Mission #13: Revenge Isn't So Sweet

[indemaat]

Sometimes all you can hope for is that it was all just a bad dream.

A/N: Protectors of the Plot Continuum was founded by Jay and Acacia. Excerpts from Revenge Isn't So Sweet by k9handler1969 in italics. This mission was chronicled by IndeMaat

-oOo-

Allison walked into the office making gagging sounds.

"What's with you? You sound like you're trying to cough up a hairball."

"I just ate at the cafeteria."

"So you probably are coughing up a hairball."

"I want to wash my mouth with soap." Allison walked into the bathroom.

Tasmin continued packing her duffel bag. "We got an assignment," she called after her partner when she was finished.

Allison walked back into the office, her mouth foaming with soap bubbles. "I didn't hear any beep."

"It came earlier when you were out."

"I didn't hear any beep walking down the hall."

"It came much earlier. Actually, you took so long getting back, I was wondering maybe I should have gotten you from the cafeteria."

"Maybe you should have. This soap tastes better than my last meal." Allison turned around. "Let me just wash out my mouth then we'll go."

"You're not eating my good soap, are you? You keep going to the cafeteria -- against better judgment -- use your own soap to wash out the taste of it."

"You got a portal open yet?" Allison returned from the bathroom dabbing her mouth with a towel.

"I will as soon as you return that towel to the bathroom. I don't want it lingering around the office."

"Right." Allison turned to the bathroom. She heard Tasmin open up a portal. She turned back round and saw that her partner had already stepped through it. She threw the towel over a desk chair and went after Tasmin.

-oOo-

"What kind of story have we got here? I haven't had a chance to read up."

"Hannibal got kidnapped by some bad guys."

"So what are we doing at the VA?" Allison cocked her head to look at her name tag. "Mildred R.N. At least you didn't name me after Ratched this time."

Tasmin flexed her brows in a way that made Allison ask: "What?"

"Murdock is about to receive some information on Hannibal's well being."

A package containing a videotape arrived in the mail at the V.A. hospital in Westwood, CA addressed to Capt. H.M. Murdock. Murdock received the package at about 1 pm that afternoon.

Allison checked the watch of the orderly as he passed them by. She had to run after him and stop him to get a good look at it. When she returned Tasmin was gritting her teeth.

"I was just curious about the time, that's all." Allison immediately defended herself.

"It's not you," Tasmin managed through clenched teeth. She nodded at the words.

The lovely lady doctor had the old colonel smitten. It was getting to the point that other than their cases she was all he ever talked about. The good doctor had made quite an impression on the colonel. They were perfect for each other.

"I take it you don't like the good doctor much."

"Not in fanfics."

"Well, get over it. We're not here about her."

He took the tape over to his VCR and slipped it in. He then sat down and pushed the play button on his remote. A few minutes later, with a horrified look on his face, wanting to throw up he hit the stop button, got up and stumbled over to his phone to call BA and Face.

"Too bad he hasn't pressed the pause button."

Allison gave her partner a horror struck look. "What? Why?"

"Just so we know if the image was really throw up worthy."

"I think you're sick." She shivered, trying to shake of the possible imagines Murdock might have seen. "I see a charge coming on." Allison nodded towards BA and Face rushing in.

When BA and Face arrived at the VA hospital, they headed straight for Murdock's room. When they arrived Murdock still had the look on his face that he had when he had called them.

"When I read all that I wrote them up when I got my notepad from my pocket." Allison did as she said.

Tasmin ignored her partner and got closer to the room to get a better look at the TV screen. She sighed; BA was blocking most of the screen. She could hardly ask him to scoot over. She had to read the words to know what was going on instead.

It was a video of a beaten Hannibal tied to a chair. Someone threw a bucket of water over him to wake him up. Someone else laughed in the background. The Team recognized the laughter.

They all looked at one another as they remembered and wondered how Chow had gotten out of prison. He was supposed to be there for the next twenty years, along with his drug-running buddy Tommy Angel, the prison camp snitch. They looked at one another, wondering how Chow had gotten out of prison.

"Are you sure they need us for this job?" Allison asked. "It sounds more like something for the Repetitive Department of Repetition."

"It's for us," Tasmin said softly.

"It's just that we're already a thousand words or so into the story and we haven't seen the Sue yet."

"She'll be here."

"But it's very unusual. Hey." Something seemed to occur to Allison. "This is not one of those slash stories, is it?"

"Not to my knowledge."

Allison eyed her partner carefully. "I guess, I'll have to take your word for it."

"Yes, you do that."

They could hear the sharp intakes of breath from Hannibal as the leather struck the bare skin of his back and could see his face in their imagination trying to bite back the pain and not scream. Hannibal was not going to give Chow that satisfaction.

"Makes sense," Allison commented. "Don't give them the satisfaction of your screams, just give them the pleasure of beating you to a bloody pulp. Seriously, if they're beating you to hear you scream, wouldn't it make sense to scream?" She looked at Tasmin. "It may make them stop beating you sooner, which is good for your physical well being."

"How do you know they're only beating you to hear you scream? They probably also want to physically hurt you. This way he gets to keep his pride."

"It's worth the risk. I wouldn't care what a man like Chow thought of me. But if there was a chance he'd stop beating me, I'd explore it."

"Hannibal doesn't think like you."

"Obviously."

The Team decided they must get Hannibal out of his situation, and make Chow pay for putting him in it. While Face worked on scamming a plane, Murdock went to Dr. Richter to talk about a leave of absence. He played the tape for him, and the doctor signed some forms for him.

"Murdock, do you know a medical doctor because I think you should take one with you if you do. From the look of the colonel on that tape, and that was two days ago. He's gonna need one..."

"Why would he say that?" Allison sat on the back of the sofa in Richter's office her back turned to the TV screen. Tasmin had insisted they'd go there so she could finally get a good look at the video tape. "Does he think the Team doesn't know first aid, or can't find their way to a hospital?"

"It's the Sue cue," Tasmin replied.

"I like how that sounds: the Sue cue."

"Come, we have to stay with Murdock."

They followed Murdock back to his room where Face claimed he got them a plane.

"He scammed a plane from a VA room?" Allison exclaimed.

Tasmin looked at her; her eyebrows slightly raised.

"Duh," Allison replied to her own question. "It's Faceman. He could talk a blind man into buying a used car."

Following Richter's advice the Team decided to ask Dr. Maggie Sullivan to come with them. Both agents rolled their eyes in quiet disapproval. Tasmin got out the remote activator and opened a portal.

-oOo-

Hiding in the shrubbery Allison looked appreciatively at the fatigues Tasmin had donned them. Of all the disguises she liked fatigues best. She noted her name tag still read Mildred R.N. That puzzled her a little. It was not like Tasmin to overlook such a little detail. She turned to the words to see what she had missed from the moment the Team boarded the plane.

BA's overwhelming concern for Hannibal was keeping him from thinking about being in the air.

"How sweet. In fanfics he is always so brave he doesn't need the knock-out juice."

"I guess you would have taken the sedative?"

"That, or gone catatonic."

Tasmin rolled her eyes. She produced a pair of binoculars from her duffel bag and pointed at a sweatbox inside the small encampment they were on the outside of, separated from the inside by a ten feet tall barbed fence and a few guards in strategic positions. Allison took the binoculars; they had amazing magnification. Allison could see Hannibal's face pressed against the crack of the sweatbox that allowed him to look around the camp.

"Hannibal doesn't look too hot." Allison brought the binoculars down. She chuckled. "Actually, he looks very hot, and sweaty. I meant, he looks bad."

"Of course he does. He's been here for three days. Chow's guards have been beating him for a big part of that time; all the time he was unconscious he spent in that sweatbox. From the words I can't tell whether he has received any water or food during that time, but I'd make a wager he hasn't."

"Shouldn't he be dead already? Died of dehydration a couple of days ago?"

"Medically, yes. But this is not medicine, this is fanfiction." Tasmin got two bottles of water from her bag. "Here, drink up."

Allison gave her a questioning look. "I thought you just said ..."

"I don't know whether the medical laws of fanfiction apply to the two of us. Better to be safe than sorry." Tasmin removed the cap from her bottle. "Drink up. Water should be carried in your belly not in a bottle."

Allison took this advice to heart.

In the mean time the Team arrived at the compound. They had followed one of Chow's guards. After a short recon they decided that the best way to approach the camp would be from behind the main building. Maggie would create a diversion at the front by asking a guard for directions. Face had some reservations as Hannibal wouldn't like it they got her involved.

"I don't like it either, but I'm not even considered," Tasmin whispered.

After telling Maggie to stay out of the fight, the Team went on their way.

Maggie waited for the guy's signal. After an hour of waiting, it finally came. They were in position. Now, it was up to her. She got into the driver's seat of the van and started the engine. She pulled onto the highway and soon turned down the road to the camp. She pulled up the main gate of the camp and stopped. She got out crying, which when she saw the camp for the first time was not hard, thinking of her Hannibal being in there. She went up to the guard in hysterics, babbling incoherently about hitting someone on the main road and that she needed to call the police to report it.

The guard didn't know what to do with the hysterical woman in his mitts. He turned around to call to the other guards for help, but that was all she wrote for him as Maggie hit him with a hypo full of a sedative and down he went. She then took off into the camp, searching for Hannibal.

Tasmin pulled her Beretta 92SB from her duffel bag, took aim and fired. Maggie stumbled forward. She yelped and cried out, clutching her left leg.

"You just shot canon!" Allison cried out. "You're only supposed to shoot Mary Sues."

"That's Maggie Sullivan. In fanfics she's as bad as a Mary Sue. And in case you hadn't noticed: they share the same initials."

"You just shot canon!" Allison repeated.

"She's a doctor; she can fix herself." Tasmin put the gun away. "Our work here is done. Let's go home." Tasmin opened a portal.

"You shot canon!" Allison had no other words for it. Her partner doing the unmentionable hampered her vocabulary. She followed Tasmin through the portal.

-oOo-

Tasmin woke up with a start. Her heart was pounding. She closed her eyes and took slow, deep breaths to quiet it down. Slowly the realization dawned on her: it was only a dream; she had not really shot canon.

She rolled herself up in her comforter. It was only a dream she had shot canon. It was probably also just a dream Allison had left a towel in the office. Tasmin decided to scold her for that one regardless.

-oOo-

A/N: Ever since I read Through the Valley of Cliches by Reckless I have been unable to take stories that feature Maggie S. seriously. This story was brought on by reading one too many of them in a short period of time.

Tips for writing Maggie into a fic: (1) Do not take her on a Team mission; (2) Do not go to Bad Rock for medical treatment unless it is the nearest town. I'm sure that there are plenty of other rural physicians in the US that have sworn the Hippocratic Oath and will give medical assistance to the Team; (3) Do research medical conditions and their treatment.