Disclaimer: I own nothing. Is it really that hard to understand?
Chapter 2: I shouldn’t have said that…training, Team Phoenix, and excessive bleeprin usage
The men just sat there, mouths agape. “WHAT?!” (*smacks self* No! Bad GC! Multiple question marks and exclamation points are the sign of a diseased mind!)
Allaire sighed. “It was probably the whole thing that got you all mixed up.”
There was a beep and Kitty checked her standard-issue mini-computer. “The SO wants you in his office.”
“The SO? Who’s that? Patrick M asked.
“Not telling, you’ll have to meet him and see,” Allaire grinned.
“I’m kind of freaked out…can I leave?” Alec asked hopefully.
“No, Trev-san.”
“…‘Trev-san’?”
“Yes. That is your new nickname. Well, one of them, anyway.”
“Uh-huh, and how many do I have?”
“Over ten thousand.” If it had been an anime continuum, Alec would have face vaulted.
“Er, well…” Trevelyan sighed when he could find nothing to say. He could feel a headache beginning to rear its ugly head.
“To the elevators!” Kitkat cried. Nobody moved. “Well? Stand up!”
Patrick K eased his feet onto the floor and winced. “Cold tiled floor. No shoes. Not happy.”
“No, almost killed, not happy. Cold floor, minor inconvenience.” Boromir sounded almost happy.
“Move it, Beany clones and Beany clone’s little bro.” Kitty marched off. The canonicals were about to follow her when Allaire stopped them, the ghost of a smile on her lips. There was a loud BANG!, and Kitty marched past the door in the other direction. “The elevators are this way.” They all shrugged and followed.
*
After the MOST EXTREME ELEVATOR RIDE EVER!, Kitty stood in front of a blank, nondescript, grey wall. The wall was so grey it hurt to look at, well, at least for the uninitiated at any rate.
“Hey, SO! We have the new guys!” A door materialized in front of her. “I love that trick.” She said, sighing. “Too bad I can’t do it.”
“Okay, now that wasn’t there five seconds ago.” Spence raised an eyebrow.
Allaire shrugged. “One gets used to these things.”
/Well, come in then!/ The voice-was it a voice?-sounded cross.
“Sorry, SO!” Kitkat yelled.
The men, followed by the agents, padded into the inner sanctum, and were greeted by a sunflower in a suit.
“Meet the Sunflower Official!” Kitty beamed.
“Oh, so that’s what SO stands for!” Sean snapped his fingers. “I knew it.”
/These are the recruits?/ The SO sounded amused. /Unless I’m mistaken, most of them-/
Kitty, Kitkat, and Allaire shook their heads vehemently. Kitty mouthed, “Ix-nay on the Eany-bay!”
The SO wisely decided to change his statement to /-almost died, and were canonically supposed to./
“Not in bookverse, Sean wasn’t, and Ickle Miller-” Allaire indicated the younger Patrick- “Wasn’t even in bookverse anyway.” The new guys looked at her. “PPC jargon. You’ll learn it.”
The giant sunflower leafed (no pun intended, please don’t kill me!) through some files. /Considering their backgrounds, I’ll put them in the Department of Mary Sues…for now. Spence can be the local weapons expert, because I don’t think he’d like being an assassin./
Spence sighed in relief.
/Patrick Miller, you can be his assistant, because I know Sean wouldn’t want to endanger you./
This time it was Sean who sighed in relief.
The SO checked a screen in front of him. /Excellent. By the time you arrive at your Department, your rooms and uniforms will be set up. You shall be codenamed…Team Phoenix, as a symbol of your “rebirth” as it were, into the PPC. Congratulations./
“Wootfulness!” Kitkat did the victory dance.
“Someone’s been spending too much time on the Neopets chat boards,” Kitty grumnbled.
Allaire’s eyes widened. “When do you have the time?”
“You’d be surprised,” Kitty said dryly.
*
“So, how did you like your first trip Upstairs?” Kitty asked conversationally as the elevator descended at a breakneck pace.
“You guys have one smegging scary place.” Patrick Koster remarked.
“Too right!” Everybody chorused.
Koster scowled. “You’re not supposed to agree!”
“We are if it’s true,” Kitkat smirked. “You guys know grammar rules, right?”
A general “Yeah” was heard about the elevator.
“And spelling?”
“Of course.” The elevator stopped.
“Nice.” Allaire smiled.
About five minutes later, they had reached the recruits’ room, which by some freakish coincidence was right next door to Kitty and Kitkat’s response center. The room was understandably three times larger than a normal response center, as it had to house six people.
“Roomy,” Kitty observed. “I didn’t think Upstairs would provide you with a bigger room. Oh look, free towels, the most useful things a hitchhiker can have! It’s the little things, I guess…go change into your uniforms and drop off your canon mementos, and you can come on over.”
Kitkat looked in the fridge and found a clear plastic pitcher of a liquid that was every color at once, and yet no color at all, so it quite hurt to look at. “’Ey! What’s this swirly stuff?” She read a note from the SO stating that it was only for use by the canonicals and that it would bind them to Headquarters. In theory, anyway, as they hadn’t had a chance to test it yet. ‘Well, they can have it later,’ she thought.
Ten minutes after that, the men ambled through the door to the Kitty and Kitkat’s response center (Allaire’s was in the Department of Plot Devices), all wearing their shiny new uniforms. They were exactly the same as every other Mary Sue operative’s, with the patch of the potted cactus on the sleeve of the T-shirt, but with a small representation of the Phoenix International logo from NightFire over the heart. Each new recruit was handed a spiral notebook. It was a little bit crowded, there being nine people in the room, but as Allaire calmly remarked that they would manage, the room suddenly doubled in size, allowing everyone to sit down comfortably.
“Neat trick,” Boromir whistled, awed.
Kitty took a deep breath and went into full-on teacher mode. “Right, lesson one: Types of Mary Sue. Sue #1: Random girl who gets thrown into insert-canon-here, sadly, generally Lord of the Rings, or Middle-earth. No, don’t be shocked, Boromir, you’ll see Gondor again. Probably. The Sues are generally punk or goth, but always beautiful and perfect.” Kitty took a sip of water from a glass on the table. “Sue #2: Daughter of one or more canonicals, or belonging to a kingdom or realm that doesn’t canonically exist. Generally ‘second daughters’ of Elrond and ‘arranged marriage’ Sues.” She stuck out her tongue to indicate her disgust. “Sue #3: The warrior-Sue. Again, perfect and beautiful, but can out-shoot Legolas, out-ride Éomer, and out-magic Eru himself. In other words, it’s freakin’ Xena: Warrior Princess, but without the leather. Well most of the time anyway.”
Kitkat gave the newbies a good long stare, and asked calmly, “Did we get all that?” The recruits hastily finished scribbling in their notebooks.
“NOTEBOOK CHECK!” Kitty yelled and ripped Sean’s out of his hands. It said “Sues = bad”, and many evil plots to kill the Royals and Jack Ryan.
“Great minds run in the same gutter,” Alec grinned and shared his paper. It simply stated, “Sues are horrible, just like Bond!” and still more evil plots. Most of the papers ran a variation of this theme, all except for Boromir’s, which said, “Sues are bad. Must have Ring my precious ring mine mine all mine my own my precious Ring,” and sketches of the One Ring and Frodo getting stabbed.
“I think we have a budding artist here!” Allaire beamed at Boromir, who just smiled back timidly, as Allaire beaming is a pretty scary thing. It can either mean that you just did a very good or a very bad thing.
“Well, I think we have the general concept here.” Kitty swept her hand around the room. “Now, one of the worst kinds of Sue is the Possession Sue. Prevalent in Slash.”
Alec raised a hand. “What’s slash?”
Kitkat winced. “You shouldn’t have asked,” she murmured sadly and passed him a copy of No-one ever comes down here, yes, you guessed it, a James Bond/Alec Trevelyan slash. It doesn’t get much worse than that.
“Well, I don’t see what’s so bad about it…”
Thirty seconds later…
“AAAAAA! SHIT! BRAIN BLEACH! MY EYES!” Alec began twitching madly on the floor.
“Alec. Alec. Janus. Stop.” Kitty forced a bag into his hands. “Let ‘er rip.”
Trevelyan gladly threw up.
“Better?”
Vigorous head-shaking.
“Bleepka martini, shaken, not stirred, stat, and I don’t CARE if it’s Bond’s drink!” Kitty yelled. Allaire gave Kitty a glass of the semi-alcoholic liquid.
“Down it.” She passed it in turn to the trembling criminal mastermind.
“Yes, master.” He chugged the whole glass in about two seconds. “Ah, I can already feel the memories getting fuzzy…thanks, psycholadies. What was that?”
“Bleeprin mixed with vodka, an effective brain bleach. You have some bleeprin and vodka in your response center already, I believe.”
Meanwhile, Spence had picked up the fanfic and promptly lurched over to the toilet to throw up.
Kitkat walked over to him. “Hey, that looks like cream of vegetable soup!”
The weapons expert managed to gasp out “Bleepka. Now.”
Allaire managed to confiscate the offending fanfic before it could do any more damage while Kitty gave a Bleepka and 7 to Spence.
“Well, at least it was only kissing,” she remarked offhandedly. “It can get much worse…” She shuddered visibly.
Silence. Then, “EWWWWWW!” Bleeprin was handed out like candy. Kitty cringed and muttered in true Hagrid fashion, “I shouldn’t have said that, I should NOT have said that…”