Of Glitter and Men
Summary: Miah makes kissy noises, Castor enjoys pumpkin guts a bit too much, Cali rescues four children, and the NCIS continua is saved from a fluffy, wangst!Sue and her plague of glitter.
Disclaimers: The PPC was created by Jay and Acacia. NCIS was created by Don Bellisario. The fic that is being sporked, Who I Was Who I Am (K+) by Jiva-Tivalover is definitely not mine. The fic's grammar may be borderline NSFB. The text below is a review in narrative form and contains elements of parody/satire.
Beta: Cassie Cameron-Young and Edward Wilder. Thank you very much to both of you, you have improved this story greatly.
Previous appearance: Mission 1: Miah and Cali Versus the Wraith Lover
Of Glitter and Men
Miah watched the Agent from DoSAT walk away, still grumbling about how stupid they thought he was for them to expect him to believe that a kitten was responsible for gutting the console. Miah put the bag holding the pumpkin she had bought Castor, the little winged menace of a kitten, on a high shelf; and went to examine Cali's room. He had been literally bouncing with excitement to show her what Castor had built out of their Disguise Generator. She stepped into what she expected to be a bare room, as they had not obtained any furniture for him yet. There was a bean bag, throw rugs, a bed complete with Superman print sheets and blanket, a side table and lamp, even a TV on a stand.
"Where did all this stuff come from?" she asked, dazedly.
"Castor did it. He made the Disguise Generator parts generate furniture here in my room. Isn't it cool?" He climbed onto the bed and jumped on it, messing up the neatly made covers.
"While I am all for more messes in this place, do you really think it is a good i--" She was interrupted by the sound of Cali landing on the floor in an undignified heap. His blue hair still showed through the top of the bed. "Are you okay, kid?"
Cali groaned, but pushed himself to his feet, and walked through the now holographic bed. As soon as he was out of the image, it became solid again. "I think I bruised my dignity," he said mournfully as he rubbed his elbow.
"I think you managed to do that when you started jumping on the bed. What are you, like five years old?"
"No! I'm--"
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!
"Time for a mission," Cali said, strapping on his green body armor and shin guards.
"What about that cat?" Miah stopped reading the printout to point at Castor. Castor took offense to her tone and hissed at her.
"Didn't you buy him a pumpkin?" Cali asked.
"Yeah, but that was before I found out that he had built a holodeck wannabe in your bedroom, and made the DoSAT guy mad at us. We have to use that Disguise Generator, you know," Miah said as she checked the supplies in her bag.
"I know," Cali said, as he cut the lid off the pumpkin. Castor wound through his legs purring like a freight train, before trying to fly. His baby wings weren't quite up to flight, yet, and he thumped back to the floor. Cali set the pumpkin on the floor, and told Castor very seriously, "I loved the present you made for me, but this time you should just eat your pumpkin and rest until we get back. Deal?" The kitten grasped Cali's proffered finger with one of his weird little paws and shook it.
"It's NCIS. Says here its a fluffy!wangst!Sue." Miah decided they should go in disguised as college students. She set the Disguise Generator to make her outfit a little more colorful than the standard PPC black, and Cali's entire person a little less colorful.
Miah exited the portal, stepping into the middle of a fluffy pink cloud of glitter. She immediately began coughing and gagging, and fell to her knees on the fluffy urple substance the ground was made of. She hadn't realized that this fic was going to be quite so glittery. Her lungs had had a lower than normal tolerance to Glitter, ever since she had gotten an overdose in a Sue explosion on her first mission. She could feel unnatural fangirl desires creeping up, threatening to send her searching for Leroy Jethro Gibbs and Anthony DiNozzo. She always carrier her Anti-Lustin inhaler in her pants pocket in case she ran into unexpected Glitter. She reached down to get it, and realized that she was wearing red and orange plaid leggings with a purple mini skirt ruffle.
Cali had remembered the booming sound of the song intro to their last Mission, and had put in ear plugs before stepping through the portal. He exited into a cloud of pink sparkles. "What is this stuff?" he asked Miah.
She had stepped through the portal just before he had, but he couldn't see her. Of course, it was hard to see anything through the haze of all the glitter. Before he could start looking for her, the booming of the Author's Note surrounded him. He smiled, as he didn't have to clap his hands over his ears this time. This seemed to annoy the Author's Note, however, and it increased in volume until he could feel the vibrations in his bones. Apparently it was of vital importance for the readers of this story to know, in horrendous run-on sentence form, that the author had deleted a story unrelated to this one.
He stopped looking for Miah to listen to the summary of the story, as he hadn't looked at the papers the Console had spat out back in the Response Center.
Summary: Kayla was put into foster care as a baby and was never adopted fifteen years later she wants to know her biological parents so she sets out on a mission to find them. Will she find them? And will she find out that they gave her up out of love or fear?
Cali had a bizarre level of knowledge in this area for a boy his age, and it seemed extremely unlikely to him that a healthy, white baby would not have been adopted when waiting lists for such babies were months or even years long. He didn't know the canon, maybe this wouldn't have been a white baby, but healthy babies other than white had waiting lists, too. He didn't think a Mary Sue would have given herself some kind of disease or disability that would have been noticeable at birth. He pulled his notepad out, and realized that he was still wearing his regular clothes. Miah had said the Disguise Generator might not work too well.
The booming had stopped, so he took his ear plugs out and heard coughing behind him. The glitter in the air was still obscuring his vision, but he followed the sound and pretty soon he had managed to trip over Miah onto the fluffy substance of the ground. It was in a bizarre color combination that tried to be both violently pink and violently purple at the same time. All the violence was making his stomach uneasy. He scrambled back off Miah. She was frantically searching her wildly colored clothes for something, while coughing, and was that...drool?
Cough. "I can't find it, Cali. It's always in my jeans pocket, but these aren't jeans." Cough. "There's not a pocket there, so of course the medicine isn't there." She laughed hysterically before breaking off to cough some more.
Cali grabbed her hands to stop her frantic searching. "What's wrong?"
She looked at him with a sort of pink glaze to her, and that was definitely drool. "You sort of look like DiNozzo with blue hair," she said dazedly. "I bet you are DiNozzo, on an undercover mission."
He made the mistake of letting go of her hands before answering. She glomped him. He ended up sunk into the violently colored fluff with his crazed partner trying to plant her lips on his. He dodged and struggled, and she managed to get her lips on him in several places that weren't quite his lips, such as his eyes, nose, cheeks, hair, and chin. Finally, she reared back for another glomping, and he managed to roll away. He saw her backpack and ran for it. He was pretty sure that it had some kind of magic to it, and that if he opened a pocket he would find just what he needed.
He snagged it as he ran by. Behind him he heard, "Wait! ur lyk so ttly hawt!!!!" He noticed that around him the ground was becoming more solid, and the glitter in the air was thinning. He opened a pocket, and pulled out a tranquilizer dart just as he was glomped from behind. Miah ended up sitting on his back.
Note to self: I need more practice in hand to hand combat. He struggled to roll over as he felt Miah pulling on the straps of his armor. When rolling over didn't work, he used his teeth to remove the cap from the dart, and jammed it into her leg. She didn't seem to notice until she slid over onto the sidewalk, unconscious.
Wait. Sidewalk?
He looked around. They were on a pink glittery sidewalk that ran beside a coffee shop. The patrons in the coffee shop hadn't noticed him or his unconscious partner, because they were all staring, slack-jawed, at a girl walking to the photography shop that was on the opposite side of the coffee shop from the agents. He noticed that further away from the two shops the landscape became fuzzier. He put on the backpack and dragged Miah toward the less defined area.
Okay. Obviously, he was missing charges, but he couldn't allow Miah to attack him again, either. They might be in a better defined part of the fic next time. He reached into a pocket of the backpack, and found plastic zip ties like the ones they had tied the Sue up with in the last mission. He bound Miah's hands and feet, and then tried to catch up by reading the Words. He didn't know anything about this fandom, and was worried he might miss something.
As it turns out, he didn't need to know anything about it to make note of the Sue's terrible use of the English language and total lack of common sense. He charged for multiple run-on sentences, one of which could have made eight individual sentences, and also for barely knowing what a comma was, much less what it was used for. He charged for being in such desperate need of money that she had worked straight through all her breaks for two months, but then spent money on coffee at a coffee shop. He added a charge for bad business practices by the Sue and her boss; the Sue had gone on break and the the boss had disappeared right when they had a group scheduled to have their pictures taken. Then the Sue had to look it up, while still drinking her coffee, because she hadn't known there was an appointment.
She looked over at the motorcycle that was in front of the coffee shop. She stared at it. Oh man how she loved motorcycle, she walked over to it and was in awe.
"Yup just finished these photos I'm going." She said."
While he was trying to decide what to make of those two sentences, a bus drove by him. It was the only vehicle that had driven by the entire time he had been here, so he knew it must be for the Sue. He pulled the Remote Activator from Miah's backpack, and opened a portal to what he hoped would be an inconspicuous place at the Sue's destination. He stopped, dumbfounded, as the Sue bounded to the top of the bus and bunny hopped in place. The bus drove away, seemingly powered by the hopping of the Sue. He quickly pulled Miah through the portal. This area was even less defined than the last one, and was still mostly made of nebulous clouds of pink glitter. Miah started coughing again.
The bus with the bunny hopping Sue on top drove up, a road hastily forming in front of it, and stopped at the only thing in the setting--a building with the words ADOPTION AGENCY emblazoned on the front. The Sue "was dropped off when she was a child." Cali couldn't believe his eyes as she transformed into a preschool age child as she got off the bus. It patiently waited for her. He scanned ahead and realized that the Sue would take it home later, so he dragged Miah into the bus. She made kissy noises at him the whole time.
He made note of random physical transformations as the Sue became fifteen again when she stated her age for the receptionist inside. As she started to say her name, everything went black as if a huge curtain had fallen, and the Author's boom took over again.
Thank you everyone for reading my first chapter. Second chapter will be up as soon as I get some input from those who read it. I want to see every ones opinion before I continue. And yes I left the last name out for a reason.
He charged for the author withholding information for no reason other than to tease the readers with her superior knowledge. The Sue came back out wailing inner wangst, and resumed powering the bus with her strange bunny-hop-on-the-roof powers. The booming impacts of the Sue Hop were decidedly less than pleasant, but Cali gritted his teeth and concentrated on keeping Miah from trying to get her bound arms over his head. The kissy noises continued.
The bus stopped in front of a house entirely formed from pink glitter. Once again it was the only thing fully defined. Cali could hear children screaming at one another over what television show to watch, a baby screaming for attention, and what actually sounded like someone using cookware and dishes as demolition tools. Cali turned his back on Miah to to scan the words and realized it was the foster mom cooking and washing dishes, not a demolition crew. Miah took his not keeping his eyes on her as an invitation to glomp him again--right through the open bus door. They landed in the fluffy pink/purple stuff the ground was made of. It was much easier to shove Miah off him this time, since she was already tied up. Note to self: Keep a better watch when dealing with a crazy person. He needed to find a way to get out of here as soon as possible to get help for his partner.
The screaming and other noises coming from the house had been stopped by the Sue's Aura of Smooth, and not much else seemed to be happening. He checked the words, and made note of charges for excessively sad background story, including all kinds of abuse, and for this set of foster parents having kept her for eight years without thinking to adopt her.
He suddenly realized that the bus had not disappeared, and that the Sue was going to be back to bunny hop powering it to the next scene in a few hours. Rather than endure the next few hours with Miah--who was currently held at bay by the prodding of a long stick--Cali opened a portal right behind Miah. He pushed her through with the stick. They were then on the bus just before the Sue climbed out of her window and took off on the bunny hop express bus again.
Cali charged for the Sue being at work with no shoes on earlier, since she had to make special note of putting them on to leave, but had never mentioned taking them off. He also charged for a fifteen year old girl owning a lock picking kit. Since, she had never said the Adoption Agency had non-see-through walls, Cali watched her from the bus.
He charged her for lack of punctuation that resulted in a room being called "she wasn't sure how to look it up on the computer so she figured she would just look through the files in the cabinet behind the computer". Inside the room with the ridiculously long name, she found her name apparently floating transparently in the air. The Sue reached through her transparent, floating name to pull another one to the front, and then wrote that name on a slip of paper. Then she was suddenly holding a file, which she released back into the ridiculous room.
A police officer that strongly resembled Barney Fife appeared in the room with the Sue. She hid under the desk. At this point the Sue, the desk, and the officer flickered through a series of bizarre contortions as the fic's poor phrasing caused it to be impossible for the canon to interpret where anyone was, how they got there, or even how many there were. Cali wrapped an arm over his stomach as he tried to prevent a repeat of last mission's reaction to scene flickers. Thankfully, the flickering didn't last too long, and settled with the officer shining his flashlight on the Sue, who was still under the desk.
After assuring the Sue that he could somehow tell she was a good kid even though he had just caught her committing a felony, he told her that her foster parents would be better able to deal with her punishment than he would. The officer was immediately able to tell who her foster parents were, because the town was so small that everyone knew each other and they were the only foster parents; however, the Sue had lived with them for eight years and neither she nor the officer had ever seen each other. Cali was still scribbling charges against Common Sense when the Sue and the officer came back outside. The bus vanished, leaving Miah and Cali to fall into the fluffy ground substance again.
As the officer drove off, Miah took advantage of Cali's distraction to glomp him yet again. He was ready for her this time, though. He had hidden capped darts in several pockets, so he could reach one in just about any situation. He pulled one from a pocket of his tac vest, and jabbed her with it. She was unconscious before she managed to plant one kiss.
He scanned ahead and decided to kill the Sue at the end of the next scene. He opened the portal to the base of the tree the Sue had used to sneak from the house, and dragged Miah through. He noted that there was almost no airborne glitter here as this was the most defined location in the fic. He used another zip tie to secure Miah to the tree in case she woke before he got back.
This Sue had to die, and this glittering monstrosity of a word world had to die, too. He climbed the staircase-like tree branches with ease.
The foster mom came to the Sue's room to mete out the fair and reasonable punishment of one month of no television for committing a felony. Then she said:
"She died in child birth. Which is what they think led my father to drugs. I lived with her for six months before child services stepped in and took me away from him."
That was just gross. "Well, duh! Of course they took you away from him, if he had you live with your dead mother for six months," he said to no one in particular. The Sue was too wrapped up in herself to notice a strange man chatting to himself outside her window. Surviving the first six months of life in the care of a dead woman had to be enough to earn the foster mom a special death, too.
The Sue and foster mom left the room and went downstairs. Cali was about to follow them, when he heard a baby crying from a nearby room. He smacked himself in the forehead. He'd forgotten about the kids and baby he'd heard screaming earlier. He couldn't just leave them here while he set the place on fire. He retrieved the baby, which continued to cry. The little girl was cold, had a wet diaper, and was probably hungry. Cali quickly grabbed a diaper and changed the baby. All that time he'd spent working in the daycare was helping him out, finally. He picked up a blanket to wrap the baby in, but found that blankets made of pink glitter were not only scratchy and irritating, but also not warm. He hoped Miah had packed a blanket, and found that the backpack had one right on top. He used it to make a sling to secure the baby to his chest and keep his hands free. He was running out of time.
He could hear the other kids shouting in another room. He couldn't think of a way to do this that didn't sound creepy. He opened the door to the room, and found two boys and a girl yelling at each other. He knew they had been named earlier, but he had been too distracted writing charges to remember the names now. The kids stopped and stared at him.
The bigger boy pointed at Cali's hair. "Why is your hair that funny color?"
The smaller one added, "Yeah, and how come it's so messy?"
The girl walked over and patted his arm. She glared at the boys as she said,"He can't help it if he looks weird. When did your worker drop you off?"
"Well, actually, I'm here to help your worker out. You know how it's always so loud and crazy here?"
The smaller boy nodded. "Yeah, and Kayla's the only one that can make it better. I hate that."
The bigger one chimed in, "Me too! I don't even like fighting with Hannah, but for some reason, if Kayla isn't around, I can't do anything but yell at her."
Hannah nodded. "You're moving us, aren't you? You won't take Kayla with you, will you?"
Cali shook his head solemnly. "No, Kayla is going to stay here in this house." He opened a portal just outside the door. "You all can go straight to your next home through that." He pointed to the shiny portal, but groaned when he saw strings of pumpkin guts hanging all over the console. Castor was so getting grounded--no mad science allowed for a week! "See, I have to go talk to your foster mom and dad, and there is a certain critter named Castor through there that needs someone to watch him until I get back."
The kids all looked through and saw the kitten--his fur matted with clumps of pumpkin guts--stagger drunkenly across the room. The kids squealed and took off toward the portal.
"Hey! Don't be rough on him. He's just a baby. Oh! Baby! Here," he said, grabbing the oldest boy's arm. "Take this baby with you. There is a TV in the bedroom, and sodas in the fridge."
The boy gave a mock salute, and carried the baby through with him. Cali only had moments left to get to the kitchen. In his hurry to get into the room before they left, he slammed the swinging kitchen door into the Sue, who had been about to walk out of it. She was knocked to the ground, and stayed there, apparently waiting for everyone to ooh and aah over her. The foster parents were too stunned to do much, and remained standing by the counter top. Good. He'd start with them. He pulled out the pistol Miah had brought him. The weight felt strange in his hands, and he tried desperately to remember the lesson she had given him on how to use it--always know where it is pointed, never put your finger on the trigger until you are ready to shoot, and never let the bad guy get hold of it.
He closed the distance between them, and shouted as fast as he could, "George and Caitlyn, no last name, foster parents. I am an Agent of the PPC, and I charge you with having a foster child for eight years with no thoughts of actual adoption, while at the same time claiming to think of that child as a daughter, for thinking that a month of no television is an adequate punishment for the commission of a felony, for existing solely to aid the purposes of a Mary Sue, and in Caitlyn's case being a Mary Sue because you somehow survived being in the care of your dead mother for the first six months due to misused pronouns." He took a deep breath, and finished, "For these crimes you are sentenced to death."
With that he shot Caitlyn. He was aiming at her head, and even though he was only a couple feet from her, he hit her in the neck. She fell clutching her throat. George ducked, and Cali's first shot went high. George was frantically trying to climb out a window. Cali ran up behind him, and shot him in the back of the head. George dropped instantly. Cali turned back to charge the Sue, only to see the kitchen door swinging and no Sue present. Note to self: plan ahead so all targets can be kept in view.
Cali ran out the door after the Sue, just in time to hear the front door slam. If she somehow called up the bunny hop bus, he'd be in big trouble. As he got outside, he saw the bus rounding the corner. The Sue was too close for him to catch her, and he couldn't just shoot her before he charged her. With his aim, he might accidentally kill her. Suddenly, Miah came seemingly from nowhere to tackle the Sue. Her hands were still bound, but her feet were free, and she was no longer attached to the tree. She was straddling the Sue, and pounding her with her fists.
"This is all your fault! I was making kissy noises! You are going to pay!" Miah was shouting. Cali ran up to stop her from killing the Sue before he managed to read the charges.
He grabbed her arms, and surveyed the damage. The Sue's eye was swelling, and she had pink glitter blood trickling from her nose, but she still glared at him defiantly, so he figured she wasn't hurt too bad. Miah was glaring at him too. She was the first to react.
"Let go of me, so I can kill this monster, Cali! I can feel the fangirlness rising up again, and I won't be able to control it for long. I've got to kill her now!" She tried to wrench her arms free, but Cali held on.
"Can you set fire to that house," he asked. "We need to burn this place up, but I don't know how to do it. I'll kill her. After I charge her."
Miah hesitated, and then with great effort nodded. Cali released her arms, and pointed his gun at the Sue's head. Miah released the Sue and took the backpack from Cali.
"Hey, she is supposed to have her mother's last name. It's Shepard. Is that a charge?" Cali asked as Miah started to walk away.
Miah turned around and kicked the Sue a couple of times, before finally saying, "If she doesn't list one of the other canons as the father, no. No matter how much I'd like it to be. Canon doesn't specifically say that Director Shepard didn't give up a baby for adoption before she met the other canons." She kicked the Sue again, then dodged as the Sue tried to kick her back.
"Go, we have to get back to the RC quickly," Cali shouted at her.
"Wh--"
"Just go!" Cali interrupted her. She hesitated, but then turned and ran toward the house, carrying the backpack. Cali was left with his pistol trained on the glaring Sue. Okay, now he just had to charge her, shoot her, and get Miah out of here. How was he going to read the charge list while watching her? She might make a run for it if he didn't keep focused on her. Tie her up? Miah had the backpack with the zip ties in it. Crap. Now what?
The Sue took his hesitation as a sign she might have a chance to escape. She swung her legs around, and knocked his feet out from under him. Note to self: Do not stand so close next time. He rolled to his knees, and saw that the Sue was still scrambling back. He tackled her from behind, knocking the air out of her. As she gasped for air, Cali positioned his knee in her back, put the pistol to the back of her head, at which point she stopped squirming, and pulled out his charge list. Now he could read it.
"Kayla Shepard, I am an agent of the Protectors of the Plot Continuum here to answer the accusation that you are a Mary Sue. You are charged with having grammar that even a chimpanzee would be ashamed of, including the continuous use of run-on sentences, tense shifts, pronoun problems, and the apparent lack of knowledge of what commas and periods are and should do; with lacking common sense and causing those around you to lack common sense; with creating a bus that is powered by you bunny-hopping on its roof; with accidentally transforming yourself into a child and back to a fifteen year old."
He stopped and shuddered. "That was just plain disturbing, by the way. You are charged with causing Barney Fife to look like a competent hard-case of a cop in comparison to the officer in your story, and causing this entire world to exist only for and about you--then through fluff and wangst causing it to be made mostly of pink glitter. Your glitter made my partner make kissy noises! That right there is enough for me to kill you, but there are more charges, so hold still!" He whacked the Sue on the head with his notebook, and she stopped squirming.
"You have placed yourself in a legally impossible situation. If you were placed with an 'Adoption Agency' you would have been adopted. They do not physically take custody of a child, they just facilitate the transfer from the birth parents to the adoptive parents. If you are in foster care, then your birth mom could have signed you over to the state, but even that isn't as simple as it sounds. The state doesn't just accept kids because they are inconvenient to their parents. The parents will end up with abandonment charges--if not legal prosecution, then a listing in the Child Abuse Registry. Either way, Jenny Shepard would never have been Director of NCIS. There are now safe drop zones where a birth mom can drop off her newborn without legal repercussions, which makes the most sense in your case. However, the first Safe Haven law did not come about until 1999, which is way too late for you to be fifteen. You might have found an orphanage willing to take you. Of course most of those were gone by 1970, and you wouldn't be in foster care. Or your birth mom could have just tossed you in a dumpster, but then you wouldn't have her last name. It just doesn't add up."
The Sue mumbled through the fluff, "It had to be like that for dramatic--"
Cali pressed his knee harder into her back. "Quiet! You don't get to talk until the charging is done--if you behave yourself." He looked for his place on the list, and launched into it again. "You have not described yourself at all. Other than that you are fifteen years old, I know nothing about your appearance. You are charged with claiming to be a good kid--yet you own a lock picking kit and know how to use it. Causing space-time distortions, rooms and other objects to have ridiculously long names, your foster parents to be bit characters in service to your wangst and incompetent in caring for the other children in the home are all charges. You are a Mary Sue, and you have seriously annoyed a PPC agent! Any final words?"
The Sue opened her mouth to speak, but the fic must have decided that it was time for the next chapter to begin, because the Author's Notes began booming around him again. Cali struggled to not drop the gun and cover his ears.
...I know I haven't written anything to do with who her mother is and I know your are waiting anxiously don't worry its coming soon I just wanted to get out there what Kayla is like since I plan on using her for other stories in the futu--
Bang!
"Not if she has no future," Cali said. The Sue had a deceptively neat hole in the back of her head. He put his gun back in its holster and went to look for Miah.
He found her dancing and giggling madly with some kind of electronic device in her hand.
"Oh good! I was just about to blow this place up without you," she said with a maniacal grin on her face.
Cali cautiously took the device from her, and opened a portal to the RC. The mess was worse. Now toilet paper, pumpkin guts, soda, and food were splattered everywhere. He saw the smaller boy run by, screaming, holding a roll of toilet paper to stream out behind him. Cali sighed heavily. This just wasn't his day.
"So, how do I set this stuff off?" he asked. Miah giggled and some drool dribbled down her chin. He forced her to look at him. "How does this work?" he shouted.
She slowly reached out to it, and said, "You flip this, then push this button. 30 seconds. Boom. You...look...kinda...liek...Tony..." She trailed off, and the drooling got heavier. Cali flipped the switch, pushed the button, and shoved Miah through the portal. As soon as he was through, he closed it down. They were pretty close, and he didn't want to risk the explosion following him through the portal.
"Kids!" he shouted. His partner was eyeing him with a look that promised glompings. The three bigger children rushed into the room, looking more than a little worried about the mess they had made. The smallest boy held Castor, who was purring like the little cat traitor he was, and the girl held the still fussing baby.
"You see my partner there?" he said, pointing to Miah, who was muttering something about "Hawt! ttly! Mine. Mine. Mine!"
They took a step back and nodded.
"She's not feeling too good right about now. In fact, she is about to jump on me and try to plant kisses all over me." He made a yucky face, which the kids echoed. "So, we need to play a little game of 'race Agent Miah to the Medical Department'. See, we're going to take off running, and she's going to try to get me. We have to beat her there. Sound like fun?"
The kids jumped and shouted. Cali took the baby. "You all take turns carrying Castor, okay. I don't want to leave him here with this mess." He opened the door and herded them into the hallway, grabbing the little boy's hand, who grabbed the girl's hand. The older boy now had Castor. They took off running, and Cali could hear Miah not too far behind, shouting words that almost seemed to be in another language. He had to watch out for the kids, make sure he wasn't jarring the baby too much, and make sure Castor was still with them. In short, they reached Medical in record time, bursting through the door at full tilt with Miah directly behind him. He handed the baby over to the girl, just in time to avoid the baby getting glomped along with him.
She had him held down with his face against the floor. "Doctor! Help!" he shouted with his voice muffled by the floor.
He heard the kids screaming, the baby screaming, Miah screaming, and feet rushing toward them. Then Miah's weight was gone, and he rolled over with a groan. This generic flooring was a lot less forgiving than that fluff in the fic.
He heard Miah screaming nonsense and then a door opening and closing before the noise was cut off.
A Nurse stepped into his field of view, "Are you hurt, Agent..."
"Cali. Cali Still. I'm fine, just tired. Is Miah going to be okay?" He managed to drag himself to his feet.
"It looks like a case of glitter poisoning. Miah has a lower threshold than most to the effects of glitter. She should have taken her medicine before it got this bad, but she'll be fine. I take it there was a lot of glitter in your mission?" she said, looking critically at Cali and the four children. All of them were covered with pink glitter.
"Before the kissy noises and glomping started, she was looking for medicine." He coughed, and a tiny cloud of glitter was left in the air.
The Nurse pulled a scanner out, and pointed it at each of them. "You're all going to have to stay the night to be de-glittered. Come this way."
The kids were looking decidedly nervous over this, but the Nurse turned around, and smiled as she said, "I have cookies!"
At this point, Cali was just as ready to fall in line over the prospect of cookies as the kids. He followed the Nurse and the kids to be de-glittered.
Next appearance: Mission 3: Pillows and Zats and Sues, Oh My!
Disclaimers: The PPC was created by Jay and Acacia. NCIS was created by Don Bellisario. The fic that is being sporked, Who I Was Who I Am (K+) by Jiva-Tivalover is definitely not mine. The fic's grammar may be borderline NSFB. The text below is a review in narrative form and contains elements of parody/satire.
Beta: Cassie Cameron-Young and Edward Wilder. Thank you very much to both of you, you have improved this story greatly.
Previous appearance: Mission 1: Miah and Cali Versus the Wraith Lover
Of Glitter and Men
Miah watched the Agent from DoSAT walk away, still grumbling about how stupid they thought he was for them to expect him to believe that a kitten was responsible for gutting the console. Miah put the bag holding the pumpkin she had bought Castor, the little winged menace of a kitten, on a high shelf; and went to examine Cali's room. He had been literally bouncing with excitement to show her what Castor had built out of their Disguise Generator. She stepped into what she expected to be a bare room, as they had not obtained any furniture for him yet. There was a bean bag, throw rugs, a bed complete with Superman print sheets and blanket, a side table and lamp, even a TV on a stand.
"Where did all this stuff come from?" she asked, dazedly.
"Castor did it. He made the Disguise Generator parts generate furniture here in my room. Isn't it cool?" He climbed onto the bed and jumped on it, messing up the neatly made covers.
"While I am all for more messes in this place, do you really think it is a good i--" She was interrupted by the sound of Cali landing on the floor in an undignified heap. His blue hair still showed through the top of the bed. "Are you okay, kid?"
Cali groaned, but pushed himself to his feet, and walked through the now holographic bed. As soon as he was out of the image, it became solid again. "I think I bruised my dignity," he said mournfully as he rubbed his elbow.
"I think you managed to do that when you started jumping on the bed. What are you, like five years old?"
"No! I'm--"
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!
"Time for a mission," Cali said, strapping on his green body armor and shin guards.
"What about that cat?" Miah stopped reading the printout to point at Castor. Castor took offense to her tone and hissed at her.
"Didn't you buy him a pumpkin?" Cali asked.
"Yeah, but that was before I found out that he had built a holodeck wannabe in your bedroom, and made the DoSAT guy mad at us. We have to use that Disguise Generator, you know," Miah said as she checked the supplies in her bag.
"I know," Cali said, as he cut the lid off the pumpkin. Castor wound through his legs purring like a freight train, before trying to fly. His baby wings weren't quite up to flight, yet, and he thumped back to the floor. Cali set the pumpkin on the floor, and told Castor very seriously, "I loved the present you made for me, but this time you should just eat your pumpkin and rest until we get back. Deal?" The kitten grasped Cali's proffered finger with one of his weird little paws and shook it.
"It's NCIS. Says here its a fluffy!wangst!Sue." Miah decided they should go in disguised as college students. She set the Disguise Generator to make her outfit a little more colorful than the standard PPC black, and Cali's entire person a little less colorful.
Miah exited the portal, stepping into the middle of a fluffy pink cloud of glitter. She immediately began coughing and gagging, and fell to her knees on the fluffy urple substance the ground was made of. She hadn't realized that this fic was going to be quite so glittery. Her lungs had had a lower than normal tolerance to Glitter, ever since she had gotten an overdose in a Sue explosion on her first mission. She could feel unnatural fangirl desires creeping up, threatening to send her searching for Leroy Jethro Gibbs and Anthony DiNozzo. She always carrier her Anti-Lustin inhaler in her pants pocket in case she ran into unexpected Glitter. She reached down to get it, and realized that she was wearing red and orange plaid leggings with a purple mini skirt ruffle.
Cali had remembered the booming sound of the song intro to their last Mission, and had put in ear plugs before stepping through the portal. He exited into a cloud of pink sparkles. "What is this stuff?" he asked Miah.
She had stepped through the portal just before he had, but he couldn't see her. Of course, it was hard to see anything through the haze of all the glitter. Before he could start looking for her, the booming of the Author's Note surrounded him. He smiled, as he didn't have to clap his hands over his ears this time. This seemed to annoy the Author's Note, however, and it increased in volume until he could feel the vibrations in his bones. Apparently it was of vital importance for the readers of this story to know, in horrendous run-on sentence form, that the author had deleted a story unrelated to this one.
He stopped looking for Miah to listen to the summary of the story, as he hadn't looked at the papers the Console had spat out back in the Response Center.
Summary: Kayla was put into foster care as a baby and was never adopted fifteen years later she wants to know her biological parents so she sets out on a mission to find them. Will she find them? And will she find out that they gave her up out of love or fear?
Cali had a bizarre level of knowledge in this area for a boy his age, and it seemed extremely unlikely to him that a healthy, white baby would not have been adopted when waiting lists for such babies were months or even years long. He didn't know the canon, maybe this wouldn't have been a white baby, but healthy babies other than white had waiting lists, too. He didn't think a Mary Sue would have given herself some kind of disease or disability that would have been noticeable at birth. He pulled his notepad out, and realized that he was still wearing his regular clothes. Miah had said the Disguise Generator might not work too well.
The booming had stopped, so he took his ear plugs out and heard coughing behind him. The glitter in the air was still obscuring his vision, but he followed the sound and pretty soon he had managed to trip over Miah onto the fluffy substance of the ground. It was in a bizarre color combination that tried to be both violently pink and violently purple at the same time. All the violence was making his stomach uneasy. He scrambled back off Miah. She was frantically searching her wildly colored clothes for something, while coughing, and was that...drool?
Cough. "I can't find it, Cali. It's always in my jeans pocket, but these aren't jeans." Cough. "There's not a pocket there, so of course the medicine isn't there." She laughed hysterically before breaking off to cough some more.
Cali grabbed her hands to stop her frantic searching. "What's wrong?"
She looked at him with a sort of pink glaze to her, and that was definitely drool. "You sort of look like DiNozzo with blue hair," she said dazedly. "I bet you are DiNozzo, on an undercover mission."
He made the mistake of letting go of her hands before answering. She glomped him. He ended up sunk into the violently colored fluff with his crazed partner trying to plant her lips on his. He dodged and struggled, and she managed to get her lips on him in several places that weren't quite his lips, such as his eyes, nose, cheeks, hair, and chin. Finally, she reared back for another glomping, and he managed to roll away. He saw her backpack and ran for it. He was pretty sure that it had some kind of magic to it, and that if he opened a pocket he would find just what he needed.
He snagged it as he ran by. Behind him he heard, "Wait! ur lyk so ttly hawt!!!!" He noticed that around him the ground was becoming more solid, and the glitter in the air was thinning. He opened a pocket, and pulled out a tranquilizer dart just as he was glomped from behind. Miah ended up sitting on his back.
Note to self: I need more practice in hand to hand combat. He struggled to roll over as he felt Miah pulling on the straps of his armor. When rolling over didn't work, he used his teeth to remove the cap from the dart, and jammed it into her leg. She didn't seem to notice until she slid over onto the sidewalk, unconscious.
Wait. Sidewalk?
He looked around. They were on a pink glittery sidewalk that ran beside a coffee shop. The patrons in the coffee shop hadn't noticed him or his unconscious partner, because they were all staring, slack-jawed, at a girl walking to the photography shop that was on the opposite side of the coffee shop from the agents. He noticed that further away from the two shops the landscape became fuzzier. He put on the backpack and dragged Miah toward the less defined area.
Okay. Obviously, he was missing charges, but he couldn't allow Miah to attack him again, either. They might be in a better defined part of the fic next time. He reached into a pocket of the backpack, and found plastic zip ties like the ones they had tied the Sue up with in the last mission. He bound Miah's hands and feet, and then tried to catch up by reading the Words. He didn't know anything about this fandom, and was worried he might miss something.
As it turns out, he didn't need to know anything about it to make note of the Sue's terrible use of the English language and total lack of common sense. He charged for multiple run-on sentences, one of which could have made eight individual sentences, and also for barely knowing what a comma was, much less what it was used for. He charged for being in such desperate need of money that she had worked straight through all her breaks for two months, but then spent money on coffee at a coffee shop. He added a charge for bad business practices by the Sue and her boss; the Sue had gone on break and the the boss had disappeared right when they had a group scheduled to have their pictures taken. Then the Sue had to look it up, while still drinking her coffee, because she hadn't known there was an appointment.
She looked over at the motorcycle that was in front of the coffee shop. She stared at it. Oh man how she loved motorcycle, she walked over to it and was in awe.
"Yup just finished these photos I'm going." She said."
While he was trying to decide what to make of those two sentences, a bus drove by him. It was the only vehicle that had driven by the entire time he had been here, so he knew it must be for the Sue. He pulled the Remote Activator from Miah's backpack, and opened a portal to what he hoped would be an inconspicuous place at the Sue's destination. He stopped, dumbfounded, as the Sue bounded to the top of the bus and bunny hopped in place. The bus drove away, seemingly powered by the hopping of the Sue. He quickly pulled Miah through the portal. This area was even less defined than the last one, and was still mostly made of nebulous clouds of pink glitter. Miah started coughing again.
The bus with the bunny hopping Sue on top drove up, a road hastily forming in front of it, and stopped at the only thing in the setting--a building with the words ADOPTION AGENCY emblazoned on the front. The Sue "was dropped off when she was a child." Cali couldn't believe his eyes as she transformed into a preschool age child as she got off the bus. It patiently waited for her. He scanned ahead and realized that the Sue would take it home later, so he dragged Miah into the bus. She made kissy noises at him the whole time.
He made note of random physical transformations as the Sue became fifteen again when she stated her age for the receptionist inside. As she started to say her name, everything went black as if a huge curtain had fallen, and the Author's boom took over again.
Thank you everyone for reading my first chapter. Second chapter will be up as soon as I get some input from those who read it. I want to see every ones opinion before I continue. And yes I left the last name out for a reason.
He charged for the author withholding information for no reason other than to tease the readers with her superior knowledge. The Sue came back out wailing inner wangst, and resumed powering the bus with her strange bunny-hop-on-the-roof powers. The booming impacts of the Sue Hop were decidedly less than pleasant, but Cali gritted his teeth and concentrated on keeping Miah from trying to get her bound arms over his head. The kissy noises continued.
The bus stopped in front of a house entirely formed from pink glitter. Once again it was the only thing fully defined. Cali could hear children screaming at one another over what television show to watch, a baby screaming for attention, and what actually sounded like someone using cookware and dishes as demolition tools. Cali turned his back on Miah to to scan the words and realized it was the foster mom cooking and washing dishes, not a demolition crew. Miah took his not keeping his eyes on her as an invitation to glomp him again--right through the open bus door. They landed in the fluffy pink/purple stuff the ground was made of. It was much easier to shove Miah off him this time, since she was already tied up. Note to self: Keep a better watch when dealing with a crazy person. He needed to find a way to get out of here as soon as possible to get help for his partner.
The screaming and other noises coming from the house had been stopped by the Sue's Aura of Smooth, and not much else seemed to be happening. He checked the words, and made note of charges for excessively sad background story, including all kinds of abuse, and for this set of foster parents having kept her for eight years without thinking to adopt her.
He suddenly realized that the bus had not disappeared, and that the Sue was going to be back to bunny hop powering it to the next scene in a few hours. Rather than endure the next few hours with Miah--who was currently held at bay by the prodding of a long stick--Cali opened a portal right behind Miah. He pushed her through with the stick. They were then on the bus just before the Sue climbed out of her window and took off on the bunny hop express bus again.
Cali charged for the Sue being at work with no shoes on earlier, since she had to make special note of putting them on to leave, but had never mentioned taking them off. He also charged for a fifteen year old girl owning a lock picking kit. Since, she had never said the Adoption Agency had non-see-through walls, Cali watched her from the bus.
He charged her for lack of punctuation that resulted in a room being called "she wasn't sure how to look it up on the computer so she figured she would just look through the files in the cabinet behind the computer". Inside the room with the ridiculously long name, she found her name apparently floating transparently in the air. The Sue reached through her transparent, floating name to pull another one to the front, and then wrote that name on a slip of paper. Then she was suddenly holding a file, which she released back into the ridiculous room.
A police officer that strongly resembled Barney Fife appeared in the room with the Sue. She hid under the desk. At this point the Sue, the desk, and the officer flickered through a series of bizarre contortions as the fic's poor phrasing caused it to be impossible for the canon to interpret where anyone was, how they got there, or even how many there were. Cali wrapped an arm over his stomach as he tried to prevent a repeat of last mission's reaction to scene flickers. Thankfully, the flickering didn't last too long, and settled with the officer shining his flashlight on the Sue, who was still under the desk.
After assuring the Sue that he could somehow tell she was a good kid even though he had just caught her committing a felony, he told her that her foster parents would be better able to deal with her punishment than he would. The officer was immediately able to tell who her foster parents were, because the town was so small that everyone knew each other and they were the only foster parents; however, the Sue had lived with them for eight years and neither she nor the officer had ever seen each other. Cali was still scribbling charges against Common Sense when the Sue and the officer came back outside. The bus vanished, leaving Miah and Cali to fall into the fluffy ground substance again.
As the officer drove off, Miah took advantage of Cali's distraction to glomp him yet again. He was ready for her this time, though. He had hidden capped darts in several pockets, so he could reach one in just about any situation. He pulled one from a pocket of his tac vest, and jabbed her with it. She was unconscious before she managed to plant one kiss.
He scanned ahead and decided to kill the Sue at the end of the next scene. He opened the portal to the base of the tree the Sue had used to sneak from the house, and dragged Miah through. He noted that there was almost no airborne glitter here as this was the most defined location in the fic. He used another zip tie to secure Miah to the tree in case she woke before he got back.
This Sue had to die, and this glittering monstrosity of a word world had to die, too. He climbed the staircase-like tree branches with ease.
The foster mom came to the Sue's room to mete out the fair and reasonable punishment of one month of no television for committing a felony. Then she said:
"She died in child birth. Which is what they think led my father to drugs. I lived with her for six months before child services stepped in and took me away from him."
That was just gross. "Well, duh! Of course they took you away from him, if he had you live with your dead mother for six months," he said to no one in particular. The Sue was too wrapped up in herself to notice a strange man chatting to himself outside her window. Surviving the first six months of life in the care of a dead woman had to be enough to earn the foster mom a special death, too.
The Sue and foster mom left the room and went downstairs. Cali was about to follow them, when he heard a baby crying from a nearby room. He smacked himself in the forehead. He'd forgotten about the kids and baby he'd heard screaming earlier. He couldn't just leave them here while he set the place on fire. He retrieved the baby, which continued to cry. The little girl was cold, had a wet diaper, and was probably hungry. Cali quickly grabbed a diaper and changed the baby. All that time he'd spent working in the daycare was helping him out, finally. He picked up a blanket to wrap the baby in, but found that blankets made of pink glitter were not only scratchy and irritating, but also not warm. He hoped Miah had packed a blanket, and found that the backpack had one right on top. He used it to make a sling to secure the baby to his chest and keep his hands free. He was running out of time.
He could hear the other kids shouting in another room. He couldn't think of a way to do this that didn't sound creepy. He opened the door to the room, and found two boys and a girl yelling at each other. He knew they had been named earlier, but he had been too distracted writing charges to remember the names now. The kids stopped and stared at him.
The bigger boy pointed at Cali's hair. "Why is your hair that funny color?"
The smaller one added, "Yeah, and how come it's so messy?"
The girl walked over and patted his arm. She glared at the boys as she said,"He can't help it if he looks weird. When did your worker drop you off?"
"Well, actually, I'm here to help your worker out. You know how it's always so loud and crazy here?"
The smaller boy nodded. "Yeah, and Kayla's the only one that can make it better. I hate that."
The bigger one chimed in, "Me too! I don't even like fighting with Hannah, but for some reason, if Kayla isn't around, I can't do anything but yell at her."
Hannah nodded. "You're moving us, aren't you? You won't take Kayla with you, will you?"
Cali shook his head solemnly. "No, Kayla is going to stay here in this house." He opened a portal just outside the door. "You all can go straight to your next home through that." He pointed to the shiny portal, but groaned when he saw strings of pumpkin guts hanging all over the console. Castor was so getting grounded--no mad science allowed for a week! "See, I have to go talk to your foster mom and dad, and there is a certain critter named Castor through there that needs someone to watch him until I get back."
The kids all looked through and saw the kitten--his fur matted with clumps of pumpkin guts--stagger drunkenly across the room. The kids squealed and took off toward the portal.
"Hey! Don't be rough on him. He's just a baby. Oh! Baby! Here," he said, grabbing the oldest boy's arm. "Take this baby with you. There is a TV in the bedroom, and sodas in the fridge."
The boy gave a mock salute, and carried the baby through with him. Cali only had moments left to get to the kitchen. In his hurry to get into the room before they left, he slammed the swinging kitchen door into the Sue, who had been about to walk out of it. She was knocked to the ground, and stayed there, apparently waiting for everyone to ooh and aah over her. The foster parents were too stunned to do much, and remained standing by the counter top. Good. He'd start with them. He pulled out the pistol Miah had brought him. The weight felt strange in his hands, and he tried desperately to remember the lesson she had given him on how to use it--always know where it is pointed, never put your finger on the trigger until you are ready to shoot, and never let the bad guy get hold of it.
He closed the distance between them, and shouted as fast as he could, "George and Caitlyn, no last name, foster parents. I am an Agent of the PPC, and I charge you with having a foster child for eight years with no thoughts of actual adoption, while at the same time claiming to think of that child as a daughter, for thinking that a month of no television is an adequate punishment for the commission of a felony, for existing solely to aid the purposes of a Mary Sue, and in Caitlyn's case being a Mary Sue because you somehow survived being in the care of your dead mother for the first six months due to misused pronouns." He took a deep breath, and finished, "For these crimes you are sentenced to death."
With that he shot Caitlyn. He was aiming at her head, and even though he was only a couple feet from her, he hit her in the neck. She fell clutching her throat. George ducked, and Cali's first shot went high. George was frantically trying to climb out a window. Cali ran up behind him, and shot him in the back of the head. George dropped instantly. Cali turned back to charge the Sue, only to see the kitchen door swinging and no Sue present. Note to self: plan ahead so all targets can be kept in view.
Cali ran out the door after the Sue, just in time to hear the front door slam. If she somehow called up the bunny hop bus, he'd be in big trouble. As he got outside, he saw the bus rounding the corner. The Sue was too close for him to catch her, and he couldn't just shoot her before he charged her. With his aim, he might accidentally kill her. Suddenly, Miah came seemingly from nowhere to tackle the Sue. Her hands were still bound, but her feet were free, and she was no longer attached to the tree. She was straddling the Sue, and pounding her with her fists.
"This is all your fault! I was making kissy noises! You are going to pay!" Miah was shouting. Cali ran up to stop her from killing the Sue before he managed to read the charges.
He grabbed her arms, and surveyed the damage. The Sue's eye was swelling, and she had pink glitter blood trickling from her nose, but she still glared at him defiantly, so he figured she wasn't hurt too bad. Miah was glaring at him too. She was the first to react.
"Let go of me, so I can kill this monster, Cali! I can feel the fangirlness rising up again, and I won't be able to control it for long. I've got to kill her now!" She tried to wrench her arms free, but Cali held on.
"Can you set fire to that house," he asked. "We need to burn this place up, but I don't know how to do it. I'll kill her. After I charge her."
Miah hesitated, and then with great effort nodded. Cali released her arms, and pointed his gun at the Sue's head. Miah released the Sue and took the backpack from Cali.
"Hey, she is supposed to have her mother's last name. It's Shepard. Is that a charge?" Cali asked as Miah started to walk away.
Miah turned around and kicked the Sue a couple of times, before finally saying, "If she doesn't list one of the other canons as the father, no. No matter how much I'd like it to be. Canon doesn't specifically say that Director Shepard didn't give up a baby for adoption before she met the other canons." She kicked the Sue again, then dodged as the Sue tried to kick her back.
"Go, we have to get back to the RC quickly," Cali shouted at her.
"Wh--"
"Just go!" Cali interrupted her. She hesitated, but then turned and ran toward the house, carrying the backpack. Cali was left with his pistol trained on the glaring Sue. Okay, now he just had to charge her, shoot her, and get Miah out of here. How was he going to read the charge list while watching her? She might make a run for it if he didn't keep focused on her. Tie her up? Miah had the backpack with the zip ties in it. Crap. Now what?
The Sue took his hesitation as a sign she might have a chance to escape. She swung her legs around, and knocked his feet out from under him. Note to self: Do not stand so close next time. He rolled to his knees, and saw that the Sue was still scrambling back. He tackled her from behind, knocking the air out of her. As she gasped for air, Cali positioned his knee in her back, put the pistol to the back of her head, at which point she stopped squirming, and pulled out his charge list. Now he could read it.
"Kayla Shepard, I am an agent of the Protectors of the Plot Continuum here to answer the accusation that you are a Mary Sue. You are charged with having grammar that even a chimpanzee would be ashamed of, including the continuous use of run-on sentences, tense shifts, pronoun problems, and the apparent lack of knowledge of what commas and periods are and should do; with lacking common sense and causing those around you to lack common sense; with creating a bus that is powered by you bunny-hopping on its roof; with accidentally transforming yourself into a child and back to a fifteen year old."
He stopped and shuddered. "That was just plain disturbing, by the way. You are charged with causing Barney Fife to look like a competent hard-case of a cop in comparison to the officer in your story, and causing this entire world to exist only for and about you--then through fluff and wangst causing it to be made mostly of pink glitter. Your glitter made my partner make kissy noises! That right there is enough for me to kill you, but there are more charges, so hold still!" He whacked the Sue on the head with his notebook, and she stopped squirming.
"You have placed yourself in a legally impossible situation. If you were placed with an 'Adoption Agency' you would have been adopted. They do not physically take custody of a child, they just facilitate the transfer from the birth parents to the adoptive parents. If you are in foster care, then your birth mom could have signed you over to the state, but even that isn't as simple as it sounds. The state doesn't just accept kids because they are inconvenient to their parents. The parents will end up with abandonment charges--if not legal prosecution, then a listing in the Child Abuse Registry. Either way, Jenny Shepard would never have been Director of NCIS. There are now safe drop zones where a birth mom can drop off her newborn without legal repercussions, which makes the most sense in your case. However, the first Safe Haven law did not come about until 1999, which is way too late for you to be fifteen. You might have found an orphanage willing to take you. Of course most of those were gone by 1970, and you wouldn't be in foster care. Or your birth mom could have just tossed you in a dumpster, but then you wouldn't have her last name. It just doesn't add up."
The Sue mumbled through the fluff, "It had to be like that for dramatic--"
Cali pressed his knee harder into her back. "Quiet! You don't get to talk until the charging is done--if you behave yourself." He looked for his place on the list, and launched into it again. "You have not described yourself at all. Other than that you are fifteen years old, I know nothing about your appearance. You are charged with claiming to be a good kid--yet you own a lock picking kit and know how to use it. Causing space-time distortions, rooms and other objects to have ridiculously long names, your foster parents to be bit characters in service to your wangst and incompetent in caring for the other children in the home are all charges. You are a Mary Sue, and you have seriously annoyed a PPC agent! Any final words?"
The Sue opened her mouth to speak, but the fic must have decided that it was time for the next chapter to begin, because the Author's Notes began booming around him again. Cali struggled to not drop the gun and cover his ears.
...I know I haven't written anything to do with who her mother is and I know your are waiting anxiously don't worry its coming soon I just wanted to get out there what Kayla is like since I plan on using her for other stories in the futu--
Bang!
"Not if she has no future," Cali said. The Sue had a deceptively neat hole in the back of her head. He put his gun back in its holster and went to look for Miah.
He found her dancing and giggling madly with some kind of electronic device in her hand.
"Oh good! I was just about to blow this place up without you," she said with a maniacal grin on her face.
Cali cautiously took the device from her, and opened a portal to the RC. The mess was worse. Now toilet paper, pumpkin guts, soda, and food were splattered everywhere. He saw the smaller boy run by, screaming, holding a roll of toilet paper to stream out behind him. Cali sighed heavily. This just wasn't his day.
"So, how do I set this stuff off?" he asked. Miah giggled and some drool dribbled down her chin. He forced her to look at him. "How does this work?" he shouted.
She slowly reached out to it, and said, "You flip this, then push this button. 30 seconds. Boom. You...look...kinda...liek...Tony..." She trailed off, and the drooling got heavier. Cali flipped the switch, pushed the button, and shoved Miah through the portal. As soon as he was through, he closed it down. They were pretty close, and he didn't want to risk the explosion following him through the portal.
"Kids!" he shouted. His partner was eyeing him with a look that promised glompings. The three bigger children rushed into the room, looking more than a little worried about the mess they had made. The smallest boy held Castor, who was purring like the little cat traitor he was, and the girl held the still fussing baby.
"You see my partner there?" he said, pointing to Miah, who was muttering something about "Hawt! ttly! Mine. Mine. Mine!"
They took a step back and nodded.
"She's not feeling too good right about now. In fact, she is about to jump on me and try to plant kisses all over me." He made a yucky face, which the kids echoed. "So, we need to play a little game of 'race Agent Miah to the Medical Department'. See, we're going to take off running, and she's going to try to get me. We have to beat her there. Sound like fun?"
The kids jumped and shouted. Cali took the baby. "You all take turns carrying Castor, okay. I don't want to leave him here with this mess." He opened the door and herded them into the hallway, grabbing the little boy's hand, who grabbed the girl's hand. The older boy now had Castor. They took off running, and Cali could hear Miah not too far behind, shouting words that almost seemed to be in another language. He had to watch out for the kids, make sure he wasn't jarring the baby too much, and make sure Castor was still with them. In short, they reached Medical in record time, bursting through the door at full tilt with Miah directly behind him. He handed the baby over to the girl, just in time to avoid the baby getting glomped along with him.
She had him held down with his face against the floor. "Doctor! Help!" he shouted with his voice muffled by the floor.
He heard the kids screaming, the baby screaming, Miah screaming, and feet rushing toward them. Then Miah's weight was gone, and he rolled over with a groan. This generic flooring was a lot less forgiving than that fluff in the fic.
He heard Miah screaming nonsense and then a door opening and closing before the noise was cut off.
A Nurse stepped into his field of view, "Are you hurt, Agent..."
"Cali. Cali Still. I'm fine, just tired. Is Miah going to be okay?" He managed to drag himself to his feet.
"It looks like a case of glitter poisoning. Miah has a lower threshold than most to the effects of glitter. She should have taken her medicine before it got this bad, but she'll be fine. I take it there was a lot of glitter in your mission?" she said, looking critically at Cali and the four children. All of them were covered with pink glitter.
"Before the kissy noises and glomping started, she was looking for medicine." He coughed, and a tiny cloud of glitter was left in the air.
The Nurse pulled a scanner out, and pointed it at each of them. "You're all going to have to stay the night to be de-glittered. Come this way."
The kids were looking decidedly nervous over this, but the Nurse turned around, and smiled as she said, "I have cookies!"
At this point, Cali was just as ready to fall in line over the prospect of cookies as the kids. He followed the Nurse and the kids to be de-glittered.
Next appearance: Mission 3: Pillows and Zats and Sues, Oh My!