Saturday, March 5, 2011

Insert Inappropriate Time Agent Here

CLUNK-CLUNK-CLUNK-CLUNK-CLUNK-CLUNK

"What is that noise?" Michael asked, entering the Library rubbing his head. Recovering was not easy when there were a series of loud metallic clanging noises ringing through what was usually a silent zone.

"That would be Tash, sitting inside a steel cage," Adrian explained, not looking up from his book. "She tried to make off with my ice cream."

Michael blinked a few times, before asking. "Can you let her out? My head hurts from the racket she's making… not that it didn't hurt already."

Adrian sighed and got up from his seat. "Alright, but I'm hiding behind you if she's mad."

Tash had in fact given up being mad. Instead she had eaten her fill of ice cream, and was now rattling her spoon against the bars, trying to get the attention of anyone nearby. Her team listings were sitting by her side in a disorganised heap.

"Adrian!" she whined. "Lemme out! I've eaten your ice cream, my butt is going to sleep sitting on this floor and even after pressing the empty tub against my cheek, my wisdom teeth are planning a rebellion in my mouth! I want my pills!"

"You know…" came an amused voice over the comlink. "Whining doesn't become you Tash."

"Isn't there a hedgehog you should be chasing Blake?" Tash sniped, before shutting down the link and opening another channel instead.

"Emma. It's been two hours and you haven't returned. Come in please."

There was a crackle of static, and a female voice with just a hint of a Welsh accent came through.

"Sorry Tash. We're having problems…"

In the background, two voices were arguing loudly.

"She's your dog!"

"You were holding the plothole generator! That makes it your fault!"

Tash was about to ask what had gone wrong, when a loud bark joined in the argument.

"Emma," Tash said sternly. "Tell me you didn't…"

"Well the reason we're taking so long," Emma breezed over. "Is because we opened up the plothole in the wrong point and landed on the wrong side of Cardiff…"

"Emma!" Tash cut in. "Was that barking Meg, or was it not?"

"...why do you ask?" Emma sounded a little worried now.

"Because at the bottom of your team listing," Tash said, holding the relevant file before her. "It specifically states in big bold letters "Do not under any circumstances let Emma take Meg on missions"!"

"Ooooh look, there's the Torchwood team, gotta go!"

"EMMA!"

The line went dead.

OOO

Meanwhile beneath ground, a young girl sat in the cells of the Torchwood hub. She looked as though she had been pretty once upon a time, but that prettiness was marred by sadness, and she now had the appearance of someone who had had their beauty drained away by an unseen force. She paid no attention to the Weevil in the next cell, even as it rattled around and moaned from time to time. She occasionally raised her wrist and glared at the device attached firmly to it.

The door to the hub opened, and another girl walked in. She was inexplicably beautiful and innocent looking, and her sapphire blue eyes shone of pain and a tragic past, but were strong as she looked in at the prisoners. The girl in the cell turned her head and her eyes widened as the figure stopped before her door.

"I knew it…I knew there was another of us here!"

The girl outside the cell shook her head sadly, her waist length auburn hair swishing as she moved.

"The Society did this to you didn't they?"

"Yeah…" the girl in the cell nodded. "My name is Mary-Ann… and the Society… they put this Prohibitor on me… I came here hoping I could get it off."

The auburn haired girl smiled slightly, and opened the door of the cell.

"I've managed to convince Jack that you're harmless… which wasn't easy I might add."

"Why?" Mary-Ann asked, confused. Normally Mary-Sues could get canon characters to bend to their every whim at the drop of a hat… well, ones that weren't prohibited like herself. With said device on her wrist, all her Mary-Sue abilities had faded away.

"I'm only fifteen," the other girl admitted. "My Sue powers have not fully developed. Added to which, a Sue has been in this fandom before, and Captain Jack was in contact with her. He's forgotten it now, but its harder when you're trying to twist their canon personalities for a second time."

"I see," Mary-Ann said, understanding dawning now. "So are you going to let me go?"

"Not till we get that Prohibitor off your wrist," the other Mary-Sue stated firmly. "The team are convinced its alien tech, and I'm sure you're dying to be free of it. We might have some technology here that can get it off."
Mary-Ann grinned. "That's what I came to this fandom for. So, what's your name?"

The girl smiled. "I am Holly Geraldine Ruby Jacaranda Ophelia Foxblade. And right now, I'm supposed to be working."

"You're part of the Torchwood team then?" Mary-Ann guessed.

"Wasn't hard," Holly shrugged. "They needed another team member, and with my perfection, I fit the bill despite my age."

Mary-Ann smiled. "And once the Prohibitor is off my wrist, I'm more than willing to help you."

Holly just smiled sweetly. "We'll see. For now we need to get that thing off…"

"And hope the Society doesn't catch us…" both of them thought.

OOO

After five loud arguments, three wrong turns, and Meg almost causing an accident at a roundabout, the Society agents arrived in the Roald Dahl Plass in Cardiff Bay. All of them were annoyed at having to walk, and determined to catch the Mary-Sue so that they could all go home. The truthful reason for their delay was that upon arriving on the wrong side of the city, Meg, Emma's insane border collie, had sat on the team's plothole generator and broken it. On the wrong side of the city, and with no way to get back, tempers had hit the roof.

Meg, overexcited by the journey, was currently alternating between chasing her tail, and trying to sit on Beth's feet. Beth and Emma were staring at the giant water tower, and wondering which way they should attempt to enter the hub. Kate on the other hand, had another agenda…

"So long you useless excuse for tourist information!" she yelled, throwing the map into the water. The shop she had stopped in had run out of English maps, and so she had been forced to buy one in Welsh.

"Kate stop littering!" Beth shouted. "And come and help us…get off me Meg!"

The collie just barked happily, and Emma held tightly to the lead.

"I say we go down the lift. They'll never expect it."

She pointed to a paving slab beside the water tower, where all three girls knew lay the invisible lift down to the hub.

"The lift is far from subtle!" Beth argued. "It drops right into the middle of the hub! We'd be seen! I say we just go in through Ianto's office."

"He'll never let us through!" Emma retorted. "Let's just go in through the lift and no one can stop us!"

"If it's all the same to you Emma, I'm with Beth," Kate admitted, pointing to her look-alike. Beth looked smugly at her sister.

"Ha!"

"Well…Meg is with me!" Emma said triumphantly. Meg, upon hearing her name mentioned, barked madly and tried to push Beth to the floor.

"Of course she's with you!" Kate rolled her eyes, as Beth fended the dog off. "You feed her!"

"Okay how is this?" Beth asked. "Emma, you and Meg can take the lift. Kate and I will take the office, and we meet up inside?"

"How about," an American voice interrupted them. "You all take the lift. It is the tourist entrance after all."

All of them whirled around to see Captain Jack Harkness standing just a few feet away from the aforementioned lift.

"Jack?" Beth said suddenly, and Emma and Kate quickly grabbed her.

"He doesn't remember us!" Emma reminded her. Beth immediately fell silent, and went back to staring at the handsome Captain.

Jack could not explain what had prompted him to watch these three girls on CCTV. At first he thought it had been because they were cute, but getting a good look at them, he was completely positive he had seen them before, but he could not remember where. When they had started discussing Torchwood loudly in the middle of a public plaza, he had grabbed his coat and raced for the lift.

"This way," he jerked his head, and the three girls (plus one dog) made their way onto the lift.

"Not a lot of room," Emma noted, as they squished onto the paving slab. She couldn't help but notice that Beth didn't seem to care that she was pressed into the hot, charismatic American, as the lift slowly began to descend into the hub.

OOO

Mary-Ann and Holly sat at the latter's desk. Holly was holding a handheld scanner, very similar to the one Toshiko had owned when she had been alive, and was currently scanning the Prohibitor on her new friend's wrist. So far, they were turning up naught, and as Holly sadly shook her head, the lift began to appear, catching everyone's attention.

"Oh no!" Holly gasped, seeing the familiar figures. "It's the Society!"

"What is he doing, bringing them in here?" Mary-Ann demanded.

"That's her!" Beth shouted unnecessarily loudly, pointing an accusing finger at Holly, who immediately yanked Mary-Ann across the hub towards Jack's office. Gwen and Ianto, who were moving about the hub doing their own various tasks, stopped to see the new arrivals.

"What's Mary-Ann doing here?" Emma demanded. "Tash just said one Mary-Sue!"

"Who cares?" Kate demanded. "She's prohibited! We can catch them both!"

"You're after Holly and our prisoner?" Jack asked in disbelief.

"Believe it or not, yes," Beth nodded, as Emma jumped off the platform before it had even landed, and began racing after Holly and Mary-Ann.

"You're both under arrest for fandom manipulation!" she shouted. Meg leaped off the platform and landed in the water below the walkways, and scrambled onto the metal, shaking her fur out, before scrambling after her crazy mistress. Beth and Kate scrambled down, but Holly was quick, pulling out her gun from somewhere in her belt, and levelling it at the two similar looking girls.

"Take one step closer and I shoot!" Still aiming, she grabbed another gun and threw it to Mary-Ann, who also aimed it, this time at Emma, who skidded to a halt before she could reach them.

"I have a gun!" Mary-Ann warned. "And this prohibitor doesn't affect my aim!"

"Well…" Emma floundered for a bit before a metaphorical light bulb appeared above her head. "I have a Plot Device!"

She brandished said device, and both Mary-Sues took a step back in fear. However before Emma could activate the device, a black hole appeared behind the lift, and spat out two figures and a large black Napoleonic looking cannon, which landed with a loud clunk. The hole then sealed up behind them.

"We miss the party?" Tash asked, picking herself up. By her side, Harriet was also getting to her feet. Mary-Ann, seeing the two infamous Society leaders, panicked and a shot rang through the hub.

"EMMA!" Beth and Kate shrieked in unison. Meg wriggled out from under her mistress's grasp, and Emma screamed. The bullet had caught her shoulder as she had dived in front of her beloved pet to protect her from getting hurt.

Jack, Gwen and Ianto immediately had their weapons out, but a shrill beeping caught everyone's attention. Emma had landed painfully on the Plot Device and accidentally set it off. The device fizzled and spat a bolt of energy at Jack, sending him flying off the lift and into the water, before it blew up in a little puff of smoke.

"What did it do to him?" Gwen levelled her gun at Tash, who pulled out a small, hand held computer, and began tapping away.

"I'm okay…" Jack pulled himself to his feet, seemingly unharmed. Tash paled.

"No you're not," she gulped. "My Plot Summary is registering M-Preg…"

"…Jack's pregnant?" Ianto's gun went limp in his hands.

"Oh not again!" Jack groaned.

"That Plot Device was defective!" Emma hissed, pressing as hard as she could against her shoulder to stem the bleeding.

Kate and Beth glared at Mary-Ann, who was smirking at her successful shot.

"So in attempting to catch us," Holly said. "You make the situation worse! There is nothing you can do now! This fandom belongs to us!"

"Really?" everyone turned to face Harriet, who stood behind the large cannon with an angry look on her face. With a flick of a lighter, she set off the fuse.

"I would say a snappy one liner here," the brunette mused. "But all I can really think of is this…"

And her face split into a grin.

"Bye!"

And the cannon exploded.

Rather than fire a cannonball, what seemed to be a seismic shockwave detonated from the end, and Jack, Gwen and Ianto all froze where they stood, with their weapons poised in mid air. Above their heads, the pterodactyl that lived in the hub was frozen in mid-flight. Most people had fallen over. Holly was unconscious, having been blown off her feet and into the nearest wall by the blast. Harriet looked up and found that her large heavy weapon had blown itself backwards and become embedded in the wall of the hub.
Kate and Beth were on Holly immediately, slapping a prohibitor around her wrist.

"One down," Kate said happily. "Now where's that…?"

She didn't need to go any further. Mary-Ann had managed to stay conscious during the explosion, but she was not going anywhere – Meg and marched purposefully over and sat on the small of her back, rendering her unable to get up.

Everyone blinked slowly.

"Well at least its not me," Beth sighed eventually.

OOO

Five minutes later, the three members of the Torchwood team began moving again. All their memories of meeting Holly and catching Mary-Ann were gone…so they were at a loss to explain why there was a huge dent in the wall of the hub, or why the place smelt of wet dog.

After checking the CCTV three times, and finding only a big blank space where five minutes of footage was missing, the team had called it a day. This wouldn't be the first time something like this had happened after all.
It was not until Gwen had gone home, and Ianto had left the hub, that Jack sat down in his office, and felt a note crunch in the back pocket of his trousers. Puzzled, he pulled it out and read it.

"9 o clock, under the water tower. See you there – x."

OOO

"How are you feeling Emma?" Tash asked, sitting down next to her friend.

"Fine," Emma said, looking at her bandaged and slinged shoulder. "Bullet didn't do much, thank God."

"Good," Harriet grinned. "I've been and checked, and Mary-Ann and Holly are safely locked up. That's one of Willowe's sisters down!"

"What WAS that giant cannon thing?" Emma asked.

"The canon cannon," Harriet explained. "It freezes the fandom and all the canon characters in it, and returns them to normal after five minutes. Anything not canon – like us and the Mary-Sues – can still move. It wasn't fixed down though, so that's why it blew itself into the wall. Not the easiest things to carry around either."

"And it can be very destructive to things that aren't canon," Tash added. "We all got blown off our feet."

"So no using it in the future," Harriet said firmly. "Unless its an emergency."

Emma nodded. "And the Plot Device. Was that rectified?"

"Oh yeah," Tash nodded. "The cannon will have restored canon, so Jack is no longer pregnant…though that would have been interesting to see."

"You're filthy," Harriet informed her.

"I blame you," Tash shot back.

"Hey guys," Kate came wandering into the room. "Have you guys seen Beth?"

"No…" Emma shook her head. "She came and saw me and then she left…said something about an important meeting. Can't imagine what."

"Just as long as she isn't chasing Captain Jack again," Kate muttered.

"Oh what are the odds of that?" Harriet shrugged. "Come on. We've got work to do."

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