Mission #1: Drake's Revenge
In this mission Agent Allison is introduced and finds out how hard the job really is. The story below is a rewrite of my "original" story. As is the case with many other writers my first story was not my best story. After having written several more protectors stories I came to the conclusion Allison's first mission needed to be reconsidered. There is no embarrassment in rewriting your earlier work.
A/N: Protectors of the Plot Continuum was founded by Jay and Acacia. Excerpts in italics taken from Drake's Revenge by CassBogg.
-oOo-
Allison looked around her office. She had just received her PPC-badge. She was now a full Protector of the Plot Continuum. After she had received her badge and filled out all the necessary forms -- wavers of responsibility mainly -- it had taken her several hours to get to her own office. Shortly after she stopped looking for it she found it. Allison strongly suspected PPC Headquarters was built behind the looking glass.
The office had all the regular office furnishings: a desk and a computer console, shelves on the wall for storage and a bean bag for relaxing. Allison sat down on the desk chair and swirled around.
"Wee!"
BEEEEEEEEEEEP!
Allison nearly jumped from her seat. The beeps had never been this loud in training. But then, they probably didn't want you to cop out before you even started. Personnel shortages as they were. She rolled over to the console and glanced through the fic. Yep, a definite Sue, all right. Allison considered whether she should go into the fic right now. She hadn't received her equipment yet, such as her Character Analysis Device, and the story was more than five years old. It probably could wait a little longer.
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!
"All right, all right. I'm going." Allison grabbed the remote activator and the complimentary notepad that were lying on the desk. She tapped a few keys and stepped through the portal that opened up.
-oOo-
She found herself in vaguely familiar surroundings. A long hallway with doors on either side and linoleum on the floor. Lockers were lining the walls. She was in high-school. Allison looked around to find the words.
A student in the front row raised his hand, "Dr. Thompson, how long did you want them to be, again?"
"Just like a miniskirt, long enough to cover the subject but short enough to hold interest." Laughter filled the classroom and the bell joined in with a resounding ring.
Allison rolled her eyes. Who ever heard of a teacher making a joke that was funny enough to laugh about. She jumped out of the way as herds of high-school students started to drone past her. Last one to leave the classroom was a tall red head. The Sue. Obviously on her way to her car, but Allison knew a short cut. When the last student had left the hall way, she opened a portal and stepped through it, straight into the street were the Sue lived. The Sue had just met the two Voyagers. Allison hid behind the red Toyota to remain unnoticed. She was told canon characters couldn't see her unless she was brought to their attention. Sues, however, were a different story.
Bogg took quite a beating from the Sue. To make amends she invited him into her home. Allison took out her notepad and wrote down her first charge: irrational behavior. The Voyagers went into the building with the Sue. Allison decided she would be more comfortable sitting on the steps of the building while she read the words to the story. She rolled her eyes at the verbal ping-pong match that went on between Bogg and the Sue. She buried her face in her hands: she generally couldn't stand such teeth grinding wittiness.
Allison glanced quickly through the words. Most of it was more or less acceptable. A little too familiar to strangers for her taste, but then, some people are like that: kind to strangers. Not her thing, to give or to receive.
Bogg exited the bathroom with only a towel around his waist, "Uh, Cassey, do you have any clothes I can borrow? I'm not going to walk around with this towel on. You could bruise some other body part that's more essential."
Cassey looked at Bogg, unable to speak a syllable. A moment passed and Cassey snapped out of her trance.
"Huh? Oh," Cassey couldn't help but notice the dripping wet bare chested figure in front of her.
Allison let out a sad sigh. She would have loved to see that sight. Well, the sight of Bogg. She didn't particularly care for the sight of Cassey in a trance. She took out her notepad and wrote Bogg up for not toweling off properly. If she'd ever get a chance she would confront him with the charges, and dream away at the sight of him.
"Hey, do you guys have any dinner plans? I've got a homemade lasagna made up, all I have to do is pop it in the oven."
Allison's stomach churned. It bothered her that the Voyagers were still visitors at the house of the Sue. What was their reason for staying? Normally they wouldn't stay this long, would they? Bogg would probably just have hopped away on his sore foot. Besides, she was getting hungry too. Maybe she could pop back round Headquarters to grab a bite to eat when around here everyone was sleeping. She took the remote activator from her pocket and just as she had entered the settings she remembered that agents weren't supposed to go back to Headquarters before the mission was completed. For a brief moment she wondered whether starvation counted as an emergency and then grumpily opened a portal to the next morning in the fic.
-oOo-
Allison returned to her post on Cassey's stoop. She sat herself down and pouting she glared at the words.
While Cassey showered, Jeffrey picked this opportunity to have a boy to man chat with Bogg. This is the first time Bogg had ever denied being attracted to a woman like Cassey. Bogg was never one to pass up a pretty face. Even if she came with a forked tongue.
The shift in tense had shaken Allison up a little and she combed back her ruffled up hair with her fingers. She sighed. It should be obvious to anyone that Bogg did not not like this lady. In films you also always knew who was going to end up with whom by the amount of bickering they did in the beginning of the flick. Hardly the stuff of a great love affair. Actually, Allison thought about it, people involved in a great love affair hardly ever bickered.
"Enough already. C'mon Bogg, admit it. You like her. You like her a lot."
With pleasure Allison wrote up her second charge: canon characters immediately like the Sue. Which was particularly odd in Bogg's case as he had mainly been receiving abuse from her. Bogg had never struck Allison as someone who would be addicted to abuse.
The story continued with Cassey singing in the shower and a moment later standing on a chair to fix a curtain rod. Allison felt the strange sensation of being rushed through the story. When Cassey reached over to grab a hammer Allison rolled her eyes.
"Domestic accident waiting to happen," she muttered. She was right.
She lowered herself to step off the chair with the hammer still in one hand. Unexpectedly, she lost her balance and fell backward with Bogg catching her.
Another charge was listed. And another one, for cruelty, as the Sue challenged Bogg into kissing her, and slapped him when he took the challenge.
Allison startled when Cassey came storming out of the building. Luckily the Sue took no notice of her but stormed down the road where she was assaulted. Allison wrote up that charge too. Five foot ten women just don't get assaulted in broad day light, not in Providence, Rhode Island of all places.
The Voyagers followed after the Sue and tried to comfort her after her attack. Bogg insisted on buying them breakfast. Allison decided to take this opportunity to snoop around in the apartment of the Sue. The Voyagers hadn't closed the doors behind them when they went out. Allison wandered through the apartment, first looking in the fridge for something to eat. There was some leftover lasagna. Allison put it in the microwave and walked into the living room while she waited for her meal to be ready. Standing in front of the bookshelf she saw a large collection of history books on one side, and an even larger collection of romance novels on the other. Her eyes were pulled towards a black, leather bound book. She pulled it out. On the cover were a large V and a name: Phineas Bogg.
"Dear Sue, you've been a naughty girl. Now, where did you get this?" Allison glanced through the words to find the answer. "From your aunt who got it from Jeff's aunt. Tsk tsk tsk." Allison pulled her notepad from her pocket. "And it got you hooked on history? How ever is that possible? It's a boring book of facts." The microwave pinged. Her meal was ready. Allison reluctantly put the Voyager guide book back on the shelf. Not because she wanted to keep it, but because she knew she had to go back for it after she had taken care of the Sue. But first the meal.
Leaving the dishes for the Sue to wonder about Allison took a portal to the next location. Thereby missing that Bogg and Jeffrey spilt their beans when Cassey presented them with the guide book. One charge that didn't make it onto her charge list.
-oOo-
The courtroom was bigger than it had looked on TV. Allison looked around in awe. She walked over to a console that looked like a vanity mirror. Her investigation was interrupted by a whistling sound. Incoming, she thought, and quickly hid behind the tribunal bench. The two Voyagers and the Sue dropped into the room. A moment later a side door opened and a third Voyager walked into the room. It was Garth, last of the Elders. He explained having summoned the Sue there to make her a Voyager. Allison added joining the team to the charge list
"What does she have to do to make it official?" Jeffrey asked.
"Well, normally one would have to enroll in the Voyager field classes, but the real qualifier is the final examination. As long as she passes, she will become a Voyager,"
Allison rolled her eyes. "Please," she said underneath her breath. "There are a lot more useful skills a Voyager should know other than history. Besides, if knowing history was the real tester, how did Bogg ever pass?" She scribbled down another charge while Cassey followed Garth into a side room.
The test would take about an hour and Allison decided to take advantage of the fact canon characters could not see her to take a really good look at Bogg. It annoyed her that Bogg was nervous about how the Sue would do on her exam, but still, some sight for sore eyes. She was so mesmerized by the sight she was almost too late diving back into her hiding place. Jeffrey asked Cassey how she thought she did on the test. Before she could answer someone else did.
"One hundred percent!" Professor Garth gleefully announced the news of Cassey's test results. "She got every one of them right. I have never seen that before. This woman knows her history."
Of course, being perfect, like most Sues, this one would know her history better than the history book on tennis shoes himself. Allison tried to keep her groaning inaudible as she wondered what had been so wrong with the premise of the series with a young history genius and his charming companion that it needed a third wheel. And it got a third wheel, as Garth said that the Sue would be voyaging with Jeffrey and Bogg. Voyagers never traveled in pairs! Allison scribbled down. At least not before Jeff came along. Then why do they travel now in threesomes? Because unlikely things always happen in Sue stories, Allison answered her own question.
Allison heard the little plop which indicated Voyagers had left the place and banged the back of her head a couple of times against the wood of the tribunal bench. Now it really was going to start. Mentally preparing for the torment awaiting her she picked herself up. Allison used the remote activator to open up a portal and stepped through it.
-oOo-
Allison stumbled over a headstone, making a far from graceful somersault which landed her on her ass on a grave. She swore under her breath and hoped that the dark and cloudy night had hidden her from view. In the little light that shone into the cemetery from the street she could make out three figures. The middle length one, the Sue, started browsing around. Allison rolled on her stomach and read the words.
Cass snooped around, browsed at all the head stones, and stopped at one particular name plate. "Come here, you two. Something's definitely wrong, here. Look," she pointed to the name plate with Norma Jeane Dougherty, born June 1, 1926, died July 10, 1946.
Sure, the Sue finds the mission. Prevents Norma Jean from dying, gives her her famous look, her first gig, kisses Bogg and tossles Jeff's hair. This was all textbook stuff. Allison wondered whether Sues had textbooks. There were so many of them; undoubtedly they got some kind of training somewhere too. She glanced through the words to see if there were more interesting places for her to go. In the distance she heard the Sue do an imitation of Marilyn Monroe. Bogg was taken in by it. Allison wasn't.
Rolling her eyes, however, caused her attention to laps and she was pulled along as the scenery suddenly changed. One moment she was sitting on a grave; the next she was hanging on the railing of a cruise ship for dear life. She managed to throw her notepad on deck so she could hold on to the railing with both hands. Then she pulled herself up and over to the right side of the railing. Panting she stood on deck, glaring at the Sue, complimenting herself on choosing a sport that involved a lot of power training for her arms.
After she had got her breath back she took interest again in the Sue and the two canons. It seemed the Sue had already spotted Norma Jeane, an overly shy woman. Next she conned a crewman into giving the Voyagers a spare cabin. Allison picked up her notepad and flicked to a new page. She sighed. There still was a lot of fic ahead. Not that there would be many charges. The brunt of what was wrong with this fic so far could be summed in the charge: "taking over, making the canons redundant".
Allison turned around and turned her face into the sun. Well, she could at least enjoy this part of the fic. She quickly looked over the Words; the Sue and the Voyagers would be here for another day or so in which they screwed around a bit with history and each other. Allison shivered. Better not to think of such things. Better to work on her tan. She found an empty deck chair and lay down on it.
When she opened her eyes again. Bogg and the Sue were strolling on deck and ran into Norma Jeane who was about to throw herself overboard. The Sue stopped her, pleading:
"You have everything to live for. Don’t you see? Life is like a bowl of cherries, sometimes you gotta fish through it in order to find the ones without the pits."
Allison had to disagree with the Sue there: life is like a box of chocolats; you never know what you are going to get. Except when it's a box of those supermarket chocolats; they put a little flyer in the box that says exactly what you are going to get. The Sue managed to convince Norma Jeane that she could help the introvert woman to become a star. Why someone as obviously shy at the world as this Norma Jeane wanted to be a star was beyond Allison. She figured red carpet appearances would scare the living daylights out of such a person, but with a Sue around everything was possible. Particularly conflicting character traits.
Norma Jeane went to her cabin. Just that moment Jeffrey came around a corner. He claimed he had seen everything and complimented the Sue on her work. He should have stopped at the first statement, Allison thought. A further look at the Words told her that some Sue-Bogg fluff was to follow, topped off with Jeffrey suggesting to Bogg he was in love with the Sue. Allison decided she had heard enough. She also had had enough sun -- fictional suns might also cause skin cancer -- she got up and opened another portal.
-oOo-
Allison found her way to the breakfast buffet. PPCing made hungry, and buffets made for great places to eat. At the buffet she ran into Norma Jeane.
"Have you seen Cassey?" she asked.
"What?" Allison removed the bagel from her mouth.
"Have you seen Cassey? I was supposed to meet her this morning, but I can't find her anywhere."
"Why are you asking me?"
"I thought you might know. You are part of their group, aren't you? You don't dress like the others on board, and neither does she."
"Very perseptive. Aren't you supposed to be shy?"
"That's just an act for when I'm around Cassey. I'm really not at all like that. But you haven't seen her, ha? Guess I'll have to look further. See ya."
"See ya." Allison quickly wrapped a napkin around the bagel so it wouldn't leave a mess in her pocket. The Sue had gone missing and she had not been paying attention to the fic. She quickly scanned the Words. It seemed in the night Drake, the evil Voyager, had come into the Voyagers' cabin and taken the Sue with him. He had tied her to a chair and showed her a film of sorts that made her think that Bogg and Jeffrey had been killed. The Sue was distraught: the man she loved and the boy she thought of as a son had been killed. Allison rolled her eyes, first at the Sue, then at herself as she tried to remember where on the buffet she had left her notepad. Then she remember that it was a rather thin, soft backed notepad and that she had folded it in half to fit it in her pocket. She pulled it out with a sigh of relief and added melodramatics as a charge.
Drake had left the Sue in her cell to die at dawn -- Drake also got a charge for melodramatics.
Suddenly, the lady Voyager heard a high pitched whistle and opened her eyes to see a man leap down from nowhere. It was Bogg.
"What!" Several passengers turned their heads towards Allison. She gave them an evil glare. Why were there even other passengers at the breakfast buffet, she wondered. The passengers disappeared as if they had never even existed. Which was probably true, the Sue had never said other people had breakfast aboard the cruise ship.
Allison returned her attention back to the Words and reread the last passage: how did Bogg find the Sue? Did she have some kind of homing device on her that hadn't been mentioned? Allison scratched her head. Or had they homed in on Drake? No, they couldn't have. First, because Bogg didn't know yet that Drake had taken her, and second, because according to canon Drake did not have a homing device: his omni was untraceable. Allison read on, skipped past the part with the Sue and Bogg kissing glad she didn't have to see that, and came across Bogg's explanation. Apparently he had known it was Drake. He had gone to Headquarters the moment he had found her missing and managed to trace her. That left Allison even more puzzled. If it was possible to trace individual people than why had Drake never been traced? The Voyager tribunal wanted him after all. And if Bogg could travel to HQ on his own, why hadn't he done that when he had first picked up the boy? Or was that a new feature to his omni? Trying to figure out the logic of the plot made her head hurt and she decided to just write it up as a charge.
Bogg took the Sue back to the ship where she gave Jeffrey a big hug and went to meet the very shy Norma Jeane. Norma Jeane had that part down peg and Allison had to compliment her on being a great actress. The Sue quickly dragged Norma Jeane over to a shop. Allison left the breakfast buffet on the Lido deck and hurried down the stairs to a lower deck to meet the Sue and company at the store.
As they entered the dress shop, Cassey turned to Norma Jeane, ”When I have a bad day teaching, I usually indulge in a day of shopping, at the mall. And we’ll do the same for you. What we have to do, Norma Jeane, is change your negative self image. In order to feel sexy, you have to look sexy. You need a dress that will knock every man’s hat off.”
”That sounds great! but ... what’s a mall?” Norma Jeane asked.
Yes, that would have been the word Allison would have zoomed in on too. Not to mention that there were already malls in 1946, though they weren't shopping malls, they were pedestrian malls, but there's no saying that those couldn't have shops. Norma Jeane kept acting shy and feigning to have no perception whatsoever of what it would take to be a star. What possessed her to want to be a star remained a mystery. One Allison was not in the mood to find out. She pulled her remote activator from her pocket and took a portal till a later time in the fic.
-oOo-
Much later in the fic, Allison found on inspection of the Words. She had missed out on Bogg and the Sue professing their love for one and other, and some purple prose love making. Well, nothing she would have been dying to see anyway. The portal had taken her to the whirlpool area of the ship. Allison was considering having a soak when she heard voices approaching. She quickly hid in one of the dressing cubicals, leaving the door open a crack so she could see the pool.
The Sue and Norma Jeane got in the pool. Bogg and Jeffrey left them alone to check with the security officers. The Sue begged them to stay. Bogg said she would be all right in the day light. The women were left alone and started to sing; the Sue's way of showing Norma Jeane she had a great voice. Allison didn't hear much of it, though, for the rumbling of her stomach. That was right, she had more or less skipped breakfast -- the one bagel she had stuck in her pocket didn't alleviate the hunger much -- and this was a particularly long mission. She didn't think it unlikely that she would starve before she could get to the Sue.
After a while the singing stopped and shortly after was replaced by wild splashing. Allison was pulled from her thoughts of where to get something to eat and turned her attention to the pool. Drake was pushing the Sue's head under water. Allison jumped up and cheered him on. If he was successful that would save her from one trouble. She'll just do the charging posthumously. No such luck though as Bogg and Jeffrey came rushing in and interrupted Drake, who took a quick exit. Allison pulled out her notepad and charged the two voyagers with always showing up at the exact right time, not a moment sooner, not a moment later.
Bogg took the Sue to their cabin and insisted that she'd have a lie down. Then he and Jeffrey left her alone to tend to Norma Jeane. Allison stared at her pad. She did not know how to phrase that charge. Obviously, Bogg should still know that Drake had already found his way into their cabin before. So either the Sue had caused him to have short-term-memory loss, or it was out of character, as Bogg would probably not leave anyone alone in a place where they might be attacked, or it was a contrived plot device. Allison took the easy way out and listed all three charges. Then she took off her clothes and hopped into the whirlpool.
The Sue woke up from her nap to find Drake had left her a bundle of dead roses. Allison yawned and leaned her head back on the edge of the pool. One of the great tips of writing was: show, don't tell, but at times there was a lot to be said for telling, telling, telling. This was one of those times. Allison decided to give up on following the fic around -- not that she had done much of that so far -- but take the Sue out of it the first instant she caught her alone. Allison started scanning the Words for an opportune time.
It didn't take long to find such an occasion, as the Sue did wander off a lot. In the mean time Allison recorded a couple more charges: one for talking while being gagged, another for having a seeing-eye dog attack a person. Allison jumped from the pool and quickly dried herself off with a towel that conveniently had been lying in the dressing cubical. She put her clothes back on and opened up a portal.
-oOo-
The Sue was sitting in the church bench singing. She didn't look up when the portal opened behind her. Allison added self-absorbed to the list of charges. Then she coughed. The Sue looked up disturbed.
"The game is up," Allison said.
"What? Who are you? Are you working for Drake?" The Sue had jumped up. She was nearly half a foot taller than Allison, but she was also quite agitated, a nervous wrack almost. Allison wasn't afraid of entering into hand to hand combat with her.
"Don't be silly. I work for the PPC, Protectors of the Plot Continuum. I'm here to charge you."
"Charge me?"
"Yes, do sit down. This may take a while."
The Sue sagged back onto the bench. Allison gave her a friendly smile. She produced her notepad from her pocket and flicked to the first page.
"Cassandra 'Cassey' Thompson, I hereby charge with intolerable cruelty against canon characters: you challenge Bogg to kiss you, then you slap him; you reduce Bogg to the part of toy boy; you reduce Jeffrey to the part of sidekick. I charge you with intolerable cruelty against the reader: you employ melodramatics; you switch tenses on several occasions; and pretty much everything that concerns Drake is a plot hole."
"I'm sorry."
"You should be. Further you should be sorry that you have turned an educational TV show into a romance novel and even intended to riddle it with historical inaccuracies."
"But that's because Voyagers set history straight: first there has to be something wrong, and then they make that right."
"I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the suggestions you make that Hercule Poirot was created after 1926; and that the British police would not investigate a murder made to look like a suicide. In 1926 suicide was still against the law in Britain so the police would investigate it."
"I didn't know that."
"Yes, that sounds probable. What you also didn't seem to know is that Voyagers don't travel in pairs, let alone threesomes and the historic problems are solved by Jeffrey and Bogg working together. Not by you, a one woman Voyager army. I charge you with making Bogg and Jeffrey obsolete. Further, I charge you with Bogg immediately falling head long for, with having a beautiful singing voice, for getting attacked in broad day light, twice, and for owning the Voyager Guidebook Bogg lost. In short, I charge you with being a Mary Sue. Do you understand these charges?" Allison folded the notepad back into her pocket and looked at the Sue.
The Sue nodded. "Yes, I think I do. I will do better next time."
"There won't be a next time. Your punishment is death. To be executed immediately. PPCers don't wait until dawn." Allison smirked.
"You can't do that." The Sue jumped up.
"Oh, yes, I can."
"Phineas, help me!" the Sue cried out and then started running away from Allison.
Because Allison had been between the Sue and the doors to the street that meant that the Sue ran to the back of the church. She pulled open a side door. Allison was close on her tail. The little corridor had several doors, but the Sue chose the one that had a window next to it. It led outside to the grave yard. The gates to the grave yard were closed. The Sue yanked them, cried out for Bogg once more and desperately fell with her back against the bars. Allison stood before her, grinning. She held a shovel she had pulled from a pile of sand of a freshly dug grave. The Sue tried to run away again. Allison hit her with the shovel in the back of the head. The Sue went down. Allison administered a couple more blows to make sure the Sue wouldn't get up anymore. Then she dragged her over to the fresh grave and dropped her down the pit. She had just finished putting a nice layer of sand over the body when a baritone voice caught her attention.
"Excuse me, you haven't seen a tall redhead, have you?" Bogg asked.
"Uh, there's no one here, but me." Allison gestured around to show they were the only two people in the grave yard.
"Hmm, I was wondering if she could help with that red light we got here." Bogg took the omni of his belt and opened it. "Huh, it's green now. Ha! Problem solved." He smiled at Allison.
Allison smiled back at him. "Good for you."
"Right, thanks for your help."
"Don't mention in."
"Kid, we got a green light, we can leave," Bogg shouted as he turned around and went back into the church.
Allison wondered if the green light on the omni had anything to do with the Sue being gone from the story.
-oOo-
Allison returned to her office and dropped the guidebook on the desk. First, she would get something to eat. Hunger made everything appetizing, even cafeteria food. She was about to leave the room when
BEEEEEP
"What? Not again. I just got back." She went over to the console and saw it wasn't a new mission. She was summoned to the Sunflower Official.
But first she would get something to eat. Bosses should not be faced on an empty stomach. Particularly not if the boss in question was edible.
-oOo-
A/N: I'm a firm believer that any Sue can be redeemed given a chance. I tried my hand at this and rewrote Drake's Revenge. I've posted the result under the title: Of Marilyn and Mystery.