"...Perhaps there was more [to your saving Danica]. Perhaps Artemis Entreri did not have the heart to let the woman die alone in the darkness."
Entreri shrugged as if it did not matter.
How many of Artemis Entreri’s victims would be surprised?" Jarlaxle asked, pressing the point.
"How many of Artemis Entreri’s victims deserved better than they found?"
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Isaiah was roused at precisely eight o’clock by a hand tapping his pillow impatiently.
"Wake up, Agent. You’ve overslept. Again."
"Unh." Isaiah fought his way into a sitting position, frantically rubbing his eyes. "Sue—Jack—Elizabeth dead—Sherlock Homes—"
Another round of taps was directed, rather painfully, at his skull.
"Ouch! Mara!" Fully awake now, Isaiah pushed her hand away and slid out of bed. "What’s so urgent? The console didn’t beep, did it?"
"Nope. I got our next assignment early, from Quen. She decided that we might need a little time to steel our nerves."
Voice still hoarse from sleep, Isaiah croaked, "We must be hardened enough against badfic, doncha think? After Shay Leigh and her horde of Sues, I think I’m ready to take on anything."
"Let’s hope you’re right. This one’s worse than all of the regular Mary Sues put together."
Isaiah shrugged the tension out of his shoulders and made his way to a tiny dresser, where he began the search for a clean uniform. "Not possible."
"It’s a Mary-You."
Isaiah’s hands grasped a shirt rather harder than he had meant to, yanking out the top drawer and nearly upending the dresser. Not heeding the sudden pile of black clothing at his feet, he sped across the room to Mara, eyes wide. "You’re not serious? It’s only our fourth mission!"
Mara looked exasperated. "Haven’t you ever had a glance at the first page of fanfiction.net? Every fifth story is a Jack/You or Will/You fic. I swear they undergo mitosis every fifteen seconds."
"It’s too bad. I kind of liked the ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ books when I was younger. Yet another childhood memory ruined by Suethors. I’m just glad the Mary Sue inserting herself as the Little Mermaid in a PotC crossover got deleted before we were handed that mission. So, let me guess, the One True Love is Jack?"
"I have no idea. Quen told me it was a Mary-You, that’s all. I haven’t got the nerve to look at it. Grab an energy bar and some Bleeprin-infused coffee, and let’s move."
"I’m still in my nightclothes, in case you hadn’t noticed." Isaiah shot her an irate look. "If it’s a You/Jack fic, we can’t go in by ourselves, anyway—one of us will get Sue’d," he pointed out. "And if it’s me," he added nervously, "I’d get an instant sex change."
"As interesting as that may be to see…" Isaiah gave her a good-natured shove "…I think a trip to the Department of Sufficiently Advanced Technology is in order."
"Good. You go to DoSat and I’ll get dressed."
"I’m afraid not. You should know your way around Headquarters better than you do, even if you’re new. As eager as I am to see this through, I’ll wait for you." Mara promptly positioned herself outside the door.
_______________________________________
"Tess?"
Mara brusquely greeted a young woman dressed in Matrix style garb and smiling wanly at the DTE agent. "We’re here to see Agent Techno Dann, if you don’t mind."
Tess nodded. "He’s in the armory, testing phasers. Careful when you go in—there’s still too little power on them, and the beams are having a ricochet effect."
"We’ll be careful," Mara assured her, motioning for Isaiah to follow her down a flight of stairs into DoSAT.
"Gotcha!" came a muffled voice from within. "Much better, much more of an even beam."
Mara pressed the pad on the side of the door and the metal door shifted open.
"Dann?" she called. "We could use your he—"
FLASH!
A beam bounced off a target’s aquiline nose and headed toward the agents. Mara ducked, but not in time. There was the smell of singed hair as she rose, carefully inspecting her locks. She turned around and raised her eyebrows at Isaiah in a silent question.
"It’s not that bad," Isaiah supplied. "You already have black hair, so it’s not as if the damage really stands out."
The agent holding the phaser turned his attention from a titanium target shaped like Marissa Picard and looked their way, puzzled for a moment. Recognition dawned on him as he glanced at their sleeves, which were newly embossed with the official symbol of the Department of Technical Errors, the red pen.
"Well, it’s certainly a surprise seeing you here," Dann remarked, putting his phaser on a rack with several dozen of its kind. "Portal generators working all right? Weapons holding up?"
"We heard that you had developed a cure for You fics," Isaiah blurted out. Eyes darting to Mara, he amended, "At least, I heard it from Mara. Is it some sort of device that we wear, or...?"
"The dummy’s relatively new," Dann stated matter-of-factly, looking in Mara’s direction.
"Hey!" Isaiah called hotly. "I may be a new agent but I’m not--"
Dann blinked and held up a hand. "Not you," he said to Isaiah. "The PPC crash dummy." He inclined his head slightly. "Follow me, please." He led them through a corridor with several storage rooms branching off. "The dummy comes with the name ‘You’ or ‘Me.’ It’s specially designed to channel the Sueish spirit of second and first person Sues to avoid flaming the authors and Sueing the PPC agents. It’s been in high demand, and I think this one’s seams are a bit fragile. Jira and Shmuckleigh couldn’t resist giving the dummy several unnecessary whacks after its timely demise."
He handed them a soft yellow cube with the instructions, "Do not pull cord until in fic."
Isaiah grinned. "I think I’m going to enjoy this."
Two minutes and one portal later, he and Mara were disguised as pirates, and the crash dummy had taken its place at the helm. The agents winced at the name of the story.
I can never think of appropriate titles, sorry
"It’s nice how Suethors take the time to make their readers feel that they’re in capable hands, isn’t it?"
"Oh, yes. It speaks of so much thought and effort put into the story."
The PPC crash dummy began to wander the deck of the ship, savoring its good fortune at having it.
You were what most people would call a pirate, but you didn’t like thinking of yourself like that. Pirates where dirty, they stole from and killed innocent people, and that simply wasn’t you.
"Oh, so you’re a snob, then." Mara tossed her hair, and then gingerly felt over her locks. "All of the other pirates are dirty, but not you. Your kind of piracy is fine—"
"And what an interesting brand of piracy it must be," added Isaiah. "What pirate doesn’t steal from innocent people, at the very least? That’s what a pirate is—a thief on the high seas."
"Maybe she has a special detector that lets her know when people are ‘guilty’ enough to steal from," Isaiah hypothesized sarcastically, while the dummy elaborated on her past. It turned out that up until she was seventeen, she had lived in a "respectable" part of town with a highly regarded family. The "You" persona, now eighteen, had already made herself famous.
"Not only a female pirate captain, but a female pirate captain at eighteen. And a famous one. Kind of young, aren’t you?" Isaiah glared at her.
"I think we’ve established that this Sue thinks that nothing is too good for her."
In fact you where quite proud of what you had achieved.
Isaiah winced at the bad spelling.
"Why does so much Suefic not pay attention to the difference between ‘were’ and ‘where’?" Isaiah made a face. "I’ve done ‘teh’ instead of ‘the’, ‘peehole’ instead of ‘peephole’, and even a few ‘your/you’re’ mix-ups, to my everlasting shame. But I never once made that error, and this is the third Suefic I’ve come across so far that has it. Not to mention that this is the second time the Suethor’s made that mistake."
"You wrote ‘peehole’ instead of ‘peephole’? When was this?"
"I’d rather not elaborate."
"Fair enough. Oh, well done, Sue, super-size that ego!" The dummy inflated slightly as "Your" ship was deemed secondary only to the Black Pearl.
Isaiah eyed it nervously. "Hope it won’t pop."
"Greater than the Dauntless?" Mara looked skeptically at the crash dummy. "Yeah, right. Sue, here’s a little nautical lesson for you. Most pirate ships were relatively small—only the very successful pirates had large ships. I doubt that you, coming from a ‘respectable’ family and not having had anything to do with piracy until last year, would be able to come into possession of such a vessel. And even then, how would you retain it, not having had any real world experience?"
You also had a loyal, strong crew who would walk to the ends of the earth for you. You also had a hold full of treasure that your father left you when you died, so all in all you saw no reason to hurt innocent people just out of greed.
"Whoa, whoa. Stop." Isaiah put his hand to his forehead, feeling a headache coming on. "Aside from the complete and utter Sue-ishness of having a crew who would go to the ends of the earth for you—when Jack’s crew didn’t, may I remind you—how could your father leave you a hold full of treasure? You just said that you came from a respectable family in a respectable town! Why did your father possess a hold full of treasure, and why would he give it to you at all if he, the respectable man that he was, knew you were breaking the law?"
"Maybe he didn’t know."
"So, what, did she just ask him for a hold full of treasure for no reason? As well-to-do as she was, she’d have had no cause to leave on her own, and no gentleman would ever let his young daughter go anywhere unescorted. Also, her father must be exceedingly rich. Even a monarch would be hard-pressed to bestow that sort of parting present on a daughter of his."
Around them, several nooses wriggled into existence, growing like vines in the air around the agents and hanging perfectly still. The space in between them shimmered, letting Mara and Isaiah know that plotholes lurked just beyond.
"Careful not to touch them, or you’ll become extremely disoriented," Mara warned, ushering Isaiah away from the closest one. "Those are logic loopholes. Extremely hazardous to stories, readers, and PPC agents."
"How wonderful that these fall under our jurisdiction," Isaiah remarked grimly. "If it weren’t for these, I’d say we could hand over this fic to the Department of Mary Sues. The grammar isn’t bad for Suefic. This ‘You’, however, smells to high heaven. Aw, how sweet. She’s temperamental, but not around her crew."
"Mm. Apparently she only dislikes other pirate captains—oh, and how lovely. Isaiah," Mara said sweetly, "do you know why she hates them? It’s because, and I quote, ‘They all seemed to think that they were above everybody else.’"
Isaiah made a strangled noise. "As opposed to her, a pirate captain who looks down on all other pirates except her beloved crew and thinks they’re dirty because they have to steal to make a living and she doesn’t because she was lucky enough to inherit treasure. Get out of my sight, wench." He narrowed his eyes at the You Sue.
The deck beneath them groaned as a tense shift hit. Then it was back to more of the reasons why everyone loved the Mary Sue. According to her, the crew loved her because of the equal shares they received at her hands.
"Pirate ships were very democratic! ALL pirate captains would have to make sure their crew got a fair share of rations, Miss Holier-Than-Thou. Do a little research, why don’t you?" Mara, of course.
"But research takes work!" Isaiah mimicked.
Mara’s lip curled. "Not an excuse. The information on that is available on the second disc of the PotC DVD."
People usually considered you a pirate because your business was in commandeering ships. Not that you ever actually stole what you had taken.
Mara and Isaiah looked at each other, baffled.
"Not...that...she…ever…stole…my head hurts."
"So she randomly goes around stealing ships and then returning them? I…I don’t get it. I just don’t get it. Besides, that’s still stealing," Mara insisted.
The crew docked in Tortuga, and the PPC dummy handed her first mate, Bill, the telescope in order to scout out a huge black ship.
"The telescope?"
The spyglass that the Sue should have been holding changed into a beautiful red telescope—not one of Hubble capacity, but one that an amateur might use.
"The tripod is a nice touch," Isaiah commented.
"I agree."
You watched Bill face change from being confused, to realisation dawning on him.
Bill lowered his gaze, and whispered, "The Black Pearl."
"Here’s where it gets messy. She makes a ruse with Bill." Mara clenched her pen hand until her knuckles turned white—no small feat for the olive-skinned agent. Bill and the Sue waited, Sue remarking on Jack’s foolish act of leaving only one guard aboard the Pearl. The rest of the pirates had left to "do other pirate things."