vgdivision (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
vgdivision) wrote2012-03-22 06:22 pm
vgdivision) wrote2012-03-22 06:22 pm
DMS/DIAU - A Failing Grade
(Disclaimer: The concept of the PPC belongs to Jay and Acacia. “Let’s Just Push Larxene in Front of a Bus” (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5792125/1/Lets_Just_Push_Larxene_in_Front_of_a_Bus) belongs to AlliElizabeth. Kingdom Hearts and its associated characters belong to Square Enix and Disney Interactive. Danny, Laura, Cornelius, and Rachel belong to me. The following contains bad language and violence.)
“Blessed caffeine, giver of life and racer of hearts,” Laura said to the can of soda in her hand as she stepped back into Cornelius’s response center. She popped the top and took a deep swig. “How I’ve missed you.”
Danny snorted. He was sitting on a chair he’d pulled from the unused bunkroom while thumbing through a dog-eared copy of The Devil’s Dictionary. “You can’t miss something you had only half an hour ago,” he remarked.
“What can I say? I get separation anxiety.”
“You sure that’s not just the caffeine making you jittery?” Danny flinched as Laura lightly slapped the back of his head.
The redhead glanced over at the powered-down hologram projector. “Where’s Cornelius?”
“Apparently having a meeting with the Antigravity Apple. Having an agent hardwired into the PPC computer system is pretty convenient, bureaucratically speaking.”
“I wouldn’t call ‘being able to more easily meet with the Flowers’ convenient. Streaming movies right into my cerebral cortex, now that would be convenient.”
Danny rolled his eyes. “Truly the future will be a wonderful place.”
There was a fusillade of electronic beeps and whistles. Both agents looked around at the projector, which was coming to life in a rather complicated way. After a few seconds of pulsing lights and shifting technological gizmos, Cornelius’s avatar appeared.
Danny closed his book and laid it aside. “How was your meeting?”
“Productive,” Cornelius said. “The Antigravity Apple was pleased to hear that you both were adapting well to AU missions.”
“He say anything about sending us back to the DMS?” Laura asked, leaning forward slightly in anticipation.
“I’m afraid not. However,” he added quickly, before Laura could color the air with a few choice words, “you may be pleased to hear that our next mission is a Kingdom Hearts Suefic containing multiple Mary Sues.” He looked back and forth between the two assassins. “I was honestly expecting some sort of reaction from you both.”
“We’re just waiting for the shoe to drop,” Danny said. “The dark cloud that comes with the silver lining.”
Cornelius’s digitized brow wrinkled in confusion. “I’m not sure I follow you, Agent Richardson.”
“I’ll put it simply: what’s the special twist that’s gonna make this mission really suck?” Laura said.
The AI’s response was cut off by a knock at the door. It slid open automatically, revealing a girl with twin ponytails, a cheerful smile, and the urple armband common to all interns. There were two yellow cubes in her arms and two leashes around one of her wrists. On the other end of the leashes were a mini-Tank and a mini-Colossus.
“Hi guys!” the intern said. “Got your mission priority delivery thingie right here! Hope you don’t mind that I brought the minis; they needed a walk so I figured why not kill two birds with one stone? WHOA, this room is so cool! You’re both so lucky, you get to work with an actual AI! I think they’re so cool. I wish I’d remembered to bring a camera, the other interns’ll never believe I met one—”
“Oh good, Little Miss Chatterbox is here,” Laura deadpanned. The two minis strained against their leashes at the sound of their owner’s voice.
“You made excellent time, Miss Calendar,” Cornelius said as Rachel entered the room, gawking at the technology contained within. “Agents Dukes and Richardson were just asking about the mission.”
Danny eyed the cubes suspiciously. “Are those crash dummies?”
“Yep!” She tossed them towards the blond agent, who almost fell out of his chair in an effort to prevent them from hitting the ground. “One ‘You’ dummy and one ‘Me’ dummy, from DoSAT with love!”
Laura turned her attention back to Cornelius. “This fic has both first and second person? I didn’t think that was possible!”
“Everything is possible when it comes to alternative realities,” the AI said. “That applies doubly when it comes to badfic.”
Danny looked down at the compressed ‘You’ in his hands. “Huh. What’s the AU?”
“High school.”
The blond agent dropped the dummy cube and clapped his hands over Rachel’s ears just in time. Laura’s time playing video games online had given her quite a vocabulary, so it took some time for her to run out of parent-horrifying slurs. “Feeling better?” he said when she had finally subsided.
“A bit, yeah. At least I’ll have Sues to take my anger out on.”
“Fascinating,” Cornelius remarked.
* * *
Cornelius – now solid, teenaged, and with a full head of black hair – watched as the ‘You’ dummy inflated to its full height and size. He tucked the unformed ‘Me’ dummy into a convenient backpack before looking over his shoulder at the portal. “Hurry up, agents!” he called out. “The fic will begin any moment now! I’ve already programmed your disguises, so you don’t need to worry about them!”
After a few seconds, a slightly shorter and less mature-looking Laura stepped through the portal. She reached up and patted her head. “Greasy hair, zits, nose no longer broken…” She looked down at her body. “Hey, this is my old lucky Mortal Kombat shirt! I won my first video game tournament wearing this thing!”
“Indeed. I based your disguises on your high school senior photos so as to make things more familiar for you both.”
“You really think we’ll be long enough here that we’ll need to reacclimatize to high school?” Danny asked as he joined the two agents. They were standing in the middle of a generic high school cafeteria. No one else was there, as the fic had not yet begun.
“Better safe than sorry.”
Laura snorted at the sight of her partner’s disguise. “Wow. Nice hair spikes, skater boi.”
“Oh please. I was with the indie crowd. We looked down on skater punks.” He paused. “Actually, we kinda looked down on everyone.”
(A/N: "Allix" is said like "Alex". "Xakra" is said like "Zack-ra", so "Xak" is the same as "Zack".)
“Yikes, right out of the gate!” Laura exclaimed. “Mark a charge for stupid Organization names.” Generic high school students began appearing from all around them as the story officially began.
The male assassin reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a notepad. “I have the feeling that somewhere Xericka just became annoyed and she doesn’t know why,” He said as he jotted down the charge.
“Right, like that’d be a huge change from her normal mood.” Laura watched as the crash dummy sat down at a nondescript table next to a peppy-looking teenage girl.
"You're staring again, Xakra," your best friend tells you.
“Naming the ‘you’ character rather defeats the point of using the second person perspective,” Cornelius said. “The point of making ‘you’ the protagonist is to create a sense of immersion for the audience. Unless the reader’s name is Xakra, they’re probably not going to connect well with this.”
The three agents sat further down the table from the You!Sue and her friend. Danny reached into his pocket again but was stopped by Laura’s hand on his wrist. “We’re on school grounds now, indie boy. No smoking.”
“What are they going to do, put me in detention?”
“If I’m going to suffer through a high school AU, so will you. Got it?”
The blond assassin sighed and nodded as he withdrew his hand from the satchel. Laura patted his shoulder, a triumphant smirk gracing her features.
"I don't get why you just stare at him. Why not go talk to him? I mean, you have THREE classes with the guy; don't you talk then?"
"Yeah, but I like staring at him. He's REALLY nice to look at."
“Him who?” Danny asked.
“Axel,” Cornelius said. “Demyx and Larxene are also present, but Axel is the main romantic focus.
Laura rolled her eyes. “Let me guess. Larxene is the nasty bitch who schemes to ruin the You!Sue’s pwecious wittle womance.” She blew a raspberry at nothing in particular.
“Very astute, Agent Dukes.”
She threw out her arm dramatically. “And lo, the plot was laid out before me, and it was predictable and trite.”
*RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING*
You grin, "Time for Algebra!"
Danny scowled as he added a new charge to his notebook. “You can’t ‘grin’ a line of dialogue. You can say, shout, scream, whisper, moan, groan, comment, remark, and even grunt something, but grinning dialogue is just not possible!”
“Algebra,” Laura groaned as the three agents stood up to follow the departing You!Sue. “I remember algebra with Mr. Jeffries in sophomore year. Sweet mother of Gordon Freeman, he could bore the paint right off the walls.”
“Then it’s a good thing we’re here to watch the Sues and not the class itself,” Danny replied.
Cornelius nudged Laura as they followed the You!Sue around a corner. “I’m not quite sure I understand why you have this antipathy towards high school. Surely it wasn’t completely terrible?”
“Maybe if you hung out with the right people or had the right teachers. I had neither, not until I got into competitive gaming. At least then I had some okay people to hang out with.” She shook her head. “Everything else was just an exercise in either tedium or emotional pain.”
Cornelius said nothing for a moment. “I suppose I don’t understand,” he finally said. “Expanding myself through learning has always been a comfort to me.”
“You don’t learn things in high school, Cornelius. You learn HOW to learn things, which is a lot less… comfortable. Can we stand outside of the classroom?”
“I don’t see a problem with that.”
The You!Sue walked into a nondescript classroom and took a seat by the window. The agents arranged themselves on either side of the doorway like pimply museum security guards. Larxene stalked between them into the classroom a few moments later. She and the You!Sue exchanged momentary death glares before the blonde found a desk.
Laura blew another raspberry. “An in-character Larxene would not put up with this brainless little twerp. She’d skip right over nasty looks straight to some sort of knife-related torture. There’d be GAH!” The assassin recoiled in surprise as Axel suddenly appeared at the desk next to the You!Sue. “I thought they couldn’t use their powers in high school AUs!”
“They can’t,” Cornelius replied. “Look at the text.”
"Hey, Xak."
You turn to the left and find the very subject of your stalker-ish-ness. You smile, "Hey Axel. How's it going?"
“Proper transitions are your friend,” Danny deadpanned as he wrote down a new charge. “Off-screen teleportation is not your friend unless you’re writing for a horror or off-kilter comedy.”
“Or something with superheroes,” the AI added.
“Right.”
“Axel as Batman would be so much more entertaining than this,” Laura said. “Sure, most of Gotham City would be in flames by the end of the story, but it’d be hilarious.”
Cornelius closed his eyes for a moment as he scanned the Words. “Agent Richardson, would you please get the remote activator out of my backpack? The rest of this scene may be safely skipped.”
“I don’t suppose we’re heading straight to the end so that we can off the You!Sue and her little pal?”
“I’m afraid not, Agent Dukes.”
Laura shrugged. “I had to ask.”
The three agents portalled into a locker-lined hallway. If the knots of generic teenagers hanging around and chatting about nothing in particular were any indication, then class had ended about a few minutes before.
Cornelius pointed down the corridor. The You!Sue, her friend from before, and a new, but familiar, boy had just rounded the corner. They were giggling about something or other.
“Is that Demyx with them?” Danny asked.
“Poor bastard,” Laura said. “Wrangled into being the friend of two Sues. Nobody deserves that.”
“Ahah,” Cornelius said. “Very witty, Agent Dukes.”
She looked over at the AI. “What are you talking about?”
“When you said ‘Nobody deserves that.’ It was a clever use of the term ‘Nobody,’ which, of course, carries an alternate meaning in the Kingdom Hearts continuum.” He paused. “I take it by your expression that you weren’t making a play on words and, in fact, were being serious.”
“Real perceptive, you are.”
"So, who're you gonna ask to the dance?"
You blink, "...Dance?"
"The Sadie-Hawkins dance, Xak. Ya know, girls ask the guys?"
Danny shook his head. “A high school dance. The level of unoriginality in this story is stunning.”
“You see?” Laura said. “This is why I hate high school AUs. They’re like Mad Libs: just copy and paste the names of canonical characters wherever there’s a space. Every single story is the same damn thing over and over again.”
“I think you’re exaggerating things just a little, Agent Dukes,” Cornelius cut in. “Not every high school AU is necessarily similar.”
“Good point. Sometimes they make everyone gay.”
“Again, I think that you don’t—”
Laura waved the AI into silence. “Shh! They’re trying to convince the You!Sue into asking Axel to the dance! Goodness knows we don’t want to miss any of this!”
"Hmm... Ya know, not only would you get to go with you-know-who, you'd get to see the über-pissed look on Larxene's face," she reasons with a smirk.
This gets the gears turning in your head. "Hm... that is a good point..."
“Cornelius, check your databases,” Laura said. “Is being annoyingly shallow a chargeable offence?”
“I don’t—” the AI started to say.
“You don’t have to check because you know I’m right? Great! Mark it, Danny.”
Danny jotted down the charge in his notebook. “Got it.” He glanced over at Cornelius, who was starting to look slightly flustered. “You doing all right?”
“I… I’m not quite sure. Do you both always get this way around Sues?”
“Not usually.” He led Cornelius away from Laura, who was glaring at the threesome and muttering new charges under her breath. “I think the setting is starting to get to us. Once you graduate, you sort of expect to leave all this high school baggage behind. To have it thrust in our faces again…” He sighs. “I probably had a better experience in high school than Laura did and I’m still on the verge of just dragging the Sues out of their classroom and bludgeoning them in the hallway.”
Cornelius thought about this for a moment. “You’re not actually going to do that, are you?”
“Relax. Both Laura and I can handle it. Trust me, we’ve tackled worse.”
“Hey ladies!” Laura bounded up to the two agents. “I checked the Words and we’re gonna need to portal again. We’ve got another action-free class scene coming up.” She paused. “What are you talking about?”
“Just chatting about the mission,” Danny replied as he pulled the RA out of his pocket. “How far ahead are we going?”
Laura raised one suspicious eyebrow, but let the matter drop. “Just after class. We’ve got drama with a capital Dee coming up.”
They ducked into a shadowy alcove and opened up a portal. A few moments later, they found themselves in another crowded, locker-lined hallway. The Sues were standing in the middle of the hall, looking at something with dismay.
You just stare, "...Look."
She follows your gaze and murmurs, "Oh..."
Axel's finished exchanging his books and is talking to Larxene, who's smiling at him. Larxene says something, Axel nods, then she grins and walks away.
Laura let out a mock gasp of horror. “Dun dun DUN!”
“Huh. I never thought I’d find myself in a situation where I’d be rooting for Larxene,” Danny remarked as the BF!Sue ran over to Axel.
“I’d be rooting for her more if she still had her powers. At least then she’d be able to throw down some teleport-spamming pain. All this version of Larxene can do is be catty and play nasty tricks on people.”
The BF!Sue walked back over to her friend as Axel departed for his next class.
"Larxene just asked him to the dance. ...I'm sorry, Xak."
Your heart starts to sting and hurt fills your eyes. "Thanks, Allix. ...C'mon, let's get to History."
Danny rolled his eyes. “This fic has more unnecessary ellipses than a 1980s comic book.”
The setting suddenly lurched as the scene changed around the three agents. After a moment’s disorientation, they found themselves in the chemistry department. A few emotionless students were sitting at the lab tables waiting for class to begin. “Charge for poorly constructed scene transitions,” Laura groaned as she clutched at the nearest table to steady herself. “A little warning would have been nice, Cornelius.”
“My apologies,” Cornelius said. “I think I’m still a little distracted from before.”
Laura looked around. “Where’s the Sue?”
Cornelius pointed towards one of the tables. “There.”
You sit at the table in the Chem. lab, staring absently down at the incoherent graffiti-scribbles on the marble surface.
This sentence got a rise out of Cornelius. “Preposterous!” he sputtered. “Marble should not be used for the construction of laboratory tables! The cost would be extraordinary, well out of reach for a typical North American high school. That does not even take the potentiality of adverse chemical reactions with the calcium carbonate—”
“Whoa!” Laura said quickly. “Settle down, HAL, we got it! Marble bad.”
The AI closed his eyes. His form flickered, but only for a moment. “My apologies, agents. I allowed myself to be caught up in the moment. To see something so obvious overlooked – never mind.”
“It happens to the best of us,” Danny said as he patted Cornelius on the shoulder.
“Aw, his first geeky rant. It’s like he’s a real live boy!” Laura remarked. She smiled wryly at the glare Danny shot in her direction. “What? No go on the Pinocchio reference? You would’ve preferred that I yell ‘mazel tov’ or something?”
“Maybe we should just get back to the fic.”
Axel laughs slightly, "I told her I was hoping you'd ask me, so she made something up about you having a date already."
"..." You peek at him over your paper. "...You really wanted to go with me?"
He nods, "Still do, but only if you want me to. I've always thought you were pretty cool."
Laura made the stupidest expression she could. “You really think I’m cool?” she said in a stereotypical ‘cool girl’ voice. “Ohmigawd, no way! That is, like, totally hawt!”
This elicited a shudder from Danny. “You did that far too well.”
“I like to use that voice in online video game matches.” Her grin took on a Cheshire Cat-like quality, only without the disappearing bit. “You should hear people swear when they think they’re getting trounced by a brainless bimbo.”
“As much as I’d enjoy hearing that story, Agent Dukes,” Cornelius cut in, “we need to portal ahead now. The dance-centric finale is coming up.”
“Finale. That’s music to my ears, Cornelius.”
At this point, Danny would have normally chided his partner for becoming too content. It slipped his mind, however; he was still reflecting on her creepy ‘cool girl’ voice. It did not slip the mind of the Ironic Overpower.
* * *
Laura frowned as she stepped through the portal. All around them were teenagers dancing, chatting, and hanging out by the walls waiting desperately for someone to come over and talk to them. “Something’s wrong.” She turned towards Danny. “You feel that, Danny? It’s like there’s – what are you staring at? And where did you get that tux from?”
Danny mumbled something as he turned his eyes toward the ground. His face had gone red.
“What? What is it?” Laura looked down at the floor. There was an expectant hush very similar to the one some people hear before a massive earthquake knocks their house down around their ears.
Cornelius cleared his throat. “I adjusted the disguise generator so that our clothing would be appropriate for a high school dance. It would not do to stand out, after a—”
He was cut off when Laura grabbed the lapels of his jacket and pulled his face within a few inches of hers. “Cornelius,” she growled. “I really don’t like having my clothing changed without my knowledge or permission.”
“If it helps,” Cornelius said, his tone remaining relatively unchanged, “you look very nice in that dress. Tea green is a good color for you. Wouldn’t you agree, Agent Richardson?” Danny, still in a bit of shock, burbled something incomprehensible.
“I don’t care! Do you know how inconvenient dresses are on Mary Sue missions! What if the Sue makes a break for it? No way I’m gonna catch up to her when I’m wearing an evening gown—” she wobbled momentarily, “—and high heels!”
“To be fair, the Sue will probably be wearing high heels and a dress as well. She will be at as much of a disadvantage as you.” He nodded at something over her shoulder. “Speaking of which, she and her friend have just arrived.”
Laura released Cornelius’s jacket. “Don’t think we’re not done talking about this,” she said.
Just like the AI said, both Sues had entered the generic large room where the dance was being held. They pointed and giggled at Axel and Demyx, who were chatting together next to one of the walls.
Demyx leaves the wall and hugs Allix, no surprise. "You look amazing..." He then turns to you, "And so do you, Xakra."
You start to blush, but Axel responds, "Hitting on my date in front of your girlfriend, Dem?" He smirks at you and lays his arm across your shoulders. "Guess I can't blame you."
Laura made retching noises. “Danny, give us a CAD reading,” she said,
“Uh… buh… right. Right!” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a CAD, which he pointed at both Nobodies in turn.
[Demyx. Male Nobody. Canonical? ??.???% OOC]
[Axel. Male Nobody. Canonical? ??.???% OOC]
Danny tapped the CAD readout before giving it an experimental shake. “Did DoSAT not give us a functioning CAD?”
“That, or the Nobodies have been given so little characterization by these particular Sues that they are confusing the CAD’s sensors,” Cornelius said as the BF!Sue and Demyx left to allow the You!Sue and Axel some time together.
You notice him staring past you at something, so you follow his line of vision. You glare, "I can't believe she still came."
Larxene's at the opposite wall, talking to Tyson.
Cornelius’s eyes flashed green for a moment. “I can find no record of any Kingdom Hearts or Final Fantasy character named Tyson.”
“He’s a Stu?” Laura smiled. “Awfully nice of the story to give us a Sue apiece. Nobody gets left out!” She glanced over at Cornelius. “I wasn’t making a clever reference to Nobodies, Cornelius. Just letting you know.”
“Thank you, Agent Dukes, but I think I can figure that out from here on.”
"The guy she's talking to. His name's Tyson; he's been hitting on me for weeks," you admit.
Axel starts glaring, too. "You never mentioned that..."
"He's just annoying. It's not a big deal."
“I sense foreshadowing,” Danny said. “Unpleasant ‘attempted rape as drama’ foreshadowing.”
“You would be correct, Agent Richardson,” Cornelius replied. Danny shook his head despondently as he wrote down the new charge.
Laura yawned as the You!Sue and Axel continued to flirt. “Sweet baby Jeebus, I’m bored out of my gourd! It’s the old days all over again!”
“What are talking about?” Danny asked.
“Almost all I did when I worked in Intelligence were high school AUs. The same old stories over and over again. That’s why I requested a transfer into the DMS. You know, to see a little action!”
“Huh. I didn’t know that about you.”
Laura glanced over at the walls. “Well, we are in school. Learning is supposed to happen here.”
"You up for some moshing?"
"Always," he answers, like it's a known fact. Axel then takes your hand and leads you through the mess of teenagers.
“Well, you did ask for something interesting,” Danny said. “I think moshing at a high school dance qualifies.”
“If you tried to mosh at one of my high school dances,” Laura remarked, “not only would you be thrown out of the dance and possibly suspended from school, your date would immediately dump you for doing something so embarrassingly stupid.”
Danny smirked at his partner. “So you’ve been to a real school dance?”
“Once. Senior prom. Let’s just say it went about as well as the rest of my high school experience.”
“Wow. It’s mind-boggling to me that you weren’t always a nerdy anti-social shut in.”
“Funny!” Laura very obviously rubbed one of her eyes with only her middle finger.
Cornelius, meanwhile, had taken off his backpack so that he could pull out the ‘Me’ dummy. He set it down next to the three agents and was now carefully watching the Words with one hand always on the inflation cord.
“We’ve got first person coming up?” Danny asked,
“Precisely,” the AI responded. “There is also a crucial plot moment that’s about to occur. Look there.” He pointed into the crowd of moshing teens. The You!Sue was pushing her way through, trying to find her friend and Demyx.
As you start forcing your way up there, someone's arm wraps around you, keeping you from moving your own arms. Before you can protest, their hand slaps over your mouth. The next thing you know, you're being pulled towards the doors. You try to fight, but your obviously male captor doesn't even waver.
“And nobody notices this!” Laura said. “The Sue is actually capable of making an entire room full of dancing high school students act even stupider than normal.”
“Where are the teachers or chaperones looking out for things exactly like that?” Danny asked.
Laura let out a short flat laugh. “In high school AUs, adults are one of three things: useless, perpetually drunk, or molesters.”
Cornelius held up one hand for silence. With the other, he yanked the ‘Me’ dummy’s cord. It rapidly began to inflate. “Point of view shift in three… two… one.”
Reality blurred. Danny would later describe the sensation in his individual mission report as ‘having his eyes taken out with silver spoons, polished like bowling balls, then put back into his head by a blind engineer.’ In her mission report, Laura simply wrote ‘it was weird and it sucked.’
Allix's P.O.V.
I follow close behind Demyx as we try to escape the mini-mosh pit on the dance floor. I laugh when we finally stumble out. "That was crazy!"
“Point of view shift complete,” Cornelius announced. “Sue known as Allix successfully merged with ‘Me’ dummy.”
Both human agents recoiled a little when they looked at the BF!Me!Sue. The plastic, foam, and metal parts of the dummy were conjoined with the sparkly flesh of the Sue. It was if Frankenstein’s monster had been created in the Twilight universe. It was currently acting very concerned that Larxene was talking to Axel.
“Please tell me this won’t last,” Danny said. “That thing is really unpleasant to look at.”
“It will end shortly,” Cornelius replied. “I would have skipped over this section entirely, but there were a few charges that needed to be collected. For example:”
"No, something's wrong! You and I both know Larxene's at war with Xak! Now she's chatting up Axel and Xak's not there; she's up to something!" I try to convince him.
“One count of improbable conclusion jumping,” he went on to say. “How could the You!Sue’s friend come to the correct solution – that her friend is missing and Larxene is involved – when there are so many others that could be equally, if not more, true?”
“Like maybe Axel ditched the You!Sue and started flirting with Larxene!” Laura said.
“Exactly.”
“That’d be a hell of a lot more canonical than this, if you think about it. Axel is something of a backstabbing prick.”
It was at this moment that Axel leapt up in a panic and left in search of the You!Sue. Larxene chose this moment to give the BF!Me!Sue a few choice insults about both her and Demyx.
Before Demyx even has a chance to argue, I snatch up a glass of soda and empty it all over the front of Larxene's dress. "Just because you don't have a great guy doesn't mean you can rag on girls who do! Leave Xak and me the hell alone!"
“Ooh, what a crushing blow!” Danny said. “Larxene will never recover from that one!”
Laura shook her head as Larxene fled the room with a shriek. “Larxene does not run away just because someone spilled soda on her. The real Larxene would’ve turned this petty little fruitcake inside out.”
Reality suddenly shuddered again. The BF!sue and the now-deflating ‘Me’ dummy were once again separate entities. “I’ll collect the dummy,” Cornelius said. “I then recommend that we head outside and begin dealing with the You!Sue and Stu. They’re just outside the door.”
“He didn’t even take her to a secluded location?” Danny said incredulously.
“With the stupidity of this student body?” Laura commented. “Nobody would notice if he started raping her in the middle of the dance floor.”
Cornelius slid his backpack across the floor towards the two assassins. “There’s some duct tape in my backpack. We might need it.”
* * *
"Get off me, Tyson!"
He sighs. "I can't believe you turned me down for that womanizing jerk. I'm trying to do you a favor, here."
"How the hell is practically kidnapping me doing me a favor!"
Tyson’s response was cut off by someone’s arm wrapping around his windpipe in a sleeper hold. “I suppose you could argue that he’s doing you a favor by allowing Axel to be the hero and rescue you from certain violation,” Danny said as he forced the Stu to his knees.
There was the sound of tape being unrolled. “He’s also doing us a favor by getting you all nice and secluded,” Laura remarked as she approached the stunned You!Sue with a piece of duct tape in her hand.
It was at this point that Axel burst through the door. As the badfic was spinning out of control by now, he was becoming more and more in character. The agents watched as his tuxedo shifted and changed into the normal Organization XIII coat. "Are you okay? Did he… did he… you…” He blinked. His eyes refocused on the four struggling teenagers. “What’s going on?”
“I believe I can explain, Number Eight,” Cornelius said from behind him. He looked around, right into the flash of a neuralyzer. “You are Axel of Organization XIII. You are an adult Nobody and not a human teenager. This all been a rather strange dream.”
“Nice timing, Cornelius,” Danny remarked as the Stu finally fell unconscious. Laura deigned not to add anything as she bound up the You!Sue’s hands, feet, and mouth.
“Thank you.” Cornelius gently steered the expressionless Axel towards a quiet corner. “That only leaves the BF!Sue and the two other Nobodies. I suggest we bring them all here before moving on to any sort of punishment.”
“Dibs on the ones less likely to do any stabbing.”
Laura looked up from her roll of duct tape. “You two go ahead. I’ll work on wrapping things up here. When you get back, I’ve got a good idea what we should do with these prissy little know-nothings.”
* * *
On a plane of reality far away from the generic high school and the Nobodies (now back at The Castle That Never Was with original personalities, but sans memories), a slightly cartoony pirate ship sailed across an almost endless ocean. The air was heavy with salt water and the sun was just beginning to set. There was almost something magical about the whole thing – except, of course, for the three OCs bound with duct tape flopping around on the deck like stranded belugas.
Danny leaned against the railing and puffed on a fresh Bleepette. “I’ve gotta hand it to you, Laura. When you go for canonical punishments, you go all out.”
“Thanks,” Laura replied. “It’s important to put a little extra touch on these things when you can.”
The blond assassin cleared his throat a little nervously. "You also looked very nice in that dress. Just thought you should know."
"Shut up," Laura said, a small smile on her face, as she gave her partner a light elbow check. She then leaned over the side and cupped one ear with her free hand. Just barely audible over the sound of the ship cutting through the waves was a ticking noise. A green, scaly creature momentarily surfaced next to the ship and looked up at the agent expectantly before submerging itself again.
“Captain Hook’s crew has all been neuralyzed,” Cornelius reported as he stepped out of the captain’s cabin. “They won’t feel the need to come above deck for approximately ten minutes and thirty two seconds.”
Laura slapped her hands together in excitement. “Danny, if you would be so kind as to read off the charges?”
“Of course.” Danny cleared his throat before consulting the notebook he had just pulled out of his pocket. “The three of you are charged collectively with the following crimes: having nonsensical Organization-themed names, having an unnecessary second person point of view, making three members of Organization XIII act wildly out of character, removing the canonical abilities of said Organization XIII members, assaulting the Organization XIII member Larxene—”
“I wasn’t aware that throwing soda at someone qualified as assault,” Cornelius interrupted.
Danny snorted. “You are also charged with abusing ellipses, abusing commas, having off-screen teleportation in a genre that does not support it, using inappropriate building materials for chemistry labs, forming a mosh pit during a high school dance, trivializing rape, and boring PPC agents. The penalty is death by crocodile. There is no appeal.”
“Agent Dukes!” Cornelius quickly said as Laura forced the You!Sue to her feet. “I would remind you that DoSAT would not approve of throwing one of their crash dummies to a crocodile. They insist on forms of execution that leave the dummy intact.”
Laura shrugged. “Fair enough.” She drew one of her daggers and slashed the dummy’s throat. It thrashed around for a moment before deflating back into its original cube form. “I can throw the others overboard, right?”
“I see no problem with that.”
“Sweet! Give me a hand, you two.”
The agents picked up the Sue and Stu in turn and tossed them over the side. Their muffled wails were cut off by the sound of snapping jaws.
Laura let out a satisfied sigh. “I don’t know about either of you,” she said, “but I feel like heading back to the RC and learning absolutely nothing for the next few hours.”
“So we’re going to watch some reality TV?” Danny asked with a joking grin.
“I said ‘learn absolutely nothing,’ not ‘give ourselves brain damage.’ I was thinking more like we could watch a few old ‘90s action movies. Cornelius, do you get streaming videos?”
The AI smiled. “Of course. It’s very convenient.”
Laura gave Danny a nudge. “Told you so.”
“Blessed caffeine, giver of life and racer of hearts,” Laura said to the can of soda in her hand as she stepped back into Cornelius’s response center. She popped the top and took a deep swig. “How I’ve missed you.”
Danny snorted. He was sitting on a chair he’d pulled from the unused bunkroom while thumbing through a dog-eared copy of The Devil’s Dictionary. “You can’t miss something you had only half an hour ago,” he remarked.
“What can I say? I get separation anxiety.”
“You sure that’s not just the caffeine making you jittery?” Danny flinched as Laura lightly slapped the back of his head.
The redhead glanced over at the powered-down hologram projector. “Where’s Cornelius?”
“Apparently having a meeting with the Antigravity Apple. Having an agent hardwired into the PPC computer system is pretty convenient, bureaucratically speaking.”
“I wouldn’t call ‘being able to more easily meet with the Flowers’ convenient. Streaming movies right into my cerebral cortex, now that would be convenient.”
Danny rolled his eyes. “Truly the future will be a wonderful place.”
There was a fusillade of electronic beeps and whistles. Both agents looked around at the projector, which was coming to life in a rather complicated way. After a few seconds of pulsing lights and shifting technological gizmos, Cornelius’s avatar appeared.
Danny closed his book and laid it aside. “How was your meeting?”
“Productive,” Cornelius said. “The Antigravity Apple was pleased to hear that you both were adapting well to AU missions.”
“He say anything about sending us back to the DMS?” Laura asked, leaning forward slightly in anticipation.
“I’m afraid not. However,” he added quickly, before Laura could color the air with a few choice words, “you may be pleased to hear that our next mission is a Kingdom Hearts Suefic containing multiple Mary Sues.” He looked back and forth between the two assassins. “I was honestly expecting some sort of reaction from you both.”
“We’re just waiting for the shoe to drop,” Danny said. “The dark cloud that comes with the silver lining.”
Cornelius’s digitized brow wrinkled in confusion. “I’m not sure I follow you, Agent Richardson.”
“I’ll put it simply: what’s the special twist that’s gonna make this mission really suck?” Laura said.
The AI’s response was cut off by a knock at the door. It slid open automatically, revealing a girl with twin ponytails, a cheerful smile, and the urple armband common to all interns. There were two yellow cubes in her arms and two leashes around one of her wrists. On the other end of the leashes were a mini-Tank and a mini-Colossus.
“Hi guys!” the intern said. “Got your mission priority delivery thingie right here! Hope you don’t mind that I brought the minis; they needed a walk so I figured why not kill two birds with one stone? WHOA, this room is so cool! You’re both so lucky, you get to work with an actual AI! I think they’re so cool. I wish I’d remembered to bring a camera, the other interns’ll never believe I met one—”
“Oh good, Little Miss Chatterbox is here,” Laura deadpanned. The two minis strained against their leashes at the sound of their owner’s voice.
“You made excellent time, Miss Calendar,” Cornelius said as Rachel entered the room, gawking at the technology contained within. “Agents Dukes and Richardson were just asking about the mission.”
Danny eyed the cubes suspiciously. “Are those crash dummies?”
“Yep!” She tossed them towards the blond agent, who almost fell out of his chair in an effort to prevent them from hitting the ground. “One ‘You’ dummy and one ‘Me’ dummy, from DoSAT with love!”
Laura turned her attention back to Cornelius. “This fic has both first and second person? I didn’t think that was possible!”
“Everything is possible when it comes to alternative realities,” the AI said. “That applies doubly when it comes to badfic.”
Danny looked down at the compressed ‘You’ in his hands. “Huh. What’s the AU?”
“High school.”
The blond agent dropped the dummy cube and clapped his hands over Rachel’s ears just in time. Laura’s time playing video games online had given her quite a vocabulary, so it took some time for her to run out of parent-horrifying slurs. “Feeling better?” he said when she had finally subsided.
“A bit, yeah. At least I’ll have Sues to take my anger out on.”
“Fascinating,” Cornelius remarked.
Cornelius – now solid, teenaged, and with a full head of black hair – watched as the ‘You’ dummy inflated to its full height and size. He tucked the unformed ‘Me’ dummy into a convenient backpack before looking over his shoulder at the portal. “Hurry up, agents!” he called out. “The fic will begin any moment now! I’ve already programmed your disguises, so you don’t need to worry about them!”
After a few seconds, a slightly shorter and less mature-looking Laura stepped through the portal. She reached up and patted her head. “Greasy hair, zits, nose no longer broken…” She looked down at her body. “Hey, this is my old lucky Mortal Kombat shirt! I won my first video game tournament wearing this thing!”
“Indeed. I based your disguises on your high school senior photos so as to make things more familiar for you both.”
“You really think we’ll be long enough here that we’ll need to reacclimatize to high school?” Danny asked as he joined the two agents. They were standing in the middle of a generic high school cafeteria. No one else was there, as the fic had not yet begun.
“Better safe than sorry.”
Laura snorted at the sight of her partner’s disguise. “Wow. Nice hair spikes, skater boi.”
“Oh please. I was with the indie crowd. We looked down on skater punks.” He paused. “Actually, we kinda looked down on everyone.”
(A/N: "Allix" is said like "Alex". "Xakra" is said like "Zack-ra", so "Xak" is the same as "Zack".)
“Yikes, right out of the gate!” Laura exclaimed. “Mark a charge for stupid Organization names.” Generic high school students began appearing from all around them as the story officially began.
The male assassin reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a notepad. “I have the feeling that somewhere Xericka just became annoyed and she doesn’t know why,” He said as he jotted down the charge.
“Right, like that’d be a huge change from her normal mood.” Laura watched as the crash dummy sat down at a nondescript table next to a peppy-looking teenage girl.
"You're staring again, Xakra," your best friend tells you.
“Naming the ‘you’ character rather defeats the point of using the second person perspective,” Cornelius said. “The point of making ‘you’ the protagonist is to create a sense of immersion for the audience. Unless the reader’s name is Xakra, they’re probably not going to connect well with this.”
The three agents sat further down the table from the You!Sue and her friend. Danny reached into his pocket again but was stopped by Laura’s hand on his wrist. “We’re on school grounds now, indie boy. No smoking.”
“What are they going to do, put me in detention?”
“If I’m going to suffer through a high school AU, so will you. Got it?”
The blond assassin sighed and nodded as he withdrew his hand from the satchel. Laura patted his shoulder, a triumphant smirk gracing her features.
"I don't get why you just stare at him. Why not go talk to him? I mean, you have THREE classes with the guy; don't you talk then?"
"Yeah, but I like staring at him. He's REALLY nice to look at."
“Him who?” Danny asked.
“Axel,” Cornelius said. “Demyx and Larxene are also present, but Axel is the main romantic focus.
Laura rolled her eyes. “Let me guess. Larxene is the nasty bitch who schemes to ruin the You!Sue’s pwecious wittle womance.” She blew a raspberry at nothing in particular.
“Very astute, Agent Dukes.”
She threw out her arm dramatically. “And lo, the plot was laid out before me, and it was predictable and trite.”
*RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING*
You grin, "Time for Algebra!"
Danny scowled as he added a new charge to his notebook. “You can’t ‘grin’ a line of dialogue. You can say, shout, scream, whisper, moan, groan, comment, remark, and even grunt something, but grinning dialogue is just not possible!”
“Algebra,” Laura groaned as the three agents stood up to follow the departing You!Sue. “I remember algebra with Mr. Jeffries in sophomore year. Sweet mother of Gordon Freeman, he could bore the paint right off the walls.”
“Then it’s a good thing we’re here to watch the Sues and not the class itself,” Danny replied.
Cornelius nudged Laura as they followed the You!Sue around a corner. “I’m not quite sure I understand why you have this antipathy towards high school. Surely it wasn’t completely terrible?”
“Maybe if you hung out with the right people or had the right teachers. I had neither, not until I got into competitive gaming. At least then I had some okay people to hang out with.” She shook her head. “Everything else was just an exercise in either tedium or emotional pain.”
Cornelius said nothing for a moment. “I suppose I don’t understand,” he finally said. “Expanding myself through learning has always been a comfort to me.”
“You don’t learn things in high school, Cornelius. You learn HOW to learn things, which is a lot less… comfortable. Can we stand outside of the classroom?”
“I don’t see a problem with that.”
The You!Sue walked into a nondescript classroom and took a seat by the window. The agents arranged themselves on either side of the doorway like pimply museum security guards. Larxene stalked between them into the classroom a few moments later. She and the You!Sue exchanged momentary death glares before the blonde found a desk.
Laura blew another raspberry. “An in-character Larxene would not put up with this brainless little twerp. She’d skip right over nasty looks straight to some sort of knife-related torture. There’d be GAH!” The assassin recoiled in surprise as Axel suddenly appeared at the desk next to the You!Sue. “I thought they couldn’t use their powers in high school AUs!”
“They can’t,” Cornelius replied. “Look at the text.”
"Hey, Xak."
You turn to the left and find the very subject of your stalker-ish-ness. You smile, "Hey Axel. How's it going?"
“Proper transitions are your friend,” Danny deadpanned as he wrote down a new charge. “Off-screen teleportation is not your friend unless you’re writing for a horror or off-kilter comedy.”
“Or something with superheroes,” the AI added.
“Right.”
“Axel as Batman would be so much more entertaining than this,” Laura said. “Sure, most of Gotham City would be in flames by the end of the story, but it’d be hilarious.”
Cornelius closed his eyes for a moment as he scanned the Words. “Agent Richardson, would you please get the remote activator out of my backpack? The rest of this scene may be safely skipped.”
“I don’t suppose we’re heading straight to the end so that we can off the You!Sue and her little pal?”
“I’m afraid not, Agent Dukes.”
Laura shrugged. “I had to ask.”
The three agents portalled into a locker-lined hallway. If the knots of generic teenagers hanging around and chatting about nothing in particular were any indication, then class had ended about a few minutes before.
Cornelius pointed down the corridor. The You!Sue, her friend from before, and a new, but familiar, boy had just rounded the corner. They were giggling about something or other.
“Is that Demyx with them?” Danny asked.
“Poor bastard,” Laura said. “Wrangled into being the friend of two Sues. Nobody deserves that.”
“Ahah,” Cornelius said. “Very witty, Agent Dukes.”
She looked over at the AI. “What are you talking about?”
“When you said ‘Nobody deserves that.’ It was a clever use of the term ‘Nobody,’ which, of course, carries an alternate meaning in the Kingdom Hearts continuum.” He paused. “I take it by your expression that you weren’t making a play on words and, in fact, were being serious.”
“Real perceptive, you are.”
"So, who're you gonna ask to the dance?"
You blink, "...Dance?"
"The Sadie-Hawkins dance, Xak. Ya know, girls ask the guys?"
Danny shook his head. “A high school dance. The level of unoriginality in this story is stunning.”
“You see?” Laura said. “This is why I hate high school AUs. They’re like Mad Libs: just copy and paste the names of canonical characters wherever there’s a space. Every single story is the same damn thing over and over again.”
“I think you’re exaggerating things just a little, Agent Dukes,” Cornelius cut in. “Not every high school AU is necessarily similar.”
“Good point. Sometimes they make everyone gay.”
“Again, I think that you don’t—”
Laura waved the AI into silence. “Shh! They’re trying to convince the You!Sue into asking Axel to the dance! Goodness knows we don’t want to miss any of this!”
"Hmm... Ya know, not only would you get to go with you-know-who, you'd get to see the über-pissed look on Larxene's face," she reasons with a smirk.
This gets the gears turning in your head. "Hm... that is a good point..."
“Cornelius, check your databases,” Laura said. “Is being annoyingly shallow a chargeable offence?”
“I don’t—” the AI started to say.
“You don’t have to check because you know I’m right? Great! Mark it, Danny.”
Danny jotted down the charge in his notebook. “Got it.” He glanced over at Cornelius, who was starting to look slightly flustered. “You doing all right?”
“I… I’m not quite sure. Do you both always get this way around Sues?”
“Not usually.” He led Cornelius away from Laura, who was glaring at the threesome and muttering new charges under her breath. “I think the setting is starting to get to us. Once you graduate, you sort of expect to leave all this high school baggage behind. To have it thrust in our faces again…” He sighs. “I probably had a better experience in high school than Laura did and I’m still on the verge of just dragging the Sues out of their classroom and bludgeoning them in the hallway.”
Cornelius thought about this for a moment. “You’re not actually going to do that, are you?”
“Relax. Both Laura and I can handle it. Trust me, we’ve tackled worse.”
“Hey ladies!” Laura bounded up to the two agents. “I checked the Words and we’re gonna need to portal again. We’ve got another action-free class scene coming up.” She paused. “What are you talking about?”
“Just chatting about the mission,” Danny replied as he pulled the RA out of his pocket. “How far ahead are we going?”
Laura raised one suspicious eyebrow, but let the matter drop. “Just after class. We’ve got drama with a capital Dee coming up.”
They ducked into a shadowy alcove and opened up a portal. A few moments later, they found themselves in another crowded, locker-lined hallway. The Sues were standing in the middle of the hall, looking at something with dismay.
You just stare, "...Look."
She follows your gaze and murmurs, "Oh..."
Axel's finished exchanging his books and is talking to Larxene, who's smiling at him. Larxene says something, Axel nods, then she grins and walks away.
Laura let out a mock gasp of horror. “Dun dun DUN!”
“Huh. I never thought I’d find myself in a situation where I’d be rooting for Larxene,” Danny remarked as the BF!Sue ran over to Axel.
“I’d be rooting for her more if she still had her powers. At least then she’d be able to throw down some teleport-spamming pain. All this version of Larxene can do is be catty and play nasty tricks on people.”
The BF!Sue walked back over to her friend as Axel departed for his next class.
"Larxene just asked him to the dance. ...I'm sorry, Xak."
Your heart starts to sting and hurt fills your eyes. "Thanks, Allix. ...C'mon, let's get to History."
Danny rolled his eyes. “This fic has more unnecessary ellipses than a 1980s comic book.”
The setting suddenly lurched as the scene changed around the three agents. After a moment’s disorientation, they found themselves in the chemistry department. A few emotionless students were sitting at the lab tables waiting for class to begin. “Charge for poorly constructed scene transitions,” Laura groaned as she clutched at the nearest table to steady herself. “A little warning would have been nice, Cornelius.”
“My apologies,” Cornelius said. “I think I’m still a little distracted from before.”
Laura looked around. “Where’s the Sue?”
Cornelius pointed towards one of the tables. “There.”
You sit at the table in the Chem. lab, staring absently down at the incoherent graffiti-scribbles on the marble surface.
This sentence got a rise out of Cornelius. “Preposterous!” he sputtered. “Marble should not be used for the construction of laboratory tables! The cost would be extraordinary, well out of reach for a typical North American high school. That does not even take the potentiality of adverse chemical reactions with the calcium carbonate—”
“Whoa!” Laura said quickly. “Settle down, HAL, we got it! Marble bad.”
The AI closed his eyes. His form flickered, but only for a moment. “My apologies, agents. I allowed myself to be caught up in the moment. To see something so obvious overlooked – never mind.”
“It happens to the best of us,” Danny said as he patted Cornelius on the shoulder.
“Aw, his first geeky rant. It’s like he’s a real live boy!” Laura remarked. She smiled wryly at the glare Danny shot in her direction. “What? No go on the Pinocchio reference? You would’ve preferred that I yell ‘mazel tov’ or something?”
“Maybe we should just get back to the fic.”
Axel laughs slightly, "I told her I was hoping you'd ask me, so she made something up about you having a date already."
"..." You peek at him over your paper. "...You really wanted to go with me?"
He nods, "Still do, but only if you want me to. I've always thought you were pretty cool."
Laura made the stupidest expression she could. “You really think I’m cool?” she said in a stereotypical ‘cool girl’ voice. “Ohmigawd, no way! That is, like, totally hawt!”
This elicited a shudder from Danny. “You did that far too well.”
“I like to use that voice in online video game matches.” Her grin took on a Cheshire Cat-like quality, only without the disappearing bit. “You should hear people swear when they think they’re getting trounced by a brainless bimbo.”
“As much as I’d enjoy hearing that story, Agent Dukes,” Cornelius cut in, “we need to portal ahead now. The dance-centric finale is coming up.”
“Finale. That’s music to my ears, Cornelius.”
At this point, Danny would have normally chided his partner for becoming too content. It slipped his mind, however; he was still reflecting on her creepy ‘cool girl’ voice. It did not slip the mind of the Ironic Overpower.
Laura frowned as she stepped through the portal. All around them were teenagers dancing, chatting, and hanging out by the walls waiting desperately for someone to come over and talk to them. “Something’s wrong.” She turned towards Danny. “You feel that, Danny? It’s like there’s – what are you staring at? And where did you get that tux from?”
Danny mumbled something as he turned his eyes toward the ground. His face had gone red.
“What? What is it?” Laura looked down at the floor. There was an expectant hush very similar to the one some people hear before a massive earthquake knocks their house down around their ears.
Cornelius cleared his throat. “I adjusted the disguise generator so that our clothing would be appropriate for a high school dance. It would not do to stand out, after a—”
He was cut off when Laura grabbed the lapels of his jacket and pulled his face within a few inches of hers. “Cornelius,” she growled. “I really don’t like having my clothing changed without my knowledge or permission.”
“If it helps,” Cornelius said, his tone remaining relatively unchanged, “you look very nice in that dress. Tea green is a good color for you. Wouldn’t you agree, Agent Richardson?” Danny, still in a bit of shock, burbled something incomprehensible.
“I don’t care! Do you know how inconvenient dresses are on Mary Sue missions! What if the Sue makes a break for it? No way I’m gonna catch up to her when I’m wearing an evening gown—” she wobbled momentarily, “—and high heels!”
“To be fair, the Sue will probably be wearing high heels and a dress as well. She will be at as much of a disadvantage as you.” He nodded at something over her shoulder. “Speaking of which, she and her friend have just arrived.”
Laura released Cornelius’s jacket. “Don’t think we’re not done talking about this,” she said.
Just like the AI said, both Sues had entered the generic large room where the dance was being held. They pointed and giggled at Axel and Demyx, who were chatting together next to one of the walls.
Demyx leaves the wall and hugs Allix, no surprise. "You look amazing..." He then turns to you, "And so do you, Xakra."
You start to blush, but Axel responds, "Hitting on my date in front of your girlfriend, Dem?" He smirks at you and lays his arm across your shoulders. "Guess I can't blame you."
Laura made retching noises. “Danny, give us a CAD reading,” she said,
“Uh… buh… right. Right!” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a CAD, which he pointed at both Nobodies in turn.
[Demyx. Male Nobody. Canonical? ??.???% OOC]
[Axel. Male Nobody. Canonical? ??.???% OOC]
Danny tapped the CAD readout before giving it an experimental shake. “Did DoSAT not give us a functioning CAD?”
“That, or the Nobodies have been given so little characterization by these particular Sues that they are confusing the CAD’s sensors,” Cornelius said as the BF!Sue and Demyx left to allow the You!Sue and Axel some time together.
You notice him staring past you at something, so you follow his line of vision. You glare, "I can't believe she still came."
Larxene's at the opposite wall, talking to Tyson.
Cornelius’s eyes flashed green for a moment. “I can find no record of any Kingdom Hearts or Final Fantasy character named Tyson.”
“He’s a Stu?” Laura smiled. “Awfully nice of the story to give us a Sue apiece. Nobody gets left out!” She glanced over at Cornelius. “I wasn’t making a clever reference to Nobodies, Cornelius. Just letting you know.”
“Thank you, Agent Dukes, but I think I can figure that out from here on.”
"The guy she's talking to. His name's Tyson; he's been hitting on me for weeks," you admit.
Axel starts glaring, too. "You never mentioned that..."
"He's just annoying. It's not a big deal."
“I sense foreshadowing,” Danny said. “Unpleasant ‘attempted rape as drama’ foreshadowing.”
“You would be correct, Agent Richardson,” Cornelius replied. Danny shook his head despondently as he wrote down the new charge.
Laura yawned as the You!Sue and Axel continued to flirt. “Sweet baby Jeebus, I’m bored out of my gourd! It’s the old days all over again!”
“What are talking about?” Danny asked.
“Almost all I did when I worked in Intelligence were high school AUs. The same old stories over and over again. That’s why I requested a transfer into the DMS. You know, to see a little action!”
“Huh. I didn’t know that about you.”
Laura glanced over at the walls. “Well, we are in school. Learning is supposed to happen here.”
"You up for some moshing?"
"Always," he answers, like it's a known fact. Axel then takes your hand and leads you through the mess of teenagers.
“Well, you did ask for something interesting,” Danny said. “I think moshing at a high school dance qualifies.”
“If you tried to mosh at one of my high school dances,” Laura remarked, “not only would you be thrown out of the dance and possibly suspended from school, your date would immediately dump you for doing something so embarrassingly stupid.”
Danny smirked at his partner. “So you’ve been to a real school dance?”
“Once. Senior prom. Let’s just say it went about as well as the rest of my high school experience.”
“Wow. It’s mind-boggling to me that you weren’t always a nerdy anti-social shut in.”
“Funny!” Laura very obviously rubbed one of her eyes with only her middle finger.
Cornelius, meanwhile, had taken off his backpack so that he could pull out the ‘Me’ dummy. He set it down next to the three agents and was now carefully watching the Words with one hand always on the inflation cord.
“We’ve got first person coming up?” Danny asked,
“Precisely,” the AI responded. “There is also a crucial plot moment that’s about to occur. Look there.” He pointed into the crowd of moshing teens. The You!Sue was pushing her way through, trying to find her friend and Demyx.
As you start forcing your way up there, someone's arm wraps around you, keeping you from moving your own arms. Before you can protest, their hand slaps over your mouth. The next thing you know, you're being pulled towards the doors. You try to fight, but your obviously male captor doesn't even waver.
“And nobody notices this!” Laura said. “The Sue is actually capable of making an entire room full of dancing high school students act even stupider than normal.”
“Where are the teachers or chaperones looking out for things exactly like that?” Danny asked.
Laura let out a short flat laugh. “In high school AUs, adults are one of three things: useless, perpetually drunk, or molesters.”
Cornelius held up one hand for silence. With the other, he yanked the ‘Me’ dummy’s cord. It rapidly began to inflate. “Point of view shift in three… two… one.”
Reality blurred. Danny would later describe the sensation in his individual mission report as ‘having his eyes taken out with silver spoons, polished like bowling balls, then put back into his head by a blind engineer.’ In her mission report, Laura simply wrote ‘it was weird and it sucked.’
Allix's P.O.V.
I follow close behind Demyx as we try to escape the mini-mosh pit on the dance floor. I laugh when we finally stumble out. "That was crazy!"
“Point of view shift complete,” Cornelius announced. “Sue known as Allix successfully merged with ‘Me’ dummy.”
Both human agents recoiled a little when they looked at the BF!Me!Sue. The plastic, foam, and metal parts of the dummy were conjoined with the sparkly flesh of the Sue. It was if Frankenstein’s monster had been created in the Twilight universe. It was currently acting very concerned that Larxene was talking to Axel.
“Please tell me this won’t last,” Danny said. “That thing is really unpleasant to look at.”
“It will end shortly,” Cornelius replied. “I would have skipped over this section entirely, but there were a few charges that needed to be collected. For example:”
"No, something's wrong! You and I both know Larxene's at war with Xak! Now she's chatting up Axel and Xak's not there; she's up to something!" I try to convince him.
“One count of improbable conclusion jumping,” he went on to say. “How could the You!Sue’s friend come to the correct solution – that her friend is missing and Larxene is involved – when there are so many others that could be equally, if not more, true?”
“Like maybe Axel ditched the You!Sue and started flirting with Larxene!” Laura said.
“Exactly.”
“That’d be a hell of a lot more canonical than this, if you think about it. Axel is something of a backstabbing prick.”
It was at this moment that Axel leapt up in a panic and left in search of the You!Sue. Larxene chose this moment to give the BF!Me!Sue a few choice insults about both her and Demyx.
Before Demyx even has a chance to argue, I snatch up a glass of soda and empty it all over the front of Larxene's dress. "Just because you don't have a great guy doesn't mean you can rag on girls who do! Leave Xak and me the hell alone!"
“Ooh, what a crushing blow!” Danny said. “Larxene will never recover from that one!”
Laura shook her head as Larxene fled the room with a shriek. “Larxene does not run away just because someone spilled soda on her. The real Larxene would’ve turned this petty little fruitcake inside out.”
Reality suddenly shuddered again. The BF!sue and the now-deflating ‘Me’ dummy were once again separate entities. “I’ll collect the dummy,” Cornelius said. “I then recommend that we head outside and begin dealing with the You!Sue and Stu. They’re just outside the door.”
“He didn’t even take her to a secluded location?” Danny said incredulously.
“With the stupidity of this student body?” Laura commented. “Nobody would notice if he started raping her in the middle of the dance floor.”
Cornelius slid his backpack across the floor towards the two assassins. “There’s some duct tape in my backpack. We might need it.”
"Get off me, Tyson!"
He sighs. "I can't believe you turned me down for that womanizing jerk. I'm trying to do you a favor, here."
"How the hell is practically kidnapping me doing me a favor!"
Tyson’s response was cut off by someone’s arm wrapping around his windpipe in a sleeper hold. “I suppose you could argue that he’s doing you a favor by allowing Axel to be the hero and rescue you from certain violation,” Danny said as he forced the Stu to his knees.
There was the sound of tape being unrolled. “He’s also doing us a favor by getting you all nice and secluded,” Laura remarked as she approached the stunned You!Sue with a piece of duct tape in her hand.
It was at this point that Axel burst through the door. As the badfic was spinning out of control by now, he was becoming more and more in character. The agents watched as his tuxedo shifted and changed into the normal Organization XIII coat. "Are you okay? Did he… did he… you…” He blinked. His eyes refocused on the four struggling teenagers. “What’s going on?”
“I believe I can explain, Number Eight,” Cornelius said from behind him. He looked around, right into the flash of a neuralyzer. “You are Axel of Organization XIII. You are an adult Nobody and not a human teenager. This all been a rather strange dream.”
“Nice timing, Cornelius,” Danny remarked as the Stu finally fell unconscious. Laura deigned not to add anything as she bound up the You!Sue’s hands, feet, and mouth.
“Thank you.” Cornelius gently steered the expressionless Axel towards a quiet corner. “That only leaves the BF!Sue and the two other Nobodies. I suggest we bring them all here before moving on to any sort of punishment.”
“Dibs on the ones less likely to do any stabbing.”
Laura looked up from her roll of duct tape. “You two go ahead. I’ll work on wrapping things up here. When you get back, I’ve got a good idea what we should do with these prissy little know-nothings.”
On a plane of reality far away from the generic high school and the Nobodies (now back at The Castle That Never Was with original personalities, but sans memories), a slightly cartoony pirate ship sailed across an almost endless ocean. The air was heavy with salt water and the sun was just beginning to set. There was almost something magical about the whole thing – except, of course, for the three OCs bound with duct tape flopping around on the deck like stranded belugas.
Danny leaned against the railing and puffed on a fresh Bleepette. “I’ve gotta hand it to you, Laura. When you go for canonical punishments, you go all out.”
“Thanks,” Laura replied. “It’s important to put a little extra touch on these things when you can.”
The blond assassin cleared his throat a little nervously. "You also looked very nice in that dress. Just thought you should know."
"Shut up," Laura said, a small smile on her face, as she gave her partner a light elbow check. She then leaned over the side and cupped one ear with her free hand. Just barely audible over the sound of the ship cutting through the waves was a ticking noise. A green, scaly creature momentarily surfaced next to the ship and looked up at the agent expectantly before submerging itself again.
“Captain Hook’s crew has all been neuralyzed,” Cornelius reported as he stepped out of the captain’s cabin. “They won’t feel the need to come above deck for approximately ten minutes and thirty two seconds.”
Laura slapped her hands together in excitement. “Danny, if you would be so kind as to read off the charges?”
“Of course.” Danny cleared his throat before consulting the notebook he had just pulled out of his pocket. “The three of you are charged collectively with the following crimes: having nonsensical Organization-themed names, having an unnecessary second person point of view, making three members of Organization XIII act wildly out of character, removing the canonical abilities of said Organization XIII members, assaulting the Organization XIII member Larxene—”
“I wasn’t aware that throwing soda at someone qualified as assault,” Cornelius interrupted.
Danny snorted. “You are also charged with abusing ellipses, abusing commas, having off-screen teleportation in a genre that does not support it, using inappropriate building materials for chemistry labs, forming a mosh pit during a high school dance, trivializing rape, and boring PPC agents. The penalty is death by crocodile. There is no appeal.”
“Agent Dukes!” Cornelius quickly said as Laura forced the You!Sue to her feet. “I would remind you that DoSAT would not approve of throwing one of their crash dummies to a crocodile. They insist on forms of execution that leave the dummy intact.”
Laura shrugged. “Fair enough.” She drew one of her daggers and slashed the dummy’s throat. It thrashed around for a moment before deflating back into its original cube form. “I can throw the others overboard, right?”
“I see no problem with that.”
“Sweet! Give me a hand, you two.”
The agents picked up the Sue and Stu in turn and tossed them over the side. Their muffled wails were cut off by the sound of snapping jaws.
Laura let out a satisfied sigh. “I don’t know about either of you,” she said, “but I feel like heading back to the RC and learning absolutely nothing for the next few hours.”
“So we’re going to watch some reality TV?” Danny asked with a joking grin.
“I said ‘learn absolutely nothing,’ not ‘give ourselves brain damage.’ I was thinking more like we could watch a few old ‘90s action movies. Cornelius, do you get streaming videos?”
The AI smiled. “Of course. It’s very convenient.”
Laura gave Danny a nudge. “Told you so.”