wight was. He'd read The Lord of the Rings enough to remember the word. It was with infinite glee that he watched an undead spirit puff up like a microwaved marshmallow and drape itself over the Sue's torso. The "cote" took a bit longer to visualize, as Isaiah didn't know what it was, but Mara found her dictionary and discovered that the Sue was wearing "a shed or coop for small domestic animals, such as sheep or pigeons."
Mara closed the dictionary with a bang. "Well. I think that took care of her impressive appearance!"
"Eh, she's still impressive-just not quite the way she meant to be!"
Mara peered further at the Words. "I think we have an overdose of megalomania on this one. Her name is Miss Captain Doom."
"For the love of pirates, tell me you're kidding."
"All right, I'll tell you I'm kidding."
"Are you lying?"
"Yes."
"Goddammit."
"Screech! Screech! Screech!"
"Now what?"
The agents, as one, turned around and were bombarded with Misspelled Monkeys. "Therewill Turner" and "Elisabeth Swan" joined Gisselle and Capitan Jack Sparrow in leaping onto the agents, one monkey resting on each shoulder. Isaiah got the Capitan and Therewill Turner, who engaged in a friendly scuffle on top of his head. Their shrieks grew still louder as Miss Doom "shacked her head" in shame.
A large shack fell out of the sky and landed atop the Mary Sue's skull.
"Ow! Owowowowow!" yelped Mara.
"Yeah, that looked like it hurt," said Isaiah, examining the shack.
"Not her-me!"
Isaiah's partner was less lucky with her monkeys. Gisselle and Elisabeth Swan had decided that it was a fantastic idea to hang off of her long, curly hair and use it as a jungle gym. When the shack crash-landed on top of the Sue, they went wild.
"Get them off me!"
Isaiah knew better than to try it. Misspelled Monkeys were more vicious than most minis. They even attacked canon characters on occasion.
"I can try to distract them," he offered. "Let's see, what do we have in the next section? Hey, monkeys!" he called. "Her first name is Vixen! She's the captain of the Bleeding Heart!"
“Vixen…..CAP’N Vixen Doom.” She said with a little smile.
“Captain that makes you a….Pirate!” Elisabeth said shocked. Though it looked very obvious.
Mara turned to raise an eyebrow at Isaiah. "You learn something new every day. I had no idea that being a captain automatically makes you a pirate! Wait until I tell Pirate Picard and Pirate Faramir what their occupations really are!"
Isaiah snorted into his right hand, but then hurriedly grabbed Mara's wrist with his left as the Sue began to board the Bleeding Heart. The disguise generator, which had been set before to "Tortugan lowlife," switched to "buccaneer" as they sneaked onto the deck.
Vixen turned back around and started walking onto the ship. She stoped at the top of the ramp.
"Stope" was another interesting term. Isaiah had learned it, appropriately, from Anguished English: An Anthology of Accidental Assaults Upon Our Language. This particular accidental assault was defined as "extracting ore from a stope, or, loosely, underground." Isaiah watched as the Mary Sue, wearing a miner's hat, took a pickaxe to the planks. He hid a smile.
"Good lord, now Elizabeth's doing it, too!" whispered Mara. The agents watched as the Sue and Miss Swann stoped in front of a door. In true Sue fashion, Vixen Doom augmented her own intelligence by downgrading that of the nearest canon character. She told Elizabeth that there was a present for her in one of the rooms. While the real Elizabeth Swann would have seen through the ruse in less than an eye-blink, Elisabeth Swan happily opened the door and walked in, a dopey smile gracing her face.
“I am terribly sorry Miss Swan but I seem to be portrayed as…well…soft and capturing you will be the best thing to get my reputation back up! G’Day Miss Swan.” She said then she slid the piece of wood back and walked off.
"Oh, nice. Can't even come up with her own diabolical plot; she has to steal Barbossa's." Isaiah pressed an ear to the door. There were no screams or sobbing from inside, so he assumed that Miss Swann was all right. Reluctantly, he allowed Mara to guide him away from the door and back to the awful, canon-warping hotel, where the Sue was rounding up crewmembers.
Max and Sam, two bit characters with personalities in the negative numbers, were busy having sex with Gisselle and Sharlot when the Sue walked in on them. She cried out and melodramatically averted her eyes, which Mara thought was a hoot, since if Vixen were an actual pirate captain, she'd see that sort of thing all the time. Tortuga was not known for its privacy and discretion. The Sue then complained about the image being "burned into her skill" for ages.
"The whores must be exceptional for the Sue to pick up on their skill by osmosis," Mara laughed. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Isaiah, whose jaw was steadily tightening. "Relax, Agent. We'll get Miss Swann out of her predicament. We always do. Then, we'll restore her spine and self-confidence."
"It's not that." Isaiah's eye twitched. "Although that rankles, too, believe me. It's that they put her in the spare cabin."
If one did the barest amount of research into colonial pirate vessels, one would find a fact that Suethors very seldom sought to include in their writings. This was that pirate ships were not, by and large, spacious, and that even the biggest pirate ships such as the Pearl usually had only one cabin for the captain. If there were a second cabin, it would be for the first mate--there was no such thing as a spare room of any kind aboard a ship, unless you counted the cells in the brig.
Mara nudged Isaiah. "Snap out of it. They're describing the bit characters. We'd better pay attention so that we can distinguish between them when the time comes to kill them off."
[Sam] was a strong man with dark hair. Usury never wearing a shirt but he didn’t care. Sam did the same. They were twins. Max was older but Sam was cuter.
Isaiah glared at his partner. "We'll be able to tell them apart, huh? Even in their appearance, they're ciphers."
Mara shrugged. "Well, at least we got to see Usury without a shirt on. I'm surprised that an abstract concept would have a shirt on, but...but..." Mara couldn't bring herself to finish her sentence. She stood, transfixed in the same way that one would be transfixed by a train wreck.
The Sue had just employed the Single Tear. A pearl-like drop trickled down her silky cheek.
Mara grabbed Isaiah by the shirtsleeve.
"I see it," her partner replied. He tapped Mara's computer pad. "Check the Words. Is there any slurpy angst in sight?"
Mara shook her head. "The narrative breaks off right about-yaaaaah!"
The agents were caught off guard. They had prepared themselves for a scene break, but instead of switching directly into a new scene, they were catapulted into the author's note. The Author's Note Alert device was giving out rapid-fire flashes. The agents found themselves in the customary blank space that occurred when they were receiving audio only.
I hope you all injoyed that. stay teuned for Chap 2.
"Let's skip the rest of it," said Mara.
Isaiah blinked. "You just got this new device and now you don't want to use it?"
"It's not the first time I've regretted making a request in HQ." She put her hands on her hips. "Are you ready to leave, or would you like to hear her sighing about Johnny Depp?"
"Ready," said Isaiah at once. Mara clicked the portal generator and they left the treacherous author's note behind.
The agents were relieved that there was no Sue in their sights. Instead, they were disguised as pirates aboard a ship. It was probably the Black Pearl, since Jack Sparrow and Will Turner were present. Jack, of course, was drinking, but as Mara leaned over him, she caught the smell of a strange beverage.
She sniffed the air. "Not rum?"
"Grog, according to the Words," said Isaiah. "How does it smell?"
"It's kind of hard to tell from here," Mara answered. "I just know it smells weird. His odor is probably covering it up." She motioned to Jack Sparrow. "At least we know the Sue hasn't gotten to him yet. Otherwise, he'd be smelling like cheap cologne."
Isaiah, meanwhile, was hovering around the blacksmith, trying to discern what Will was doing aboard the ship. Contrary to what most Suethors seemed to think, Will Turner was not an actual pirate. Isaiah would bet his entire supply of chocolate that Will would rather stay in Port Royal with Elizabeth than spend his days stealing from innocent people.
Racking his brains for an answer to Will's questionable presence, Isaiah was too oblivious to notice that they were docking. He ceased to be oblivious when the monkeys began leaping up and down on his shoulder.
"Arr! Steady, guys!" Isaiah called to them. The monkeys knew full well that since there were no original characters, they had much less of a chance of being heard. They capered up and down his arms and, when the time came, leapt off onto the jollyboat before the agents could.
"Oi!" Isaiah glanced at Mara. "What are they doing?"
The female agent was staring at the boat with an expression of horror. "Oh, no! Quick, quick, after them!"
Not waiting for Isaiah, Mara leaped towards the boat. She missed, but caught hold of the side and clung for dear life. Isaiah, who had hesitated, had a bird's eye view of the scene. He quickly found out why Mara had leapt after the boat-or, more accurately, after the Misspelled Monkeys.
He had forgotten that the minis of OFUCI attacked canon characters when they were agitated enough. Jack and Will were heading towards the part of town where Giselle the whore would be slapping Jack. Gisselle the Misspelled Monkey was screeching madly and trying to get to Jack Sparrow's dreadlocks.
There weren't many things that could attract the attention of canon characters when the agents were disguised and no Sue was present. A mad monkey in Jack's hair, however, would definitely be one of them.
In desperation, Mara reached into her pack with one hand, drew out her pistol, and fired it.
"Yeek!"
Gisselle disappeared over the side of the ship. Mara twisted to the right and threw her pistol to Isaiah, then disappeared over the side as Jack and Will leaned down to see where the shot had fired from.
In moment, however, the jollyboat had run aground. As they touched down onto Tortuga, the Sue's influence over them grew. The two men, their expressions now dull and vacant, disembarked without another word.
A few seconds later, Mara surfaced.
"I love waterproof backpacks, don't you?" she said airily to Isaiah, who merely answered, "Catch!"
Mara caught her pistol, thankfully dry, and put in a new shot. Isaiah packed up his grapnel hook and charge list and waded after Mara. They arrived on the beach and made their way over to Jack. It wasn't too hard to find him; they just looked for the out-of-place hotel.
Shaking the water out of his hair, Isaiah turned to Mara. "So much for not drawing attention to ourselves."
"Better than having an injured canon character," Mara shot back. "Do you know what Upstairs does to us when canonicals sport PPC-related injuries?"
"Do I want to?" Isaiah reached into his pack. "Even so, I can't believe you killed a Misspelled Monkey!"
"I didn't kill her," said Mara. "She'll pop up as soon as she's mentioned again, which should be in about two seconds. Fortunately, she'll have no memory of anything that happened before, including my shooting her."
"Good," said Isaiah. "Ahh, here's the 'I didn't deserve that' moment."
Jack just looked at him then he spotted Gisselle and Sharlot coming out of the hotel. He quickly walked over to the ladies and with his usual charm said “Sharlot, Gisselle. Yer still not angary at me from last time are ye?”
Wait...but it wasn't Sharlot who slapped..." Isaiah looked at Mara in trepidation. "Unless..."
"Scarlet," said Mara resignedly. "She's supposed to be Scarlet."
"SCREECH!"
Sharlot, who up until this point had been unrecognizable as a canon character, sprouted fur and began to chatter. The Misspelled Monkey hopped about angrily, then leaped atop an ale-soaked barrel, looking from one agent to another. Misspelled Monkeys already occupied both of Mara's and Isaiah's shoulders. Sharlot, deciding that Mara's hair looked more comfortable, sprang up onto the agent's head and sat there contentedly, tail dangling over Mara's line of vision.
"If I have to run or move suddenly," Mara warned it, "you'll be thrown off."
Sharlot ignored her.
Mara shrugged. "Your choice." She then braced herself for the scene change back to the Bleeding Heart, where a man with huge mussels was escorting Elizabeth to the captain's cabin.
"Huge mussels, indeed," said Isaiah, delighted. "Those babies look tasty." The six-foot-tall chap, instead of being built like Superman, was stick-thin and plastered with large, black shellfish.
As it turned out, Miss Doom was partial to black. Her room was painted that color and spattered with what looked like dried blood. (Mara suggested that she and Isaiah could redecorate, once they had finished charging the Sue.) The mussel man turned out to be called Rocky, but since he wasn't actually muscular, the name sounded risible to the agents.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth and Miss Captain Doom were engaging in some "witty" banter, in which the Mary Sue showed that she wasn't intimidated by a governor's daughter because of her station. She then tried to imitate Jack by painting the situation in a way that was most advantageous to her, but failed for the very simple reason that she lacked the brains and the experience.
Elisabeth just looked at her. She was fed up with the game that Vixen was playing. “Miss Doom Must we play these endless games of denial?”
Vixen tuned around on her heels “endless games? I clearly ashore ye Miss Swan I Cap’n Vixen Doom dose not play games!”
Crunch!
The Misspelled Monkeys were thrown, Elisabeth flying outwards and hitting the mizzenmast, some of Mara's hair still clutched in her paws. Isaiah, who had been busy being sick over the side of the Bleeding Heart, was the first to see what had happened.
The Mary Sue had "ashored" Elizabeth, all right...the Bleeding Heart had run aground.
Mara found her footing with relative ease and scrambled to check the contents of her backpack, which she had inadvertently fallen upon in her tumble. The Misspelled Monkeys, naturally, weren't damaged in the least. Mara was in awe of their agility, even if she had no peace of mind around them.
"Well, Isaiah, we have one more charge-some thin guy 'pocking' his head in...Isaiah? ISAIAH!"
Mara ran to where her partner was leaning over the side of the ship. There came the distinct sound of vomiting.
"Uh-oh," she said, pounding him on the back.
He shoved her away. "Not...helping!"
"Sorry!" Mara frantically searched the contents of her pack for anything that would alleviate his symptoms. She had known that he was still slightly unwell, but she hadn't been there when the grammasite had invaded his innards, and so hadn't assessed how much he would need to recuperate. Normally, a mixture of bad grammar and a ship capsizing would make Isaiah nauseated, but not to the point of throwing up.
There were a few more dry heaves, and then Isaiah managed to say, "Quick, before the chapter ends...in my bag. Gravol. Hurry!"
Mara fiddled with the zipper, which stuck, and finally opened the front pocket in desperation. To her relief, she found the Gravol and handed it to her partner, who nodded his thanks.
"Good thinking, to bring that along when you were feeling under the weather," said Mara.
"Yes, I'm oh-so-smart." Isaiah finally turned away from the railing and gave her a weak smile. "Actually, that's from when Quen and I were having dinner aboard the Interceptor. Quen gets seasick easily."
Mara's jaw dropped. "That was how long ago?" she asked.
Isaiah turned red. "A month or two," he replied. Fortunately for him, the chapter ended and they were whisked into the author's note.
"Let me guess," Isaiah said. "The ANA device has lit up."
Mara stared at the Words. "Oh, it's more than that." She muttered a curse under her breath. "Our Suethor has decided to make a chapter consisting entirely of an author's note."
"Oh, great!" Isaiah clapped a hand to his forehead. "How will we make it through?"
"We'll reply to it," said Mara. "It's the only way, since we have no visual. Hold onto your stomach, Agent. Here we go!"
Hello Twiszed here. I would just like to make clear to the people who are reading my story.
"Ooh, a transparent author," said Isaiah.
I am sorry if it seemed like I was pushing you all to review my story I’m really not. Now if you see any Spelling Mistakes I am sorry. I have been using Microsoft Word but it’s not the best.
"Oh, your excuse is pathetic," Mara said crisply. "Microsoft Word spelling and grammar check would have caught many of the mistakes in your story. And if you used words that you actually knew the meaning of, you'd be no worse than the average PotC fanfic on the Pit of Voles."
"That's not saying much," Isaiah pointed out.
"Still."
Now explaining Vixen Doom I know that she is a Female Captain but she has a reason to be one.
"Sure she does," Isaiah sardonically. "It's called wish-fulfillment. The question is, does she have a plausible reason to be one?"
I also know it’s quite stupid to have a Female Captain but I do and I’m ok if you all don’t like it.
"It's not stupid to have a female captain, just unusual. There were female pirates, as the movie showed. What you haven't shown is any skill, personality trait, or good fortune that has enabled her to become a captain," answered Mara. "You haven't worked hard enough to make your character believable."
Now to explain her clothes her so called “millennium Goth-hair” has an explanation. It’s only got red tips at the bottom because of the blood that has spilt in her hair.
"Um, that's not enough to dye black hair red, I think you'll find."
Now saying most of this is almost giving stuff about her away. If I have been giving too much of the plot away I really haven’t. There are twists and many different plots all rolled into one. It’s just a long story and I haven’t got up to it. So please don’t feel that you’re being pushed to read my story. I’m a newbie here and I just want to know if people do enjoy my work.
Isaiah finished off the commentary. "It's politer than 'Don't like, don't read,' I'll give her that. However, I refuse to pity an author who is so careless in her word choices, who misspells the names of five different canon characters, and who ignores the rules of the Pit of Voles to leave an entire chapter of an author's note." He took a deep breath as they were sucked back in to the story. "What next? We need to find a way to off this girl."
"I'm with you. This fic is vile." Mara handed him the computer pad. "Take a gander at it, if you like. Where do you think we should stop her?"
"Or stope her, as the case may be," Isaiah snickered. "Let's see, now. We'll be catching up with Commodore Norrington soon, as he has decided that Elizabeth needs rescuing."
"Finally," said Mara, "someone with his wits about him."
"Nah," said Isaiah. "Look at this sentence here. 'I young lady am Commodore Norrington and you are a Pirate!' He's as hopelessly out of character as the rest of them."
"Strange," Mara remarked. "This author misspells Elizabeth, Swann, Captain, Giselle, and Scarlet, but she gets Commodore Norrington's name correct, to the letter."
"Typical Suefic inconsistency. Now, Norrington gets on her case for being a woman pirate, and Captain Vixen Doom prepares to fight him by 'firing up the cannons.' What, is she putting them in a kiln?"
"There's no way she could take the Dauntless in a ship-to-ship fight, regardless of her methods of fighting," said Mara. "Even the Pearl can't match her in a fair fight, and since the Black Pearl is the last real pirate threat in the Caribbean, Vixen's ship has to be much smaller than that."
Isaiah pretended to be shocked. "What? Implausibility from a Suefic? I never thought I'd live to see the day!" He suddenly noticed that Vixen was taking Elizabeth in a different direction. "Let's follow her."
Mara rolled her eyes.
Miss Swann opened a 'cabernet' and discovered a map of the ocion and a compose. A considerable amount of scribbling later, Isaiah whispered out of the corner of his mouth, "We can nab her right after her sooper speshul description. Careful, though; it's a leap to the Black Pearl."
"I don't mind," answered Mara. Gisselle screeched in agreement.
Gibbs looked up into the sky as if a bird had just flown over and a rainbow was attached to its tail feathers “ah Cap’n Doom. Now that’s an imperishable woman right there. Strong, striking good looks and has the anger like a bloodthirsty shark. She gets that off her brother Cap’n Bar….” Jack walks up and gives Gibbs an evil look. “Cap’n Doom.”
Mara looked over at Isaiah. "You're right; this is an excellent place to finish our charge list. There must be a dozen offenses against canon and grammar in this solitary paragraph." Her nostrils flared. "She's Barbossa's sister; what a surprise!"
Isaiah shook his head pityingly. "If that's not impugning Barbossa's honor, I don't know what is. Okay, now we just have to wait for Gibbs to finish his speech and-"
“Ah….She used to sail on the Back Pearl when Jack and Barbossa were together….as a crew. All that stuff that jack tells ye that the Perls not just a ship and a haul and a deck and a mask but its freedom…."
"She-she misspelled Pearl!" exclaimed Mara, outraged. "How do you misspell a five letter word that's part of the title of the movie? HOW?"
"I want to know how Gibbs can misquote Jack so badly! A haul and a mask?!"
Ka-THUMP!
The PPC agents were yanked forward and fell onto the deck of a most unusual vessel.
Mara looked around. "Where are we now?"
Isaiah made a sound of disgust. "Aboard the Perl, naturally. Careful-it should collapse any second." On cue, several pieces of wood broke away beneath their feet.
Mara looked down at her boots nervously. "Let me guess. It's made out of a haul, a deck, and a mask."
Nervously, both agents looked up. A small opera mask was stretched out to make a sail. It was attached to a mast holding a large haul of fish. That was better than looking down, however. There was only a deck beneath them-no stem, no stern, no gunwale, and no keel. It was no more than a large, floating raft.
"What a muttonhead this Mary Sue is!" Mara tried to keep her feet amidst the frantic rocking of the...whatever it was. "Keel, hull, deck, sails. How hard should that be to remember?" The water started creeping up towards the toes of her boots. "Oh, spiffy."
"I'm thinking we should bail," Isaiah said anxiously as a wave formed in front of them. It wasn't a large wave, but it was more than enough to tip them over.
"I'll grab a bucket," said Mara automatically.
Isaiah shook his head. "I didn't mean it literally! Look out!"
The wave crested and broke under the Perl, which did an inelegant nosedive into the sea. The monkeys hooted in panic.
Unfortunately, none of this stopped the fic from progressing.
"nay….it was never freedom…not with out Vixen it was never freedom…."
Splash! Splash!
"If by freedom you mean a deathtrap, I suppose not," grumbled a bedraggled Mara. The agent was treading water, her clipboard in one hand and her backpack in another. Elisabeth, Sharlot and Gisselle were still clinging to her hair, although Therewill Turner and Capitan Jack Sparrow were floating. It seemed that the Misspelled Monkeys could swim.
it was just a another ship that sail’s the Caribbean.
"Not anymore," said Isaiah, watching the last of the sad wreck that was the Perl disappear into the waves. "I can't believe she is trying to put herself above the Black Pearl in Jack's affections! She's ruining his best moment of character exposition!" Isaiah grabbed Mara's arm. "We should get her now!"
"I would love to. There are two problems, however."
Mara nodded over to a piece of wreckage, where Jack and Gibbs were dancing a minuet. "Someone mixed up 'minuet' and 'minute'. The second problem is that we seem to have lost our Sue."
Isaiah swiveled his head. Of course; they were on the wrong ship. Vixen Doom was nowhere to be found.
"Oh, this is bad," gasped Isaiah. "When do we return to her?"
Mara winced. "At the end of the fic."
Isaiah thought for a moment. "Can we portal?"
"Sure. Always assuming..." Mara struggled with her backpack "...that I can get to my portal generator without drowning." She looked frustrated. "This thing is weighing me down!"
"It's in your backpack?" Isaiah swam awkwardly over to Mara. "Let's see if I can get to it. By the way, I hope your charge list is in there, too, because mine wasn't when we hit the water."
Things were going from bad to worse. The ocean's currents were making it impossible for the agents to hold their positions, and they were beginning to lose sight of the canon characters. They were endeavoring to hold up both themselves and their equipment and were not succeeding very well in either effort. They had lost sight of their quarry just when they had been about to charge her.
"All we need is thunder and lightning," Isaiah grumbled.
At once, there came a bright blue flash.
"Curse it!" Isaiah yelled to the Narrative Laws of Comedy.
"Wait!" Mara yelled back to him. "It's not lightning. It's the Author's Note Alert!"
Their eyes met, realization dawning on them.
"Woo-hoo!" Isaiah shouted as they were sucked into the blank nothingness. "We'll be high and dry, Agent!"
Mara patted the light gently. "So it does come in handy," she smiled. "Just not when it's supposed to."
While the author was busy railing against those pesky reviewers who were telling her to get a thesaurus and a dictionary, the agents managed to extricate Mara's portal generator and program it to the Mary Sue's last known coordinates. Mara pushed the button, and they left the note in mid-sentence.
"Good," said Isaiah as they landed on the deck of the Bleeding Heart. "She hasn't moved yet."
"And if we have our way," said Mara venomously, "she'll never move again. MARY SUE!"
Vixen, who was about to walk away from the door to Elizabeth's room, halted in her tracks. She looked down on them scornfully. "And you might be?" she inquired haughtily.
Mara smiled. "We are the Protectors of the Plot Continuum. We have some charges for you."
She felt a tap on her shoulder and craned her neck. Isaiah was holding out his scroll. It was considerably worse for the wear: the ink had bled out, and the parchment had partially disintegrated in the water. "I hope you have some charges for her, Mara, because I'm fresh out."
In response, Mara pulled out her own illegible papers. The clipboard was intact, but the writing wasn't.
Together, they compared soggy charge lists.
"They're both beyond saving, I'm afraid," Isaiah concluded. "So...what do we do now?"
Mara didn't look perturbed. "We'll remember them as we go along. Now, let's get rid of her."
They both looked up...into the barrel of a gun.
"Did you think you could get rid of me?!" squealed Captain Vixen Doom. "Do you know who I am?"
Mara regarded her calmly. "I'd beware the monkeys, if I were you."
"What?"
"Capitan, Therewill?" said Isaiah. "Have at her!"
"Eek!" screamed the Mary Sue, and tried to run. The Misspelled Monkeys pinned her easily. The agents loomed over her, smiling manically.
"Captain Vixen Doom," Mara began, "you are charged with being a Mary Sue, with having an obnoxious name, for starters, as well as being the captain of your own ship when you've demonstrated no knowledge of sailing or tactics whatsoever, not to mention having stupid crewmembers like that Rocky guy with the mussels instead of muscles-"
"Also, for making Elizabeth Swann stupid, for attempting to kidnap her, for being Barbossa's sister and copying his plot device, for misspelling Elizabeth's name, thereby creating a Misspelled Monkey-" Isaiah added.
"Which reminds me: for having the most Misspelled Monkeys of any fanfiction story we've seen, for creating a hotel in Tortuga, for creating the mini-ship Perl, for having it made out of a haul, a deck, and a mask-"
"Are we jumping all over in chronology, then?"
"I like to call it brainstorming."
"As you wish. For, let's see, wearing a cote and a wight puffy shirt, um..."
"Yes, and for shacking your head-"
"And for referring to the ocean as the ocion, for ashoring Elizabeth, for many other malapropisms that I can't remember right now, oh, and especially for using 'stope' instead of 'stop' multiple times-"
"For bad grammar, leaving out punctuation, for sundry misspellings, for really obnoxious author's notes, including one that takes up an entire chapter, for making Gibbs think of you like a-a rainbow, was it?"
"Something like that. Also, for having a spare cabin on your ship...I think we're nearing the end, here, Mara..."
"Right you are, Isaiah. Finally, for using the Single Tear to generate pity, for attempting to replace the Black Pearl as Jack's true love, for taking away its liberating influence over Jack and attributing it to yourself, and for forcing Sparrow and Gibbs to dance a minuet, you are condemned to die." Mara smirked. "I seem to recall Mr. Gibbs likening your fierceness to that of a shark. Care to test that theory?"
By now, the Sue was quivering. A single tear slid down her cheek.
"Ugh." Isaiah's lip curled. "That won't work with us. We save our pity for the canon characters." He faced his partner. "You must choose, Agent Mara! How shall she die? Shark, or death by monkeys?"
Mara tapped her chin with one finger. "Hmm, this is going to be a hard one. I choose-"
But Agent Mara never got the opportunity to finish. The Misspelled Monkeys, which had gone deathly silent while the agents had read the charges, began to howl and scream, drumming their paws on the Sue's forehead. When they got tired of pulling her hair and clawing at her eyes, they yanked her across the deck.
"Yaaaaargh!" cried the Mary Sue as she was pulled away by the monkeys.
"Apparently, she's not so keen on the word 'doom' once she's actually faced with it," remarked Isaiah. "What will they do with her?"
"Ooh ahh ahh!" cried Elisabeth Swan. The monkey knocked Mara's pistol from its holster.
The agent's eyes widened. "Of course!" Cocking the weapon, she said smartly, "You want to mimic Captain Barbossa? Share his fate, then, Sue."
Bam!
The monkeys grinned at the former bane to Canon. Then they scampered about the ship, loosening a knot here, turning the tiller there. It took about ten minutes for them to finish whatever they were doing. Next, they ran back to the agents. Gisselle pointed downwards.
Mara's eyes widened. "I have a hunch that this ship is about to sink."
"Same here." Isaiah regarded the Sue. "Shall we leave her here?"
Mara smirked at the point-blank pistol wound. "On the Bleeding Heart? I think it's rather appropriate. The best part is, all of her bit-character crewmembers will go down with her vessel--we don't have to do a thing. Come on, monkeys!"
As they went through the portal, a topsail came loose and fluttered away in the breeze.
______________________________
Two hours and twenty minutes later...
"Agent Tiranel, welcome to the Department of Technical Errors!" Isaiah shook the agent's hand and smiled broadly. "There's a lot to do in this department, but I think you'll fit right in."
"Where do you want to start?" asked Mara. "We can have proper divisions now."
Agent Tiranel inclined her head. "Are they improper now?"
Mara chuckled. "They exist in name only. One is Grammar; the other is Linguistics. Isaiah and I cover all the bases, but you can be in whichever division you wish."
"Hmm." Agent Tiranel closed her eyes, thinking. "I believe I'd like to be in Linguistics, for now. What about my partner?"
Isaiah started. "You have a partner?"
"Agent Melanin," replied Tiranel. "She's...er...late."
"Wandering the corridors?" Isaiah supplied.
Tiranel nodded, embarrassed. "I'm afraid so."
"'S all right, you know. Is she bringing your agent profiles? The Uncommon Comma asked us to check your backgrounds, for some reason. It's a bad time to be choosy, but you seem very nice."
"And sane," Mara added. "That's very helpful."
"Actually, my friend's stopping by with the profiles," said Tiranel. "She's good with papers, so I gave her a call."
"Great. Well, that's all settled, so..." Mara motioned toward a tankard. "Rhum, anyone? It makes you talk like Captain Jack."
Tiranel opened her mouth to reply, but the doors opened.
"Tiranel, do you really want these papers to be sorted by the number of commas on each page? It seems a bit-oh! Oh, hello, Agent Isaiah."
Isaiah gulped. "Quen. It's...very nice to see you." Neither one of them could look each other in the eye.
"Likewise." Quen blushed bright green. "I hope that you are recovering well from the grammasite?" Tiranel held out a hand to receive the papers, but Quen absentmindedly placed them in Mara's hands instead.
"Oh, yes, completely." Isaiah managed a laugh. "I did have to use some of your Gravol, though. You can have it back, if you like."
"No, that's all right," said Quen, fidgeting.
Mara clapped Agent Tiranel on the back. "What do you say? Should we head for Quark's to celebrate your instatement?"
"Sure!" said the new DTE agent. "I'll see you later, Quen!"
"Bye!" Quen waved to her friend. She slowly turned to face Isaiah.
There was complete silence for a good thirty seconds.
Isaiah took a deep breath. If only one thing got said during this conversation, it would have to be this. "It wasn't the Pink Stuff."
Quen quirked an eyebrow. "Pardon me?"
He looked down at the floor. "Kissing you, it wasn't...it wasn't because of the medicine, or the alcohol. It just made me braver, that's all."
Quen shyly brushed her fingers against the underside of his hand. "You don't need to be any braver."
"Quen...." She was achingly close. Isaiah leaned in a little more. The tips of their noses touched.
"Is it my turn to say something?" Quen whispered.
Isaiah smiled. "No. It's mine, and I won't tempt the console by making the usual declarations of eternal adoration. I think I'll just say...I love you more than meat loves salt, Quen." He drew away. "There. Now you'll have to read up on Terran folklore."
Quen grinned cheekily. "Won't be hard. I know the database inside and out." She pressed a pad into Isaiah's hands. "Your next mission, a whole sleep cycle ahead of schedule. Now, I'd better skedaddle, or else I think I'll be overrun."
"Huh?" A feeling of dread swept over Isaiah.
"Screech! Screech! Screech!"
Quen stifled a giggle. She didn't have the experience with the Misspelled Monkeys that Isaiah had, and had no idea what exactly she was doing by opening the door for them. "They were outside your quarters when I came in. I think they're waiting for you."
"Uh..."
"SCREECH!"
Aren't they cute?" she said, and left Isaiah to his fate.
The End
Continue to Mission 11
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