Mission #29: A Bad Dream, part two
Dealing with a Sue that exists in the now and in the past takes a lot of time. Part two of this mission. Part one here
A/N: Protectors of the Plot Continuum was founded by Jay and Acacia. Excerpts in italics taken from A Bad Dream by Sakara. This story has some convoluted references to slash. This mission was chronicled by IndeMaat.
-oOo-
When Tasmin and Allison returned to the fic, they took up a room in the house of horrors and followed the proceedings of the story through the Words.
The afternoon wore on, and Face and the others had no leads, and no idea where to start looking.
"Seriously? They think the Sue took Hannibal; they think the Sue is working for Arthur; and they read in the paper that Arthur has set up shop on the other side of town, or state. How many more clues do they need to come here and start shooting the place up?"
Tasmin frowned at her partner. Her eyes gestured towards the notepad.
"Yes, well, if I wrote up every instance of stupidity by someone on the Team in this fic, I would get writer's cramp."
Face pointed out to the others that they needed to find out where Hannibal was and whether or not the Sue should be rescued too. BA argued that they left no one behind. The phone in the van rang. It was the Sue. Face told her they knew she was set up. She was relieved and told them when and where to meet her at Arthur's brothel. Hannibal would explain the rest of the plan once they were inside. Then the Sue disconnected.
Allison held up her hand as if to collect on a bet. "Told you they would be going in without a plan."
The Sue had broken into Arthur's office -- apparently a different one than the Team had visited earlier that day -- and was rummaging through his cabinets and drawers to find his bookkeeping. She too found a secret drawer. In it she found lists with names of people that worked or used to work for Arthur. There was a noise at the door, someone trying to get into the office, and the Sue hid behind a curtain. She was saved from being found out by a ringing telephone.
The Sue overheard the phone conversation; Arthur wanted to be picked up from the airport and the Sue was to be killed. When the guard left the office, the Sue went out the window and shimmied up the drainpipe back to the attic. In the attic, Hannibal was having an argument with one of the other 'residents'. The Sue pulled them apart. The man called Hannibal on bad strategies; Hannibal argued that his plans always came through.
‘Not from what I heard. Word in the military is that you’re a renegade, a man whose plan’s never work the way they should.’
"Word in the military is that his plans don't work right? Even if they are still talking about a man that escaped a military prison some ten years ago, they would be talking about that fact, or what he had done to be thrown into the brig." Tasmin grabbed the notepad from Allison. "And his nickname is Hannibal, after one of the most talented commanders in history. They don't give higher ranking officers ironic nicknames, at least not if they are going to mention those nicknames to their faces."
"Plus he never would have made it to the rank of lieutenant colonel if he never got the desired result."
"One word: Lynch." Tasmin flicked the notepad back at Allison, who just managed to catch it.
The Sue deflected the argument and asked Hannibal how many weapons they needed so she could tell Tem.
"She's also not calling them by their proper nicknames. Well, Murdock and Face she isn't."
Hannibal decided that only the military people who were capable of shooting would get a gun. The rest would stay with the Sue in the attic while the A-Team and the five from the military liberated the brothel. Hannibal told the Sue she couldn't have a gun either. She accepted this and went back down to meet the Team.
The Sue undid the top button of her blouse and tousled up her hair. Then she went into the guardhouse. There were three guards in the little house already, and three more entered shortly after she did. They asked her what she was doing out there.
I thought you might wanna have a bit of feminine company.
"She should have sent in fanon!Face," Tasmin growled. "I'm more masculine than he is."
One of the men hit the Sue and pinned her down to the table. The Team arrived and the guards jumped up to take them down. The one pinning the Sue down was so distracted ordering everyone around that he did not notice the Sue was fumbling for his crotch and his gun until she pointed the latter item at his groin. He called off the other men.
The guards were in awe of BA and quickly overpowered. The Team took their guns and locked them in the guardhouse.
That made four in total from their loot.
"These guards are getting more incompetent by the minute; that's four guns from six guards. Usually it's the other way round."
"It's impossible to say whether these guards did not take enough guns with them, the Team didn't do a proper search, or the Sue just can't count."
"That last thing is obvious. She counts four confiscated guns, mentions that Hannibal wants six in total, and concludes that they need three more."
"To which none of the Team says, 'you don't count right', or, worse, 'let's get them from our stash in the van'."
"There, there now, Tasmin." Allison patted her partner
on the back. "No need to get so frustrated. What do you think the odds are that there is a phone line in the guardhouse and the Team did not dismantle it or break the phone?"
"You're not helping me relax."
The Team and the Sue make their way through the shrubbery. The Sue tells them Arthur is on to her and that he will arrive in about ten minutes.
‘What?’ Face said tripping over his own feet as they moved on.
‘What’s the matter Facie? Getting slow in your old age?’ Murdock said in a teasing voice.
"This Sue is also not helping me relax. Did you leave any chocolate?"
Allison was well ahead of her and had dug out the last two bars of chocolate from the duffel bag.
"Face tripping over his own feet," Tasmin mumbled as she chewed on her chocolate. "Face being called Facie."
"At least the spelling is original."
Tasmin glared at her partner. Allison held out the last bar of chocolate to ward her off. Tasmin grabbed the bar and turned her eyes back to the Words.
Face slipped into the equivalent of a locker room. This was a large dining room converted into a dingy locker room.
Tasmin let out a scream. "I don't have the patience for this any more. The equivalent of a locker room? If it has lockers in it, it is a locker room. If it doesn't have lockers, but employees are required to change into their work clothes there and leave their clothes behind on pegs, then it's the equivalent of a locker room."
"We already knew that the Sue didn't use the dictionary to look up the meaning of words," Allison said in a soothing voice.
Tasmin ravished the chocolate.
There was a camera in the locker room, but it was not pointed at Face. He was able to stay out of its line of view until he got to it and disabled it. In the corner of the room there was an unlocked weapons cabinet, where the Team stocked up. The Sue filled them in on what little she knew of Hannibal's plan. The Team then proceeded to go up the stairs. They encountered a guard, but he was quickly unarmed and made prisoner.
Murdock entered a room. A little scuffle followed and the Team were now prisoners of Arthur. Hannibal was already tied down to the bedpost and Murdock, who had been knocked out, was tied down next to him. Face and BA were ushered to the side.
Allison put three thick lines underneath the charge that Arthur was a bad strategist.
Arthur explained that he had been on to the Sue. Then he had her tied to a pillar. The other people from the attic were huddled together in a corner, guarded by a person with a gun on the other side of the attic. Arthur then started to taunt the Team, and cut the Sue with a knife. He was shocked to find the Sue had stolen documents from his office and asked her why she was still helping the Team after all they had done to her.
‘My name is Sofia, as you well know. If you touch them I’ll break your neck.’
"An impressive threat, coming from someone tied to a pillar."
Arthur mocked the Sue and told her she'd have no place on the A-Team. Murdock regained consciousness and said she was a friend. BA called her his little sister and Face pointed out that the Sue would give up everything to protect them. Hannibal called her a guardian angel.
Tasmin buried her face in her hands. "Just a little bit longer," she muttered. "Just a little bit longer. The Team has to be out of the attic before we charge the Sue."
Murdock and the Sue started to wiggle themselves free from the ropes that bound them. Arthur put a knife to her throat again. The Sue freed herself from her bonds and banged her shoulder into Arthur's stomach. Some more bad fight choreography followed, but the Team won and left Arthur and the guards out of commission. The people that had been held captive in the attic cheered.
The Team decided to make things final, grabbed their guns and rushed down the stairs.
The moment they had passed the door to their room, Tasmin jumped up, grabbed her duffel bag and ran up the stairs to the attic. Allison was right behind her.
The Sue was holding a gun and pointing it at the guards. Tasmin shot it from her hands.
The Sue turned around and glared at her. "What ...?"
"Sofia Pinedale, a.k.a. Butterbee, we are Protectors of the Plot Continuum," Tasmin said, grim determination marking her face and voice. "We are here to charge you with crimes against fanfiction in general and A-Team canon in particular. Allison?"
The bit characters, guards and victims alike, just stared at the two agents. Even the few of them that had a gun did not intervene. Without the Sue telling them what to do they did nothing.
"First, we charge you with crimes against punctuation and grammar. We also charge you with using words you don't know the meaning of. Second, we charge you with a whole bunch of stuff the Team would never ever do, but under your influence they did. You have been charged."
Tasmin took her eyes off the Sue to glare at her partner.
"What? I thought you wanted to get this over with quickly."
"Quickly and properly. Just talk fast."
"All right." With a sigh Allison started flicking through the pages of the notepad that contained the particular charges against this Sue. "Charge Two A, the Team are all living together to make it easier for the military to arrest them. Two B, the Team takes on a dubious mission. Two C, they stake out the place for two weeks. Two D, they go in without a plan. Two E, they only rescue you while there are plenty more people that can be rescued."
"What?" one of the men said. "They were here before and didn't free us? They only rescued us now because one of their own was captured? Those--"
"Thanks, but I'm not finished yet. Two F, they keep you and take care of you for two weeks. Two G, they don't think this is in the least bit fishy, at least not for longer than thirty seconds. Two H, the Team fails at putting two and two together when Hannibal is kidnapped. Two I, scamming a way into Arthur's uptown office for no particular reason. Two J, going into Arthur's brothel without a plan a second time." Allison looked up at the Sue. "Although, I appreciate all this going in with only a goal, ill-prepared and lacking an exit-strategy, as a pastiche of US military strategies of the past five decades."
The Sue returned a glassy look.
"That's just charges against the Team as a whole. Charges against individual members: Two K, Face scamming bad living quarters. Two L, Face tripping over his own feet. Two M, Murdock calling Face Facie. Two N, Hannibal worrying about the age gap between the two of you rather than worrying about the fact he had tortured and raped you. Two O, Hannibal feeling bad about having raped a virgin, rather than about having raped a person. Two P, after knocking out a few guards and some other guy, Hannibal locks the two of you in a room, rather than running the hell out of this place. Two R through Z, Face and Murdock in a romantic relationship for no particular reason.
"Having run out the alphabet, I will now move on to a different set of charges. Third, we charge you with being a Mary Sue. Three A, you made the A-Team behave stupidly and out of character, as mentioned above. Three B, you get enough leverage jumping out of a wet bath to knock down a man that outweighs you by at least thirty pounds. Three C, knowing the Team came to rescue you even though you were unconscious. No wait, that's a charge under Two; Two some letter, the Team not being suspicious of you. This one is for you, Three C, bad sensual scenes with Hannibal and you playing a piano piece together and you applying his make-up. And what was that Lobby Clown thing all about?
"Three D, managing to take out a guy that is BA's size with a couple of kicks in not very vulnerable places. Three E, using idiotic and improbable plot devices, to wit: placing a woman in the same POW camp as the Team; trying to capture four men by luring them to a place from which you let them escape, then kidnapping one of them so the rest can be lured back to the place so they all can be caught." Allison looked up at the Sue again. "That could have been simpler."
The Sue squinted at the agent and crossed her arms. "Anything else?"
"Some bad fight choreography, but that's about it. Do you understand these charges? And don't think too long about the answer; Tasmin's a bit impatient today. Your punishment is death and she wants to execute you."
Before the Sue could make a comment, Tasmin had shot her.
"Right." Allison turned to Arthur who turned slightly pale. "As you may have noticed, Arthur Hammerstein, I did not charge her with the guards being incompetent, as in they searched all visitors to the premises, but let the Team just pass through; guards not being able to tie nods properly, allowing people to escape from them. Those charges we saved for you. Further, we charge you with coming up with one of the daftest plans ever to catch the Team. You had them on your grounds the first time. Why didn't you catch them then? Or were you counting on your guards being incompetent and being given the slip? No need to answer that, we're not interested. We only want to charge and execute you.
"Let's see, what else have we got for you...? Having two offices which both have secret drawers where you keep incriminating documents. Personally, I would have either filed the one with the fake memories for the Sue under fiction or destroyed it. Ever heard of the concept 'hide in plain sight'?"
Arthur opened his mouth to speak, but he was cut off by a shot through the head.
"You're supposed to wait until I've finished charging."
"I was just trying to
hurry things along. It was not like there was anything big coming any more."
"A couple of charges that he did things that are listed as things not to do on the Evil Overlord list." Allison surveyed the room. Guards and victims were all staring at her. "How many of you have had speaking parts in this fic?"
Two men hesitantly raised their hands. All the other bit characters vanished from the attic.
Allison gave them an apologetic grin. "Sorry about that."
Tasmin shot them too. "That's that," she said, returning her gun to the duffel bag. "That wasn't too much trouble, now was it?"
Allison looked at her in astonishment. "Have you been paying attention to yourself for like the last half-hour?"
"What's done is done." Tasmin pulled the Remote Activator from the duffel bag and opened a portal.
"Did this fic perhaps damage your short-term memory?" Allison asked as she followed her partner through the portal. "And if it did, where do I get me one of those?"
-oOo-
A/N: I like the premise of a girl whose memories have been tampered with and she tries to entrap the A-Team because of that. That's about all I liked of this fic. The Team were behaving utterly stupidly, and so was everyone else because the Team got away with things they should not have ever gotten away with. Also, a girl in a POW camp? Not likely. In most wars civilians, even members of rebellions or the resistance, are kept separate from military prisoners. If you want the above mentioned girl with the tampered memories to be someone they knew from their POW time, put her on the other side of the fence, perhaps trying to get some food through to them.