PPC: Team Phoenix
By GreenCat3
Disclaimer: Kitkat, Allaire, and I (Kitty) owneth not the PPC, mini-Balrogs, OFUM, Patriot Games, LotR, Don’t Say a Word, GoldenEye, Ronin, Sonic Adventure 2, anything but what we actually own, or any derivative thereof. We also owneth not Sean Bean, but we wish we did. *drools in fangirlish bliss*
Chapter 1: Rescues
Patrick Koster ran for his life from the tons of dirt that had been set loose by Nathan Conrad. Grabbing a small white pouch that off the ground, he spied his escape route: stacked coffins. Unfortunately for him, stacked items have a tendency to fall over when one is climbing them. He yelled in shock and horror as the grave dirt enveloped him, still with a death grip on the pouch as Conrad walked away to have a happy Thanksgiving dinner with his family, not feeling any emotional or moral trauma after just totally killing a guy (yes, I’m bitter about that)…
Unbeknownst to Koster, a small portal opened horizontally near the grave, and three people fell out.
“Last time I let you set the controls, Kitkat.” One of them muttered.
“Sorry, Allaire. I know you’re not used to those.” Kitkat apologized.
Being the Dreamweaver, Allaire had an office in the Department of Plot Devices, and as such did not travel by portal too often.
“Right, let’s get what we came for.” Kitty stretched and pulled what looked like an egg timer from her pocket.
“What’s that?” Allaire asked.
Kitty was shocked. “You don’t know? This is a little something we picked up from the SA2, or Sonic Adventure 2, continuum. It’s like Chaos Control in a bottle, and we’ll be using it a lot tonight.”
“Wonderful.” Kitkat could feel her stomach lurch as her partner set the timer. The wind abruptly stopped.
“We have five minutes.” Kitty snapped the controls shut. “Let’s get digging.” She looked at Kitkat. “I know you don’t like this, but it’s not as bad as being able to walk from Rivendell to Hollin in a day.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“I just did.” Kitty stuck out her tongue.
“Four minutes, 45 seconds, guys!” Allaire had grabbed a shovel.
“Burr aye, we doan’t ‘ave much toime!” Kitkat had decided to put on her mole voice.
“One of these days I’m going to take a vacation on Sampetra.” Kitty muttered.
“If only we had brought Foremole.” Allaire sighed.
They continued to dig in silence for three minutes when Allaire yelped. “I think we got him!” The PPC agents dragged Patrick Koster up by his wrist.
Kitkat checked his pulse. “I’m not getting anything, but that’s probably because canonical time is frozen.”
Another portal was opened, this one to the PPC sickbay, and Koster was unceremoniously tossed through.
“Next!”
*
The cradle for the GoldenEye satellite was collapsing, another shimmering door was opened, and the Chaos Control was set for one minute.
“Grab the Trevvy, we must.” Kitkat dove for the frozen ex-MI-6 agent and hit him with a frying pan, thus causing him to lose consciousness.
“What was that for?!” Allaire frowned.
“You’ll see.” Kitty smiled mysteriously and opened yet another portal. “Another canonical!” she yelled, and pushed Trevelyan in.
*
Unfortunately for Boromir, the agents had gotten to Middle-earth just after he had been hit with the arrows. Kitkat grabbed the airsickness bag once Chaos Control had been activated again.
“Just two more canons, just two more canons…”
“Everyone loves persocoms!” Kitty grinned, and programmed a Boromir “’com”. “We can fix the horn back at HQ.” She replaced said horn with another exact replica, this one “cloned” from the props department. “Gotta love stuff synthesizers.”
“This baby’s programmed to go exactly with canon.” Allaire hugged the exact likeness of Boromir proudly. “I call it ‘Boromir 3.0’.”
“Eh? 3.0?”
“Well, Kitty has officially taken the names Boromir 1.0 and Boromir 2.0 for a couple of Boromir plushies she made in Home Ec,” Allaire explained. “See you back at HQ, 3.0!” The persocom waved back in reply and lay down in Boromir’s place.
Kitty picked up their LotR lust object (not an easy task, as “Boromir was a man both tall and strong” in Tolkien’s own words), and put him in the same sickbay portal. “We got three arrow wounds to the torso!”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Dr. Fitzgerald’s voice moaned. “What is up with you three, bringing back all these canonicals?”
“We have our orders, you have yours. Get healing!”
As the portal closed, Kitkat sighed.
“I call the next one!”
*
Sean Miller was pushed backwards onto the anchor and froze in midair just as it began to scrape his back.
“I think I’m getting used to this!”
“Good, Kitkat.”
Miller was knocked unconscious with a frying pan, and taken back to HQ.
*
“This is almost the last one. We’re still in the Patriot Games continuum.”
“Why?”
“We have to get Patrick, you fool!”
“Oh, right.”
Chaos Control was activated, frying pans were brought, Patricks were bonked on the head.
“We just have the Ronin continuum now.” Kitty shivered at Allaire’s mention of Ronin, the movie that stalks her. (Seriously. It follows me everywhere.) Allaire took a deep breath and dumped Patrick in the portal.
*
“The last one. Hold on, Kitkat!”
“Holding.” The agent looked quite green.
Kitty clicked the controls. “Two minutes, guys.”
You can probably guess what happened next. We’ll just say that Spence was whacked with a frying pan as he moodily stalked out of the warehouse, and out of the movie.
“Ah, I wuvvles him with the sammitch, I does,” Kitkat grinned as she remembered the first half-hour of the movie.
“Favorite incapacitating weapon.” Kitty looked at her kitchen utensil fondly. This time there was but one portal opened, back to the sickbay, and they all stepped through.
*
Patrick Koster slowly returned to the land of the living. He heard a female voice muttering in elvish, “Patrick, I am Kitty. I have come to help you. Hear my voice, come back to the light.”
Koster slowly opened his eyes.
“Do you have to do that?” The blonde girl snapped.
“The dark-haired one smirked. “It’s funny.”
“It makes you sound like a Sue.”
“Liar. You think it’s funny too.”
Another girl stepped into his field of vision. “See, he’s awake.” She turned to Koster. “Tip for you: When being buried, hold your nose, and close your mouth and eyes. We had a time getting all that grave dirt off of you.”
“Who are you?”
The girls all gasped. “He lives!”
“We know who you are, Patrick Koster. I’m Kitty.” The olive-skinned one with a ponytail said.
“Kitkat here.” The blond one, also with a ponytail, smiled.
“Allaire the Dreamweaver, Department of Plot Devices.”
“That’s nice, but where am I?”
“The headquarters of the Protectors of the Plot Continuum!”
“What?” Patrick blinked.
“Okay, you’ve seen the Matrix, right?” Koster nodded. “Right. Where you and everyone you know-canonicals-live is called canon. It’s like the computer program. Where we’re from is not canon, so we are UnCanonicals, or non-canons for short. We’re like from the “real” world. You getting all this?”
Koster weakly nodded. It’s not easy to accept that your whole world is a fabrication.
“And where we are now is sort of in-between. Got it? You live here now.”
Memories came flooding back to Koster. “The pouch! Where is it?”
“You mean this?” Kitkat smiled and gave it to him. Patrick peeked inside. The ruby was still there.
“A little canonical memento.” Allaire patted his shoulder. “We got the Horn of Gondor for Boromir, a ski mask for Sean, the ruby for you, the GoldenEye for Alec, another ski mask with an Irish flag on for the other Patrick, and an Uzi for Spence, though I doubt he’ll use it.”
“Who are these people?”
“Look around.”
Koster did so, and saw four people that looked a lot like him, and one that didn’t all with nametags. He looked at his own.
Name: Patrick Koster
Home Continuum: Don’t Say a Word
Department: Undefined
Rank: Recruit
Arch nemesis: Nathan Conrad
“Recruit? I was recruited?”
“In a way. You guys are probably going to move to the Department of Mary Sues, but Spence will probably go in the Department of Weapons and Other Sharp, Pointy Thingies.”
Koster looked at everyone else’s nametags.
Name: Alec Trevelyan
Home Continuum: GoldenEye
Department: Undefined
Rank: Recruit
Arch nemesis: James Bond
Name: Sean Miller
Home Continuum: Patriot Games
Department: Undefined
Rank: Recruit
Arch nemesis: Jack Ryan
Name: Patrick Miller
Home Continuum: Patriot Games
Department: Undefined
Rank: Recruit
Arch nemesis: Jack Ryan
Name: Spence
Home Continuum: Ronin
Department: Undefined
Rank: Recruit
Arch nemesis: Sam/Seamus/Gregor
Name: Boromir of Gondor
Home Continuum: Lord of the Rings
Department: Undefined
Rank: Recruit
Arch nemesis: Sauron (or Frodo)
The last one, Boromir, Koster noted, was still out.
“Crap. He’s not looking good. If we lose Boro…” Kitty gulped. “Well, then we can say g’bye to our plans.”
Dr. Fitzgerald brought some athelas forward. “This should help.”
Kitkat realized what the doctor was on to. She filled a basin with steaming water and placed it next to Boromir’s bed. Allaire just watched, always interested in healing.
The athelas was crumbled and dropped into the water, and its sweet scent refreshed all nearby, especially those who were still recovering from the after-effects of the frying pans. It had little effect on Boromir, though.
Kitty sighed. “I was afraid it had to come to this. I really shouldn’t…but then, I really should…hold on…” She quickly portalled into Osheen Nevoy’s fanfic, Boromir’s Return, and stole a little silverweed from Svip (I command you to read this fanfic!). “There we go, with the athelas it should be enough.”
“Right, this better work.”
“Yeah, let’s crowd him! No, not you recruits!”
*
Boromir awoke to the sound of elvish, a whack, and three faces staring at him.
“Augh!” He sat bolt upright and smacked into the heads of the PPC agents. “OW!”
“See, what did I tell you. He’s ferpectly lucid.” Kitty said.
“Ferpectly?” The warrior asked dazedly.
“Yes, ferpectly and zigactly.”
Allaire silently applauded the healing, then raised her voice. “Is everyone at least semi-conscious?” Nods. “Okay then, let’s go around and introduce ourselves. I’ll go first. I’m Allaire the Dreamweaver, I’m 13, and I work in the Department of Plot Devices.”
“I’m Kitty, I’m 13, and I’m an assassin. Mary Sues, Bad Slash, doesn’t matter. I’m Kitkat here’s partner.”
“Yes, I’m Kitkat, I’m 13, as I am Kitty’s partner I am also an assassin.” She nudged Patrick K. “Your turn.”
“I’m Patrick Koster, my age is none of your business, and I’m an assassin of sorts.”
“I’m Sean Miller, I’m 26, and I’m an Irish nationalist…okay, okay, terrorist.”
“I’m Patrick Miller, I’m 16, and I’m Sean’s little brother.”
“I’m Alec Trevelyan, if you expect me to tell you you’re mad, and I’m the head of the Janus Crime Syndicate.”
“I’m Spence, what he said, and I’m a weapons expert.”
“I’m Boromir, hahaha, like I’m going to tell you, and I am the Captain-General of Gondor.”
Kitty smiled. “Well, now that we all know each other, it’s info time!”
“The Protectors of the Plot Continuum is the name of our organization. We’re conveniently situated in between canon and non-canon, thus allowing us easy access to both worlds. You guys are from canon, which is a fabrication that lots of people from non-canon like to mess around with through their writing. It is our sacred task to prevent this from happening. Now, except for Spence, all of you were near death, right?” Allaire asked. A general “Yes” was heard about the room.
“Right, we have picked you exceptional individuals after an extensive monitoring period. If you all would look at your nametags?” Kitkat requested nicely. “What do you all have in common?”
Sean raised his hand. “Ranking. It says ‘Recruit’.”
Kitty nodded. “Welcome to the PPC, gentlemen.”