PPC Mission: Moon's Daughter
And here’s my chance to bring in something new to the PPC.
Disclaimer: The PPC is the creation of Jay and Acacia, Van Helsing belongs to Stephen Sommers and Universal Pictures, and Star Wars, the origin of my Imperial Knight, belongs, as always, to George Lucas. ‘Moon’s Daughter’ and Nicole Johnson belong to Artemis_Diana_Lupina, who is entirely welcome to keep them.
Thanks to tea_fiend for betaing.
Mission: Moon’s Daughter
Mid-April 2009, HST
Therese Martin sat quietly in her RC, looking around at the trinkets she’d picked up over the last four years. Well, the one I’m supposed to train will probably find some use for most of them. Just shy of her twenty-eighth birthday, the lanky blonde Agent was on the verge of retiring from PPC work. She’d been persuaded to stay just a little longer, in order to serve as a training partner to a new Agent.
I just hope he gets here soon, so I can get this over with. “Rrgh, newbies, he’s probably doing something stupid like concentrating on how to get here,” she muttered to herself.
As if on cue, there was a knock on the door. Therese rose and headed over, opening it and looking out at the man waiting there, before greeting him with a cheerful “Hi” as she subjected him to an assessing gaze.
He was of fairly average height, with very light bronze-coloured skin and dark brown eyes whose shape had her guessing at some sort of Asian heritage somewhere back in his family tree. Noting the messy black hair, bits of grey showing in it despite his not looking old enough for so many, the serious case of stubble and general air of untidiness, she continued to look him over, before seeing the lightsaber at his belt and the fact that he was levitating a box beside his left shoulder. At this point, she rapidly revised her guess at his heritage, entertaining sudden doubts that he’d even had an Asia to trace his lineage to.
“Are you Therese Martin?” He had endured her scrutiny, face impassive.
“Yeah, that’s me.” She gave a slightly embarrassed smile. “You can come in.”
As she stepped back, he walked past her, setting his box down on the room’s second bed. “My name is Vander Lorren. I was told that you were going to take my first mission with me.”
Therese nodded. “Yep, just to be sure, because Basic Training rarely covers everything. What’s in the box?”
“My armour, among other things.” In demonstration, he lifted out a red gauntlet with a white Imperial symbol inlaid into it. “Not black, therefore not uniform here,” he noted, clearly displeased at being unable to wear it.
“Guess you’ll have to paint it or something, then.” She paused. “Okay, given the little symbol, I’ll go out on a limb and say you probably aren’t a Jedi. Are you one of Palpatine’s Dark Jedi or something?”
At this, Vander turned to face her, very slowly. “No. I’m an Imperial Knight, of the Fel Empire, not Palpatine’s Empire. We do not use the Dark Side, and our Empire acts for good, rather than the evil of Palpatine.” If she’d thought his face had been neutral before, now it was utterly expressionless, and there was no emotion in his voice.
“Okay, not one of Palpatine’s lot. Got it.” Sheesh, she thought. This guy’s going to be a barrel of laughs to work with, isn’t he?
He seemed to relax at this, immobility seeping away from his expression. “I’m sorry, but it is a very important difference. Too many people confuse the two. As a result, they judge us wrongly.”
“Yeah, I guess they would. So, sit down, relax, we might as well get our mission as soon as possible.” She gestured casually towards a chair.
Vander looked a little puzzled, but sat. He waited. Nothing happened. “How were we going to get our mission any sooner -”
[BEEEEP!]
“That’s how.” She hadn’t even flinched. “It tends to go off if somebody relaxes around it, or gets comfortable in any way.”
“Thanks for warning me.” His tone was rather sarcastic.
“Sorry. But if you’d known, it might not have done it for even longer, just to try and be funny.” Therese strolled over to the Console, casually hitting the button to acknowledge the mission. “Great, I don’t suppose you happen to know the Van Helsing continuum at all? No, of course you don’t, that would be too easy.”
“Actually, I do know it. It was one of the ones I was given over the last month. What sort of fic is it?” Having recovered from the earlier surprise, Vander remained seated, apparently on the basis of having already incurred the penalty for relaxing.
“It’s a Suefic, but a strange one. The girl’s a werewolf. Modern times, so we’ll just have to stay out of sight, disguises or no.” Within minutes, Therese had set their disguises, opened a portal, and had stuffed a number of small bags into her jacket pocket.
“Where are your weapons?” Vander asked curiously.
“In my pocket, where else?” Therese grinned.
“Oh, don’t tell me, let me guess. You’re going to stuff some little bags down her throat and let her choke to death.” The slightly biting tone merely amused Therese. It suggested that the Imperial Knight might not be so stiff and boring to work with after all.
“Wrong! They’re Bags of Holding. Dungeons and Dragons continuum. They’re much bigger on the inside. I keep my supplies in them,” she said cheerfully. “Well, let’s go then.”
“I didn’t get the impression veteran Agents were this eager to do their missions,” Vander noted.
“I wouldn’t be, except that I retire after this one. I wanted to before, but they said I had to train you for one first. So I’ll be sure to explain everything I can think of to you, just so I have an excuse to shred the Flowers if they try to make me stay on any longer.” Her grin was worryingly broad.
“I can’t possibly tell you how thrilled I am to be the instrument of your liberation,” he responded dryly as they stepped through the portal.
“Yeah, yeah, funny. Ignore the greyness, it just means we’re awaiting an Author’s Note. Before it gets here, I’m curious. You said you’d been here a month, but this is your first mission?”
Vander paused as though debating whether to reply or not. “Yes. I found my way here after a... somewhat unpleasant war. I wasn’t in a very good state after the things we all saw. So, they let FicPsych help me, and when I wasn’t being given assistance, I was encouraged to study the continua, so that I’d be ready for my missions.”
“Oh.” Effectively robbed of any curiosity that wouldn’t involve tactless prying into the details of a war that had put the new Agent in Psych for a month, Therese waited silently for the Author’s Note.
Blacksammicat15 I do not own Van Helsing or anything. I just love it enough to write stories using the characters -- This is my first fic involving Van Helsing so be nice when you review and remember, flamers are lamers!! Now anyways, on with the fic!!
Therese grimaced as the loud babbling filled the air. “Excessive exclamation marks, opening not clearly marked as either an Author’s Note or a disclaimer, and general stupidity.”
Nicole Johnson was a relatively normal 16 year old girl. She had a crush and a favorite subject in school. She had a part time job and a fear of spiders. She had a favorite band and a favorite tv show. She also had a secret. A dark secret so mysterious and abnormal that only her father and two of her brothers knew about. And they only knew of it as well because their fates were entertwined with her secret. Her secret was their secret as well.
Vander looked mildly disturbed as the Words unfolded and the story began. “Sixteen? I... didn’t realise she’d be this young.”
“You have to ignore their ages, really. They’re like robots or something. Even if they were created yesterday, they can still be evil,” Therese advised, feeling an unwanted pang of sympathy. The Knight was beginning to look concerned. He’ll get used to it eventually. “If you make fun of them, it doesn’t bother you as badly. It works for really incoherent Word Worlds, totally unbelievable situations, all sorts of things.”
“Laugh or you’ll cry?” he queried with a grim kind of humour.
“Close. Laugh and then make the Sue cry.”
“Thank the Force that you’re here to tell me these things. Truly, you are a guiding light in the dark.” There was a wry smile on his face now.
“Save that kind of mockery for your real partner. I’m just training you. If you don’t, I’ll be forced to consider your wit to be promiscuous, spreading it around so freely.” She was glancing around throughout this banter. They hadn’t needed to hide yet, since the Sue hadn’t even properly appeared thus far. She’d merely been talked about.
Her secret was so surreal, she has wondered at first if her dad was crazy. Could such creatures truly exist? And if they did, why did they have to be those…..things? Would anyone even believe her if she told them the truth? That she was a werewolf?
A werewolf. Yes, that was what she was or actually, what she was going to be. Or a Lykon, as other cultures called it. Her father was one, she was sure of it. She had seen him change before her very eyes. And because the blood that flowed through his veins also flowed through hers, she had supposedly inherited this trait of his.
“Has wondered?” Vander winced at the tense change as it swept over them.
“It’s a charge. Well spotted. Especially in light of the giant enormous charge right after it. Uncanon word for werewolves, uncanon werewolf genetics, she should be dead by now and he should be a mindless ravening monster if he changed in front of her...” Therese’s pen scratched frantically at the notepad’s page as she recorded the charges.
All these thoughts and more swirled around in her head as she laid sprawled out on her bed. She gazed out the window at the yard below. Her father said that if she or her brothers had truly gained this trait, then they would have their first transformation on the first full moon after their sixteenth birthday. For her brothers, Michael and Phillip, that was years away. But for her, that was two nights away.
With that, the Agents were forced to hide as an oddly featureless Sue appeared in the strangely indistinct bedroom that suddenly surrounded them. Lacking other visible options, they ducked under the bed.
“Helsingverse werewolves do not work that way!” Therese hissed furiously.
“What about the brothers?” Vander whispered. “If it’s years away for them, they’re even younger, just kids.”
“Background characters. I doubt their ages ever really get defined, though I suppose, if they don’t vanish when the Sue dies, FicPsych therapy could help them get proper ages and appearances. Their brand of werewolf may not be canon, but at least it’ll make them safe in the Nursery, I guess.” She kept her voice low, mindful of the Sue above them.
Would she even be able to transform? And if she could, would it hurt? And more importantly, did she want to? Did she want to be a powerful, immortal being? She decided that she probably didn’t have a choice in the matter. She continued to ask herself all these unanswerable questions until she started to get a little dizzy.
“I stand in awe of her capacity for deep thought,” Vander muttered. “Or would, if I could stand right now. Instead, I must recline in contempt of it, sadly.”
“Yeah, you’ll fit in just fine,” Therese decided.
After glancing up at her clock, she decided that 9 p.m. was too early to go to bed on a Saturday night. She got off of her bed and went downstairs, deciding to see what Michael and Phillip were up to. She found them in the basement, watching a movie on the big flat screen tv. After further inspection, she realized the movie was Underworld. Underworld! What a movie to be watching after their dad’s big news.
The two Agents followed gingerly, trying not to draw any attention from the Sue or her brothers, who were also oddly featureless, having not been given specific ages, or any description other than names and gender.
If werewolves were real, could vampires be real too? And what about all the other mythological creatures, like those in the pictures on her wall? Could they be real as well? So, it could very well be that everything she ever thought was fantasy could indeed be truth. She decided to share this new found theory with her brothers.
“Well, given that this is the Helsingverse, yes, other mythological creatures exist. Van Helsing has fought them, and should be fighting them right now, instead of this focus on the insipid life of an adolescent werewolf Sue.” Therese looked distinctly irritated. She began checking through her Bags of Holding to distract herself. “Rope, chains, handcuffs, damn it, is that all of the acid I have left? Two vials? I can’t possibly have used five on the Elven Sue...”
“Why do you carry acid, anyway?” Vander stared with a certain amount of fascination at the items being pulled out of the little bags and slipped back in again, just as though violating the basic laws of space and size was something to do on a lazy night in.
“If you use it well enough, it’s an execution method and a disposal method all in one. Saves time, really.”
Phillip was shocked at the idea of this as well. “If vampires are real, will we have to fight them, like in the movie?” he asked. “Don’t be silly. That was just a movie”, Nicole said hopefully. She was trying to convince him as well as herself. The thought of an ongoing war between her family and a vamp’s family kind of disturbed her. It wasn’t that she couldn’t handle it but rather, that she saw it as pointless to fight for no reason.
Michael, on the other hand, tilted his head to one side and seemed to be considering the whole idea. “Well, I sure hope there are other freaks out there like us” he said grinning. “Hey, I’m serious!” Nicole protested. “Yea, and so am I”, Michael answered, his grin now replaced with a look of seriousness.
“There really should be a new line for each speaker,” Therese noted, eyeing with disfavour also the misplaced commas.
His comment was followed by a long interval of uncomfortable silence, so Nicole just collapsed onto the couch and they all watched the last 30 minutes of the movie in complete silence.
“Come on.” Therese grabbed Vander’s arm, tugging him up the stairs.
“Why?” He followed, but glanced back at the Sue and her siblings, who remained engrossed in watching the movie.
“Because we now have half an hour to ourselves, and I can show you a new trick about things you can do in a Suefic. See, if they don’t explicitly state something, sometimes you can make it happen for yourself. If you focus hard enough, you can get a Sue who’s switching between contradictory descriptions to settle down into one, or if they describe their clothes in two totally different ways. And right now...” Therese looked around, face intent as she muttered statistics about floor plans and housing construction. The house seemed to solidify. “Right now, as a normal, modern house, this place must have a kitchen.”
“Like the one through there?” Vander pointed, surprised, as a kitchen seemed to coalesce out of the formless greyness, just beyond a nearby doorway - a doorway that had not been there before, any more than the kitchen had.
“Houses have kitchens, kitchens have fridges, fridges have food,” Therese was chanting as she walked through the doorway.
“Kitchens usually have pantries, too.”
“Right, good idea! Think of food, think of food... Ha!” She laughed to herself as she hauled bread from the pantry, and a large collection of spreads from the fridge. Ignoring Vander’s bemused look, she began making sandwiches, stuffing most of them into plastic containers and stowing them in one of her Bags of Holding. “Believe me, this stuff is much better than you’d get at the Cafeteria, the food there’s dreadful. Oh, yours will be cold chicken and a bit of salad, hope you don’t mind.” She offered him a pair of sandwiches. “We eat when we can, sleep whenever we can get away with it, and collect anything that takes our fancy. For example, bits of Sue jewellery or weapons, you can trade them for other things.” Any further explanations were postponed as she tore into one of her own sandwiches, wolfing it down and wincing at the dreadful pun.
They washed their meal down with glasses of orange juice, and then reluctantly headed back down to the basement, though Therese was still angling the cookie jar into one of her little bags as they came down the stairs. The Sue, naturally, hadn’t moved, still watching the movie with her brothers.
“She still hasn’t specified their ages,” Therese murmured. She squinted at the Words, reading ahead. “She never specifies. But they are some plural number of years younger than sixteen, so I’m going to call her irresponsible for letting them watch an R rated film. It’s a bit petty, but we need whatever charges we can get for this one.”
“Why?”
“Look at the Words. They’re in the air if you look just right. Van Helsing only shows up at the end of this chapter, and then he isn’t seen again in the next one. I don’t want to have to go looking for him and maybe risk his either avoiding being neuralysed or getting stuck wherever the hell here is,” she said, watching as Vander appeared to discover the Words. Who’d have thought I’d wind up teaching this job to a guy older than I am? “Just out of curiosity, how old are you? I mean, I know humans from your continuum don’t seem to age as quickly as the rest of us, but...”
He seemed to consider this for a moment. “Thirty-seven, now. The hair, it’s a family thing. Mine’s a lot less severe than my father’s, he was totally grey by thirty-five.” He gave her a wry little smile. “Do I look particularly ancient?”
“Oh, no, I just wondered. You look younger than that,” she assured him hastily, feeling a little awkward about having asked. “It’s only the hair that throws it off.”
Nicole was glad that she had her two brothers to relate to. It would’ve been lot harder for her to handle her situation properly if she wouldn’t have had someone to talk with about it. She would still be the first one to transform, if that was indeed possible, and they would learn from her mistakes/experiences. The idea that whatever happened to her would also effect them as well, kind of frightened her. She felt like a prototype of some sort.
Therese was forced to stifle a snigger. “No, Sue, you’re just another ordinary model of your kind,” she whispered. “Hardly a prototype.” She looked over at Vander. “But what did I tell you about robots? It makes her sound like one, doesn’t it?”
“A bit, yes.”
She glanced up at the clock and saw that it was now 11:30 p.m. She was about to tell Michael to be sure and change the channel so they could watch Inuyasha when she heard someone moving around upstairs. She glanced at her brothers and saw that they had heard the noises as well. “It’s dad”, Phillip whispered. “Going out on his nightly prowl, I’ll bet”, Michael said. “Well, I’m going to follow him” Nicole said as she got up off of the couch. “Do what you like but don’t expect me to come along, Inuyasha’s on now” Michael said while staring at the tv. Nicole sighed dramatically. “Oh fine. I can see that I’m not as important to you as Inuyasha”, she said as she left the room.
“Well, at least we know where these two will stay if they don’t vanish.” Therese headed up the stairs a little. “I don’t fancy sneaking through a forest after a werewolf Sue, though, with a grown werewolf out there somewhere. We’ll portal.” Raising her Remote Activator, she neatly opened a portal and stepped through, Vander following closely.
The forest was very dark. The light of the portal was all that kept Therese from stumbling, and she was forced to close it as soon as Vander was through.
Her body suddenly tensed up as she glanced around. Her nerves were on fire as she stood motionless, realizing she wasn’t alone. She continued to stand as still as a gravestone until she noticed a dark figure come into view. The figure was standing off in the shadows to her left.
The figure was obviously not her father so she squinted hard, trying to make out as many details as possible. Even from a distance, she could tell that the figure had long, wavy hair, a crooked hat that covered his face and a long, dark trench coat.
In the shadows to the Sue’s right, however, the two Agents rolled their eyes in unison. “How suspenseful,” Therese drawled quietly.
“Who are you?” she called out, trying to sound brave. The figure continued to stay completely still and silent. “I said, who are you?” she demanded. The figure seemed to hesitate for a minute but then answered “What are you doing out here in the dead of the night? Don’t you know what stalks this forest?”. For some reason, that response seemed to anger Nicole.
“Who are you? Answer me and I’ll answer you”, she said, trying to stay calm. Once again, the figure seemed hesitant but then said “Dr. Van Helsing, the monster killer. Perhaps you’ve heard of me?”. He was right. She had heard of him and his words, monster killer, made her blood run cold. She struggled with trying to find the right answers for his earlier questions while digesting the information just given to her. Her intuition had been right. This man was after her father.
“How did she know that? I mean, I could get Force premonitions if necessary, but I didn’t think werewolves got any kind of mystical boost to their intuition,” Vander objected.
“Just be grateful she didn’t assume he was after her, Sues tend to be egotistical that way.”
“What about my questions? What are you doing out here?” Van Helsing asked. He started to walk slowly and carefully towards her. She tried to answer but found that her mouth couldn’t form the words. It was as if her vocal cords had been sliced. Van Helsing continued to walk towards her until he stood right in front of her, maybe 2 ft. away.
“That’s going to be a charge. Inspiring agonising wishful thinking in a PPC Agent by suggesting the slicing of her vocal cords,” Therese muttered.
She could now see his face and saw that he didn’t have the look of a stone cold killer that she had expected. Instead, his innocently beautiful face had a look of weariness to it. He tipped her chin up so she was looking him straight in the eye. “Now, let’s be fair. I answered your question, now you answer mine” he said with the smallest trace of a smile of his face.
Unfortunately, her answer was missed entirely by the Agents watching this little scene, who were suddenly doubled over, trying valiantly to suppress their mutual incredulous laughter at hearing Gabriel Van Helsing described as ‘innocently beautiful’.
Oh God, she’ll hear me, I can’t breathe... Therese kept her hand firmly over her mouth, stifling her laughter, though her body still shook with it, and tears of mirth were appearing in her eyes. Beside her, Vander had been forced to sit down, also shaking with barely-silenced laughter.
Van Helsing ripped his hand away from her face and stared at her like she had a 3rd eye or something. “You….you’re father? Wait, are you telling me that beast is your father?” he demanded. She nodded. “Then that means you’re….”, he trailed off, still staring at her. Nicole finally found her voice and said “Yup. I’m a werewolf. Well, not quite but I will be 2 nights from now”. Van Helsing’s look of amusement was immediately wiped away and replaced with one of business. “Well, then that means I’m your enemy now” he said. She nodded, smiled, and leaned over and kissed him.
“...What. The. Hell?” Therese hissed. “Oh, that does it. I’ll neuralyse Van Helsing, you grab the Sue.”
He didn’t resist at all but when she pulled away, he looked at her, his resolute face was unchanged. “That doesn’t change anything” he whispered. She laughed, threw back her long shiny red hair and turned back to the way she came from. Halfway to the house, she turned around and called out into the darkness, “I was a little nervous about being a werewolf at first, but if someone as sexy as you are is going to be hunting me down, then I can’t wait!”
“You won’t be waiting for anything,” Vander said grimly, knocking her out with his lightsaber hilt.
Meanwhile, Therese had fumbled her sunglasses into place, checked that Vander wasn’t looking at them, and activated the neuralyser. There was a flash. “Gabriel Van Helsing, you were never here, remember nothing of this, and were not hunting any werewolves just now.”
He vanished, and Therese put both her sunglasses and the neuralyser away again, heading over to check on the Sue.
Vander was staring with a mix of horror and fascination at the girl. He’d activated his lightsaber, and was using it as a makeshift torch. “Look, her hair reflects the light.”
“Downside of shiny hair. Wake up, Sue-thing,” Therese called, watching as the Sue began to stir. She lifted a gun from a Bag of Holding, loading it with silver bullets. “Nicole Johnson, you are charged with being a totally uncanonical form of werewolf; distorting the canon’s werewolf lore; being an irresponsible older sister who lets her younger brothers watch Underworld; not specifying the ages of aforementioned brothers; creating tense shifts; using numerals instead of actual words for numbers; having shiny red hair that reflects light in a distinctly peculiar manner; inspiring wishful thinking in a PPC Agent by mention of sliced vocal cords; annoying PPC Agents; severely disturbing a new PPC Agent by being only sixteen; describing Van Helsing’s face as ‘innocently beautiful’; kissing Van Helsing after being revealed as a werewolf and surviving it; arrant stupidity regarding the finer points of his hunting you - if he hunts you, he would kill you, you little idiot, try taking that seriously; various other errors of canon, spelling, grammar and punctuation; and finally, being a Mary Sue. The sentence is death. Any last words?”
“Therese.” It was not the Sue speaking. “Hand me the gun, very carefully.” There was a slight tension to Vander’s whisper, and Therese obeyed.
The Imperial Knight whirled and shot the large, furry grey shape in the bushes. “The father.” He handed back the gun.
The Sue looked terrified. “I don’t understand...”
“You don’t need to.” Therese aimed and fired, sending a silver bullet directly into the Sue’s heart. By the time she had put the gun away safely, Vander had collected fallen limbs from the nearby trees, hauling the grown werewolf onto the rudimentary pyre. She dragged the Sue over, placing the body next to the other one.
“Now, we need... oil. Oil will do it.” She couldn’t help but be amused by Vander’s stare as she hauled out the sealed container of oil, opening it and liberally dousing the bodies.
“What else do you keep in those bags?”
“A little bit of this, a little bit of that. I think I’ve actually forgotten some of it,” Therese mused as Vander lit the pyre with his lightsaber.
“Okay. Now, shall we go back and get the brothers?”
“Sure. Keep your lightsaber activated, though, or I won’t be able to see a thing until we get there.”
They walked back to the house, returning to the basement, where a surprise awaited them. Presented with some kind of genetic inspiration from the detail given about their sister, the two boys’ hair had shifted from a pale, neutral shade to a light red, perhaps strawberry blond. Unfortunately, their ages were still impossible to determine.
“Hey, you two. Did you want to find more people who are different, like you are?” Therese asked brightly.
Without their sister’s guidance, Michael and Phillip nodded uncertainly.
“Well, if you’ll come with us through the blue doorway right there, you can.” She smiled coaxingly as she opened the portal.
Vander stepped through first, proving it to be safe, and the two children followed. They looked around warily at the RC.
“Come on, you two.” Therese handed Vander a large sheaf of paper. “Old mission reports, you can read those, they’ll tell you anything I might have forgotten. I’ll take these two to Nursery and explain about their werewolf thing. I’ll be back later for my things, but then I am out of here.” With that, she ushered the boys out of the RC, leaving Vander behind.
He sighed, shook his head a little, and settled down to read the mission reports.
Therese poked her head back in. “Oh, I almost forgot. Welcome to the PPC, DMS, and everything else. You should do just fine. And thanks for being a decent final task.” She grinned broadly, and was gone again.
“You’re welcome, I guess,” he informed the suddenly closed door. He did, however, manage to smile a little.
Disclaimer: The PPC is the creation of Jay and Acacia, Van Helsing belongs to Stephen Sommers and Universal Pictures, and Star Wars, the origin of my Imperial Knight, belongs, as always, to George Lucas. ‘Moon’s Daughter’ and Nicole Johnson belong to Artemis_Diana_Lupina, who is entirely welcome to keep them.
Thanks to tea_fiend for betaing.
Mission: Moon’s Daughter
Mid-April 2009, HST
Therese Martin sat quietly in her RC, looking around at the trinkets she’d picked up over the last four years. Well, the one I’m supposed to train will probably find some use for most of them. Just shy of her twenty-eighth birthday, the lanky blonde Agent was on the verge of retiring from PPC work. She’d been persuaded to stay just a little longer, in order to serve as a training partner to a new Agent.
I just hope he gets here soon, so I can get this over with. “Rrgh, newbies, he’s probably doing something stupid like concentrating on how to get here,” she muttered to herself.
As if on cue, there was a knock on the door. Therese rose and headed over, opening it and looking out at the man waiting there, before greeting him with a cheerful “Hi” as she subjected him to an assessing gaze.
He was of fairly average height, with very light bronze-coloured skin and dark brown eyes whose shape had her guessing at some sort of Asian heritage somewhere back in his family tree. Noting the messy black hair, bits of grey showing in it despite his not looking old enough for so many, the serious case of stubble and general air of untidiness, she continued to look him over, before seeing the lightsaber at his belt and the fact that he was levitating a box beside his left shoulder. At this point, she rapidly revised her guess at his heritage, entertaining sudden doubts that he’d even had an Asia to trace his lineage to.
“Are you Therese Martin?” He had endured her scrutiny, face impassive.
“Yeah, that’s me.” She gave a slightly embarrassed smile. “You can come in.”
As she stepped back, he walked past her, setting his box down on the room’s second bed. “My name is Vander Lorren. I was told that you were going to take my first mission with me.”
Therese nodded. “Yep, just to be sure, because Basic Training rarely covers everything. What’s in the box?”
“My armour, among other things.” In demonstration, he lifted out a red gauntlet with a white Imperial symbol inlaid into it. “Not black, therefore not uniform here,” he noted, clearly displeased at being unable to wear it.
“Guess you’ll have to paint it or something, then.” She paused. “Okay, given the little symbol, I’ll go out on a limb and say you probably aren’t a Jedi. Are you one of Palpatine’s Dark Jedi or something?”
At this, Vander turned to face her, very slowly. “No. I’m an Imperial Knight, of the Fel Empire, not Palpatine’s Empire. We do not use the Dark Side, and our Empire acts for good, rather than the evil of Palpatine.” If she’d thought his face had been neutral before, now it was utterly expressionless, and there was no emotion in his voice.
“Okay, not one of Palpatine’s lot. Got it.” Sheesh, she thought. This guy’s going to be a barrel of laughs to work with, isn’t he?
He seemed to relax at this, immobility seeping away from his expression. “I’m sorry, but it is a very important difference. Too many people confuse the two. As a result, they judge us wrongly.”
“Yeah, I guess they would. So, sit down, relax, we might as well get our mission as soon as possible.” She gestured casually towards a chair.
Vander looked a little puzzled, but sat. He waited. Nothing happened. “How were we going to get our mission any sooner -”
[BEEEEP!]
“That’s how.” She hadn’t even flinched. “It tends to go off if somebody relaxes around it, or gets comfortable in any way.”
“Thanks for warning me.” His tone was rather sarcastic.
“Sorry. But if you’d known, it might not have done it for even longer, just to try and be funny.” Therese strolled over to the Console, casually hitting the button to acknowledge the mission. “Great, I don’t suppose you happen to know the Van Helsing continuum at all? No, of course you don’t, that would be too easy.”
“Actually, I do know it. It was one of the ones I was given over the last month. What sort of fic is it?” Having recovered from the earlier surprise, Vander remained seated, apparently on the basis of having already incurred the penalty for relaxing.
“It’s a Suefic, but a strange one. The girl’s a werewolf. Modern times, so we’ll just have to stay out of sight, disguises or no.” Within minutes, Therese had set their disguises, opened a portal, and had stuffed a number of small bags into her jacket pocket.
“Where are your weapons?” Vander asked curiously.
“In my pocket, where else?” Therese grinned.
“Oh, don’t tell me, let me guess. You’re going to stuff some little bags down her throat and let her choke to death.” The slightly biting tone merely amused Therese. It suggested that the Imperial Knight might not be so stiff and boring to work with after all.
“Wrong! They’re Bags of Holding. Dungeons and Dragons continuum. They’re much bigger on the inside. I keep my supplies in them,” she said cheerfully. “Well, let’s go then.”
“I didn’t get the impression veteran Agents were this eager to do their missions,” Vander noted.
“I wouldn’t be, except that I retire after this one. I wanted to before, but they said I had to train you for one first. So I’ll be sure to explain everything I can think of to you, just so I have an excuse to shred the Flowers if they try to make me stay on any longer.” Her grin was worryingly broad.
“I can’t possibly tell you how thrilled I am to be the instrument of your liberation,” he responded dryly as they stepped through the portal.
“Yeah, yeah, funny. Ignore the greyness, it just means we’re awaiting an Author’s Note. Before it gets here, I’m curious. You said you’d been here a month, but this is your first mission?”
Vander paused as though debating whether to reply or not. “Yes. I found my way here after a... somewhat unpleasant war. I wasn’t in a very good state after the things we all saw. So, they let FicPsych help me, and when I wasn’t being given assistance, I was encouraged to study the continua, so that I’d be ready for my missions.”
“Oh.” Effectively robbed of any curiosity that wouldn’t involve tactless prying into the details of a war that had put the new Agent in Psych for a month, Therese waited silently for the Author’s Note.
Blacksammicat15 I do not own Van Helsing or anything. I just love it enough to write stories using the characters -- This is my first fic involving Van Helsing so be nice when you review and remember, flamers are lamers!! Now anyways, on with the fic!!
Therese grimaced as the loud babbling filled the air. “Excessive exclamation marks, opening not clearly marked as either an Author’s Note or a disclaimer, and general stupidity.”
Nicole Johnson was a relatively normal 16 year old girl. She had a crush and a favorite subject in school. She had a part time job and a fear of spiders. She had a favorite band and a favorite tv show. She also had a secret. A dark secret so mysterious and abnormal that only her father and two of her brothers knew about. And they only knew of it as well because their fates were entertwined with her secret. Her secret was their secret as well.
Vander looked mildly disturbed as the Words unfolded and the story began. “Sixteen? I... didn’t realise she’d be this young.”
“You have to ignore their ages, really. They’re like robots or something. Even if they were created yesterday, they can still be evil,” Therese advised, feeling an unwanted pang of sympathy. The Knight was beginning to look concerned. He’ll get used to it eventually. “If you make fun of them, it doesn’t bother you as badly. It works for really incoherent Word Worlds, totally unbelievable situations, all sorts of things.”
“Laugh or you’ll cry?” he queried with a grim kind of humour.
“Close. Laugh and then make the Sue cry.”
“Thank the Force that you’re here to tell me these things. Truly, you are a guiding light in the dark.” There was a wry smile on his face now.
“Save that kind of mockery for your real partner. I’m just training you. If you don’t, I’ll be forced to consider your wit to be promiscuous, spreading it around so freely.” She was glancing around throughout this banter. They hadn’t needed to hide yet, since the Sue hadn’t even properly appeared thus far. She’d merely been talked about.
Her secret was so surreal, she has wondered at first if her dad was crazy. Could such creatures truly exist? And if they did, why did they have to be those…..things? Would anyone even believe her if she told them the truth? That she was a werewolf?
A werewolf. Yes, that was what she was or actually, what she was going to be. Or a Lykon, as other cultures called it. Her father was one, she was sure of it. She had seen him change before her very eyes. And because the blood that flowed through his veins also flowed through hers, she had supposedly inherited this trait of his.
“Has wondered?” Vander winced at the tense change as it swept over them.
“It’s a charge. Well spotted. Especially in light of the giant enormous charge right after it. Uncanon word for werewolves, uncanon werewolf genetics, she should be dead by now and he should be a mindless ravening monster if he changed in front of her...” Therese’s pen scratched frantically at the notepad’s page as she recorded the charges.
All these thoughts and more swirled around in her head as she laid sprawled out on her bed. She gazed out the window at the yard below. Her father said that if she or her brothers had truly gained this trait, then they would have their first transformation on the first full moon after their sixteenth birthday. For her brothers, Michael and Phillip, that was years away. But for her, that was two nights away.
With that, the Agents were forced to hide as an oddly featureless Sue appeared in the strangely indistinct bedroom that suddenly surrounded them. Lacking other visible options, they ducked under the bed.
“Helsingverse werewolves do not work that way!” Therese hissed furiously.
“What about the brothers?” Vander whispered. “If it’s years away for them, they’re even younger, just kids.”
“Background characters. I doubt their ages ever really get defined, though I suppose, if they don’t vanish when the Sue dies, FicPsych therapy could help them get proper ages and appearances. Their brand of werewolf may not be canon, but at least it’ll make them safe in the Nursery, I guess.” She kept her voice low, mindful of the Sue above them.
Would she even be able to transform? And if she could, would it hurt? And more importantly, did she want to? Did she want to be a powerful, immortal being? She decided that she probably didn’t have a choice in the matter. She continued to ask herself all these unanswerable questions until she started to get a little dizzy.
“I stand in awe of her capacity for deep thought,” Vander muttered. “Or would, if I could stand right now. Instead, I must recline in contempt of it, sadly.”
“Yeah, you’ll fit in just fine,” Therese decided.
After glancing up at her clock, she decided that 9 p.m. was too early to go to bed on a Saturday night. She got off of her bed and went downstairs, deciding to see what Michael and Phillip were up to. She found them in the basement, watching a movie on the big flat screen tv. After further inspection, she realized the movie was Underworld. Underworld! What a movie to be watching after their dad’s big news.
The two Agents followed gingerly, trying not to draw any attention from the Sue or her brothers, who were also oddly featureless, having not been given specific ages, or any description other than names and gender.
If werewolves were real, could vampires be real too? And what about all the other mythological creatures, like those in the pictures on her wall? Could they be real as well? So, it could very well be that everything she ever thought was fantasy could indeed be truth. She decided to share this new found theory with her brothers.
“Well, given that this is the Helsingverse, yes, other mythological creatures exist. Van Helsing has fought them, and should be fighting them right now, instead of this focus on the insipid life of an adolescent werewolf Sue.” Therese looked distinctly irritated. She began checking through her Bags of Holding to distract herself. “Rope, chains, handcuffs, damn it, is that all of the acid I have left? Two vials? I can’t possibly have used five on the Elven Sue...”
“Why do you carry acid, anyway?” Vander stared with a certain amount of fascination at the items being pulled out of the little bags and slipped back in again, just as though violating the basic laws of space and size was something to do on a lazy night in.
“If you use it well enough, it’s an execution method and a disposal method all in one. Saves time, really.”
Phillip was shocked at the idea of this as well. “If vampires are real, will we have to fight them, like in the movie?” he asked. “Don’t be silly. That was just a movie”, Nicole said hopefully. She was trying to convince him as well as herself. The thought of an ongoing war between her family and a vamp’s family kind of disturbed her. It wasn’t that she couldn’t handle it but rather, that she saw it as pointless to fight for no reason.
Michael, on the other hand, tilted his head to one side and seemed to be considering the whole idea. “Well, I sure hope there are other freaks out there like us” he said grinning. “Hey, I’m serious!” Nicole protested. “Yea, and so am I”, Michael answered, his grin now replaced with a look of seriousness.
“There really should be a new line for each speaker,” Therese noted, eyeing with disfavour also the misplaced commas.
His comment was followed by a long interval of uncomfortable silence, so Nicole just collapsed onto the couch and they all watched the last 30 minutes of the movie in complete silence.
“Come on.” Therese grabbed Vander’s arm, tugging him up the stairs.
“Why?” He followed, but glanced back at the Sue and her siblings, who remained engrossed in watching the movie.
“Because we now have half an hour to ourselves, and I can show you a new trick about things you can do in a Suefic. See, if they don’t explicitly state something, sometimes you can make it happen for yourself. If you focus hard enough, you can get a Sue who’s switching between contradictory descriptions to settle down into one, or if they describe their clothes in two totally different ways. And right now...” Therese looked around, face intent as she muttered statistics about floor plans and housing construction. The house seemed to solidify. “Right now, as a normal, modern house, this place must have a kitchen.”
“Like the one through there?” Vander pointed, surprised, as a kitchen seemed to coalesce out of the formless greyness, just beyond a nearby doorway - a doorway that had not been there before, any more than the kitchen had.
“Houses have kitchens, kitchens have fridges, fridges have food,” Therese was chanting as she walked through the doorway.
“Kitchens usually have pantries, too.”
“Right, good idea! Think of food, think of food... Ha!” She laughed to herself as she hauled bread from the pantry, and a large collection of spreads from the fridge. Ignoring Vander’s bemused look, she began making sandwiches, stuffing most of them into plastic containers and stowing them in one of her Bags of Holding. “Believe me, this stuff is much better than you’d get at the Cafeteria, the food there’s dreadful. Oh, yours will be cold chicken and a bit of salad, hope you don’t mind.” She offered him a pair of sandwiches. “We eat when we can, sleep whenever we can get away with it, and collect anything that takes our fancy. For example, bits of Sue jewellery or weapons, you can trade them for other things.” Any further explanations were postponed as she tore into one of her own sandwiches, wolfing it down and wincing at the dreadful pun.
They washed their meal down with glasses of orange juice, and then reluctantly headed back down to the basement, though Therese was still angling the cookie jar into one of her little bags as they came down the stairs. The Sue, naturally, hadn’t moved, still watching the movie with her brothers.
“She still hasn’t specified their ages,” Therese murmured. She squinted at the Words, reading ahead. “She never specifies. But they are some plural number of years younger than sixteen, so I’m going to call her irresponsible for letting them watch an R rated film. It’s a bit petty, but we need whatever charges we can get for this one.”
“Why?”
“Look at the Words. They’re in the air if you look just right. Van Helsing only shows up at the end of this chapter, and then he isn’t seen again in the next one. I don’t want to have to go looking for him and maybe risk his either avoiding being neuralysed or getting stuck wherever the hell here is,” she said, watching as Vander appeared to discover the Words. Who’d have thought I’d wind up teaching this job to a guy older than I am? “Just out of curiosity, how old are you? I mean, I know humans from your continuum don’t seem to age as quickly as the rest of us, but...”
He seemed to consider this for a moment. “Thirty-seven, now. The hair, it’s a family thing. Mine’s a lot less severe than my father’s, he was totally grey by thirty-five.” He gave her a wry little smile. “Do I look particularly ancient?”
“Oh, no, I just wondered. You look younger than that,” she assured him hastily, feeling a little awkward about having asked. “It’s only the hair that throws it off.”
Nicole was glad that she had her two brothers to relate to. It would’ve been lot harder for her to handle her situation properly if she wouldn’t have had someone to talk with about it. She would still be the first one to transform, if that was indeed possible, and they would learn from her mistakes/experiences. The idea that whatever happened to her would also effect them as well, kind of frightened her. She felt like a prototype of some sort.
Therese was forced to stifle a snigger. “No, Sue, you’re just another ordinary model of your kind,” she whispered. “Hardly a prototype.” She looked over at Vander. “But what did I tell you about robots? It makes her sound like one, doesn’t it?”
“A bit, yes.”
She glanced up at the clock and saw that it was now 11:30 p.m. She was about to tell Michael to be sure and change the channel so they could watch Inuyasha when she heard someone moving around upstairs. She glanced at her brothers and saw that they had heard the noises as well. “It’s dad”, Phillip whispered. “Going out on his nightly prowl, I’ll bet”, Michael said. “Well, I’m going to follow him” Nicole said as she got up off of the couch. “Do what you like but don’t expect me to come along, Inuyasha’s on now” Michael said while staring at the tv. Nicole sighed dramatically. “Oh fine. I can see that I’m not as important to you as Inuyasha”, she said as she left the room.
“Well, at least we know where these two will stay if they don’t vanish.” Therese headed up the stairs a little. “I don’t fancy sneaking through a forest after a werewolf Sue, though, with a grown werewolf out there somewhere. We’ll portal.” Raising her Remote Activator, she neatly opened a portal and stepped through, Vander following closely.
The forest was very dark. The light of the portal was all that kept Therese from stumbling, and she was forced to close it as soon as Vander was through.
Her body suddenly tensed up as she glanced around. Her nerves were on fire as she stood motionless, realizing she wasn’t alone. She continued to stand as still as a gravestone until she noticed a dark figure come into view. The figure was standing off in the shadows to her left.
The figure was obviously not her father so she squinted hard, trying to make out as many details as possible. Even from a distance, she could tell that the figure had long, wavy hair, a crooked hat that covered his face and a long, dark trench coat.
In the shadows to the Sue’s right, however, the two Agents rolled their eyes in unison. “How suspenseful,” Therese drawled quietly.
“Who are you?” she called out, trying to sound brave. The figure continued to stay completely still and silent. “I said, who are you?” she demanded. The figure seemed to hesitate for a minute but then answered “What are you doing out here in the dead of the night? Don’t you know what stalks this forest?”. For some reason, that response seemed to anger Nicole.
“Who are you? Answer me and I’ll answer you”, she said, trying to stay calm. Once again, the figure seemed hesitant but then said “Dr. Van Helsing, the monster killer. Perhaps you’ve heard of me?”. He was right. She had heard of him and his words, monster killer, made her blood run cold. She struggled with trying to find the right answers for his earlier questions while digesting the information just given to her. Her intuition had been right. This man was after her father.
“How did she know that? I mean, I could get Force premonitions if necessary, but I didn’t think werewolves got any kind of mystical boost to their intuition,” Vander objected.
“Just be grateful she didn’t assume he was after her, Sues tend to be egotistical that way.”
“What about my questions? What are you doing out here?” Van Helsing asked. He started to walk slowly and carefully towards her. She tried to answer but found that her mouth couldn’t form the words. It was as if her vocal cords had been sliced. Van Helsing continued to walk towards her until he stood right in front of her, maybe 2 ft. away.
“That’s going to be a charge. Inspiring agonising wishful thinking in a PPC Agent by suggesting the slicing of her vocal cords,” Therese muttered.
She could now see his face and saw that he didn’t have the look of a stone cold killer that she had expected. Instead, his innocently beautiful face had a look of weariness to it. He tipped her chin up so she was looking him straight in the eye. “Now, let’s be fair. I answered your question, now you answer mine” he said with the smallest trace of a smile of his face.
Unfortunately, her answer was missed entirely by the Agents watching this little scene, who were suddenly doubled over, trying valiantly to suppress their mutual incredulous laughter at hearing Gabriel Van Helsing described as ‘innocently beautiful’.
Oh God, she’ll hear me, I can’t breathe... Therese kept her hand firmly over her mouth, stifling her laughter, though her body still shook with it, and tears of mirth were appearing in her eyes. Beside her, Vander had been forced to sit down, also shaking with barely-silenced laughter.
Van Helsing ripped his hand away from her face and stared at her like she had a 3rd eye or something. “You….you’re father? Wait, are you telling me that beast is your father?” he demanded. She nodded. “Then that means you’re….”, he trailed off, still staring at her. Nicole finally found her voice and said “Yup. I’m a werewolf. Well, not quite but I will be 2 nights from now”. Van Helsing’s look of amusement was immediately wiped away and replaced with one of business. “Well, then that means I’m your enemy now” he said. She nodded, smiled, and leaned over and kissed him.
“...What. The. Hell?” Therese hissed. “Oh, that does it. I’ll neuralyse Van Helsing, you grab the Sue.”
He didn’t resist at all but when she pulled away, he looked at her, his resolute face was unchanged. “That doesn’t change anything” he whispered. She laughed, threw back her long shiny red hair and turned back to the way she came from. Halfway to the house, she turned around and called out into the darkness, “I was a little nervous about being a werewolf at first, but if someone as sexy as you are is going to be hunting me down, then I can’t wait!”
“You won’t be waiting for anything,” Vander said grimly, knocking her out with his lightsaber hilt.
Meanwhile, Therese had fumbled her sunglasses into place, checked that Vander wasn’t looking at them, and activated the neuralyser. There was a flash. “Gabriel Van Helsing, you were never here, remember nothing of this, and were not hunting any werewolves just now.”
He vanished, and Therese put both her sunglasses and the neuralyser away again, heading over to check on the Sue.
Vander was staring with a mix of horror and fascination at the girl. He’d activated his lightsaber, and was using it as a makeshift torch. “Look, her hair reflects the light.”
“Downside of shiny hair. Wake up, Sue-thing,” Therese called, watching as the Sue began to stir. She lifted a gun from a Bag of Holding, loading it with silver bullets. “Nicole Johnson, you are charged with being a totally uncanonical form of werewolf; distorting the canon’s werewolf lore; being an irresponsible older sister who lets her younger brothers watch Underworld; not specifying the ages of aforementioned brothers; creating tense shifts; using numerals instead of actual words for numbers; having shiny red hair that reflects light in a distinctly peculiar manner; inspiring wishful thinking in a PPC Agent by mention of sliced vocal cords; annoying PPC Agents; severely disturbing a new PPC Agent by being only sixteen; describing Van Helsing’s face as ‘innocently beautiful’; kissing Van Helsing after being revealed as a werewolf and surviving it; arrant stupidity regarding the finer points of his hunting you - if he hunts you, he would kill you, you little idiot, try taking that seriously; various other errors of canon, spelling, grammar and punctuation; and finally, being a Mary Sue. The sentence is death. Any last words?”
“Therese.” It was not the Sue speaking. “Hand me the gun, very carefully.” There was a slight tension to Vander’s whisper, and Therese obeyed.
The Imperial Knight whirled and shot the large, furry grey shape in the bushes. “The father.” He handed back the gun.
The Sue looked terrified. “I don’t understand...”
“You don’t need to.” Therese aimed and fired, sending a silver bullet directly into the Sue’s heart. By the time she had put the gun away safely, Vander had collected fallen limbs from the nearby trees, hauling the grown werewolf onto the rudimentary pyre. She dragged the Sue over, placing the body next to the other one.
“Now, we need... oil. Oil will do it.” She couldn’t help but be amused by Vander’s stare as she hauled out the sealed container of oil, opening it and liberally dousing the bodies.
“What else do you keep in those bags?”
“A little bit of this, a little bit of that. I think I’ve actually forgotten some of it,” Therese mused as Vander lit the pyre with his lightsaber.
“Okay. Now, shall we go back and get the brothers?”
“Sure. Keep your lightsaber activated, though, or I won’t be able to see a thing until we get there.”
They walked back to the house, returning to the basement, where a surprise awaited them. Presented with some kind of genetic inspiration from the detail given about their sister, the two boys’ hair had shifted from a pale, neutral shade to a light red, perhaps strawberry blond. Unfortunately, their ages were still impossible to determine.
“Hey, you two. Did you want to find more people who are different, like you are?” Therese asked brightly.
Without their sister’s guidance, Michael and Phillip nodded uncertainly.
“Well, if you’ll come with us through the blue doorway right there, you can.” She smiled coaxingly as she opened the portal.
Vander stepped through first, proving it to be safe, and the two children followed. They looked around warily at the RC.
“Come on, you two.” Therese handed Vander a large sheaf of paper. “Old mission reports, you can read those, they’ll tell you anything I might have forgotten. I’ll take these two to Nursery and explain about their werewolf thing. I’ll be back later for my things, but then I am out of here.” With that, she ushered the boys out of the RC, leaving Vander behind.
He sighed, shook his head a little, and settled down to read the mission reports.
Therese poked her head back in. “Oh, I almost forgot. Welcome to the PPC, DMS, and everything else. You should do just fine. And thanks for being a decent final task.” She grinned broadly, and was gone again.
“You’re welcome, I guess,” he informed the suddenly closed door. He did, however, manage to smile a little.