Chapter 4: Huzzah, huzzah, a mission at last!
Disclaimer: Do I have to spell it out for you?
Trevelyan glared at the urgently beeping console and conjured some red and black fire threateningly. Cowed, the console stopped mid-beep. He meandered over to the machine and looked at the note from the SO. “Rescue mission, eh?” He scanned the document they’d been sent. “Wow. This is one bad badfic.”
Spence sidled over. “Nah, that’s just the script of Airborne.”
“It says that we have to rescue a canon bloke, David Toombs. The SO said we’ll know him when we see him.”
“Well, it has the makings of a badfic, that much is certain. Glaring script holes, improbable laser weapons…” Boromir growled. “Hell, time isn’t even defined clearly!”
“Dispatch would be hard put to kill the guy who greenlighted this thing on sight.” Sean muttered angrily.
Koster angrily smashed a few buttons to set the coordinates. “There we go, we’ll get ‘im now. See you two when we get back,” he nodded to Paddy and Spence.
“You had better be right,” Boromir muttered.
They didn’t even need to set a disguise, as they would be invisible to all the canonicals in Airborne, so after the portal opened they all jumped into shitty movieland.
“I knew it, black bloke always dies first…” Alec rolled his eyes as he scanned what had happened before they had arrived. They were watching what was left of Mach One infiltrate the facility where the virus was being stored. As the Mach One team came to the chain-link fence, McNeil used an improbable laser weapon to cut it open.
“Charge one: physically impossible weapo-no, bad Boromir, this is canon…”
After silently following them into the building and near the liquid nitrogen, Patrick asked if Airborne would be MSTed.
“Are you kidding?” Sean whispered hoarsely. “This practically MSTs itself!”
“Well, badfic can’t screw up this canon any more, that’s for sure.” Alec shook his head. This time it was Sara who used the laser to open the canister. As Sara sarcastically mentioned that the virus looked familiar and wondered what they were going to do with it, a voice said, “Don’t bother. I’ll take that.” The Mach One agents looked up, as the PPCers heard the strangely familiar voice and stared at the strangely familiar face…
“That’s our man Davey, I take it?” Sean asked innocently.
As Toombs pulled the canister up, he remarked, “So this is the Mach One team.” He pronounced it “Mack-One”. “And I thought you were so big and bad.” He laughed. “You two went down as easy as your friend!”
“Who are you?” Sara asked in a panicked way. “How the hell’d you get in here?”
David unclasped the canister from the rope. “Magic.”
“I’m starting to like this guy,” Alec grinned.
“Zeus, we’ve got company,” McNeil whispered into his headset.
“I’m locking all frequencies, Mr. McNeil. You think I’d be that stupid?” Toombs marveled.
“WARNING. LIQUID NITROGEN NOW BEING SHUNTED. PLEASE MOVE AWAY FROM THE UNIT. CLOSE ALL CISTERN DOORS TO AVOID EXPOSURE.” The really bad female computer voice said.
“Employing really bad female computer voices…no, bad Boromir…”
The Mach One team tried to move away, but Toombs fired at them. “A bullet in the head or a cold bath, you two!”
“LIQUID NITROGEN NOW BEING DISTRIBUTED. AVOID CONTACT WITH CISTERN. CLOSE ALL CISTERN DOORS TO AVOID CONTAMINATION.”
“This should be interesting,” Toombs remarked conversationally to his henchman. “I failed science in school. I’m going to bet that we’re about to see two human icicles.”
Sara began (unnoticeably…yeah right) using the laser to cut the nitrogen feeder pipe and freeze Toombs’ henchman. Toombs, of course, got away.
The PPCers followed him.
“I liked Boris’ nitrogen death better,” Alec muttered.
“Okay, he’s in shape,” Patrick said as Toombs dashed across the field, ducked through the hole in the fence, and shot at wotshisname, the driver bloke, with about ten rounds to the chest, more than was strictly necessary.
“Gratuitous slow-motion sequences-no, stop, bad Boromir…”
“Okay, he can aim, and likes overkill…” Alec nodded. “Let’s portal to tomorrow morning, we don’t want to see Bill and Sara getting all mushy.”
“Good idea. According to the Words, Toombs dies of a shot or two to the chest, but with kevlar and a little help…” Sean agreed. He set the coordinates and the four agents stepped through.
*
They arrived at the Presidential Suite of the Embassy Suites Hotel in Washington DC.
“Okay, I’ve been to DC before, and this is not the Embassy Suites,” Alec rolled his eyes. “Get it right, people!”
“Mucking with locations-” Boromir shook his head.
It was time for Sean to put the plan in action. Toombs started as a strangely compelling Irish lilt came out of nowhere. “Why don’t you wear a bulletproof vest? Just in case.” He looked around, but saw nobody. The PPC agents had already portalled to the airfield, where they were deep into a game of fizzbin.
Or, more specifically, Alec trying to teach everyone how to play fizzbin.
A few hours later, when “Maillot” arrived, Sean whispered in his ear, invisible, “If you have to shoot anybody, why not aim a little lower and to the left of the heart? Does more damage that way, oh yes.” For some reason, “Maillot” found himself unable to resist the Irish voice. When Sean returned to the group, he practically gagged as Koster handed him a bottle of water, which he gulped down, thanking his partner. “All right, next time one of you guys has to use the urple. That nearly made me sick, it did!” He grimaced.
“Right, now all we can do is watch and wait.”
Soon, what was left of the Mach One team would burst through the door into the hangar. For now, the agents amused themselves by playing Tetris on Alec’s Game Boy, having totally given up on fizzbin.
Within the hour, a large, quite staged gunfight had broken out in the hangar. In a matter of seconds, Toombs was the only one of his team left standing, surrounded by the two guards and the tech guy.
“All right! Don’t fire!” He yelled.
McNeil stepped forward, rage causing his gun hand to shake. “Listen. Asshole. You killed two of my friends, so I’m going to count to two. One-” He cocked his gun.
“You do that,” Toombs said calmly, “and we’ll release the virus.”
“Where’s Maillot?”
“Mr. Maillot is here!” Toombs slowly put down the gun. “Mr. Maillot is-”
BAM! Toombs collapsed, a bullet slightly down and to the left of his heart, a wound that wasn’t quite mortal but would still hurt like hell. After the three good guys had left, chasing after Maillot, Toombs stirred slightly and barely moved his head. (note: Sean Bean actually does that, after they’ve all left and you just see Toombs’ body lying there, I swear his head moves. Toombs lives! *happy flags*)
“Hello, David.” A voice, akin to the Irish lilt he had heard earlier, came out of nowhere. He raised his head and stared about fearfully, thinking an angel—or demon—had come to collect him, and that he was actually dead, and not just hearing things. Not a soul was in his field of vision, however. “We can heal you, David.”
“Y-you can? Who are you?”
There was humor in the voice. “Never mind that. If we help you, however, you can never return here. Do you accept?”
“I’m just about sick of Washington, anyway,” Toombs said, his mouth dry. “I accept.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Really? Because you can always change your mind, you know.”
“Yes, I am pretty sure.”
“Ah, but are you positive?”
“YES!”
“You sure you’re sure?” There was the distinct sound of someone being pushed and another voice, also similar to the Irish one but even closer to the other one grumbled, “Don’t milk it, Alec.”
“But it’s fun, Kos. Job satisfaction.”
“Erm, I know this may seem impolite, considering that you’re going to heal me, but GET ON WITH IT!” Toombs half-croaked.
“Sorry, Alec’s just a git.”
“I am not! And anyway, you’re a tad bit obsessive over that stupid ruby…” Four men, all bearing a strange resemblance to him and each other, seemed to appear by his side. The one with reddish-brown hair nearly cut to his shoulders bent over him with a strange device that looked a bit like a Polaroid camera, in reality a Star Trek Original Series tricorder.
“Mmm-hmm, right where you said, Sean.”
The Irishman, apparently called Sean, grinned. “Am I good or what?”
The scar-faced man mused aloud, and as soon as Toombs heard his voice he was absolutely positively sure that this had been the man who had been doggedly asking if he was sure, and so therefore must be Alec. “Isn’t it funny that Boromir, who came from Gondor, land of low-tech, is best with the tricorder?”
Toombs assumed that the long-haired one was Boromir, and the device he was holding was a tricorder, whatever that was.
“Take off your shirt, jacket, and body armor, please. I need to see this.” When Toombs hesitated, Boromir followed it up with, “Fine, die of gangrenous bullet wounds with Kevlar scraps in. No skin off my bones.” His patient reluctantly obeyed as Boromir inspected the wound. “Ooh. Must’ve hurt. Speaking of pain, this is probably also going to hurt, so hold still.”
Alec couldn’t resist adding, “Because if you squirm, the high-intensity laser beam will slice into your vital organs and kill you.”
Sean rolled his eyes. “Ignore him, he’s just insane. And he has a morbid sense of humor.”
Despite Alec’s disturbing warning, Toombs actually managed to stay calm throughout the whole procedure of picking miniscule scraps of Kevlar, and finally the bullet, from the wound, barely wincing (perhaps that was because of the cordrazine hypospray that Boromir had slipped him). After requesting Alec’s “phaser”, he cauterized the wound with said Trek weapon, and returned it with a sarcastic “Thank you, Alec,” and subsequent rolling of eyes.
“Hey, no problem, I like this guy.” Alec said nonchalantly, either oblivious to the sarcasm or ignoring it.
“So, who’s that over there?” Toombs nodded to the final member of the team.
“That’s Patrick, also known as Koster, Kos, or, sadly, K-chan. But he only answers to that name if Kitty, Kitkat or Allaire calls him by that. So you’d be better off with ‘Kos’, then.” Boromir looked where the bullet wound had been. “A small scar, but that’ll heal.” Boromir helped him stand, then returned his garments.
“Well, let’s get back to Headquarters so we can show Davey here to the SO,” Patrick drawled.
Toombs, halfway in a shirt sleeve, stiffened. “Don’t call me Davey.”
“Oh, chill out,” Patrick fiddled with a small device and a glowing oblong doorway hung in midair. Toombs’ mouth hung open in amazement.
“What’s the matter, newbie? Never traveled by portal before?” Sean grinned. “Oh yeah, you don’t have these. Let me tell you, they make traveling a lot faster and easier.” He bowed mockingly to David. “You first.”
When he hesitated again, Boromir growled, “Don’t be a bloody fool, David. If we wanted to kill you, we would have done so already.”
“Wait, why are you helping me? How do you know my name?”
“Don’t ask questions,” Alec muttered irritably and stepped out of Toombs’ field of vision, motioning to the others to do the same, and watched their newest addition look about frantically. They had become invisible to canonicals, and since Toombs was technically still canon, he couldn’t see them.
“Alec? Patrick? Sean? Boromir? Where are you?” The portal closed with an ominous click.
“Easy, Davey me boy.” Sean’s voice came from behind him. Toombs wheeled, but saw no-one. “You can’t see us because we don’t want to be seen. We have to show you something. Here, hold on…” Something rapped him sharply on the head and he felt like something cool was trickling down his spine.
“Go on, lad, look at your hand.” Toombs obediently raised his hand to his face…and saw right through it. Before he could panic, the Irishman said proudly, “Bog-standard Disillusionment Charm, that is. Picked up from Potterverse-well, you’ll learn that later.” Toombs sensed a rueful smile aimed at him. “Come on, outside.”
*
“I still don’t like you, Murdoch.”
Murdoch raised an eyebrow. “Well, now you’re really going to hate me.”
“As you will, Dave, watch.” Alec’s voice said.
Murdoch, to the surprise of all but the PPCers, opened the canister and crushed some of the globes underfoot.
Nothing happened.
“The virus was a decoy. The real virus is safe.”
“I’ll goddamn murder him.” Toombs growled. “I nearly died for this!” He clenched his invisible fists with barely contained rage.
“You’ll do no such thing, because correction: you are dead. Well, at least in canon anyway. You’re very much alive right now. It took me a bit to understand when it happened to me.” Boromir’s voice came from his right. “Shall we leave?”
Nobody noticed the portal open and close, admitting five invisible people to the depths of the PPC headquarters.
Unfortunately, Toombs didn’t quite trust them, so he hesitated while going through the portal, having second thoughts about the whole affair.
Portals are very perceptive things, and Toombs having no clear direction to go in his mind, the portal just placed him in stasis until he decided.
*
“Well, welcome to our humble abo-wait, where’s Davey?” Sean asked.
“Oh crap.” Boromir checked the statistics. “Apparently, the portal’s held him in stasis. He’s stuck.”
Alec dashed into Kitty and Kitkat’s room. “Guys, our newest member is in stasis in the portal!”
“Did you knock him out?”
“No, why?”
“Ai Eru, we forgot. Canonicals have to be in a strong state of unconsciousness or disorientation before they go through a portal to the PPC. That’s why we hit you guys before bringing you here.” Kitkat explained.
“Ohhh. So how do we get him back?”
“Go in the portal and hit him.” Kitty reasoned.
Alec got a running start into the portal before anyone could ask what he was doing, and once inside, gave David a good right hook. That promptly knocked him out and the portal took them both to their destination.
“You may get stabbed in the head with a dagger or a sword, you may be burned to death, or skinned alive or worse…”
Toombs awoke to Koster doing a very poor rendition of “La Resistance”. He realized that he was sitting in an armchair. He stared at his hand. Good, he was visible. Sean must have fixed that while he was unconscious. Speaking of which…he glared at Alec. “Now what in the name of crap was that for?”
“You were stuck. Our fault, actually.” Boromir said apologetically. “Oh yeah, I went back and got you this.” He happily brandished a familiar virus canister.
“Is that the real deal?”
“Nah, just the decoy. But you can use the bulbs to store poisons and such.” Boromir shrugged. “Sorry, but you don’t see the real deal in canon…I think. So this is the best I could do.”
“Wow! How’d you get it?”
“Nicked it,” Boromir said proudly, spinning the canister to make it look like it was breakdancing.
“Better get him to the SO then,” Alec said as he motioned for them to follow him. About five minutes and one dizzyingly long elevator ride later, they had arrived at a wall that was an eye-smarting shade of grey. Alec strode up and thwacked the wall with the butt of his pistol three times. A door grudgingly materialized, nearly indistinguishable from the surrounding wall space.
/I suppose I’ll have to let you in,/ a mental voice said exasperatedly.
“Did…you guys…”
“In, Davey.”
Cowed, Toombs inched in the door and caught his first glimpse of the SO.
“Sunflower. In suit.” Toombs blinked. He was hallucinating, yeah, a hallucination brought on by the stress and blood loss-
/I assure you, you are not hallucinating./ This time, the voice (for lack of a better word) sounded amused. /We get that a lot with new recruits./
“Top o’ the mornin’ to ye, SO! Well, if it is morning at any rate,” Sean said in a (falsified) rough approximation of “Irish Manners” that he had picked up from Harper in Sharpeverse, a cheery tone in his voice. “You can never really tell time in this blasted place.”
But the rather large plant was ignoring him. /David Toombs, is it?/ The newbie nodded. /All right, after checking your background, I think that you should stay with them./ The SO waved a frond at the four Beany clones. /Just go find Agents Kitty and Kitkat, they’ll train him./
“Ja, sir!” Boromir saluted.
“That was quick,” Sean said innocently.
/You think I want you people to stay?/
*
After ten more minutes of losing their way, they eventually made it to Kitty and Kitkat’s response center. Again, Alec thwacked the door with his pistol butt.
“Do you mind? Totally kicking ass at Unreal Tournament!” Kitty’s voice called from inside the room.
A blonde teenager opened the door, clutching a copy of “Spock’s World” by Diane Duane like it was vital to her very existence. “Oh, h’lo boys.” She grinned. “What’s shakin’?”
“Davey, meet Kitkat.”
Kitty scooted her chair back from her console. “Oh, g’day then.” She circled Toombs. “Can’t be Mellors, no hat…can’t be Lovelace, y’don’t look like a swot with evil tendencies…a-ha! You must be David Toombs.”
“How does she know that?” Toombs asked, bewildered.
“I’m PSYCHO!” Kitty grinned. “G’day, I’m Kitty.” Toombs noticed a touch of the Australian about her (that means easygoing and friendly). “Spence and Paddy are down in the cafeteria trying to find something edible. We’re to train him?”
“Yep,” Koster said. “But he hasn’t even been properly initiated yet.”
“Oh, well we can’t have that, can we?” Kitkat grinned fiendishly. “His uniform should be there already. Make him wear it and proceed.”
The boys frog-marched him a grand total of ten feet back to their response center. Spence and Paddy, having returned in their absence, handed them his uniform, noting the extra things that had appeared.
Paddy said “hello” through his egg roll. Spence simply waved and added more mustard to his Twinkie to make it semi-edible. After Toombs had donned the uniform, Alec grabbed an opaque liquid from the fridge that was every color, and yet no color at all. It made Toombs’ mind spin.
“If you really want to do this, drink this. If not, we can always wipe your memory and send you back.” Boromir said solemnly, handing him the cup.
David looked from the cup…to the boys…to the console and repeated the process a few times. He hesitantly raised the cup, then lowered it. His resolve seemed to harden, and he downed the cup’s confusing contents in one long swig.
Spring green starbursts danced across his vision, he broke out in a cold sweat, there was a loud keening noise in his ears, then, rushing darkness.
When he came to in the armchair for the second time in what seemed to be the space of an hour, the others were staring at him apprehensively.
“I feel like I just ingested Astroturf.” He moaned. “I just have this sense of bright green.”
Boromir clapped him warmly on the shoulder. “Welcome home.”
Whoo! It sure took long enough, eh? But don’t worry, I have some very special plans in store for Davey. *mutters something about Alter Echo* Um, yes, right. The first actual assassination is a real doozy, glad they’re doing it and not me and Kitkat. Saio!