Is it an update? Why, yes it is!
Mara was awakened that morning because of her console. The console was silent at the time, so it felt quite proud of such an achievement.
The agent was busy with her recurring dream of beating a Sue to death with her own charge list when a baritone “GYAAAAAAAAAH!” pried her eyes open.
Agent Techno Dann was standing in her room, looking rather like a member of the Borg collective as every inch of his person was plastered with the latest Sue-repelling gadget. He had obviously drawn his phaser as soon as he spotted movement, and the shock of seeing Mara there sent an orange beam lancing into the wall above her cot.
“Hey, that was my Sue scalp belt!” Mara cried, dashing to her desk and retrieving a mug of cold coffee to hurl on the smoldering trophy. The mug was metal, and the noise of it clattering against the wall seemed to force Techno Dann to his senses.
He pocketed his phaser and contented himself with taking several steps back as Mara rounded on him. “What was that, eh? If the Uncommon Comma wanted a wake-up call, there are easier ways of going about it!”
“C-console,” was all Techno Dann could stammer, looking from Mara to her desk and back.
The DTE agent put her hands on her hips.
“Ohhh no,” she admonished him. “You are NOT taking my computer for one of your experiments. The last one you received ended up stuck between one and two dimensions. What’s the hurry, anyway? It’s barely 7 a.m.!”
“I wanted beat the rush,” Dann explained, recovering from his apparent shock only to be bowled over by three covetous agents.
“MINE!”
“MINE!”
“MINE!”
Two of them fastened themselves onto Mara’s computer and began a tug of war, while the third started disconnecting the device from the wall. All were apparently unaware of Mara herself, who looked from one eager face to the other, wondering if a mass breakout had occurred from the Psych Ward. But no…these agents she all knew, and they were generally respectable, as far as assassins went.
“Maybe I’m still dreaming?” asked Mara, scratching her head and watching in bemusement. Two more agents scurried in, uttering cries of, “My console!” and “Softer!” It was then that Agent Unn Lyeklea accidentally hit the remote activator in the struggle. Mara had a moment’s glance at a random PPC broom closet before she decided it was time to get a handle on things. She didn’t yet know why this was happening, but this state of affairs would not persist if she had anything to say about it.
“Barbosa,” Mara commanded her Misspelled Monkey, “Attack!”
Barbosa zoomed across the gray floor. In a streak of enthusiastic mayhem, he attached himself to agent hair, clothes, weapons, and any exposed skin. Agent Dann backed hurriedly out of the way, but the others didn’t have his reaction time. Needless to say, the intruders let go of the console and were beating a retreat towards the doorway. Unfortunately for them, Barbosa was in a clingy mood.
“Argh!”
“Help!”
“Oh, dear Eru!”
A swearing Unn Lyeklea hid behind Agent Jack Snapson, who was taller and thus presented a bigger target. Agent Drake, the third of the group, tried to draw a knife, but Barbosa pointedly grabbed it and began gnawing, showing them all just how undead he was.
“Before Barbosa lets go of you lot,” Mara said calmly, “why exactly, are you making off with my machinery?”
The other agents froze.
“The rumors were true?”
“She’s still alive!”
“Does this mean we don’t get the console? Ouch!”
“Alright, Barbosa, here you go.” The monkey couldn’t exactly be tamed, but Mara had found his weakness: an addiction to eating fangirl jewelry. Holding out a colonial locket with a holographic mermaid inside, she fed it to the Misspelled Monkey.
Mara looked at the PPCers firmly. “There’s no reason for you to want anything of mine. You do know that my console is louder than yours, correct?”
A hurried exchange of glances ensued.
“Aw man,” muttered Agent Unn Lyeklea, scuffing her shoe on the floor. “So Techno Dann tuned it ten decibels UP?”
“That’s what I was trying to tell you!” said the DoSAT agent. “Oh, good lord, someone else is coming.”
Mara dashed to the door and tugged forward the offending party by the collar of his shirt. “You’re lucky I’m not charging you chocolate for-oh, it’s you.” She let go of Isaiah, whose eyes were growing rounder by the minute as he looked at the crowd.
“They declared us dead,” Mara explained helpfully, “after our extended vacation. The only ones who saw us alive after Sampetra were Doctor Fitzgerald and our new recruits.”
“Well, splendid,” Isaiah mumbled. “At least we know how solemnly our comrades in arms will treat our former possessions if something DOES happen to us. Is that a portal to a broom closet?”
Techno Dann deftly deactivated the portal and then examined the computer. “No permanent damage,” he remarked. “Nifty desktop, though. And, uh,” he looked a bit awkward, “glad you’re alive?”
The DTE agents laughed.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Isaiah cheerfully. “But Mara, if we don’t stop these rumors, the Lobelias of the PPC will rob us of our silver spoons, or the equivalent.”
Mara envisioned a world without caffeine, and suddenly learned what it was to be confronted with true evil. “Perish the thought,” she shuddered in agreement. “What’s your solution?”
The door opened.
“Are there any of her trophies available?" said Agent Tori, entering the room slowly but not leaving quickly enough. "I can pay-ARGH! Get if off! Getitoffgetitoff!”
Mara waggled a sparrow-with-black-pearl pendant in front of Barbosa, who accepted the diversion amiably. “Maybe we should just invite the whole of Headquarters in here,” she grumbled.
A few minutes of discussion later...
________
PPC WELCOME BACK PARTY!
(for Mara and Isaiah)
(DTE)
(and Barbosa too, don'tkillmedon'tkillm
________
"I like the sign," said Agent Naomi conversationally. "Who drew it?"
"Sarah," responded Isaiah. "She found out that Misspelled Monkeys are even crazier than she is."
Agent Emma brought along a Cliffie, a wooden boy that sang Cliff Richard songs. He had been rescued from badfic, and happily serenaded the agents in return. The PPCers that weren't completely mad were usually quiet, which resulted in their being more wallflowers than social butterflies. This amused the DTE, who stood side by side in front of Mara's console, protecting it just in case. Gradually, everyone was coaxed into relaxing...some too much so. Agent Eve had spiked the punch...with spikes...and Agent Tothero, who had come back late from a mission, was snoring soundly on Mara's cot.
Isaiah gingerly avoided the spikes and dared some of the punch. He'd become old enough to drink during his hiatus, and after tasting the drink, realized that it was actually rhum.
“To Mara and Isaiah!” Agent Elcalion toasted. “May this rhum replenish your spirits and the good cheer of your friends make this a memory you will look back on with-”
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!
All doubts as to the volume of Mara’s console were instantly dispelled.
“Oh, you’re kidding,” said Mara in disbelief. “We can’t be there for our OWN welcome back party?”
Sadly putting aside his rhum, Isaiah shouldered his pack and tightened his belt. “Wish us luck,” he called to the others as he tugged Mara near to the portal. “Come on, Mara. Maybe we’ll find something to eat along the way.”
____________________
Caribbean Bell
“Belle, I think?” Mara said with relish. She loved a snigger at first sight.
“Oh, good,” Isaiah agreed as he brought out his charge list and quill. “Yet another Suefic that can’t make it past the title without a technical error. Let’s see what we have in store for us.” He put on his reading glasses and pored over the words, avidly searching for more mishaps. It had been a while since he had done this work; he was eager to get back on the job.
The Swann family would like to say that they were better then the poor thank you very much they married for riches not love, some of them used you long enough to get what they wanted and then tossed you aside like someone would toss away a piece if junk.
“Wow,” said Mara. “I’m impressed. Right down the DTE charge list it goes! Bad subject-verb agreement, misspelling of ‘than,' spliced commas resulting in neglected capitalization, switching from third to second person without warning, and ‘if’ instead of ‘of.’ That’s the first sentence, and we have enough to break out the gunpowder.”
“Mmm,” said Isaiah, mulling over the Words again. “Not to mention the seriously OOC Swann family. Ah, here she comes. Figures. She’s what the Swann family thinks of as junk...but is actually treasure. And her name is Bella Swann.”
“Well, it’s better than Salina Marie Doubou Lennox Rose,” Mara admitted as she and Isaiah found cover. Once the Sue was introduced, it was always prudent not to be noticeable, even though they were disguised as servants and not pirates.
Finally, Isaiah discovered the charge that made him draw back in disgust. “How, how?” he whined. “And NOmph!” Mara had clapped a hand over his mouth.
“Oh, come on, cheer up. She’s just a professional pirate!”
“She’s a SWANN, and this takes place only after the first movie! There’s no reason-”
They cast her aside ashamed at what people in town would think, their daughter a pirate!
“I see,” Mara said. “I get the feeling that the author is vilifying the Swanns for casting out Bella. But if you stop and THINK about what most pirates really were, you'd know that most of them are like Barbossa-evil. They're NOT unreasonable to disown a pirate!”
“Not only that,” Isaiah whispered, careful to keep his voice down. “Apparently, the Swanns have hated pirates for generations. Which really makes one question why Elizabeth was so fascinated with them.”
Weatherby Swann, the Governor of Port Royal, and Father to Elizabeth Swann.
“What was that, Mara?”
“I think it was trying to be a sentence,” the agent answered. “Uh oh, look out! Chocolate-eyed Elizabeth at six o’clock!”
“Chocolate eyes I can stand more than GAH YOU STUPIDmph!”
“Isaiah.”
“Mph.”
“Stop. Shouting.”
“Elizabeth feels betrayed when she finds out Bella is a pirate!”
[Aiiiii!] shrilled the CAD.
“We don’t need TWO noisemakers,” Mara said curtly as she turned her CAD to the lowest volume. Inwardly, she did feel sympathy for Isaiah. It was tough when one’s favorite character was 80% Out of Character and she didn’t even have a speaking part. It was even worse when Elizabeth stopped talking to her sister because of this.
Mara and Isaiah watched while Elizabeth, the future Pirate King, hated and shunned her sister because Bella was a pirate.
“Poor, poor Bella Sue was kicked out with nowhere to go. Aww. Let’s eat her.”
Isaiah hid a smile as they followed Bella’s angst-ridden route through piracy. “If she were ALREADY involved with pirate activities, I rather think she would have a ship on which to serve instead of ‘nowhere to go’, yes?”
“Dingdingding! The prize goes to Isaiah for cursory pirate knowledge!” laughed Mara.
“Maybe we should ring a bell in my honor,” Isaiah smirked. “A Caribbean bell!”
The agents tried so hard to muffle their laughter that they almost missed the scene change.
Bella had become close friends with William Turner, whom she had met on the crossing from England, she knew his hate for pirates what would he say if he found out that she was one herself?
“Friends with Will Turner for no reason,” Mara charged. “At this point in the movie, Will isn’t that keen on pirates, anyway! But you know what really bothers me, Isaiah?”
“Yes,” replied the agent promptly. “The same thing that irks me here,” and he pointed to a spot in the Words just below what Mara had indicated.
She left the town of Port Royal with a Captain without saying goodbye to him, she had grown close to William maybe closer then friendship, but as she got on the ship with the Captain she pushed that out of her mind feeling it was no use.
“Comma splices,” the agents chorused.
“The author that used ‘whom’ correctly evidently doesn’t know what the purpose of a period is.”
Bella running away from the Swanns broke Governor’s Swann’s heart, in spite of the fact that HE was the one who turned her out on her ear in the first place. To make matters worse, when the situation broke his heart, it “added tears to it.”
Governor Swann’s heart appeared beside the agents in a neat facsimile of the heart of Davy Jones. Several tears plopped onto the pulsating object.
“Um,” said Mara thoughtfully. “Quite the mental image there. Although, if there was ever a reason for Will to be cold towards Elizabeth, as he is in the next paragraph, seeing her father’s disembodied heart with tears on it would definitely suffice.”
Isaiah pressed a hand to his forehead. “Cold towards Elizabeth. That should be a charge and a half. And isn’t Elizabeth being a piratephobe, too? Oh, Mara. Our poor canon couple.”
Bella was only sixteen a girl that seemed ahead of her time, she had grown into a person that felt she was an equal to men,
“What enabled her to do so, I wonder?”
“Isaiah...she's a Mary Sue. Besides,” Mara nudged him meaningfully, “isn't that one of the things you like about Elizabeth?”
“I like that she IS equal to the male characters,” Isaiah responded, “without needing to say a word. Her actions speak for themselves. That’s far better than pushing an anachronistically feminist agenda.”
Another run-on sentence presented itself, which kept the agents busy for a moment. When they next looked up, however, Bella was entirely different. She looked…normal.
The agents looked from the Words to Bella and back again, scratching their heads and mumbling. Normal?
Normal?
“I’m pretty sure my eyesight’s getting-”
“My hearing must not be what it used to-”
Isaiah and Mara stared at each other.
“You noticed it, too?” Isaiah asked her, aghast.
Mara nodded shakily. “Yep. You weren’t imagining things. I hope,” she said suddenly, “maybe, it could be, who knows, I hope she’s not a Sue anymore…”
As normal as one can get, she had dark black hair and gray misty eyes.
Two pairs of shoulders slumped at the sentence.
“OF course.” Mara closed her eyes. “I shouldn’t have let my senses get the better of my instincts.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Isaiah gave her a friendly nudge. “We all hope that these ninnies will reform. It’s just been a while since we got a glimpse of it. And hey, her hands are still rough!”
“Sure, that really makes up for ‘gray misty eyes,’” snapped Mara, “the fact that the Sue doesn’t know what breeches are, and the ruby necklace that her mother gives her.”
“Mara, you known that no Sue description is complete without corny magical jewelry...whoa, look out! Scene change!”
Without further ado, the agents found themselves aboard a ship.
There wasn’t much of a crew, only Bella and the Captain
Two excruciatingly loud guffaws rent the air. This Sue ran a ship with only two people?
"Well, if one of them's Jack..." Isaiah postulated.
"But that was a short voyage, not an actual pirate mission! He couldn't have kept it up for days and days, much less fended off an attack."
"You're right. This Sue makes it seem like a crew of two is a regular occurrence."
Then, too late, the agents noticed that the Mary Sue had become indignant as she searched for the cause of the boisterous laughter.
Mara looked guilty. “Now we’ve done it.” The agents had disguised themselves as pirates when Bella was aboard the ship, but now that what should have been a full crew compliment had vanished into oblivion, they stuck out like sore thumbs.
The Sue began searching the barrels one by one. As several anxious seconds passed, however, the agents noticed that her gaze was becoming more and more distracted. Sure enough, it wasn’t long before Will Turner surfaced in her thoughts. Not having enough wits to concentrate on more than her L.O., Bella dropped her search attempt like a hot potato.
“Gee, Mara, what ever could her lust object be? I am being kept in suspense by this complex and innovative story!”
The universe gave a rumble.
The agents looked around nervously.
“What did she do now?” Isaiah groaned.
All of a sudden, the agents were sucked into a vortex of movement. A captain was steering the ship, he was odd, things were tied to his hair…an entire, detailed description of Jack Sparrow flashed by in record time. The colors of the world around them blurred together.
Both agents were promptly seasick over the sides of the crew-less ship.
No sooner had they emptied their stomachs than more drive-by description rocked the ship. There were plenty of commas, but full stops hardly existed. Unfortunately, circumstances didn’t improve much when they did.
An old gray coat that was probably once black but the color was fading due to all the time in the sun.
Mara patted the poor, abandoned sentence fragment and promised to find it a good home with Grammer.
"That’s the second sentence fragment we’ve seen, and with the run-ons…” Isaiah tilted his head, examining the charge list. “I’d wager I can sum up this fic for you: the author does not know what makes a sentence work.”
Which means," said Mara evilly, "that we can guess how the sentences should end!”
“I can tell you how the next one ends: with Jack wearing gray slacks.”
Mara tried to cover her eyes in horror, but it was too late. Jack’s breeches became slacks, which (along with his boots) became attached to his chest through the sloppy word order.
“Grafting Jack’s clothing onto his chest,” Isaiah charged.
Then the ship flooded, or rather, thentheshipflooded, for as the ship capsized, so did the scene. Comma splices put the event through its paces at a far greater speed than the agents were used to. When the commas were done desecrating the ship, they tap-danced merrily on the grave of the full stop.
“Are they…forming a kick line, Mara?!”
“Well, commas can’t really kick, but they’re doing one hell of a bounce.” Mara shook her head and then faltered on her feet, grabbing wildly at the railing. The dimensions of the ship rapidly shrank and she was trapped between the hull and Isaiah, who was trapped between her and the mast. The breath was driven out of her--painfully.
“Now…she…tells…us…it’s…a…boat!” Isaiah gasped, clearly as oxygen-deprived as she was. The “ship” was now clearly the Jolly Mon, but the belated description of its size meant that the agents now had no room to move.
Mara realized that the only way she could breathe would be to force herself sideways in one direction or the other. One direction would leave her stranded in the water; the other would make her fall onto Jack and the Sue.
Oh, well.
“Isaiah…weapons,” she grunted, and shoved herself out of the crush, landing atop the nearest person.
The Sue had been standing with her back to Jack’s chest, which meant that although Mara landed on the Sue, both Bella and Jack lost their balance. Bella shrieked and made a fruitless attempt to get rid of Mara.
Jack, seeing a threat to his beloved, pulled out his pistol…
….But this version of Jack, much less keen on assessing his surroundings, had forgotten that the ship was still sinking according to canon. As he pulled away from the human tangle and pressed the trigger, the water enveloped them. The ball propelled forward at Mara’s forearm, which she had thrust out in front of her to protect herself. The shot hit, but with such reduced intensity that it barely broke the skin.
This was small consolation to the DTE agent.
Mara bubbled out what was probably the name of an Aztec deity, although Isaiah couldn’t be sure. He quickly broke the surface as Jack and Bella also struggled into the open air.
Jack tried to swim over to Isaiah, but his journey was arrested by Bella, who was clinging onto him for dear life. Frantically, the male agent dove back beneath the waves and grabbed Mara’s other arm. With both of them windmilling their arms and legs, they managed to swim to a pylon of one of the docks.
“Still got my backpack!” crowed Mara as she finally drew in a breath of fresh air. “Kicked off my shoes, though.”
“You’re worried about your backpack?” Isaiah asked in disbelief, watching nervously as Jack made for the agents in firm defiance of Bella. “They’ve seen us! And your pistol is wet, so we can’t-”
“What? Hey! Hold up there, you. It’s a shilling to tie you’re boat up to the dock,” Said a man with a white powdered wig on, both Bella, Jack and the Harbormaster looked at the ship, Bella and Jack exchanged looks of, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
The Sue and Jack turned their heads at record rate to listen to the harbormaster, who sounded, due to the wretched sentence, like he was being put through high-speed dubbing. Everything fled by them so quickly that neither one had time to remember either of the agents.
ThelittleboylookedatbellawhoputherheadonJackwhopulledcoinsoutofhispocked...
Pop! Pop! Pop!
Jack Sparrow suffered an extremely rapid, extremely acute outbreak of the pox.
Isaiah, repelled by the sight, averted his eyes. "The face not even a fangirl could love. And all because there is no 'd' in 'pocket!'"
"Now they're pulling coins out of his 'pocked'...his pocked what? Do I want to know where those coins will be pulled out of?" Mara took her turn looking away.
After a few moments, Isaiah told her, "S'okay, Mara, they're just coming out of his..." giggle ”...ears."
Pause.
"You lie!"
"You wish."
"And I shall need to know you’re name."
The Sue disappeared, sadly for but an instant, and in her place stood a bright neon sign with the word BELLA! flashing across it in fluorescent green.
ThenJackgrinnedandtheywalkedawayBellawasexcitedthey'dcommandeeredshipsbefore...
"Hugp!" Isaiah and Mara strangled out as the universe yanked them by the scruffs of their necks and flung them into the next scene.
They were back near the start of the movie, with a reprise of Elizabeth waking up from her prologue-dream. For a few beautiful seconds, she stayed in character as she thought about Will, but then her eyes misted over and she began to miss Bella, as she contemplated marrying James Norrington just so her father wouldn't kick her out of the house. For no reason, it seems that Elizabeth had spilled the beans on Bella, whose, er, pastime did not coincide with her cushy life in Port Royal. Why Elizabeth had told on her and then regretted it was still a mystery.
"If I may borrow a quote?"
"Yeah, Mara, no problem. Where from?"
"Potcsues, who said this of a different Sue: the most annoying thing about this Sue is that the author grossly mischaracterizes Elizabeth, just so that she can steal Elizabeth's actual personality and give it to the Sue and thus make Will attracted to her. It's just 52 different flavors of wrong."
She knows Bella would have some sort of words of comfort for Elizabeth but Bella isn’t here now, Elizabeth saw up looking
BZZZZZ! Due to the bad writing, the story supplied Elizabeth with a saw.
"Uh-oh, look out!"
Mara grabbed at her partner's sleeve as he tried to leave the room. "She's only sawing up, not down."
"Oh, phew," said Isaiah as Elizabeth proceeded to saw a hole through her bedroom ceiling. "Nice place for a skylight, though."
"Sure. At least that makes this a little more interesting, now that the Suethor has reverted to repeating the movie again."
"'Cept for the bad coloring."
"Huh? Oh, oh, no, why did you tell me?"
“Elizabeth? Are you alright? Are you decent?” She heard her father ask through the greenish door almost a gray.
Mara tapped her pen on her clipboard. "I hear that 'terrible writing' is now a charge."
Isaiah nodded in confirmation. "Plus, there's a nice little line misquote, and what the Nine Hells is the governor doing?"
“Isn’t it?” He said slightly bouncing on the balls of his feet looking around nervously.
"Making Governor Swann bounce on the balls of his feet," Isaiah charged. The agent thought it was one of the queerest things he'd ever seen, and he'd witnessed more than his share in his tenure as an agent. Sometimes, in Suefic, it was the little things, not the big, that stuck in the mind like old oatmeal.
The author of the fic felt that sticking to third person omniscient wasn't very interesting, so she plunked in a bit of second person for good measure: Elizabeth's dress was so tight it forced you to have good posture.
The only "you" around was the agents. In an eyeblink, both PPCers stood rigidly to attention, posing with painfully good posture. Somehow, Elizabeth's dress was activating a plothole that worked like a temporary force field.
Isaiah tried to crane his neck unsuccessfully.
"Should...have...brought...the...crash...dummy..." It wasn't easy to breathe. He was sure they were missing charges.
"How were we supposed to know?" grunted a stiff-backed Mara. A moment later, their stance was back to normal.
GovernorSwanntriedtomatchupElizabethhethoughttheCommodorewasaperfectmatchbecauseNorringtoncamefromawealthyfamilywasanhonorablemanhewoulddotheSwannnameproud...
The agents spent the time falling here, there, everywhere, slipping and sliding and trying to retain their footing...and failing. Mara crashed into the wall; Isaiah tripped on the carpet and went down hard on his backside.
The governor shook his head as he came out of the splice and Sue trance, inspecting the new arrivals with puzzled condescension.
"You're new help, I assume?" he queried.
Isaiah nodded vigorously, hoping they wouldn't be thrown out.
"Well, then, I trust you'll soon know enough to keep out from underfoot," said the Governor, albeit less acidly than he could have been to such clumsy hirelings. "You will both return to your duties immediately."
Isaiah forgot himself and saluted; Mara curtseyed properly, but was ignored like a fly on the wall. She bit her lip as the governor made a muttered comment about paying a Negress to work for him.
Isaiah looked pained as they both made themselves scarce.
"Ouch," was all he said.
Mara rolled her eyes.
Trying to cheer her up, Isaiah rambled on. "I mean, as a white male aristocrat, he would be prone to saying things like..."
"Oh, please. I expected that. Had to bite back an angry retort, but doesn't everybody, at one time or another? And anyway," she smirked, "he didn't even call me the right name."
"I guess anyone with brown skin is African to a colonial governor." Isaiah paused. "We lost the Sue, didn't we?"
Mara twiddled her pen between her fingers. "Isaiah, what kind of Sue is this?"
"Sister Sue."
"More than that."
"Turner Sue, Jack-wannabe...oh, right, and she's copying from the movie. We just need to catch up with CJS, then."
"That'd be about right. Let's meet up with Murtogg and Mullroy, then, shall we?"
The agents, sure of their quarry's location, didn't deign to use the portals but instead strolled leisurely down to the docks, where Bella was busy stealing Jack's lines and calling Murtogg "a twig of a soldier."
“Well, there’s no real ship, that can’t match the Interceptor,” Mullroy interrupted, countering canon with a double negative.
Mara looked around at the other ships in the port, seeing what effect this would have. Sure enough, every one of them now looked as if it could outrace the Interceptor. Her partner sighed, shook his head, and commenced vigorous eyebrow-knitting.
They tagged along after the first movie, pausing only to charge for Governor Swann's heaving chest and Jack saying, "Wait for the opportune moment" nearly all the time ("You mean, twice?"). They jogged ahead of Jack to the smithy, not fancying getting hit with musket fire across the bridge. Dressed as townspeople, they peered through the windows, since hiding inside Will's shop at the time of his swordfight with Jack all but ensured their capture.
“Pirate.” Jack said cocking his pistol, Bella ran over, “Jack just let it go!” She said tugging on his sleeve as the door to the entrance to the shop started to open the soldiers were trying to break it down, “You! You side with him!” William spat glaring at her.
She frowned, “I see you believe my Father’s lie that I left willingly.”
"This is a serious continuity issue," Mara berated the fic. "First Bella runs away in the middle of the night to become a pirate, then Elizabeth muses on how Bella got kicked out of the house, then the Governor says she left willingly, then it's supposedly a lie! You know, Sue, you might want to get your facts straight."
"She wants it all, this one," Isaiah added. "See, she needs to be rebellious and independent, but she also has to be a victim of tragic circumstances. Only problem is, the Suethor has trapped her narrative between two mutually exclusive plot devicesssswhoa!"
The world tipped back and forth.
ShecalledWillabastardWillstoodthereindecisivelythinkingabouttheSue'sbeautyandtake-no-crapattitude.
Somehow, the agents succeeded in understanding what had just transpired. The Sue and Jack were both locked away in prison by this time, so the agents followed as prison wardens.
Leave it to a man, she thought to herself, to screw things up.
Isaiah's head snapped up. He took off his reading glasses and narrowed his eyes. "I see she wants to make things interesting," he said. "Um, Mara?"
"Mmm?"
"This girl is weird."
"No kidding."
"No, I mean...look, we can both recognize a Jack tagalong when we see one. But as much as she teases and rattles the good captain, I'm still pretty sure we're looking at a Will Sue here."
"It is unusual." Mara listened carefully to the Sue's angst, which confirmed this.
All she could think was what lie her father could have told for William to be so cold and to sentence her to death.
"Fortunately for us," said Isaiah, "we can kill her now."
"Now? Before we've seen the romance? Do we have enough crimes for her list?"
Isaiah pulled an energy bar from his pack and munched. "Look a' fa nekft line ovah. We got 'er."
They had been friends for so many years, and to her, how could he throw so many years of friendship out the door because she was doing something she didn’t agree with?
The agents feasted their eyes on "she", alias the former Will Turner. Sadly, this was not the first time that this had happened in the agents' PPC experience. They just counted their blessings that Will wasn't in the scene at the time, so they didn't have to see him.
"All 'at," Isaiah grumbled, "plush all 'ose shtuuuupid run-ons an' her title..."
”...Puts her far, far over the edge," Mara said in triumph. "Go ahead, Sue, stew yourself to your neck in angst. Have a last whine. We're coming for you."
She wanted to cry right then and there, she couldn’t express how she felt, to sit and be able to do noting but wait to die, wait till the guard came in the next morning and take them to be hung.
She wasn’t ready to die, this wasn’t how she wanted to die, but somehow it was how it was going to happen.
"That's right, thief," said Isaiah coldly from behind Bella. "It's so good of you to face facts. Even if you did insult me."
Bella turned around to confront her hard-faced jailer.
She was obviously nonplussed. When did she insult him? Who was he, anyway, to interrupt her tragic musings?
Any further thoughts were cut short as the jailer took out a key and let her out of the cell.
Bella blinked. Of course! Someone had, yet again, fallen for her charms! It was only natural.
"Hey, what about me?" Jack pouted, still stupidly OOC.
Mara locked the cell behind Bella.
"Trust me, Captain," she said. "You're far better off where you are."
____________________
"Wow!" Bella said anachronistically as the portal performed its work. "I know, I know! I'm being whisked off to adventure with two magical time travelers! Thank you for freeing me! I'll just tag along and be the center of the story!"
"Oh, no problem," said Mara. They arrived swiftly at Fort Charles.
"Where are we going? Can my Will come, too?"
"Of course he can, just not right now. Well, here we are! And believe me when I say," Mara looked down from the fort wall to the sea, "you will most certainly be going places. Bella Swann, I'll make this short and sweet. You are charged with existing when Elizabeth has no siblings, stealing Will, tagging along with Jack, turning Will into a woman, making the governor bounce on the balls of his feet while you corrupt him into a complete toad, with attempting to superimpose Elizabeth's personality on yourself and making her wildly OOC, especially making the future pirate king despise her sister for being a pirate, with giving the Governor a heaving chest and a teary heart, and stealing or mangling Jack's lines. Alsoyouarechargedwithsplicingcommastoanobscenedegreeyoumiddenheap."
She put a friendly arm around the Sue. "Now, we all know how much you like pretending to be Elizabeth. We'd like you to do that again for us. Will you do us the honor?"
"But of course!" yipped the Sue, not having understood a single word of the charge list.
"Magnifique, my dear Sue," said Isaiah gallantly. "Could you pretend to be her when she's listening to Commodore Norrington's proposal?"
"I'm her sister; it won't be hard," Bella said airily.
"Of course it won't. And I'll be Commodore Norrington," added Isaiah.
The agents persuaded the Sue to come very near to the edge.
"You look lovely, Bella," said Isaiah with a disingenuous grin. "Might I suggest moving a little to the right?"
"What, here?"
"That's the ticket." Bella looked confused at the slang, but Isaiah didn't much care.
"Now, you are supposed to be gasping for breath in your corset."
"Stupid Elizabeth," Bella supplied.
"And I turn around for a moment," said Isaiah, obligingly turning his back.
"And then...?"
"Then you faint off the edge. Don't you remember?"
There was a pause.
"F-fine," said Bella, her confidence wavering ever so slightly. "Elizabeth is nothing more than a stuck-up know-it-all, anyway. How do I faint?"
Isaiah whirled around and struck her on the head with his grapnel hook.
"Like that," he said, as Bella's eyes rolled and she went limp. True to form, her knees buckled and she slipped off the edge, much as Elizabeth had done.
"Forgot your hat," Isaiah called down, tossing it towards the unconscious Sue.
A few seconds of silence, and then...
Crunch-SPLAT!
"Sir, the rocks!" called Mara. "It's a miracle she missed-oh, wait, she didn't."
"I see," said Isaiah unconcernedly, looking at the mangled heap below him, "you don't realize the dangers of ALMOST copying the script right, Bella." He doffed his hat and saluted the corpse. "However, since you're taking your time becoming a One True Love, there is one thing I can do for you."
He marched to the center of the fort wall, right near where Will and Elizabeth had kissed. In the center, there was a small stone archway. In the center of the arch hung a bell.
A Caribbean bell.
Isaiah nodded to Mara, who pulled the rope. The bell tolled out a last lament for the hapless beauty.
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"I don't understand what I'm doing here," said a girlish voice as two PPC agents latched on to either arm.
"Decontamination," said the male agent shortly. "Ready, Mara?"
"Ready," she responded. "We can't really kill you, since you're not a bit character, you're not a Sue, and your sole offense against canon is your gender."
"Truly?" asked the lovely young woman with dark brown curls.
"To be sure."
The young lady stepped gracefully out of the portal, along with the two agents.
"You could be a recruit," Mara offered, "but that'd be...well, a little too weird even for our standards."
"Plus," said Isaiah, as the lady fanned herself, "I'm not sure you're the type...Wilma Turner."
"Wilma Turner. I like that name. What do you think of my bonnet, by the way?" Wilma said shyly, fiddling with her skirts.
"Oh, gorgeous," said Isaiah, trying not to sound sardonic. To the depths with you, inexplicably feminine pronouns!
Wilma blushed. "You're so kind." She held Isaiah's arm a little tighter, and a hunted look came over Isaiah's face.
"Not really kind," said Isaiah, struggling to loosen Wilma's hold. "We're taking you to Medical. They can sort just about anything out."
"Wonderful," Wilma breathed. Then she looked down. "I owe you a debt of gratitude."
"Uh, no. No, you really, really don't."
"I think you're growing on her," Mara said out of the corner of her mouth.
This time, Isaiah was acerbic. "How helpful of you, Mara."
"It's probably the blondish hair," said his partner knowingly. "Now, we just have to find a gender-bent Elizabeth. Maybe we'll call him Eli."
A smoldering-eyed Wilma laid her head on Isaiah's shoulder...
"Hey, stop that! Doctor Fitzgerald? Doctor Freedenberg! Emergency, emergency, help!"
The End
Continue to Mission 14
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Oh, it was fun to get back into the swing of things again. Caribbean Bell[e] was found at http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2552172/1/.
Edit: Oops. It is still up. The author identifies herself as Bella Swann. Araeph is incredibly astonished.