Mission #5, continued
“Why are we in a closet?” Moon asked, his elbow inadvertently going into Maria’s shoulder. “Couldn’t we put on disguises, be cats or rubber ducks or something? There were a lot of rubber ducks in the bathroom.”
“NO,” said Maria and Crispin, in unison. Their disguise generator had never functioned very well, and the last time they had turned into something without hands, it had required bending of the space-time continuum to fix. Privately, Crispin wouldn’t have minded chancing it again, but Maria would likely kill him if he suggested the idea.
[Bip! Incoming message!]
One of the few good things about Crispin’s rather annoying CAD was its ability to transmit messages from HQ, something no one had bothered putting in Maria’s DoMS standard model. Crispin scanned the message. “HQ’s in lockdown,” he announced to his partners. “Just a drill…but we can’t go anywhere in HQ but our response centre and Medical until it’s over.”
“Why are tools involved?” Moon asked. Maria and Crispin gave him a blank look. “You said something about a drill?”
“Shut up and watch the Sue,” said Maria. It was an invariable law of the universe that if a person had an unconventional background, they would never understand idioms or figurative language.
“Miss Miller,” Wicky said bowing in front of me, “I…I…need a shirt”
“What happened to the rest of your uniform!” I boomed.
“It fell in some big round bowl in your powder room,” Wickham said quietly rubbing the back of his head nervously grinning at me, “…sorry….”
“ What?!” I screamed running past him and burst through the bathroom door to find the toilet clogged with Wickham uniform, “crap!”
“Wickham uniform?” Crispin whispered. “Is that like Long Table Elrond?”
“I don’t want to know,” said Maria, covering Moon’s mouth before he could ask about Long Table Elrond. “I see three things wrong with this part. One, Wickham should be able to recognize a chamber pot when he sees one. Two, I think he has enough sense to pull his shirt out of the toilet. It’s not that hard. And three, WICKY?! Why is she calling him Wicky?”
[Bip! Another incoming message!]
Crispin checked the CAD. “Oh, GLAURUNG!” He read the message out loud: “The lockdown is no longer a drill. There is a macrovirus epidemic sweeping Headquarters, which is therefore under total quarantine until further notice. All portals in and out of HQ are blocked. Signed, Captain Dandy, Department of External Security and Doctor Fitzgerald, Medical Department.”
“What’s macrovirus?” Moon asked. Crispin started to answer, but Maria, realizing that this was going to spark one of Crispin’s geek rants, cut in.
“It’s like a regular virus, only really big. And dangerous.”
“It’s a little more complicated than that-” Crispin tried to add. Maria glared at him. “Does it say anything about what we’re supposed to do?”
“What we always do,” said Crispin. He adopted a facial expression common among many stoic heroes, which looked rather silly on him. “We kill the Sue.”
***
“HEY MAN!” I spat out running in front of him and the door, “I-I-I loave you!”
“What?” Wickham said flabbergasted.
“Yea that’s right I LOAVE you!” I snapped whacking him on the arm.
“I LOAVE you!” Wickham spat at me whacking me on the arm.
“I LOAVE you first!” I cried looking him straight in the eye.
Then, something happened.
He KISSED ME!!!!!!!!!
Maria snickered. “This is just getting ridiculous,” she said, as the Sue and the canon threw loaves of bread at each other. “When will people learn to spell?”
Crispin’s CAD let out a pathetic whimper. [George Wickham. Human male. Canon. OOC: 247.1%. For pity’s sake, turn me OFF!]
Crispin complied. “Okay, you have enough charges?” Maria nodded. “Then let’s kill her. Moon, you stay behind us and get ready to activate the portal to send Wickham back home. Got that?”
“Um, maybe.”
The agents burst out of the closet and confronted the startled Sue and the even more startled canon. “Hannah Miller!” Maria proclaimed. “You are charged with thinking that there are generals in the navy, horrendous abuse of commas, utter lack of angst, bringing a nineteenth-century soldier into the twenty-first century with no explanation, causing a rupture in the character of George Wickham, calling said George Wickham by the ridiculous name of WICKY, causing said George Wickham to lose all common sense, lack of proper spelling, really ticking us off, and being a Mary-Sue. For these crimes you are sentenced to death. Good-bye.” She shot the Sue, frozen in surprise, in the eye.
Crispin directed Wickham’s attention to the neuralyser. “Just look at the light, that’s it…” FLASH! “Right, Mr. Wickham, you are a complete cad who seduces a fifteen-year-old girl. Please walk through the portal here…there you go. So long.”
Moon had just closed the portal when there was a strange grating noise, somewhat like piano strings being mangled. Crispin, sci-fi geek that he was, immediately perked up his ears in interest. “Is that a TARDIS? Please tell me that’s a TARDIS.”
A large, overstuffed armchair (fuzzy purple to match the Sue’s couch), appeared in the living room. Despite it having no visible door, it opened, and a man Crispin recognized as Techno-Dann, the DoSAT technician, stepped out. “Hello Crispin, Maria. You’ve-who are you?”
“Moon Sonata,” said Moon. “I’m new.”
“Oh. Hi. All agents in the field have been issued a TARDIS. There’s a manual on the control panel; you’re to go to the town of PPC-HQ in New Caledonia. The TARDIS coordinator is the Corkscrew Cattail.” He paused, and his face became very grim. “There’s also a sheet of codes to make your equipment. Agents have to handle their own tech for now, as…Makes-Things is dead.” He portalled out before the agents could ask any further questions.
There was a moment of stunned silence. Moon was the one who finally broke it, in typical Moon fashion. “Um, who’s Makes-Things?”
To be continued…
Notes
iPod is the trademark of Apple. I don’t even own one.
Small Gods is by Terry Pratchett.
Maria’s Saracen bow came originally from the BBC’s Robin Hood continuum.
The PPC expletive ‘Glaurung’ was first the name of a dragon created by J.R.R. Tolkien.
A sponge is, by the way, an animal. SpongeBob SquarePants is the property of Nickelodeon and they are more than welcome to keep the Glaurunging thing.
The macrovirus crisis and the resulting quarantine, along with all events connected with it, are the creation of Tawaki. (Whom we may never entirely forgive for killing Makes-Things.) The text of Captain Dandy and Doctor Fitzgerald’s message, as well as some of Techno-Dann’s dialogue, is also by Tawaki.
The macrovirus is from Star Trek: Voyager, and is the property of CBS Paramount.