PPC, Az & Boston, Mission 3: Last of People of the Shadows Pt. 2
The two stepped out into a hallway to see Estel speaking with Elrond. Az sat Piper down on a convenient bench, and sat down next to her to listen to the conversation.
"She is a Wilder Elf."
"A what?"
"Estel." Elrond said as he walked out onto a balcony. "There are many creatures of this world. Some blending lead to evil."
Az grumbled. “Again with the charge for the brand new fancy elves. And charge for a stupid name.
“What’s an Orcs?” asked Piper, frowning.
“At the moment?” asked Az. “We are. In the long run? Orcs are creatures that are servant of the villain in these books. They’re… well, they were Elves who were captured and twisted. Not the product of ‘blending’.” Az frowned as Elrond explained the origin of the Sue.
"Yes." Elrond nodded. "But some lead to good. Some of the Grey Elves years ago went to the far north. There in the northern woods before the icy flats, they found creatures, the guardians. They intermarried and soon the cold advanced killing the woods and the guardians. The half elves borne of such unions were all that remained of their knowledge. They are healers and understand all creatures of this world. They were the reasoning for alliances in the times of old. They were discovered by orcs of the Misty Mountains. They were captured and forced below. They did not live long without the sun, for they do not do well within stone walls." Elrond looked at Estel. "Serenia is the last of her people so for as the knowledge of all the shadows know. Once gone it will be a terrible day indeed."
“No,” said Az, “no it will not be a terrible day. It will be a joyous day, worth celebrating, for the Sue will no longer be twisting our world beyond recognition.”
Piper turned to Boston, looking worried. “Why is she being so angry at the girl? Is she always like this?”
Boston sighed. “This is her home. Think of it like… What if someone wrote a story giving your king a sister when he didn’t have one? And made that sister perfect beyond all reasoning? How would you feel?”
“Oh.”
"I thought such creatures were myth."
"They soon will be." Elrond sighed. "They are myths to the race of man whom have not had guardian protection for nearly two centuries."
“That is not the meaning of myth!” said Boston, pulling at his hair. At the startled looks from his companions, he blushed a little. “My other self was a teacher,” he mumbled, looking at his hands.
A moment later, the girl walked out into Elrond’s Council chamber, still clad in her camouflage snuggie and showing off her waterfall hair and willow arms.
"Child." Elrond said holding out his hands. The girl extended her forearms out and her palms facing her. She then pressed her hands to her head and bowed to him.
“…” Piper turned her head to one side, frowning at the proceedings of the fic. “Does she have a headache?”
“I think that was supposed to be a greeting,” said Boston, also cocking his head to the side.
“That was just awkward,” said Az, shaking her head. When she looked back at the Sue, she burst out laughing again. Serenia-Sue now appeared to be made out of leaves. Az scanned the Words, and pointed out the offending paragraph to her companions.
Elrond looked at the woman before him. Small and delicate she looked, but she was a powerful ally, though she knew not of such things at the moment. The pixie like face was fair and delicate. Her willowy arms rested on the arms of the chair. To most it would seem that one breath would destroy the small leaf, but Elrond knew that appearances could be deceiving.
“B… Boston? … Charge… Charge… Leaf…”
Boston, working more on instinct than on his partner’s incoherent order, dutifully wrote ‘Turning into a leaf’ on his charge list. “You know, at this point, I believe she counts more as a dryad than an Elf,” said Boston, pinching the bridge of his nose.
"Child. You must find a mate." Elrond said. Elves did not hide sexuality from the young. Marriage for love encouraged and young the couple could enjoy children and each other for years. Monogamy was absolute and premarital sex was unthinkable. That was a vile practice among the race of man. Love it's physical form was intimate and for children conception, and to do so outside marriage, with another, other than one's mate, was forbidden.
Boston had to grab Az round the middle again to keep her from lunging at the Sue. “That’s not right, is it?” he asked, with the pleasant smile of one expecting to be clobbered on the head at any moment.
Instead, Az reached down, grabbed him behind the knee, and pulled one leg out from under him, sending him to the ground. By the time she was done with this, she had calmed down to a reasonable extent, and no longer wanted to kill the Sue before charging her. “No,” she said, picking herself up. “No, that is not right. Yes Elves are monogamous, no it’s not some rules-governed thing. No Elves don’t have sex before marriage, because it’s physically impossible to have sex before marriage when sex is marriage.” She glared at the girl before her. “And no, Elves are not encouraged to find a spouse young. They live for thousands and thousands of years. They will wait until they absolutely know that this is the one for them - which can take thousands and thousands of years!”
“Ma’am?” asked Piper. “You’re frothing.” She turned to Boston, with a frown. “Is there some way to get her away from this girl so she can cool down?”
In answer, Boston pulled the RA out of Az’s pack, and dialed in a few coordinates. Shoving Az through, he and Piper were about to follow her when the portal fizzed along the edges and blinked shut. Boston frowned, hit the activator button again, and stepped through, arriving not where Boston had thought they would arrive, but inside a cave which appeared to have been converted to military use. More worrying than that was the fact that, at first glance, Azrael was nowhere to be seen.
“Ma’am? What’s wrong?” cried Piper, dropping to one knee and shaking what Boston had previously thought to be a bundle of blankets, and which didn’t respond, only curled tighter and whimpered a little.
Piper looked up at Boston, her brown eyes wide and panicked. “What’s going on? Where are we? What’s happening?”
“I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know!” said Boston, who had resorted to banging the RA on a rock to try to get it to work. Out of the corner of his eye, Boston saw movement, and, on instinct, grabbed Piper and retreated to the shadows. Before he could go back for Az - the bundle on the floor was now unmistakably his partner, though she was covered in a thick cloak, and he couldn’t see her face - a tall, thin man with dark hair strode into the cave.
“Well, girl? Are you ready to talk, or do I have to make you scream again?” the stranger asked, pulling Az into a sitting position. The hood that covered her head fell away, and masses of silky, dark hair fell in coils to the floor.
Boston stared. Yes, that was Az. At least it had been, many years ago. She had been beaten, and, Boston realized with horror, was completely naked under the cloak. Az’s voice echoed in his head as he forcefully buried Piper’s face in his shoulder, still fiddling with the Remote Activator, hoping against hope that it would work. “I was created as a throwaway character. Someone to emphasize how evil a character was, and then to die when I went after him for… for something he did.”
Boston stopped focusing on the RA, instead looking up to read the words of the fic he had landed in, and cringing. This was just the echo of a fic, someone had already killed the Sue and purged the corruption, but still…
Finally, finally, after what Boston knew was only seconds but felt like hours, a blue portal popped into the air before them, and Boston hustled Piper through, to where the Azrael they knew was waiting impatiently.
“Geeze, took you two long enough. What happened?”
“I…” Boston swallowed, hard, and extended the RA. “I think it’s malfunctioning.”
The look on Boston’s face told Az that something wasn’t right. “Where did it take you?” she asked, flatly.
“A cave.” Boston reached out a hand to touch her arm, but stopped just short.
Az nodded, sharply, and snatched the RA out of his hands, fiddling with it, and opening a portal back to the woods that surrounded Rivendell. She stepped through, and her partner and trainee followed.
“Az,” began Boston, but his partner held up a hand.
“Drop it,” she ordered, all of the familiarity of the last few days gone. One fumbling hand reached into a pocket, and produced her kohl, smearing it around her eyes and over her lips in angry strokes. The set of her shoulders relaxed subtly, and she thrust her head high.
A moment later, she collapsed into giggles at the sight of the Sue. “How did she… What am I seeing?” she asked, turning to Boston, tears of laughter - hopefully - making her kohl stream down her face.
Boston squinted at the words, and laughed a little himself, though even he knew it was forced. The line Her hair, this day was braided and wrapped about her head to keep it from blocking her vision. Had resulted in, not her hair, but the day itself, being braided and wrapped about the Sue’s head.
When the girl moved behind another sudden waterfall, Boston looked at Az again, but didn’t say anything. So. That was the reasoning behind it all.
“Shh! It’s a secret!” cried a tiny voice from the Sue’s gathering basket, startling all three Agents.
“What on earth?” demanded Az, scanning the words.
Piper got to it first. “Um… ‘she moved to find a secretive mushroom that grew at the base of the waterfall behind the water stream in a cave’. Would that do it?”
“The water stream?” asked Az, skipping over the obvious Secretive Mushroom. “As opposed to the Fire Stream?” She turned to Piper. “Want a pet?” she asked, her manic grin back.
“Um… Sure?” said Piper, slightly unnerved by the older woman’s quickly changing moods.
“Good. You get a Secretive Mushroom.”
When a trio of Elves suddenly appeared on the scene, and the Sue squeaked and vanished, dropping her basket, Az set about the tedious task of coaxing the Secretive Mushroom toward her. Eventually, she settled on pulling her baggie of home-made peanut butter cups out of her bag, and breaking one up, tossing it near to the basket, to get the little thing to come out.
Az ignored the fic going on around her, letting her partners worry about that. Eventually, she had a medium sized mushroom coaxed into her lap, happily chewing on peanut butter cups. “Here,” she said, handing it up to Piper. “What’s its name?”
“Secret!” said the mushroom, through its candy.
“I suppose I’m calling it ‘Secret,’ then…” said Piper, putting the thing on her shoulder.
That was the point when another Mini-Balrog showed up. “Weston,” said Az, with another frown. She unfocused her eyes, and scanned the words, then started fiddling with the RA. “I think we can skip on to the next chapter. Just note charges for turning Legolas into a pedophile and jumping into an engagement after just a few hours of knowing each other.”
“Wait what?” asked Boston, dutifully noting the charges anyway.
“She’s described as looking like a child,” said Az, smirking. “So now we have a prepubescent leaf-willow-waterfall-rooted speshul Balrog-Elf in a camouflage snuggie.” She dialed in directions into the RA, and motioned for the other two to go through before she did. “You are not ditching me again.”
When the three got through the portal, they saw Thranduil standing in his study, Legolas draped over his head pretending to be a wig. This triggered another giggling fit out of Az, and even jogged a chuckle out of Boston. A moment of scanning and Piper pointed out the offending phrase, the elder and his hair, Legolas,
The three sat in the corner of the study, browsing the book selection, eating Az’s candy, and listening to the boring banter of father and sons. The grammar and spelling degraded a little, but there was nothing much of interest to note. When Oropher, Legolas’ grandfather, was mentioned, Az muttered a little more about knowing the tiny details and completely missing the big picture. At the phrase “The blood of the Old Ones flow through her veins,” Az knew what the Sue was going to look like next time they saw her.
“Boston? Charge for growing tentacles. Preemptively.”
“Preemptive tentacles, or preemptive charging?”
“Charging.”
A whine from the Fic Location Follower told them that they had just missed an unmarked scene break, and Az dialed it in, shoving the other two through. It appeared to Boston that the rapport that he had been establishing with her had returned, at least in part.
The trio of Agents found themselves near a picturesque little cottage in Rivendell, watching Legolas walk up a comically tiny path toward it.
"Greetings, kinswoman."
Boston pursed his lips. “May I charge for incest?”
Az shook her head. “Sadly, no. They’re not really related closely.”
When Legolas went inside, the Agents remained outside, looking in a window. Glorfindel was within with Serenia, who had indeed sprouted an impressive set of face-tentacles, and another, a small boy in ragged clothing, with fluffy blond hair and big blue eyes.
“… What?” demanded Boston, staring quizzically at the boy, who was looking back at them with interest.
Az scanned the words, and had to read three times before she caught the error that had produced the child. “She had died leaving Serenia and orphan as an infant. That would be Orphan. Come here, Orphan. We won’t hurt you…”
Part Three.