The floor of the Library was shaking.
Valerie could feel the rumbling from the medical wing. Rhia had to rush around her kitchen to stop things from bouncing off the surfaces. In the Basement, several Sues perked their heads up, hoping another takeover-bid was in the offing.
No such luck for the Sues.
"What's going on?" Emily burst into Tash's room, a terrified look on her face. "Is it happening again?"
"Nope." Tash was sprawled on her bed and didn't even look up from her book. "But if you see Jess coming towards you, I suggest you stay away."
As if to illustrate Tash's point, a sudden shriek came from somewhere down the hall.
"LEONARD!"
"She's off." Tash still didn't bother to look up.
"CHRIST ON A BICYCLE!"
"Um... what's she on about now?"
"It's best not to ask."
"BRING THAT BLOODY IPOD BACK!"
"I know Jess gets possessive about her music, but this seems extreme..." Emily was confused, and more than a little scared.
"Oh, it is," Tash raised her eyebrows over her book. "Let's just say... there's been a break up."
"Oh," Emily relaxed slightly. "And this is normal?"
"Well... ish."
Tash didn't feel like explaining to such a young person the dynamics of Jess' relationships and what tended to happen when they ended. In this case, Jess and her pet American back in Real Life had mutually decided to bring things to an end (before his girlfriend could find out what had been going on).
Mutual or not... Jess was still pretty damn pissed off. At it seemed she was taking it out on the Library floors.
Stomp, stomp, stomp.
Jess was angry. Bloody angry, actually. She'd known things would have to end, but she hadn't expected the end to come so soon. Buggeration and bollockery. And now Leonard had run off with her iPod, probably fed up of hearing Jess screeching along to 'Valley of the Damned' over and over again.
Briefly, Jess wondered if the Society had a gym anywhere. She really felt like giving a punchbag what for. It had to have one somewhere, she reasoned... But being the type of person whose preferred exercise regime involved running from kitchen to kitchen trying to find more chocolate, she wasn't entirely sure where one would be found.
"Right, who's in here?" she growled, stamping into the Monitor room. Ben turned from his position at a screen, a somewhat terrified expression crossing his face.
"...me?"
"Yes, you'll do. Any idea where the gym is in here?"
"I... um. Actually I was just about to call you. That Sue you were looking for in the Glee fandom has just popped up again."
"Oh, excellent," Jess smiled. Ben shrank back in fear – it was not a happy smile. In fact it was the smile of a psychopath who was in the mood for some psychopathing. "Far better than a punchbag."
"Maybe someone else should go... She's up to Level 5 now, I should really check with Tash..."
"Screw that, I'm going." Jess took a leap across the room and glanced at Ben's computer screen. "Big Bang Theory? Christicles, she's getting diverse. Right, see you later!"
As Jess activated her Plothole Generator, Ben picked up his Communicator.
"Tash, I think we have a problem..."
The first thing Jess noticed was the heat. Wherever she'd turned up was so swelteringly hot, she felt she could almost be back home in France again in the middle of the summer. Oh well, the Big Bang Theory was set in California, she supposed. Not too unusual for it to be baking, then.
The second thing she noticed was a slightly familiar looking boy standing right in front of her.
"Who are you?" he said, his eyes bulging slightly in shock.
"Never mind who I am, I'm looking for someone," Jess stared around her, ignoring the teenager. She seemed to be in a bedroom, but it wasn't any of the bedrooms she'd seen on the TV show. "Leonard Hofstadter, Raj Koothrappali, Howard Wolowitz, Sheldon Cooper..."
"But I'm Sheldon Cooper," said the teenager.
"No you're not," Jess said absentmindedly, sticking her head out of the window and looking around. Funny, this didn't look like Pasadena... it seemed far too arid. The heat was strong enough in the house but with her head outside she could almost taste it. Surely this wasn't quite right...
"I can assure you, I certainly am."
"Oh... fuck." Jess stuck her head back in the room and stared at the gangly teenage boy standing straight as a rod in front of her. "I'm in Texas, aren't I?"
"Yes, you are."
"And you're a kid, right?"
"I don't know what you mean by 'kid', but I am sixteen years old if you're questioning my age."
"Oh... crap." Jess gave her head a good whack. "Why didn't I do some research?"
"SHELLY!" Suddenly a loud Texan voice hollered from somewhere below. "Dinner's ready! Tell Leonor too!"
"Leonor?" Jess snapped to attention. "So she is here..."
"What do you want with Leonor?" Sheldon's eyes narrowed.
"She's a... an old friend." Jess was trying her very hardest to stay calm and not grab Sheldon round the neck yelling 'Where is she? Where is sheeeee?'
"Is it normal for you to search for your 'friends' in strangers' bedrooms?"
"Yes." Jess put on her best glare. "So how do you know her?"
"She moved in down the street a few weeks ago..." To Jess' abject horror, Sheldon's face went slightly slack and his eyes took on a strange fuzzy hue. "She's... so different. She understands me. She... she knows me."
Well, being a Mary-Sue who had evidently studied the fandom and inserted herself into a point of it that could change the course of canon forever... yeah, it wasn't hard to see how she knew Sheldon. However, while Jess knew this well, poor Sheldon didn't. And that sappy look on his face was so out of character it was scary. Sheldon wasn't meant to have romantic thoughts... he wasn't meant to even comprehend them. Jess was willing to bet they were going round and round in his head now. If he started to get like this, she wouldn't expect things to turn out how they were meant to. He would probably never finish his second dissertation, he might never move to California, he would never meet Leonard Hofstadter, who would therefore probably never meet Penny...
"She is getting so damn good at doing this," Jess growled under her breath.
"Excuse me? I didn't quite catch that."
"I said, where is she now?"
"She was just in the bathroom..."
"Oh, great, I'll just go and surprise her."
Doing an impression of the proverbial speeding bullet, Jess darted out of the room and onto a landing.
"First on the right," Sheldon called from his room.
"Thanks, mate," Jess whispered, edging towards the door. She pressed her ear against it... and heard a very strange sound for a bathroom. Some kind of... knocking? A kind of... scraping? "Screw this."
With a bang, Jess gave the door a good kick.
As it flew open, she breathed a sigh of relief that she hadn't inadvertently stormed in on Sheldon's father on the toilet or some such lovely sight. Instead, sitting on the windowsill with a screwdriver determinedly trying to get the window frame out, was Leonor.
"Oh, crap," she hissed, seeing the somewhat formidable figure of Jess framed in the doorway. "I thought you'd take longer than this."
"Not this time, Leonor," Jess' voice was low. "This time, you're going back to the Basement."
"You think?" Leonor sneered, landing lightly on the tiled floor.
The Sue hadn't changed much since the last time Jess had seen her, way back in the X Files fandom. Like the last time they'd met, she was wearing black skinny jeans almost identical to those Jess had on, along with an oversized band t-shirt – the Rolling Stones had been replaced with Blondie.
"Hey!" Jess exclaimed, noticing something different. "You've had your eyebrow pierced! Copycat!"
"You can talk," Leonor sniffed. "You nicked my hairstyle."
"It's a popular style!"
"Funny you only got it after meeting me..."
"Well at least mine's purple... Just a quick question – what the hell are you trying to do to the window?"
"I heard you coming from a mile away. I wasn't exactly going to hang around and wait for you to get me, was I?"
Jess looked around her. "Um, just in case you haven't noticed... You're in a bathroom. I'm in front of the door. You can't get the window open. I think you've hit a dead end, dearie. Now come here and let me put your personal Prohibitor on and we'll go back to the Library like good-"
Right up until then, Jess had actually been feeling fairly disappointed that she wasn't going to get some kind of chase-and-punch-up out of Leonor... but all of a sudden, it looked like she was going to get her wish.
Leonor had made a quick lunge forward, something silver glinting in her hands that Jess had failed to notice. Jess dropped to the floor to avoid the knife, whipping out her piercing needle from where it was tucked in her sock and stabbing it into Leonor's ankle as she tried to leap towards the door.
With a howl of pain, Leonor attempted to clutch her foot and missed, dropping her knife and falling to the floor. Jess was back on her feet in a second, grabbing her enemy by the throat and hauling her up to eye level. She could feel the pentagram tattoo on her back throbbing, physically willing her to use its powers to bring down Leonor once and for all... but Jess had had too much building up in her in the past while. She wanted to do this herself.
"I've wanted to do this for a while," she hissed through gritted teeth, shoving Leonor against the wall. The Sue gasped as her airway was effectively cut off, held halfway up the wall by the bigger girl's iron grip. Jess stared at her, eyes narrowed, as the flailing of her limbs got weaker and weaker. "You're a useless piece of shit."
With a hideous sounding crunch, Jess' free fist made contact with Leonor's nose. "You don't deserve to roam the multiverse." With another crack, Jess' fist smashed into the Sue's face again. "You're not worth my time!"
Jess pulled back her fist to deliver the blow that would knock Leonor unconscious... and fell to the floor herself.
Jess opened her eyes... and instantly closed them again, the lights of the Medical wing shining far too intensely.
"Oh... bugger. Man, you've got to sort those flaming lights out."
"Welcome back, Jess," said Valerie brightly. "The land of the living has missed you."
"What the-"
"You forgot to Copyright Sheldon." Tash was sitting on the end of Jess' bed. "He heard you smashing around and decided to rescue Leonor. He came in the bathroom when you were shouting and clonked you on the head with a copy of 'Contemporary Physics'. I was just on my way to come and calm you down, I got there just in time to see Leonor scarpering out the front door."
"Crap. Shit. Fuck. Jesus, Tash, how many bloody times are you going to have to show up and save my ass while I'm left on the ground?"
"Honey, I'm worried about you," Tash said gently. "It seems to me you weren't exactly yelling at Leonor back there..."
"Of course I was yelling at Leonor." Jess put her stubborn face on, and Tash sighed. She could tell when her friend was closing up. "Who else do you think I was yelling at?"
"You're still wearing the American's t-shirt," Tash felt the need to point out.
"So? It's comfy."
"And now bloodstained."
"What?" Jess' face fell.
"Case in point."
"Shut up," Jess glowered. "Never mind that. Any sign of Leonor?"
"Nope," Tash sighed. "It's looking like running away is her speciality. God knows where she'll pop up next."
"I'll be there when she does."
"Don't you think you should leave her to someone less... homicidal?"
"No. She's pissed me around too much now. She's mine."
Valerie could feel the rumbling from the medical wing. Rhia had to rush around her kitchen to stop things from bouncing off the surfaces. In the Basement, several Sues perked their heads up, hoping another takeover-bid was in the offing.
No such luck for the Sues.
"What's going on?" Emily burst into Tash's room, a terrified look on her face. "Is it happening again?"
"Nope." Tash was sprawled on her bed and didn't even look up from her book. "But if you see Jess coming towards you, I suggest you stay away."
As if to illustrate Tash's point, a sudden shriek came from somewhere down the hall.
"LEONARD!"
"She's off." Tash still didn't bother to look up.
"CHRIST ON A BICYCLE!"
"Um... what's she on about now?"
"It's best not to ask."
"BRING THAT BLOODY IPOD BACK!"
"I know Jess gets possessive about her music, but this seems extreme..." Emily was confused, and more than a little scared.
"Oh, it is," Tash raised her eyebrows over her book. "Let's just say... there's been a break up."
"Oh," Emily relaxed slightly. "And this is normal?"
"Well... ish."
Tash didn't feel like explaining to such a young person the dynamics of Jess' relationships and what tended to happen when they ended. In this case, Jess and her pet American back in Real Life had mutually decided to bring things to an end (before his girlfriend could find out what had been going on).
Mutual or not... Jess was still pretty damn pissed off. At it seemed she was taking it out on the Library floors.
Stomp, stomp, stomp.
Jess was angry. Bloody angry, actually. She'd known things would have to end, but she hadn't expected the end to come so soon. Buggeration and bollockery. And now Leonard had run off with her iPod, probably fed up of hearing Jess screeching along to 'Valley of the Damned' over and over again.
Briefly, Jess wondered if the Society had a gym anywhere. She really felt like giving a punchbag what for. It had to have one somewhere, she reasoned... But being the type of person whose preferred exercise regime involved running from kitchen to kitchen trying to find more chocolate, she wasn't entirely sure where one would be found.
"Right, who's in here?" she growled, stamping into the Monitor room. Ben turned from his position at a screen, a somewhat terrified expression crossing his face.
"...me?"
"Yes, you'll do. Any idea where the gym is in here?"
"I... um. Actually I was just about to call you. That Sue you were looking for in the Glee fandom has just popped up again."
"Oh, excellent," Jess smiled. Ben shrank back in fear – it was not a happy smile. In fact it was the smile of a psychopath who was in the mood for some psychopathing. "Far better than a punchbag."
"Maybe someone else should go... She's up to Level 5 now, I should really check with Tash..."
"Screw that, I'm going." Jess took a leap across the room and glanced at Ben's computer screen. "Big Bang Theory? Christicles, she's getting diverse. Right, see you later!"
As Jess activated her Plothole Generator, Ben picked up his Communicator.
"Tash, I think we have a problem..."
The first thing Jess noticed was the heat. Wherever she'd turned up was so swelteringly hot, she felt she could almost be back home in France again in the middle of the summer. Oh well, the Big Bang Theory was set in California, she supposed. Not too unusual for it to be baking, then.
The second thing she noticed was a slightly familiar looking boy standing right in front of her.
"Who are you?" he said, his eyes bulging slightly in shock.
"Never mind who I am, I'm looking for someone," Jess stared around her, ignoring the teenager. She seemed to be in a bedroom, but it wasn't any of the bedrooms she'd seen on the TV show. "Leonard Hofstadter, Raj Koothrappali, Howard Wolowitz, Sheldon Cooper..."
"But I'm Sheldon Cooper," said the teenager.
"No you're not," Jess said absentmindedly, sticking her head out of the window and looking around. Funny, this didn't look like Pasadena... it seemed far too arid. The heat was strong enough in the house but with her head outside she could almost taste it. Surely this wasn't quite right...
"I can assure you, I certainly am."
"Oh... fuck." Jess stuck her head back in the room and stared at the gangly teenage boy standing straight as a rod in front of her. "I'm in Texas, aren't I?"
"Yes, you are."
"And you're a kid, right?"
"I don't know what you mean by 'kid', but I am sixteen years old if you're questioning my age."
"Oh... crap." Jess gave her head a good whack. "Why didn't I do some research?"
"SHELLY!" Suddenly a loud Texan voice hollered from somewhere below. "Dinner's ready! Tell Leonor too!"
"Leonor?" Jess snapped to attention. "So she is here..."
"What do you want with Leonor?" Sheldon's eyes narrowed.
"She's a... an old friend." Jess was trying her very hardest to stay calm and not grab Sheldon round the neck yelling 'Where is she? Where is sheeeee?'
"Is it normal for you to search for your 'friends' in strangers' bedrooms?"
"Yes." Jess put on her best glare. "So how do you know her?"
"She moved in down the street a few weeks ago..." To Jess' abject horror, Sheldon's face went slightly slack and his eyes took on a strange fuzzy hue. "She's... so different. She understands me. She... she knows me."
Well, being a Mary-Sue who had evidently studied the fandom and inserted herself into a point of it that could change the course of canon forever... yeah, it wasn't hard to see how she knew Sheldon. However, while Jess knew this well, poor Sheldon didn't. And that sappy look on his face was so out of character it was scary. Sheldon wasn't meant to have romantic thoughts... he wasn't meant to even comprehend them. Jess was willing to bet they were going round and round in his head now. If he started to get like this, she wouldn't expect things to turn out how they were meant to. He would probably never finish his second dissertation, he might never move to California, he would never meet Leonard Hofstadter, who would therefore probably never meet Penny...
"She is getting so damn good at doing this," Jess growled under her breath.
"Excuse me? I didn't quite catch that."
"I said, where is she now?"
"She was just in the bathroom..."
"Oh, great, I'll just go and surprise her."
Doing an impression of the proverbial speeding bullet, Jess darted out of the room and onto a landing.
"First on the right," Sheldon called from his room.
"Thanks, mate," Jess whispered, edging towards the door. She pressed her ear against it... and heard a very strange sound for a bathroom. Some kind of... knocking? A kind of... scraping? "Screw this."
With a bang, Jess gave the door a good kick.
As it flew open, she breathed a sigh of relief that she hadn't inadvertently stormed in on Sheldon's father on the toilet or some such lovely sight. Instead, sitting on the windowsill with a screwdriver determinedly trying to get the window frame out, was Leonor.
"Oh, crap," she hissed, seeing the somewhat formidable figure of Jess framed in the doorway. "I thought you'd take longer than this."
"Not this time, Leonor," Jess' voice was low. "This time, you're going back to the Basement."
"You think?" Leonor sneered, landing lightly on the tiled floor.
The Sue hadn't changed much since the last time Jess had seen her, way back in the X Files fandom. Like the last time they'd met, she was wearing black skinny jeans almost identical to those Jess had on, along with an oversized band t-shirt – the Rolling Stones had been replaced with Blondie.
"Hey!" Jess exclaimed, noticing something different. "You've had your eyebrow pierced! Copycat!"
"You can talk," Leonor sniffed. "You nicked my hairstyle."
"It's a popular style!"
"Funny you only got it after meeting me..."
"Well at least mine's purple... Just a quick question – what the hell are you trying to do to the window?"
"I heard you coming from a mile away. I wasn't exactly going to hang around and wait for you to get me, was I?"
Jess looked around her. "Um, just in case you haven't noticed... You're in a bathroom. I'm in front of the door. You can't get the window open. I think you've hit a dead end, dearie. Now come here and let me put your personal Prohibitor on and we'll go back to the Library like good-"
Right up until then, Jess had actually been feeling fairly disappointed that she wasn't going to get some kind of chase-and-punch-up out of Leonor... but all of a sudden, it looked like she was going to get her wish.
Leonor had made a quick lunge forward, something silver glinting in her hands that Jess had failed to notice. Jess dropped to the floor to avoid the knife, whipping out her piercing needle from where it was tucked in her sock and stabbing it into Leonor's ankle as she tried to leap towards the door.
With a howl of pain, Leonor attempted to clutch her foot and missed, dropping her knife and falling to the floor. Jess was back on her feet in a second, grabbing her enemy by the throat and hauling her up to eye level. She could feel the pentagram tattoo on her back throbbing, physically willing her to use its powers to bring down Leonor once and for all... but Jess had had too much building up in her in the past while. She wanted to do this herself.
"I've wanted to do this for a while," she hissed through gritted teeth, shoving Leonor against the wall. The Sue gasped as her airway was effectively cut off, held halfway up the wall by the bigger girl's iron grip. Jess stared at her, eyes narrowed, as the flailing of her limbs got weaker and weaker. "You're a useless piece of shit."
With a hideous sounding crunch, Jess' free fist made contact with Leonor's nose. "You don't deserve to roam the multiverse." With another crack, Jess' fist smashed into the Sue's face again. "You're not worth my time!"
Jess pulled back her fist to deliver the blow that would knock Leonor unconscious... and fell to the floor herself.
Jess opened her eyes... and instantly closed them again, the lights of the Medical wing shining far too intensely.
"Oh... bugger. Man, you've got to sort those flaming lights out."
"Welcome back, Jess," said Valerie brightly. "The land of the living has missed you."
"What the-"
"You forgot to Copyright Sheldon." Tash was sitting on the end of Jess' bed. "He heard you smashing around and decided to rescue Leonor. He came in the bathroom when you were shouting and clonked you on the head with a copy of 'Contemporary Physics'. I was just on my way to come and calm you down, I got there just in time to see Leonor scarpering out the front door."
"Crap. Shit. Fuck. Jesus, Tash, how many bloody times are you going to have to show up and save my ass while I'm left on the ground?"
"Honey, I'm worried about you," Tash said gently. "It seems to me you weren't exactly yelling at Leonor back there..."
"Of course I was yelling at Leonor." Jess put her stubborn face on, and Tash sighed. She could tell when her friend was closing up. "Who else do you think I was yelling at?"
"You're still wearing the American's t-shirt," Tash felt the need to point out.
"So? It's comfy."
"And now bloodstained."
"What?" Jess' face fell.
"Case in point."
"Shut up," Jess glowered. "Never mind that. Any sign of Leonor?"
"Nope," Tash sighed. "It's looking like running away is her speciality. God knows where she'll pop up next."
"I'll be there when she does."
"Don't you think you should leave her to someone less... homicidal?"
"No. She's pissed me around too much now. She's mine."
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