Mission #3: To Love or Not to Love
Disclaimer: The PPC belong to Jay and Acacia. The Lord of the Rings belongs to the Tolkien Estate. “To Love or Not to Love” belongs to Flying-Griffins, and s/h/it can keep it. I certainly don’t want it.
Mini Disclaimer: The Minis were originally created by Miss Cam for OFUM. Sir Rodric Murgatroyd was found by Agent Tawaki and adopted by Agent Tomato. Gilbert and Sullivan belong to…well, to Gilbert and Sullivan. The staff of UDÉM have graciously allowed the agents to adopt Enjorlas. Les Misérables belongs to Victor Hugo, and the people who wrote the musical.
A Thank-You: Someone on the PPC Board recommended printing off the badfic in order to write the mission without needing a computer. It’s a simple idea and I should have thought of it myself, but I didn’t, because I’m not always that smart. I used their suggestion for this mission, so that I could work on it while visiting colleges, and it was very useful. So, thank you to that person. Unfortunately, I don’t remember who that person is. If anyone does, please let me know.
The Mission:
Maria felt a wrenching in the pit of her stomach as her body shifted from male back to female. She made a mental note to carefully consider historical gender roles before setting the disguise next time; getting turned into a boy was not something she wanted to do again. At the console, Crispin was fending off Enjorlas the Mini-Brick with a rolled-up magazine while he tried to read the screen. Sir Rodric egged on his new friend in a tinny baritone.
“Maria, get-” WHAP! “-this thing-” WHAP! “-off the console!” Sir Rodric leapt onto the end of the magazine and tried to pull it out of Crispin’s hands. Maria grabbed the Mini-Major General by the back of his shirt and dropped him on a bookshelf.
“You shouldn’t hit them,” Maria chided. “It’s only going to make them bad-tempered.” She scooped up Enjorlas and hummed him the chorus from “Red and Black” to calm him down. Crispin turned his attention back to the console.
“It beeped just before you came through-Lord of the Rings again. Looks like your standard Sue: Arwen’s best friend, falls for Legolas, attends the council…oh, and she’s Gandalf’s apprentice.”
“Tenth walker?”
“It might turn into one, but it hasn’t gotten that far yet. We have several canon violations and at least two serious cases of OOCness, just in the first two chapters.”
“Great.” She set Enjorlas down on a chair. “Attendez-là, Enjorlas. Have you called UDÉM about adopting this little guy yet?”
“Yeah. They say we’re welcome to him.” Crispin tried to look enthused at the thought of having two minis in the Response Centre.
“Great!” Maria grabbed her bow and tested the string. It sprung back in place with a satisfying twang. “Let’s go.”
***
I don’t own Lord of The Rings, or I would have Legolas locked in a closet somewhere so I could have him all to myself. Cause I love him! ;O)
Sitting on the window of Gandalf’s library, two sparrows rolled their eyes in unison. “They always say that,” the one on the left muttered. “Do they think they’re being original?”
Maria grimaced as best as her beak would allow. “They’re Suethors. They don’t think.” She ruffled her feathers. “Why are we sparrows, anyway?”
“It’s a small room, the Sue might see us, and birds are canon for this scene. She talks to them, apparently. They’re her ‘only companions.’”
“First charge: talking to birds.” Maria reached for some paper to start a charge list. “Um, Crispin? Where’s my stuff? I can feel it, but I can’t see it and I can’t reach it.”
“Oh. Er, I think it’s under the feathers. Birds don’t have hands, so the disguise generator won’t let us hold anything. I’ll keep track of the charges, and we can change when we get to Rivendell.”
Maria wasn’t listening; her attention had been drawn by the utter strangeness of the room they were in. It was described as a library, with bookshelves high enough that the Sue, Marin, needed a ‘tall ladder’ to reach the higher shelves, but the building in which it was contained was described as a cottage with a dirt floor. The result of this confusing description was a very tall, very skinny room that resembled a two-story, book-filled cupboard with a window.
The Sue herself was trying to get a book down from a shelf, and was having much more difficulty doing so than Maria had thought was possible. “If she’s having so much trouble reaching it, why doesn’t she just use a stick or something to knock it down? Or move the ladder, or ask Gandalf to help her get it down, or something?”
“Remember what you were saying about Suethors and thinking?”
“Right. Never mind; just add it to the charge list.”
She wrinkled her button-shaped nose and climbed down the ladder. Oh well, Gandalf really didn’t need to read her writing tonight anyways. All she had to do was flash him a bright smile and ask for an extension and he wouldn’t be able to resist her baby blues. In fact, she had that effect on a lot of people.
“You’re kidding me,” Crispin groaned. “Are we talking about the same Gandalf here?” He added several new charges to his list.
Maria whistled softly, which was rather easy for a sparrow. “OOC before he actually appears in the story; that has to be a record. Poor Gandalf.” She took a closer look at the Sue. “Hey, Crispin, is she an elf?”
“No.”
“She looks like an elf. She has pointed ears. I know some people have pointed ears, but in a fic, that usually means they’re elves. Or cat-girls. She’s not a cat-girl, is she?”
“Nope, no cat-girl. She just has ‘slightly pointed ears.’ And get this: the people in her village used to mistreat her and pick on her because her ears were pointy. They ‘made her different from the other children.’”
“That’s the most pathetic excuse for angst I’ve ever heard,” Maria said. “My old choreographer had pointed ears, and no one ever picked on him for it.”
“You had a choreographer? When?”
“Before I joined the PPC, I was in a couple of musicals. Long time ago. Anyway-”
“With great power comes great responsibility,” boomed a disembodied voice. Crispin looked around, confused.
“That’s from Spiderman. What the cruk’s it doing here?”
Marin frowned in annoyance as Gandalf’s usual saying entered her head; she didn’t think writing little essays counted as either great power or great responsibility. Gandalf really didn’t make sense sometimes.
“Gandalf doesn’t make sense, you worthless piece of Slitheen excrement? You made him quote Spiderman for no reason, and you wonder why he makes no sense?” Crispin flapped his wings in fury, wishing he could get at his weapons. This Sue needed to burn.
Gandalf entered the room and inquired about the Sue’s homework assignment. Marin immediately burst into tears and started whining about how she wanted to do good in the world and help all the little children who were being “mistreated” like she’d been and how homework was just pointless. Maria hoped that Gandalf was enough in character to tell the Sue that she was being childish, but that was too much to hope for.
Gandalf smiled kindly, understanding the girl completely. “Marin, you’re right. Why don’t you come with me to Rivendell for the next council, and be a co-advisor. There always needs to be a wizard representative at the council, and it’s my turn for this one. Do you want to come?”
“HUH?” Two sparrows stared in astonishment from the window.
“But-but-but-” Crispin stammered. “But what about Saruman? What about the hobbits? It’s the hobbits, then Saruman, then the council, right? So when did he do this? Is this after Saruman? Did they forget about it? Is this a different council? What’s going on?”
The two sparrow!agents watched in hope of seeing some sort of explanation. Crispin checked the words for any warnings they might have missed. Nothing.
“Okay,” said Maria, “We’ve got enough charges for this chapter. Let’s portal ahead to Rivendell and…um, Crispin?”
“Yeah?”
“How are we supposed to portal when we can’t reach our stuff?”
“Um. Good question. I guess we’ll have to wait until the time rift at the end of the chapter.”
“Right.” They sat on the windowsill for a few minutes as Gandalf left the room and Marin went to talk to a robin. According to the Words, there was only another paragraph or so until the time rift. Then Maria thought of something. “Wait a minute. If we can’t portal, we can’t change our disguises.”
“Well, I think I have a D.O.R.K.S. with me…which is, of course, with the rest of my things.” Crispin looked down forlornly at his feathers. “Cruk.”
“One sentence to time rift,” Maria said. It felt like the sort of situation where an annoying countdown was needed.
“That’s it! If we flew against the flow of the time rift, then we would be propelled backwards in the fic, and we could go back through our original portal into the Response Centre!” Crispin tried to look smug and satisfied, but beaks did not have a wide range of expressions.
“You made that up,” Maria replied. “That won’t work. We’re not in a time-travel compatible continuum, and you’d probably cause a paradox.”
“The Sue’s omission of Saruman-I’m going to get her for that, by the way-has increased the uncanonicity of the continuum to a dangerously high level, which could cause physical laws to be temporarily suspended when coupled with the temporal distortion of the time rift.”
“Have you been watching Star Trek again?”
“Don’t underestimate the power of technobabble!” Crispin proclaimed. “You ride the rift to Rivendell-I’ll try going backwards.” The time rift started. Crispin flapped his wings and started flying away from the window. “If I perish in a transtemporal paradox or get eaten by Reapers, you can have my matches!” he shouted as he disappeared.
*** Part Two