Mission #9: Sweet Sampetra
Summary There really is no good way to describe the horror of this story, which has driven the agents into the Redwall fandom. Walk-talkies, hot-pink stilettos, and a mushy romance between two villains are only a few of the canon breaches that beleaguer the DTE agents.
Mara tapped her new CAD in satisfaction. Actually, she reminded herself, it wasn't a new CAD-just one with a new modification. She could imagine it was new, though, and that was what mattered.
She then shook it-it wouldn't do to have a fragile CAD on a mission-and banged it across her desk for good measure. A couple of paper clips vibrated off the edge of the desk, drawing Isaiah's attention away from the far corner of the room. He was one for three in his attempts to feed Moordor a slice of bacon.
"So what's the little blue light for?" Isaiah asked. The Department of Technical Errors had finally bribed-er, convinced-Techno-Dann to update their Analysis Devices. They had been trying for months to get a special CAD that would help them detect grammar errors ahead of time, but in Headquarters anything 'special' was put at the very bottom of the to-do list. With their luck, the new devices would be ready just in time for the agents' retirement.
"Author Note Alert device," Mara said. "It's just a small modification, albeit an important one, since the PPC usually sticks to the fic itself. But you know how it is with us...sometimes, the worst grammar is in the author's notes. The Uncommon Comma approved, probably figuring that the more badness we could catch, the better."
"It also pays to be on friendly terms with Techno-Dann," Isaiah pointed out. The DoSAT agent would often make minor repairs and alterations that Makes-Things would refuse to be threatened or coerced into doing. "Should I also surmise that we need this device for our next mission, in particular?" He narrowed his eyes at Mara.
Mara smiled innocently. "Maaaaybe. Maybe we could also use the Canon Catapult he designed for us last week."
"Great. More Pirates of the Caribbean Suethors conversing about how much they 'luv' the 'hott' Jack Sparrow," Isaiah spat.
"Nope. New fandom."
"' I'm so sugar high and it's, like, one in the morning, but don't be hatin' on me for my bad writing!'" Isaiah mimicked sarcastically.
"Isaiah. New fandom."
"' Me: I'll stuff you in a closet and tie you up, savvy! Jack: Why's all the rum gone? Ehehehhe!' Oh, how I wish I could-"
Mara shook her head. Isaiah wasn't always ready to rant, but when he got going, he could be quite persistent. Pragmatic as usual, she went over to her computer console and typed the words WE ARE PPCING IN A NEW FANDOM in bold, 72-point font. Then she grabbed a fistful of Isaiah's hair and jerked his head down so that he was at eye level with the computer.
"Ow! Mara, let-hey, we're PPCing in a new fandom?"
"Yes. Redwall, to be exact. Are you familiar with it?"
"Uh...kind of. It was a long time ago."
"Tell me about it."
"Why did we get the fic?"
"The mission was up for grabs." Mara smiled sweetly. "In other words, personal grudge. The Sue is Hispanic, though there are plenty of technical errors as well, believe me."
Isaiah stared at her. "Hispanic. Um...how? Real-world geography doesn't apply to Redwall."
Mara's smile widened. It looked painful. "That's what we'll find out."
Isaiah folded his arms across his chest. "I love how you ask my permission before doing this."
Rather than argue, Mara replied, "So, you'll get to pick the next mission. What, are you afraid of turning into a field mouse?"
Isaiah shook his head. "No, just afraid of you picking which missions-by-request we get ourselves into. Remember the last one you decided to put us on? The one that involved Mary Sues beating Middle-earth's finest warriors at volleyball?"
Mara sighed impatiently. "I'll partner with Rosie if you really want me to."
Isaiah gave her a dirty look.
The female agent threw up her hands. "What do you want me to do? The paperwork's already been processed."
Isaiah considered. "I want you to watch Gordor for me while Quen and I go to Al's Wait and Eat the day after tomorrow. And a little more notice next time, if you don't mind."
"Done." The agents shook hands.
"How is Quen doing?" asked Mara, trying to sound nonchalant. "Didn't you see her yesterday, with the grammasite episode?"
"I...don't remember." Isaiah frowned. It was strange...everything before he entered Mara's quarters to prepare for the mission had gone fuzzy in his mind. "Must be the Bleeprin. It's making me senile. Let's just do this PPCing so I can visit her later."
Mara nodded in agreement, and straightaway both agents shouted at the computer. "Portal!"
_________________________
Hey pplz
The blue light began flashing wildly at the author's note.
I know everyone is out of character but that’s what makes it funny!
"Oh, har har," said Mara. "I'm dying with laughter. By the way, Recruit-"
"I'm not a recruit! I've been PPCing for months now!"
"-The title is 'Sweet Sampetra.' According to the hideous note, we're within Pearls of Lutra before the final battle takes place."
Isaiah pointed to the Words. "Why is it called Season One? Is this a television show?"
Mara snorted. "Sounds like it. I don't think we can charge her for it, though. The Redwall universe, being a world of talking animals, measures time by seasons. This might have nothing to do with television."
Episode 1
Isaiah raised an eyebrow.
"Or I might be getting too optimistic," Mara said sheepishly.
Sagitar Sawfang stood on the jetty looking out to the seemingly endless stetch of ocean before her, nervously pawing at the hilt of her trident.
Isaiah considered the 'endless stetch' before him. He and Mara were disguised as black-backed seagulls, a fact which was very annoying, as they had to memorize their charges. Fortunately, it also afforded them an interesting view of the jetty and the...whatever it was.
"You know what we have to do," Mara said resignedly.
Isaiah nodded. "Find the next closest words and pick the one we like best. Too bad our thesaurus is down there among the rocks. Uh, let's see. Stetch. Stitch, stretch, sketch-"
"Stench!" chimed in Mara.
"Oh, great," Isaiah groaned. "The universe heard you." The agents were now overlooking a seemingly endless stench of ocean. "Smells like putrid squid or something."
"At least we're seagulls. They like refuse. What puzzles me is why Sagitar is pawing at the hilt of her trident. Swords have hilts; tridents have hafts."
"Really." Isaiah squinted against the sunlight, looking at Sagitar in disbelief. "I overlooked the pawing and focused on her WALKIE-TALKIE!"
To his right, Isaiah heard a strangled screech. Apparently, she hadn't seen it.
"It's in her pocket, Mara. Yes, I'm sure. A walkie-talkie...on Sampetra."
“Whoa, chill Sagitar. Its only me”, reassured Rasconza.
“I’m calm!” she burst out, and then realized how un-calm that sounded and felt her cheeks burn in embarrassment. She was glad the Rebel Crew had such low-tech walkie-talkies, so Rasconza wasn’t able to see her face.
"We have Level Nine cultural contamination here. Don't forget it, for when we have hands again. Man, I hate being animals."
"Come on. This is better than orcs."
"I miss my fingers."
"I miss Canon more. You know, the place where there was no such thing as a 'chill Sagitar.'"
True to the Words, Sagitar now looked like she had stepped out of a refrigerator.
Isaiah clicked his beak in frustration. "She wasn't such a coward, either! This fic mentions her nervousness once every couple of sentences. And feeling guilty? Dude, she's a villain!"
"Well, here she's just trying to usurp Ublaz. Not inconsistent with villainy, or with Sagitar's actions at the end of the book. Ooh! Remember to get charge for her 'risking her ass'. Also, for-argh! No, no!"
“All you need to do is when Ublaz orders you to leave his castle sneak off to the rebel crew and when the time comes to reveal your treachery and I say “Unveil yourself for the Mighty Ublaz” be all cool and freaky and pull off your hood so he can see your face” Rasconza paused as though thinking it over.
"Cool? FREAKY?!" screeched Isaiah. There was one advantage to being a gull-the characters couldn't overhear them. That was good, because if Isaiah's yelling at "freaky" was loud, his exclamation at the word "tropical-ness" fairly rent the air. Meanwhile, Mara was flapping agitatedly as Sagitar attempted to hang up a walk-talkie. Since it was, in fact, a walk-talkie and not a telephone, Sagitar ended up hanging the entire device on a coat hook that had appeared out of thin air.
That, unfortunately, was not the worst of the historical inaccuracies.
...it seemed everyone on Sampetra thought Groojaw was crazy because of his strange obsession with making bombs and blowing up stuff.
Ploosh! Ploosh!
There came the sound of two birds hitting the water from sheer shock. A bomb in the Redwall fandom was like a nuclear warhead showing up at Troy.
Abruptly, Mara and Isaiah reverted to their human form, Mara clutching a soggy pink memo. A moment later, they were disguised as flying fish and heading towards Sagitar and Rasconza once more.
"Cultural contamination..." Isaiah dived under the water and surfaced "...must be at ten now!"
"Or off the scale," Mara added before ducking briefly under.
“I do not have feelings for Ublaz, okay?” she lied even though she knew she was a terrible liar. She tried to think up a witty comeback. “You’re…you’re probably just saying that because you’re jealous of him!”
“Me, jealous of Ublaz? Not a chance. The only reason why he’s the chick magnet he is is because he’s swimming in money and he’s got a six-pack.”
The agents unsuccessfully tried to make their fins cover their ears as the dreadful slang hit them full force. While inhabitants of the Redwall universe did have strange accents or mannerisms, none of them included the slightest hint of Modern Teenager.
"How could a pine marten have a six-pack, anyway?" Isaiah wondered.
"He couldn't, unless it were a literal six-pack and he got stuck in those plastic loops." Mara tried to shake her head, which only served to make her veer off course. "Let's skip ahead to...ah, here we are. Episode Three: The One with the Hot Corsair Chick."
"That's wonderful, except that I can't press the portal button without hands."
"Erm..." Thankfully, the disguises changed a few minutes later, when the scene shifted back to the land. It wasn't an improvement; someone named Craig the Trident-rat was ogling Sagitar, who had decided to wear pink stilettos.
"Um, hello? No-nonsense commander? Seasoned warrior? She's not a supermodel!" Isaiah hissed. "You're right, Mara, we should portal. Let's get this one over with quickly."
Mara was only too happy to oblige.
"Are there any charges that we missed back there?" she inquired.
Isaiah put on his reading glasses and looked at the Words. "There seems to be a relationship going on between Rasconza and Sagitar. That's...interesting. I mean, they do join forces at the end of Pearls of Lutra to go after Ublaz, but since they both end up killing each other, I'd have to vote 'no' on any hint of romance between them."
"Sometimes, I'd like to get inside the heads of these authors and see what makes them tick," Mara said thoughtfully. "Then again, I probably don't want to know why someone read the book and came away with the image of Sagitar as a 'total ditz and drama-queen.'"
"Or the two of them having an affair in the captain's cabin," Isaiah added, pointing down to the offending line.
The news of what happened in the Captain’s Cabin spread like a chain letter through Sampetra.
"Spread...like a chain letter?" Isaiah and Mara struggled valiantly to muffle their laughter. As they watched, a roll of parchment that was evidently a chain letter began to unfold...and unfold...and unfold, spreading across the deck and fanning out over the ocean.
Tears streaming down their faces, the agents staggered about the deck, paying little attention to the heaving of the ship. Naturally, they both ended up on the floor, all but incapacitated from laughter.
"P-p-portal! Ahahahaha-"
Thunk!
The agents landed inside Sampetra's fortifications, where Ublaz was busy sneaking up on the Mary Sue. The agents, knowing Ublaz's volatile temper, stayed well out of the way and merely noted the description.
She was the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen...
"Oh, no!"
Mara rolled her eyes. "Yeah, talk about trite."
"Trite? Mara, don't you remember what happened when we first met?"
Mara's hands flew to her mouth. "The fusion!"
Sure enough, a shimmering began to overtake the story, starting from the Mary Sue and spreading. Two fanfiction stories had once again fused at the point of a similar sentence.
After a moment's pause, Mara frowned. "I don't get it, though. We got rid of those two stories. There shouldn't be any contamination between the two different fanfics!"
"Which means..." Isaiah sighed "...that there is yet another story that has that line in it. So very, very many females are the most beautiful, you know."
"Enough. I don't want to think about it," said Mara. "Let's just get through the rest of her description quickly, before the shimmering spreads."
Her bright emerald eyes were piercing against the silky midnight-black of her fur. It was obvious by the ragged open necked tunic she wore and her numerous body piercings (one he noticed in her exposed belly-button), that she was a corsair.
"Body piercings. Terrific. I wonder if she knows what a body piercing would involve in this era."
"About a 99.9 % chance of infection?" Isaiah hazarded.
"Yes. Along with lots of stinging from the brine at sea, I would imagine, as well as many places for an enemy fighter to grab. Imagine having a navel piercing ripped out of your skin with a cutlass!"
"No, thank you."
“Wait.”, the black rat replied, she spoke with a slight exotic accent that suggested she was Latino, “Are you the emperor Ublaz I’ve heard so much about?”
“That I am. Why?”
"An exotic accent, huh?" Mara shook her head. "Assuming that Redwall takes place in the Middle Ages, an accent like that would be nonexistent. What, exactly, is a 'Latino' accent, anyway? A Mexican who speaks English as a second language will have a different accent than, say, a Puerto Rican or an Argentinean. Yeesh." Mara tossed her hair behind her shoulder. "It's bad when Sues pretend to be gypsies, or some other supposedly exotic ethnic group, but when they're dealing with a group that's so diverse and so common, it's best if they know what they're talking about."
Isaiah grinned. "You're not taking this personally, are you, Mara?"
He started but at that moment he felt her slap him hard across the face.
The agents looked at each other. There was a long silence. The air filled with tension.
At last, Isaiah spoke. "One of us has to say it."
"I'm afraid you're right, Isaiah."
"So, which of us will it be?"
"You can go ahead."
A pause. Then Isaiah spoke in an 'exotic' Jack Sparrow accent.
"I'm not sure I deserved that!"
Both agents breathed a sigh of relief. It was hard to be away from the PotC fandom, as aggravating and mind-numbing as it could be.
Almost as mind-numbing, however, was the complete shock that Ublaz had upon being slapped by a girl.
"And that makes him lost for words?" snapped Mara. "He appointed Sagitar as chief Trident-rat, for goodness' sake! I don't know why he'd suddenly be biased against females."
One of the most annoying traits of Suedo-feminists was their ability to manufacture misogyny in an otherwise egalitarian universe in order to "prove" that they were as good or better than men, when in fact there was nothing to prove at all, except that they were deficient characters.
He opened his mouth to speak, but she beat him to it.
“Now heed my words, emperor.”, she leaned in close to him, her tone dangerous, “Rasconza will put an end to your tyranny. I’ll make sure of it.”
"He's fairly trembling in his shoes, I'm sure of it," said Isaiah. "What's the CAD reading? Never mind, I'll check it." He brought out the Analysis Device. "Oh, dear. He is trembling in his shoes. 78.48 % Out of Character."
Mara cringed. "I never thought I would feel sorry for that creature. Come to think of it, I still don't. But I'm as close to pitying him as I've ever been. What's the Sue's name, Isaiah?"
Isaiah rolled his eyes. "Rinj, can you believe. No Suefic is complete without the oddball name."
Mara shrugged. "It's no worse than Ublaz."
"Yeah, but aren't protagonists supposed to be named after flowers, trees, and the like?"
"She's consorting with Ublaz, and she's a rat," Mara pointed out. "I highly doubt she'd be called Honeysuckle, or whatever goodbeast names are out there. We have to leave it out of the charge list."
"Rinj," Isaiah muttered to himself, dissatisfied.
"I know, I know. And hey, I'm beginning to hate the sight of her emerald eyes already."
"More than Rasconza employing spy-cameras to be a Peeping Tom?"
"Yes. Look, she's described as 'slim' and 'gorgeous'. I'm charging for trying to apply human standards of beauty to a rat."
"Still...you can't tell me you hate her more than the computer screen, or the fact that Ublaz's palace now suddenly has electronic gates."
"Well..."
"Or the fact that Romsca wants to be a secretary?"
"Urgh. Okay, that one rankles...hello, what have we here?"
A file popped up on the screen, it said “Urgent message from: (Barranca’s e-mail address, god knows why).” Clicking the “read” button, she scrolled down the message, and this was what it said:
OMG! U’LL NEVER BEELEEVE WAT RINJ + ME SAW ON THE SPY-CAMERAS
"Aaaargh!"
"Aaaargh!"
Both agents covered their ears in pain as the hideous chatspeak hit them. Fortunately, although they were reading over Romsca's shoulder, the hideous mischaracterization (the Analysis Device showed a 92 % canon breach) made Romsca obsessed with this unimportant piece of information.
As Mara and Isaiah got their bearings again, they simultaneously reached for their pens.
"I don't even know where to begin," Isaiah muttered.
"And there's more of that coming up, you can be sure."
Isaiah groaned. "Isn't there a fast forward button?"
"Well, we can portal to the next author's note," said Mara.
"I think the phrase 'out of the frying pan and into the fire' fits this situation, don't you?" Isaiah sighed. "We might as well."
There was a brief tug, and they were off.
When they landed, though, they found that the chapter was still going. The DTE agents looked at each other in confusion.
"Maybe the Words can tell us something." Isaiah squinted at them. "Aha! Look, we came in at the last paragraph. The author forgot to hit the 'enter' key."
She stifled a giggle. Ublaz sounded like such an evil villain-a hot one at that.
Sagitar. Canon. Female. Out of Character 602.2! The CAD made a sobbing noise.
She had no clue what he was planning but one thing was for sure. Something sinister was afoot, and Detective Sagitar Sawfang was on the case.
To be continued…
"No, no, don't continue it," pleaded Mara. "This is a great stopping point, don't you think, Isaiah?"
The agent wasn't paying attention. He was staring at the Words. "She says it's going to be an interested chapter! Noooo!"
"Oh, relax. Authors usually say that to market their fics, although usually they say it a little more coherently. See? Episode Six is called..." Mara didn't finish her sentence.
Episode 6: the one with the “skinny dipping”.
There was a pause.
"Mara? Remind me never to listen to anything you say, ever, ever, again."
The agents were once again huddled in the shadows, disguised as vermin. Rinj the "corsairess" was attempting to seduce Ublaz.
“All you have to do”, Rasconza had said, “Is work your little seductive spell on him so he,” he grinned mischievously, “ lost in your deep emerald eyes, will accidentally let his plot slip.”
Frantic, she had come up with a hasty excuse she hoped would satisfy the captain.
“But what if it doesn’t work?”
“ I bet there’s not a single guy on Sampetra who can resist you”, she felt her face burn at the complement, “If this doesn’t work, you can skin me alive and tell everyone Groojaw’s my gay lover.”
"Uh oh," teased Mara. "Not a single guy? Looks like you're a prime candidate, Isaiah."
"If you're trying to get me to listen to you again, it's not working." Isaiah's eyes were trained on the Sue, but in no universe could his look be mistaken for anything other than revulsion. "I hate emerald eyes with a passion."
"Though Quen's emerald skin doesn't seem to bother you."
"Still not listening!"
The Sue, fluttering her eyelashes prettily, attempted to extract information from the emperor. Mara and Isaiah both watched, slumped in defeat, as the Sue magic began to work.
Or did it?
Rinj, instead of entrancing Ublaz with her emerald eyes, became lost in the emperor's own hypnotic stare. The CAD, which hadn't stopped sobbing, finally began to quiet down as Ublaz turned her own trick against her. He made her tell him her own plan, and then watched as Barranca shoved the Sue off the jetty and into the water.
Mara's jaw dropped. "That was...unexpected."
Isaiah, wearing an identical expression, could only nod. "So the Sue isn't so Sueish, after all."
"Eh, she's still a Sue, just not a bad one."
Isaiah looked disappointed. "We can't kill her, then?"
Mara smirked. "Of course we can. We're not the Department of Mary Sues; we're the Department of Technical Errors, and this entire story is a perpetrator. There are enough grammatical mistakes and historical inaccuracies to keep a hundred proofreaders busy for a decade."
"Mmm, true." Isaiah watched with amusement as Rinj was rescued, half-drowned, from the sea. Ublaz attempted to resuscitate her. "Oh, great. Contrived CPR, I take it?"
Mara bit her lip to keep from laughing. "Not quite."
“Hemlic manoeuvre?”, he asked dubiously.
Isaiah looked at his partner. "You've got to be kidding. He's going to give her the Heimlich maneuver? But...that doesn't help someone who's drowning. That's designed to help choking victims!"
Mara shook her head patronizingly. "No, no, no, Isaiah," she said patiently. "It's not the Heimlich maneuver...it's the Hemlic manoeuvre. My turn for filling in the wrong word!" she said cheerfully. "Let's see, what spell-check correct word could we substitute here? Oh, it's too easy." She pressed her keypad. "Heh heh."
Isaiah watched in fascination as Ublaz gave the Sue the Hemlock Manoeuvre. "Nice going."
"Thanks. Now let's portal before he actually does give her CPR."
"Sorry, no can do. We have some Fangirl Spanish coming up."
"Oh, we can't possibly miss that!" said Mara with fake enthusiasm.
“Get off me puerco, pig!”, the Latino rat pounded on the young emperor’s chest fiercely with her fists, trying to throw him off.
"¡Dios mío!" exclaimed Mara sarcastically. "¡Tienes tanta soltura con la lengua española-conoces una palabra que se puede buscar fácilmente en un diccionario! Es lástima que no puedas usar correctamente la gramática simple, ni siquiera la forma correcta de tu orígen. Se debe usar la forma femenina de 'Latino', enemiga mía."
"I'm not going to pretend that I understood that," said Isaiah, "but I'll add that calling Ublaz a 'pig' in a world where animals rule is probably not the best way to insult him."
Her eyes were kindled with defiance as she spat “Callabero is what you think you are, Mad-eyes, a gentleman. But you are far from it.”
Mara made a choking noise.
Isaiah thumped her on the back. "Mara? You okay?"
The agent shook her head, trembling with either rage or suppressed laughter. Isaiah, expecting an explosion any moment, wisely stepped back.
To his relief, Mara quieted down.
"What did she say?" Isaiah asked curiously.
"Our oh-so-defiant and witty Latina? Oh, she said a pile of gibberish. She meant caballero, not callabero." Mara snorted. "A mistake that no native Spanish speaker would ever make."
Isaiah, who was looking ahead at the rest of the fic, gave a groan. "Brace yourself, Agent! There's another one of Barranca's e-mails coming up shortly!"
The agents waited in silence, pens poised.
OMG! Guess wat I saw when I went 4 a stroll on da jetty! No, not Rasconza making out with Sagitar again. RINJ SKINNY DIPPING WITH UBLAZ! Spread the rumour 2 every1 u can, or else
Barranca.
[Barranca. Canon. Male. Out out out out out of Character! HELP! SOCORRO! HELP!]
Mara's Canon Analysis Device flickered and died. She banged it against a stanchion. No effect.
"Oh, that is it," said Isaiah angrily. "Let's get this Sue."
"Let's get this fic," said Mara. "Lots of what went wrong had nothing to do with her."
"Really?" Isaiah eyed the Sue. "Somehow, I think when she's gone, and there's no reason for any of this OOCness, the canon will re-assert itself."
"I'll take that chance if you will. Only, we'll have to make sure to cleanse Sampetra of as much of this technology as we can. Now..." Mara looked thoughtful. "What would kill a corsair rat?"
Isaiah smiled dangerously. "I know just the thing."
Beepbeepbeepbeep!
"It's my personal phone number," Ublaz said apologetically. "I'll answer it."
"Rinj," said a strange voice on the other end.
The emperor narrowed his eyes. "Seems that someone's calling you, little lady."
The feisty "corsairess" growled. "I'm busy!" she said. "Who is this?"
"We are the Protectorz of the Plot Continuum," said the voice. It sounded like a very gleeful male lizard. "I have vital information for the future of your plan."
Rinj pressed her ear closer. "Yes? What is it?"
"Zadly, your pathetic zcheme will never be completed. Furthermore, you are charged with being a Mary Zue, with having bad author'z notez, with making Zagitar wear ztilettoz, with making her into a pathetic and lovelorn idiot, with making her zo ztupid that we could zneak up on her and zteal her weapon, with bringing all zortz of modern technology into the Redwall Univerze, thereby cauzing Level 9.5 Cultural Contaminationz and Level 8 hiztorical inaccuraciez, with uzing bad Zpanish and bad zyntax, ezpecially cauzing Barranca to write in chatzpeak, with having emerald green eyez, with being a corzairezz inztead of a corzair, with zeducing Ublaz, with zlapping him without retribution, with inzulting him without getting thrown to the lizardz, with making him afraid of you, with interfering with the perzonalitiez of canon, ezpecially Razconza and Romzca, and with being the mozt beautiful creature that Ublaz haz ever zeen."
Rinj shook her head, openmouthed. What bizarre nonsense was this?
"For theze crimez," continued the voice, "we are about to bombard thiz jetty uzing the Canon Catapult. Don't look for uz, becauze we're well out of zight. If you're lucky, you'll drown. If you're lezz lucky, we'll poke you with Zagitar'z trident. And," there came the sound of wheels turning, "if you put up any zort of ztruggle, I'm afraid we'll have to eat you."
CRASH!
Multi-phase Canon balls soared in one after another, landing perfectly on target. The effect was not quite what the agents had anticipated. The Canon balls did not really collide with anything; they sort of slid through reality, leaving trails of clear dust along the way. Unlike before, when the agents shot a Sue out of the Canon Cannon, Rinj did not explode. Instead, her beauty withered and the glare from her eyes softened. She had been canonized: she was now ugly, craven, and stupid, no more noticeable than any other vermin on Sampetra. A Canon ball also targeted each character that was supposed to be there, ridding them of their horrible modern attire and bad vernacular. Each error disappeared in a puff of logic, and when the dust settled, it really was Sweet Sampetra once again.
"Cell phone?"
"Check."
"E-mail?"
"Check."
"Electronic gates?"
"Check."
"Computer?"
"Check."
"Spy cameras?"
"Check, check, and check."
"Miscellany?"
"Check."
"Phew!" Isaiah wiped a bead of sweat off his forehead. They had dispensed with their disguises and were now cleaning up. "The Canon Catapult doesn't erase technology very well, does it?"
"Perhaps because it is a piece of technology, itself. Or maybe it needed a direct hit." Mara patted the catapult affectionately. "The Canon Cannon will always be a favorite of mine, but this baby works just fine, too. So, now that all of the advanced technology is gathered up, what do we do with it?"
She nodded in the direction of a huge pile of electronics.
Isaiah shrugged. "Maybe we should try again?" He set the coordinates and together, the agents eased the catapult arm back.
"Ready...go!"
A sphere of Canon soared through the air. Instead of sailing through the pile to the sea, the ball broke apart over the technology. A few sparks shot into the air.
Isaiah tsked. "Guess we'll have to do this ourselves. Wait a minute. What's that?" He pointed to a dark space that was growing in the center of the pile. "Uh-oh. Mara? I think the Canon ball reacted with the modern-day equipment."
Mara looked at the hole in trepidation. "It's growing very fast. Maybe we should portal out of-wha!"
Isaiah had a minute to think, A black hole of logic! before he was yanked forward, too.
Evidently, the Canon Catapult would need a few more modifications before it was ready for another adventure.
____________________________________________
The gravity caused by the black hole pulled both agents towards it inexorably. The agents might have been lost forever, had not there been a call to the Department of Technical Errors near the other side of the black hole.
All roads lead to Headquarters, even if the travelers tend to get lost along the way.
Agent Mara and Agent Isaiah! There is a new agent who says she wants to join the DTE. The Uncommon Comma attempted communication through telepathy. Normally, a department head would just have sent a memo, but since the Comma had no arms, no legs, no mouth, and no secretary, it was a bit difficult to attempt any other form of communication.
It was surprised when it received no answer. Using thought-speak to command the computer, the Comma did a search for the agents and discovered they were in a story, which was steadily collapsing in on itself. Startled, the Comma realized that it was a story that it hadn't sent the agents into yet.
The black hole had reached back in time.
i They must have compiled the charge list already the Comma mused. It then took a close look at the readout. Oh, my. I had better get Grammer here to help with this. It is going to be tricky.
Using a chain of punctuation and one of Grammer's knitting needles, the DTE heads managed to extricate Mara and Isaiah from eternal oblivion. Unfortunately, they were both recovered unconscious.
The Uncommon Comma stood over them, frowning. While Upstairs sorts out the time jump, we'll put them back where they were supposed to be at 0:400 this morning. Make sure Isaiah still has some symptoms from his grammasite attack. Fortunately, they were both asleep at that time, as well as anyone who might have seen them vanish for the amount of time that the PPCing took place. They will probably write off the whole experience as a dream, but that is not our concern. Gram, remove all traces of this PPCing. Then, we can try to forget this fiasco, yes?
Grammer merely grinned.
That morning, Mara woke up suddenly. The first thing she saw was a newly modified CAD. By the device was a note, as she thought, from Techno-Dann.
Grammer could forge any handwriting.
Mara propped herself up and thought she'd skim through it before fetching Isaiah from Medical.
Here's the update you requested. The Author Alert Analysis Device is a little blue light on the regular CAD...
The End
Continue to Mission 10
________________________________
Mara tapped her new CAD in satisfaction. Actually, she reminded herself, it wasn't a new CAD-just one with a new modification. She could imagine it was new, though, and that was what mattered.
She then shook it-it wouldn't do to have a fragile CAD on a mission-and banged it across her desk for good measure. A couple of paper clips vibrated off the edge of the desk, drawing Isaiah's attention away from the far corner of the room. He was one for three in his attempts to feed Moordor a slice of bacon.
"So what's the little blue light for?" Isaiah asked. The Department of Technical Errors had finally bribed-er, convinced-Techno-Dann to update their Analysis Devices. They had been trying for months to get a special CAD that would help them detect grammar errors ahead of time, but in Headquarters anything 'special' was put at the very bottom of the to-do list. With their luck, the new devices would be ready just in time for the agents' retirement.
"Author Note Alert device," Mara said. "It's just a small modification, albeit an important one, since the PPC usually sticks to the fic itself. But you know how it is with us...sometimes, the worst grammar is in the author's notes. The Uncommon Comma approved, probably figuring that the more badness we could catch, the better."
"It also pays to be on friendly terms with Techno-Dann," Isaiah pointed out. The DoSAT agent would often make minor repairs and alterations that Makes-Things would refuse to be threatened or coerced into doing. "Should I also surmise that we need this device for our next mission, in particular?" He narrowed his eyes at Mara.
Mara smiled innocently. "Maaaaybe. Maybe we could also use the Canon Catapult he designed for us last week."
"Great. More Pirates of the Caribbean Suethors conversing about how much they 'luv' the 'hott' Jack Sparrow," Isaiah spat.
"Nope. New fandom."
"' I'm so sugar high and it's, like, one in the morning, but don't be hatin' on me for my bad writing!'" Isaiah mimicked sarcastically.
"Isaiah. New fandom."
"' Me: I'll stuff you in a closet and tie you up, savvy! Jack: Why's all the rum gone? Ehehehhe!' Oh, how I wish I could-"
Mara shook her head. Isaiah wasn't always ready to rant, but when he got going, he could be quite persistent. Pragmatic as usual, she went over to her computer console and typed the words WE ARE PPCING IN A NEW FANDOM in bold, 72-point font. Then she grabbed a fistful of Isaiah's hair and jerked his head down so that he was at eye level with the computer.
"Ow! Mara, let-hey, we're PPCing in a new fandom?"
"Yes. Redwall, to be exact. Are you familiar with it?"
"Uh...kind of. It was a long time ago."
"Tell me about it."
"Why did we get the fic?"
"The mission was up for grabs." Mara smiled sweetly. "In other words, personal grudge. The Sue is Hispanic, though there are plenty of technical errors as well, believe me."
Isaiah stared at her. "Hispanic. Um...how? Real-world geography doesn't apply to Redwall."
Mara's smile widened. It looked painful. "That's what we'll find out."
Isaiah folded his arms across his chest. "I love how you ask my permission before doing this."
Rather than argue, Mara replied, "So, you'll get to pick the next mission. What, are you afraid of turning into a field mouse?"
Isaiah shook his head. "No, just afraid of you picking which missions-by-request we get ourselves into. Remember the last one you decided to put us on? The one that involved Mary Sues beating Middle-earth's finest warriors at volleyball?"
Mara sighed impatiently. "I'll partner with Rosie if you really want me to."
Isaiah gave her a dirty look.
The female agent threw up her hands. "What do you want me to do? The paperwork's already been processed."
Isaiah considered. "I want you to watch Gordor for me while Quen and I go to Al's Wait and Eat the day after tomorrow. And a little more notice next time, if you don't mind."
"Done." The agents shook hands.
"How is Quen doing?" asked Mara, trying to sound nonchalant. "Didn't you see her yesterday, with the grammasite episode?"
"I...don't remember." Isaiah frowned. It was strange...everything before he entered Mara's quarters to prepare for the mission had gone fuzzy in his mind. "Must be the Bleeprin. It's making me senile. Let's just do this PPCing so I can visit her later."
Mara nodded in agreement, and straightaway both agents shouted at the computer. "Portal!"
_________________________
Hey pplz
The blue light began flashing wildly at the author's note.
I know everyone is out of character but that’s what makes it funny!
"Oh, har har," said Mara. "I'm dying with laughter. By the way, Recruit-"
"I'm not a recruit! I've been PPCing for months now!"
"-The title is 'Sweet Sampetra.' According to the hideous note, we're within Pearls of Lutra before the final battle takes place."
Isaiah pointed to the Words. "Why is it called Season One? Is this a television show?"
Mara snorted. "Sounds like it. I don't think we can charge her for it, though. The Redwall universe, being a world of talking animals, measures time by seasons. This might have nothing to do with television."
Episode 1
Isaiah raised an eyebrow.
"Or I might be getting too optimistic," Mara said sheepishly.
Sagitar Sawfang stood on the jetty looking out to the seemingly endless stetch of ocean before her, nervously pawing at the hilt of her trident.
Isaiah considered the 'endless stetch' before him. He and Mara were disguised as black-backed seagulls, a fact which was very annoying, as they had to memorize their charges. Fortunately, it also afforded them an interesting view of the jetty and the...whatever it was.
"You know what we have to do," Mara said resignedly.
Isaiah nodded. "Find the next closest words and pick the one we like best. Too bad our thesaurus is down there among the rocks. Uh, let's see. Stetch. Stitch, stretch, sketch-"
"Stench!" chimed in Mara.
"Oh, great," Isaiah groaned. "The universe heard you." The agents were now overlooking a seemingly endless stench of ocean. "Smells like putrid squid or something."
"At least we're seagulls. They like refuse. What puzzles me is why Sagitar is pawing at the hilt of her trident. Swords have hilts; tridents have hafts."
"Really." Isaiah squinted against the sunlight, looking at Sagitar in disbelief. "I overlooked the pawing and focused on her WALKIE-TALKIE!"
To his right, Isaiah heard a strangled screech. Apparently, she hadn't seen it.
"It's in her pocket, Mara. Yes, I'm sure. A walkie-talkie...on Sampetra."
“Whoa, chill Sagitar. Its only me”, reassured Rasconza.
“I’m calm!” she burst out, and then realized how un-calm that sounded and felt her cheeks burn in embarrassment. She was glad the Rebel Crew had such low-tech walkie-talkies, so Rasconza wasn’t able to see her face.
"We have Level Nine cultural contamination here. Don't forget it, for when we have hands again. Man, I hate being animals."
"Come on. This is better than orcs."
"I miss my fingers."
"I miss Canon more. You know, the place where there was no such thing as a 'chill Sagitar.'"
True to the Words, Sagitar now looked like she had stepped out of a refrigerator.
Isaiah clicked his beak in frustration. "She wasn't such a coward, either! This fic mentions her nervousness once every couple of sentences. And feeling guilty? Dude, she's a villain!"
"Well, here she's just trying to usurp Ublaz. Not inconsistent with villainy, or with Sagitar's actions at the end of the book. Ooh! Remember to get charge for her 'risking her ass'. Also, for-argh! No, no!"
“All you need to do is when Ublaz orders you to leave his castle sneak off to the rebel crew and when the time comes to reveal your treachery and I say “Unveil yourself for the Mighty Ublaz” be all cool and freaky and pull off your hood so he can see your face” Rasconza paused as though thinking it over.
"Cool? FREAKY?!" screeched Isaiah. There was one advantage to being a gull-the characters couldn't overhear them. That was good, because if Isaiah's yelling at "freaky" was loud, his exclamation at the word "tropical-ness" fairly rent the air. Meanwhile, Mara was flapping agitatedly as Sagitar attempted to hang up a walk-talkie. Since it was, in fact, a walk-talkie and not a telephone, Sagitar ended up hanging the entire device on a coat hook that had appeared out of thin air.
That, unfortunately, was not the worst of the historical inaccuracies.
...it seemed everyone on Sampetra thought Groojaw was crazy because of his strange obsession with making bombs and blowing up stuff.
Ploosh! Ploosh!
There came the sound of two birds hitting the water from sheer shock. A bomb in the Redwall fandom was like a nuclear warhead showing up at Troy.
Abruptly, Mara and Isaiah reverted to their human form, Mara clutching a soggy pink memo. A moment later, they were disguised as flying fish and heading towards Sagitar and Rasconza once more.
"Cultural contamination..." Isaiah dived under the water and surfaced "...must be at ten now!"
"Or off the scale," Mara added before ducking briefly under.
“I do not have feelings for Ublaz, okay?” she lied even though she knew she was a terrible liar. She tried to think up a witty comeback. “You’re…you’re probably just saying that because you’re jealous of him!”
“Me, jealous of Ublaz? Not a chance. The only reason why he’s the chick magnet he is is because he’s swimming in money and he’s got a six-pack.”
The agents unsuccessfully tried to make their fins cover their ears as the dreadful slang hit them full force. While inhabitants of the Redwall universe did have strange accents or mannerisms, none of them included the slightest hint of Modern Teenager.
"How could a pine marten have a six-pack, anyway?" Isaiah wondered.
"He couldn't, unless it were a literal six-pack and he got stuck in those plastic loops." Mara tried to shake her head, which only served to make her veer off course. "Let's skip ahead to...ah, here we are. Episode Three: The One with the Hot Corsair Chick."
"That's wonderful, except that I can't press the portal button without hands."
"Erm..." Thankfully, the disguises changed a few minutes later, when the scene shifted back to the land. It wasn't an improvement; someone named Craig the Trident-rat was ogling Sagitar, who had decided to wear pink stilettos.
"Um, hello? No-nonsense commander? Seasoned warrior? She's not a supermodel!" Isaiah hissed. "You're right, Mara, we should portal. Let's get this one over with quickly."
Mara was only too happy to oblige.
"Are there any charges that we missed back there?" she inquired.
Isaiah put on his reading glasses and looked at the Words. "There seems to be a relationship going on between Rasconza and Sagitar. That's...interesting. I mean, they do join forces at the end of Pearls of Lutra to go after Ublaz, but since they both end up killing each other, I'd have to vote 'no' on any hint of romance between them."
"Sometimes, I'd like to get inside the heads of these authors and see what makes them tick," Mara said thoughtfully. "Then again, I probably don't want to know why someone read the book and came away with the image of Sagitar as a 'total ditz and drama-queen.'"
"Or the two of them having an affair in the captain's cabin," Isaiah added, pointing down to the offending line.
The news of what happened in the Captain’s Cabin spread like a chain letter through Sampetra.
"Spread...like a chain letter?" Isaiah and Mara struggled valiantly to muffle their laughter. As they watched, a roll of parchment that was evidently a chain letter began to unfold...and unfold...and unfold, spreading across the deck and fanning out over the ocean.
Tears streaming down their faces, the agents staggered about the deck, paying little attention to the heaving of the ship. Naturally, they both ended up on the floor, all but incapacitated from laughter.
"P-p-portal! Ahahahaha-"
Thunk!
The agents landed inside Sampetra's fortifications, where Ublaz was busy sneaking up on the Mary Sue. The agents, knowing Ublaz's volatile temper, stayed well out of the way and merely noted the description.
She was the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen...
"Oh, no!"
Mara rolled her eyes. "Yeah, talk about trite."
"Trite? Mara, don't you remember what happened when we first met?"
Mara's hands flew to her mouth. "The fusion!"
Sure enough, a shimmering began to overtake the story, starting from the Mary Sue and spreading. Two fanfiction stories had once again fused at the point of a similar sentence.
After a moment's pause, Mara frowned. "I don't get it, though. We got rid of those two stories. There shouldn't be any contamination between the two different fanfics!"
"Which means..." Isaiah sighed "...that there is yet another story that has that line in it. So very, very many females are the most beautiful, you know."
"Enough. I don't want to think about it," said Mara. "Let's just get through the rest of her description quickly, before the shimmering spreads."
Her bright emerald eyes were piercing against the silky midnight-black of her fur. It was obvious by the ragged open necked tunic she wore and her numerous body piercings (one he noticed in her exposed belly-button), that she was a corsair.
"Body piercings. Terrific. I wonder if she knows what a body piercing would involve in this era."
"About a 99.9 % chance of infection?" Isaiah hazarded.
"Yes. Along with lots of stinging from the brine at sea, I would imagine, as well as many places for an enemy fighter to grab. Imagine having a navel piercing ripped out of your skin with a cutlass!"
"No, thank you."
“Wait.”, the black rat replied, she spoke with a slight exotic accent that suggested she was Latino, “Are you the emperor Ublaz I’ve heard so much about?”
“That I am. Why?”
"An exotic accent, huh?" Mara shook her head. "Assuming that Redwall takes place in the Middle Ages, an accent like that would be nonexistent. What, exactly, is a 'Latino' accent, anyway? A Mexican who speaks English as a second language will have a different accent than, say, a Puerto Rican or an Argentinean. Yeesh." Mara tossed her hair behind her shoulder. "It's bad when Sues pretend to be gypsies, or some other supposedly exotic ethnic group, but when they're dealing with a group that's so diverse and so common, it's best if they know what they're talking about."
Isaiah grinned. "You're not taking this personally, are you, Mara?"
He started but at that moment he felt her slap him hard across the face.
The agents looked at each other. There was a long silence. The air filled with tension.
At last, Isaiah spoke. "One of us has to say it."
"I'm afraid you're right, Isaiah."
"So, which of us will it be?"
"You can go ahead."
A pause. Then Isaiah spoke in an 'exotic' Jack Sparrow accent.
"I'm not sure I deserved that!"
Both agents breathed a sigh of relief. It was hard to be away from the PotC fandom, as aggravating and mind-numbing as it could be.
Almost as mind-numbing, however, was the complete shock that Ublaz had upon being slapped by a girl.
"And that makes him lost for words?" snapped Mara. "He appointed Sagitar as chief Trident-rat, for goodness' sake! I don't know why he'd suddenly be biased against females."
One of the most annoying traits of Suedo-feminists was their ability to manufacture misogyny in an otherwise egalitarian universe in order to "prove" that they were as good or better than men, when in fact there was nothing to prove at all, except that they were deficient characters.
He opened his mouth to speak, but she beat him to it.
“Now heed my words, emperor.”, she leaned in close to him, her tone dangerous, “Rasconza will put an end to your tyranny. I’ll make sure of it.”
"He's fairly trembling in his shoes, I'm sure of it," said Isaiah. "What's the CAD reading? Never mind, I'll check it." He brought out the Analysis Device. "Oh, dear. He is trembling in his shoes. 78.48 % Out of Character."
Mara cringed. "I never thought I would feel sorry for that creature. Come to think of it, I still don't. But I'm as close to pitying him as I've ever been. What's the Sue's name, Isaiah?"
Isaiah rolled his eyes. "Rinj, can you believe. No Suefic is complete without the oddball name."
Mara shrugged. "It's no worse than Ublaz."
"Yeah, but aren't protagonists supposed to be named after flowers, trees, and the like?"
"She's consorting with Ublaz, and she's a rat," Mara pointed out. "I highly doubt she'd be called Honeysuckle, or whatever goodbeast names are out there. We have to leave it out of the charge list."
"Rinj," Isaiah muttered to himself, dissatisfied.
"I know, I know. And hey, I'm beginning to hate the sight of her emerald eyes already."
"More than Rasconza employing spy-cameras to be a Peeping Tom?"
"Yes. Look, she's described as 'slim' and 'gorgeous'. I'm charging for trying to apply human standards of beauty to a rat."
"Still...you can't tell me you hate her more than the computer screen, or the fact that Ublaz's palace now suddenly has electronic gates."
"Well..."
"Or the fact that Romsca wants to be a secretary?"
"Urgh. Okay, that one rankles...hello, what have we here?"
A file popped up on the screen, it said “Urgent message from: (Barranca’s e-mail address, god knows why).” Clicking the “read” button, she scrolled down the message, and this was what it said:
OMG! U’LL NEVER BEELEEVE WAT RINJ + ME SAW ON THE SPY-CAMERAS
"Aaaargh!"
"Aaaargh!"
Both agents covered their ears in pain as the hideous chatspeak hit them. Fortunately, although they were reading over Romsca's shoulder, the hideous mischaracterization (the Analysis Device showed a 92 % canon breach) made Romsca obsessed with this unimportant piece of information.
As Mara and Isaiah got their bearings again, they simultaneously reached for their pens.
"I don't even know where to begin," Isaiah muttered.
"And there's more of that coming up, you can be sure."
Isaiah groaned. "Isn't there a fast forward button?"
"Well, we can portal to the next author's note," said Mara.
"I think the phrase 'out of the frying pan and into the fire' fits this situation, don't you?" Isaiah sighed. "We might as well."
There was a brief tug, and they were off.
When they landed, though, they found that the chapter was still going. The DTE agents looked at each other in confusion.
"Maybe the Words can tell us something." Isaiah squinted at them. "Aha! Look, we came in at the last paragraph. The author forgot to hit the 'enter' key."
She stifled a giggle. Ublaz sounded like such an evil villain-a hot one at that.
Sagitar. Canon. Female. Out of Character 602.2! The CAD made a sobbing noise.
She had no clue what he was planning but one thing was for sure. Something sinister was afoot, and Detective Sagitar Sawfang was on the case.
To be continued…
"No, no, don't continue it," pleaded Mara. "This is a great stopping point, don't you think, Isaiah?"
The agent wasn't paying attention. He was staring at the Words. "She says it's going to be an interested chapter! Noooo!"
"Oh, relax. Authors usually say that to market their fics, although usually they say it a little more coherently. See? Episode Six is called..." Mara didn't finish her sentence.
Episode 6: the one with the “skinny dipping”.
There was a pause.
"Mara? Remind me never to listen to anything you say, ever, ever, again."
The agents were once again huddled in the shadows, disguised as vermin. Rinj the "corsairess" was attempting to seduce Ublaz.
“All you have to do”, Rasconza had said, “Is work your little seductive spell on him so he,” he grinned mischievously, “ lost in your deep emerald eyes, will accidentally let his plot slip.”
Frantic, she had come up with a hasty excuse she hoped would satisfy the captain.
“But what if it doesn’t work?”
“ I bet there’s not a single guy on Sampetra who can resist you”, she felt her face burn at the complement, “If this doesn’t work, you can skin me alive and tell everyone Groojaw’s my gay lover.”
"Uh oh," teased Mara. "Not a single guy? Looks like you're a prime candidate, Isaiah."
"If you're trying to get me to listen to you again, it's not working." Isaiah's eyes were trained on the Sue, but in no universe could his look be mistaken for anything other than revulsion. "I hate emerald eyes with a passion."
"Though Quen's emerald skin doesn't seem to bother you."
"Still not listening!"
The Sue, fluttering her eyelashes prettily, attempted to extract information from the emperor. Mara and Isaiah both watched, slumped in defeat, as the Sue magic began to work.
Or did it?
Rinj, instead of entrancing Ublaz with her emerald eyes, became lost in the emperor's own hypnotic stare. The CAD, which hadn't stopped sobbing, finally began to quiet down as Ublaz turned her own trick against her. He made her tell him her own plan, and then watched as Barranca shoved the Sue off the jetty and into the water.
Mara's jaw dropped. "That was...unexpected."
Isaiah, wearing an identical expression, could only nod. "So the Sue isn't so Sueish, after all."
"Eh, she's still a Sue, just not a bad one."
Isaiah looked disappointed. "We can't kill her, then?"
Mara smirked. "Of course we can. We're not the Department of Mary Sues; we're the Department of Technical Errors, and this entire story is a perpetrator. There are enough grammatical mistakes and historical inaccuracies to keep a hundred proofreaders busy for a decade."
"Mmm, true." Isaiah watched with amusement as Rinj was rescued, half-drowned, from the sea. Ublaz attempted to resuscitate her. "Oh, great. Contrived CPR, I take it?"
Mara bit her lip to keep from laughing. "Not quite."
“Hemlic manoeuvre?”, he asked dubiously.
Isaiah looked at his partner. "You've got to be kidding. He's going to give her the Heimlich maneuver? But...that doesn't help someone who's drowning. That's designed to help choking victims!"
Mara shook her head patronizingly. "No, no, no, Isaiah," she said patiently. "It's not the Heimlich maneuver...it's the Hemlic manoeuvre. My turn for filling in the wrong word!" she said cheerfully. "Let's see, what spell-check correct word could we substitute here? Oh, it's too easy." She pressed her keypad. "Heh heh."
Isaiah watched in fascination as Ublaz gave the Sue the Hemlock Manoeuvre. "Nice going."
"Thanks. Now let's portal before he actually does give her CPR."
"Sorry, no can do. We have some Fangirl Spanish coming up."
"Oh, we can't possibly miss that!" said Mara with fake enthusiasm.
“Get off me puerco, pig!”, the Latino rat pounded on the young emperor’s chest fiercely with her fists, trying to throw him off.
"¡Dios mío!" exclaimed Mara sarcastically. "¡Tienes tanta soltura con la lengua española-conoces una palabra que se puede buscar fácilmente en un diccionario! Es lástima que no puedas usar correctamente la gramática simple, ni siquiera la forma correcta de tu orígen. Se debe usar la forma femenina de 'Latino', enemiga mía."
"I'm not going to pretend that I understood that," said Isaiah, "but I'll add that calling Ublaz a 'pig' in a world where animals rule is probably not the best way to insult him."
Her eyes were kindled with defiance as she spat “Callabero is what you think you are, Mad-eyes, a gentleman. But you are far from it.”
Mara made a choking noise.
Isaiah thumped her on the back. "Mara? You okay?"
The agent shook her head, trembling with either rage or suppressed laughter. Isaiah, expecting an explosion any moment, wisely stepped back.
To his relief, Mara quieted down.
"What did she say?" Isaiah asked curiously.
"Our oh-so-defiant and witty Latina? Oh, she said a pile of gibberish. She meant caballero, not callabero." Mara snorted. "A mistake that no native Spanish speaker would ever make."
Isaiah, who was looking ahead at the rest of the fic, gave a groan. "Brace yourself, Agent! There's another one of Barranca's e-mails coming up shortly!"
The agents waited in silence, pens poised.
OMG! Guess wat I saw when I went 4 a stroll on da jetty! No, not Rasconza making out with Sagitar again. RINJ SKINNY DIPPING WITH UBLAZ! Spread the rumour 2 every1 u can, or else
Barranca.
[Barranca. Canon. Male. Out out out out out of Character! HELP! SOCORRO! HELP!]
Mara's Canon Analysis Device flickered and died. She banged it against a stanchion. No effect.
"Oh, that is it," said Isaiah angrily. "Let's get this Sue."
"Let's get this fic," said Mara. "Lots of what went wrong had nothing to do with her."
"Really?" Isaiah eyed the Sue. "Somehow, I think when she's gone, and there's no reason for any of this OOCness, the canon will re-assert itself."
"I'll take that chance if you will. Only, we'll have to make sure to cleanse Sampetra of as much of this technology as we can. Now..." Mara looked thoughtful. "What would kill a corsair rat?"
Isaiah smiled dangerously. "I know just the thing."
Beepbeepbeepbeep!
"It's my personal phone number," Ublaz said apologetically. "I'll answer it."
"Rinj," said a strange voice on the other end.
The emperor narrowed his eyes. "Seems that someone's calling you, little lady."
The feisty "corsairess" growled. "I'm busy!" she said. "Who is this?"
"We are the Protectorz of the Plot Continuum," said the voice. It sounded like a very gleeful male lizard. "I have vital information for the future of your plan."
Rinj pressed her ear closer. "Yes? What is it?"
"Zadly, your pathetic zcheme will never be completed. Furthermore, you are charged with being a Mary Zue, with having bad author'z notez, with making Zagitar wear ztilettoz, with making her into a pathetic and lovelorn idiot, with making her zo ztupid that we could zneak up on her and zteal her weapon, with bringing all zortz of modern technology into the Redwall Univerze, thereby cauzing Level 9.5 Cultural Contaminationz and Level 8 hiztorical inaccuraciez, with uzing bad Zpanish and bad zyntax, ezpecially cauzing Barranca to write in chatzpeak, with having emerald green eyez, with being a corzairezz inztead of a corzair, with zeducing Ublaz, with zlapping him without retribution, with inzulting him without getting thrown to the lizardz, with making him afraid of you, with interfering with the perzonalitiez of canon, ezpecially Razconza and Romzca, and with being the mozt beautiful creature that Ublaz haz ever zeen."
Rinj shook her head, openmouthed. What bizarre nonsense was this?
"For theze crimez," continued the voice, "we are about to bombard thiz jetty uzing the Canon Catapult. Don't look for uz, becauze we're well out of zight. If you're lucky, you'll drown. If you're lezz lucky, we'll poke you with Zagitar'z trident. And," there came the sound of wheels turning, "if you put up any zort of ztruggle, I'm afraid we'll have to eat you."
CRASH!
Multi-phase Canon balls soared in one after another, landing perfectly on target. The effect was not quite what the agents had anticipated. The Canon balls did not really collide with anything; they sort of slid through reality, leaving trails of clear dust along the way. Unlike before, when the agents shot a Sue out of the Canon Cannon, Rinj did not explode. Instead, her beauty withered and the glare from her eyes softened. She had been canonized: she was now ugly, craven, and stupid, no more noticeable than any other vermin on Sampetra. A Canon ball also targeted each character that was supposed to be there, ridding them of their horrible modern attire and bad vernacular. Each error disappeared in a puff of logic, and when the dust settled, it really was Sweet Sampetra once again.
"Cell phone?"
"Check."
"E-mail?"
"Check."
"Electronic gates?"
"Check."
"Computer?"
"Check."
"Spy cameras?"
"Check, check, and check."
"Miscellany?"
"Check."
"Phew!" Isaiah wiped a bead of sweat off his forehead. They had dispensed with their disguises and were now cleaning up. "The Canon Catapult doesn't erase technology very well, does it?"
"Perhaps because it is a piece of technology, itself. Or maybe it needed a direct hit." Mara patted the catapult affectionately. "The Canon Cannon will always be a favorite of mine, but this baby works just fine, too. So, now that all of the advanced technology is gathered up, what do we do with it?"
She nodded in the direction of a huge pile of electronics.
Isaiah shrugged. "Maybe we should try again?" He set the coordinates and together, the agents eased the catapult arm back.
"Ready...go!"
A sphere of Canon soared through the air. Instead of sailing through the pile to the sea, the ball broke apart over the technology. A few sparks shot into the air.
Isaiah tsked. "Guess we'll have to do this ourselves. Wait a minute. What's that?" He pointed to a dark space that was growing in the center of the pile. "Uh-oh. Mara? I think the Canon ball reacted with the modern-day equipment."
Mara looked at the hole in trepidation. "It's growing very fast. Maybe we should portal out of-wha!"
Isaiah had a minute to think, A black hole of logic! before he was yanked forward, too.
Evidently, the Canon Catapult would need a few more modifications before it was ready for another adventure.
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The gravity caused by the black hole pulled both agents towards it inexorably. The agents might have been lost forever, had not there been a call to the Department of Technical Errors near the other side of the black hole.
All roads lead to Headquarters, even if the travelers tend to get lost along the way.
Agent Mara and Agent Isaiah! There is a new agent who says she wants to join the DTE. The Uncommon Comma attempted communication through telepathy. Normally, a department head would just have sent a memo, but since the Comma had no arms, no legs, no mouth, and no secretary, it was a bit difficult to attempt any other form of communication.
It was surprised when it received no answer. Using thought-speak to command the computer, the Comma did a search for the agents and discovered they were in a story, which was steadily collapsing in on itself. Startled, the Comma realized that it was a story that it hadn't sent the agents into yet.
The black hole had reached back in time.
i They must have compiled the charge list already the Comma mused. It then took a close look at the readout. Oh, my. I had better get Grammer here to help with this. It is going to be tricky.
Using a chain of punctuation and one of Grammer's knitting needles, the DTE heads managed to extricate Mara and Isaiah from eternal oblivion. Unfortunately, they were both recovered unconscious.
The Uncommon Comma stood over them, frowning. While Upstairs sorts out the time jump, we'll put them back where they were supposed to be at 0:400 this morning. Make sure Isaiah still has some symptoms from his grammasite attack. Fortunately, they were both asleep at that time, as well as anyone who might have seen them vanish for the amount of time that the PPCing took place. They will probably write off the whole experience as a dream, but that is not our concern. Gram, remove all traces of this PPCing. Then, we can try to forget this fiasco, yes?
Grammer merely grinned.
That morning, Mara woke up suddenly. The first thing she saw was a newly modified CAD. By the device was a note, as she thought, from Techno-Dann.
Grammer could forge any handwriting.
Mara propped herself up and thought she'd skim through it before fetching Isaiah from Medical.
Here's the update you requested. The Author Alert Analysis Device is a little blue light on the regular CAD...
The End
Continue to Mission 10
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