It had been several years since the Stargate was first activated, and during that time the personnel from Stargate Command had encountered aliens galore. Most of these aliens were friendly; some however were hostile. Of all the hostile aliens, nothing was quite like the Goa'uld; a parasitic life-form that claims a host, whilst removing all semblance of self control. The Goa'uld had proved to be a formidable foe for the various SG teams sent across the galaxy. After four years, they were still fighting.
"GET DOWN!" Carter yelled across the battlefield. Louise peered over the top of a large rock. She could see the battle clearly from her vantage point, but could do nothing about it. The Goa'uld forces advanced on the weakening SG personnel. A staff blast impacted the stone in front of her, and Louise ducked out of sight again. Around her, the sounds of battle continued. She jumped as a young Air Force man was launched over her rock, and landed dead at her feet.
She knew that she was there under orders from Tash to find the newest Sue to appear on the radar, but she hadn't been expecting to land in the middle of an alien battle. Keeping her head below the surface of her rock, Louise peered around the edge.
"Oh crap!" she whispered. The battle was not going well. Dead SG personnel littered the floor, whilst the Goa'uld mass marched on. In the midst of the Goa'uld forces stood a young woman. She wasn't a Jaffa, but she wasn't a slave.
Her hair, pulled back in a perfect plait, drifted gently in the breeze. Her petite figure contrasted greatly with the hulking forms of the Jaffa around her. In fact, as Louise spotted her, the Jaffa warriors moved into a protective formation around the woman. She looked around at the carnage that her guardians had wrought. She was dressed in very anachronistic clothing for the technology level of the local population, Louise noted as she peered around the rock.
The society agent stared at the woman. She had all the makings of a Mary-Sue, but how to get past her bodyguards. Since none of the other agents had reported her, Louise knew that she was an unknown Sue to the Society. This must be the one she had been sent to capture.
"Oh crap," she repeated, reaching for her communicator. She had to tell Tash that the Sue had already corrupted the fandom. Her hand slipped into her pocket. "Oh... crap!" Louise's hand grasped thin air. She'd left her communicator back in the Library.
Back in the Library, Tash had come across Louise's communicator.
"Oh, bollocks! Louise, you idiot!" Tash yelled at the universe in general.
Louise continued to peer around her shield. The battle was still going badly. The remaining SG personnel had turned tail and bolted for the Stargate. She could just see them through the trees. A man was standing at the dialling device, inputting their intended destination. Louise hoped they would make it home. She turned back to the Mary-Sue, who was now ordering the Jaffa warriors around. Ok, she thought, this has gone too far. She knew she couldn't approach the Sue directly, for fear that her muscle would perceive her as a threat, so she watched from a distance.
The Sue gave the appearance of great wisdom, and yet couldn't have been older than Louise herself. As she talked and ordered some the Jaffa to pursue the fleeing soldiers, the Sue flicked her hair across her shoulders. Despite being several inches shorter than the majority of the male Jaffa, the Sue radiated a palpable aura of strength and authority. She ordered the Jaffa around as if she were their God, instead of the Goa'uld.
Louise watched, incensed that this Sue was manipulating one of the fundamental rules in the fandom. She heard, in the distance, the sound of the Stargate activating, and prayed that the SG personnel had made it safely home. Home... that was something that couldn't be contemplated now... She focused on the Sue, surrounded by her bodyguards. How on earth was she going to capture this one?
The roar of a ship's engine caused Louise to look up. Just surfacing from behind the rim of the surrounding hills, a Goa'uld Al'kesh, a medium ranged bomber, zoomed overhead. Louise hit the deck. The last thing she wanted was the Goa'uld becoming aware of her; she was going to have enough problems capturing this Sue as it was. From the looks of her, she was at least a level 5 if not higher. Tash clearly didn't know the strength of this Sue; else she would have sent a more experienced agent into the fandom.
Realising that there was no way she was going to be able to take the Sue in her current location, Louise sidled back into a clump of bushes. She would have to come up with another plan, and quickly. She looked up from within the bushes, watching the ship head into the upper atmosphere. If there was a Goa'uld Ha'tak, or Mothership, in orbit... Louise couldn't bare thinking about the kind of trouble she may end up in. She turned her eyes back to where the Sue had been standing... she was gone!
"Oh crap! Tash is really gonna kill me" she peered out of the bushes, looking for any sign of the Sue. "Oh double crap!" If the Sue was in charge of the Jaffa on the ground, she was no doubt in command of that ship, and any mothership that might, or might not, be in orbit. Louise knew she had to get up there, but how? She wasn't prepared to take the standard route for non-Jaffa – as a prisoner. There must be an alternative.
Walking into the clearing, she looked at the chaos. The land around the battle was littered with bodies, both Jaffa and human. If the Sue was willing to adopt the persona of a God to rule over the Jaffa, she clearly had to be stopped. Louise stooped, and pocketed a couple of PP9's. She checked the current magazines of each of them, and gathered a handful of extra ones, just in case. Deciding that she didn't have time to be picky about using clothing from a corpse, Louise swallowed as she stripped a dead SG soldier of his vest, sliding the spare ammo into the pockets, and swung the vest on. It was a little tight for her, but it would do. She tried not to look at the faces of the fallen as she picked her way across the carnage.
After the hell she had been through with Alice on her first mission, she had wished for a quieter, more peaceful fandom. Why did she have to end up here? Louise sighed, and trudged into the forest on the opposite side of the clearing. "And we're walking" she murmured to herself, with a wry smile on her face. She didn't know where she was going, or what she was looking for, but less than an hour after leaving the site of the battle, she had found it.
Hidden, behind a large amount of fallen branches, was a Goa'uld Tel'tak, a cargo ship, exactly what Louise needed.
A twig snapped in the trees behind her, and she whirled around, pulling the pistol up to defend her. Had a Jaffa found her? Had she inadvertently walked into a trap?
"Wait" a small voice called from within the trees. It sounded human enough. "Please... don't shoot."
"Who are you?" Louise demanded, her voice less confident than she intended.
A thin, gaunt-looking man staggered out of the trees. He certainly wasn't Jaffa. Louise's hand gripped the handle of the gun. The man's hands were outstretched, palms forward. "Please..."
"Who are you?" she repeated.
"My name is... Sebastian" the mere fact that he paused before his name put Louise on the back foot. She raised the gun again.
"Really?" she sounded so suspicious, even to herself. The man before her dipped his hand, and then looking up at her more serenely spoke,
"My name is Menes" Louise's hand tightened. Sebastian's voice was different. She had heard those kinds of voices before. "You're Goa'uld" she accused.
"NO!" Sebastian looked furious. "We are Tok'Ra."
Louise nodded with immediate understanding. The Tok'Ra; a splinter faction of the Goa'uld, who took willing hosts and despised all that the Goa'uld were. She soon realised that this could be a very fortunate meeting. She needed to get to the mothership no doubt in orbit, but she also needed a pilot. This Tok'Ra, with the right words, could be exactly that.
"My apologies Menes, I didn't mean to offend you. My name is Louise, and I'm a..." she paused. How to explain the society to a canon character... "I'm a bounty hunter, and my quarry has just escaped me. She is... working for the Goa'uld," she lied smoothly.
Menes / Sebastian staggered slightly. Louise caught him under the arm, and felt the wet warmth that could mean only one thing. "Oh my God!" she exclaimed, "You're bleeding"
"I took a staff blast to the shoulder in the forest. The Jaffa were taking..." he winced.
"Carefully, carefully" she soothed as she sat the Tok'Ra onto the damp earth.
"The Jaffa were taking orders from a young girl" the words came out rushed. It was only then that Louise realised that the symbiote wasn't talking anymore, Sebastian had taken over again.
"The exact same one I've been sent to capture. Sebastian, I can stem the bleeding, but I need your help," she pulled a wad of fabric from her pocket. "Always keep a hankie in case of emergencies." Sebastian looked confused as she pressed the material onto the wound. "Be grateful this wasn't any further to the left, a couple of inches you'd have been dead." As she finished fastening the handkerchief to his shoulder, Sebastian took her hand... "Thank you" he whispered.
"I'm not doing this merely out of kindness, Sebastian" Louise stated, "I need a pilot for this damned ship" she hit the cargo ship, and then regretted it. That thing was hard. Shaking her hand at the pain shooting through it, Louise extended the other one to help Sebastian to his feet. "I have no idea how to pilot one of these, and I need to get to the mothership that's in orbit"
"Out of the question" Sebastian was clearly not fond of her idea. "We'd be killed the moment we got on board." He had a point; she had to give him that. She sighed, "Look, I need this. That girl is very dangerous, and I need to capture her as soon as possible. If you are too worried about getting caught, ring me over and then leave. I don't really care"
"Very well" Sebastian sighed in resignation of his role, "but don't expect me to come rescue you when you get into trouble." He sounded so sure that this would be the fact; Louise almost chickened out, but then she realised that if she got into serious trouble, help would no doubt come in the form of fellow agents of the society. Although technically this wasn't her first mission, she was under no illusions that someone, most likely to new Librarian, would be watching her progress. After the trouble she and Alice had gotten into, she was surprised to even be allowed into another fandom, let alone on a solo mission.
It didn't take long for Louise and Sebastian to get the craft flight-worthy. It took a little clearing of the branches from around the ship, but soon Sebastian was sitting behind the controls, and the Tel'tak was lifting majestically from the forest.
"Sebastian," Louise started as the ship finally cleared the trees, and began its trek up to the awaiting Ha'tak. Her pilot looked up. "I know you don't want to get into a fight with the Jaffa, but I..." she didn't get to finish the sentence.
"Look, Louise... was it?" she nodded in response, "I hate the Goa'uld about as much as the next Tok'Ra, but I am not willing to go on a suicide mission to capture a runaway little girl."
Louise, standing behind him, was checking she had all that she needed. Pistol, check. Prohibitors, check. Plothole generator, check. Communicator, nope – she remembered that she'd left that back in the Library. Tash really was gonna kill her.
"We're approaching the Ha'tak" Sebastian announced, breaking into Louise's reveries and worries about Tash's reaction when she got back to the Library. Looking through the window of the cockpit, she could see the giant mothership looming up as they drew nearer.
"Can you ring me in?" she asked, knowing the fact that their presence was not likely to go undetected for long. Sebastian looked around; it was clear on his face that he was nervous about this mission. From the state Louise had found him in, he had clearly barely escaped his last encounter with this Mary-Sue, and he obviously didn't fancy a second round.
"I can get you in, but I don't know whether I'll be able to get you out. Once you're in, you're on your own." His voice sounded hollow, as though he were sentencing her to death. Louise's hand folded around the plothole generator nestled in her pocket. If worse came to worse, she always had an escape route back to the Library, but she wasn't about to tell him that. "Don't worry," she reassured him, "I'll be fine. I've done this kinda thing before."
As Sebastian brought the ship to a gradual halt, Louise approached the ring platform with a little trepidation. She already knew that the Sue had corrupted the fandom, forcing this group of Jaffa to worship her and not their "Gods" the Goa'uld. She took a deep breath, and then the final step. "Wait!" Turning, she saw Sebastian's worried eyes; he handed her a small Tok'Ra communicator. "I'll be fine." Her voice was falsely confident. He activated the rings, her vision blurred, and before she knew it, she was standing in a corridor.
The corridor was mercifully deserted, but Louise didn't know how long it would remain so. An area of darkness drew her attention, and she sidled into the shadows. Lifting her gun, she crept back into the half-light of the corridor. To her left, a door stood half open with voices coming from within. Moving silently closer, she heard the familiar deep tones of a male Jaffa, and the higher shriller voice that could only belong to the Sue.
"I don't care if you have searched the forest...I want him found!" the Sue was yelling.
"Yes, Lord Merle" the Jaffa sounded nervous, and a little frightened. Louise fought back the gasp that was threatening to escape. She knew that name, but was praying that she'd misheard it. The Jaffa didn't hang around long, and she was forced to press herself into the shadows to avoid being seen. Once the Jaffa had fled out of sight, she turned her ear back to the doorway. "Lord Merle" as the Jaffa had called her, was talking again, although it seemed to herself.
"Soon, we shall have all that we need to crush those..." Merle's voice was less shrill that before, almost hushed in a whisper. She was cut short by a loud bang from several floors below. Louise threw herself back into the shadows, as Merle ran from the room. Despite the rush, her hair was still in a perfect plait, and flowed down her back in undulating ripples. Her hips swayed rhythmically. It was almost hypnotic...
"Oh, for cryin' out loud Louise! Get a grip!"
Louise blinked, and the spell was broken. She watched Merle disappear around the corner before following in her wake. After what felt like miles of corridors, and what were definitely too many near misses with patrolling Jaffa, Louise came across the origin of the loud bang. A laboratory. She almost snorted in surprise. It looked like a 20th Century science lab. Merle was stood in the very centre, yelling at some white-coated humans. They all looked terrified.
"WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU DOING?" she was demanding; her voice was back to its shrill, bat-destroying pitch.
"Lord Merle..." the lead scientist was pleading, "the chemicals you provided have proven to be a more volatile combination than previously expected. We..." Merle glared at the poor man. "We are working, right now, on an alternative."
"THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE, FOOL! MAKE IT..."
A young scientist ran up from the back of the room. "My Lord, we have a success." He sounded so pleased with himself that he completely missed the look of horror on the lead scientist's face. Merle, however, did not.
"Get him out of my sight," she gestured at the lead scientist, "and make sure I never see him again." The Jaffa immediately converged on the man, and dragged him out of Louise's line of vision. Merle followed the junior scientist to the back of the room.
"Oh crap," Louise slipped her arm around the door frame, and fortunately lifted a white coat from a peg by the door. Sliding her arms into it, she strode into the room. The Jaffa didn't bat an eyelid. She walked up behind the gathered scientists until she was mere metres from Merle. Her hand slipped into her pocket, and around the prohibitor located there. She knew she would only get one shot at this.
Merle was appraising the work of the young scientist with a disdainful look on her face. Despite the look, Louise noted, the Sue was still a very attractive young woman.
"I want ten times this quantity by noon tomorrow." At her words, the scientists scattered. Louise wasn't ready for them. As they knocked into her, she was pushed closer to Merle, and to the scientific equipment she was now studying. Sliding around the edge of the lab table, Louise glimpsed a bright blue liquid in a glass conical flask. Merle picked up the flask, swilling the liquid around inside. She was gazing at the contents with an almost longing expression on her face.
Louise slid to Merle's blind side. With her eyes fixed on the flask, she hoped that the Sue would be distracted enough for her to clip the prohibitor onto her wrist and get out of the fandom without any trouble. Although, as she was about to find out, trouble seemed to follow Louise around. The bang, as she was about to realise, had been from a large number of exploding flasks. Placing her right foot down, she heard a loud crunch of glass. Merle looked around and spotted her.
"You!" she cursed
"Merle Ravensclaw!" Louise's voice was shakier than she had heard it in a long time. She pulled the prohibitor from her pocket. "The society would like a word with you." She stepped forward, wanting to get this over with before the rapidly approaching Jaffa reached her. Merle had other ideas. With a heave, she pushed Louise to the floor. The agent landed amidst shards of glass. She reached for the lab bench to pull herself to her feet. Upon returning to the vertical plane, she launched herself at Merle, prohibitor in one hand, and her pistol in the other. She levelled the weapon at her quarry. "The time for running is..." Louise crumpled to the floor as a blast from a zat'ni'katel hit her in the back.
Back in the Library, Tash had been joined by Alice and Dave, and there was presently a huge argument about the sanity of attempting a rescue.
"They're going to kill her" Dave was protesting, defending Alice's initial request to head into the fandom herself. Tash, as Librarian however, wasn't backing down.
"One, we would risk losing you both as well, and you know much less about the fandom than Louise. Two, she went through a lot worse with you, Alice. She'll cope."
Alice and Dave were not happy, but once Tash had spoken there was little they could do about it. The three of them returned to watching the fandom.
Louise came to in a small dark cell. She immediately rummaged in her pockets and found that both her prohibitors had been taken, along with copyrights and scene transition. This day was just getting better and better. She continued digging into her pocket. There was one thing that could get her out of this mess, right here, right now. But it too was missing. Great! She lay back down on the hard ground. It wasn't earth but metal. Great, a prison cell on a Goa'uld mothership, taking her goodness knows where, and she didn't have her plothole generator. Wonderful!
Footsteps attracted Louise's attention away from the pessimistic wonderings. She lay, resigned to her fate, gazing through the bars of her cage. A slight figure, cloaked in black, turned the corner at the end of the corridor. Despite being in silhouette, it was impossible not to recognise the petite and yet well-formed shape of Merle. As the Sue approached the cell, Louise saw that in her hand was the plothole generator, she could have jumped for joy.
"Well, well, well," Merle's voice was like oil-slick. "A rat caught in a trap"
"Yes, well done Merle. Now, give me that," Louise gestured at the plothole generator, "and I'll leave." She realised that she was never going to catch Merle now, so better to accept a gracious defeat for now, and return to the Library the moment the opportunity presented itself.
"I want to know how you managed to get on my ship," Merle crouched, lupinesque, in front of the cell.
"I won't tell you," Louise was defiant, and yet utterly terrified.
"I know you are from the Society, and therefore you have come to take me in. I cannot allow that. You have a lot to be grateful for, Mirani." Louise gasped. She hadn't been called that in over five years, long before she had joined the society, when Merle's original author had been Louise's best friend.
"Merle, things have changed. I'm not the cowardly little girl I was back then. You have corrupted enough fandoms to be locked in the basement for the rest of time. You have interfered enough here that it has appeared on the Society's radar. If I don't bring you in, someone else will follow me. You will be stopped, Merle." Louise was almost shocked at her defiance. Merle laughed; a mirthless laugh that sent shivers down the agent's spine. She had almost forgotten how malicious and vindictive Merle could be.
"You're not getting away from me this time." Merle opened the door to the cell, and Louise retreated to the far side. "HA, look at you, running away like you always did." Louise braced her foot against the wall. She would only get one shot at this. As Merle approached, stupidly leaving the cell door open, Louise pushed herself off from the wall, and launched her body into Merle's. Knocking the plothole generator to the floor, she slid unceremoniously to a halt, a few metres from the generator, and right next to the open cell door. Merle had likewise ended up sprawled across the dirt floor.
Years of dodging the bullies at school, and then later dodging bone-crushing hugs from fellow agent, Alice, had given Louise a generally unnoticed dexterity. She recovered first from the impact, and soon had the plothole generator in her hand. She was willing to lose her prohibitors and other equipment in exchange for a speedy and preferably safe return to the Library. She would no doubt get a grilling from Tash, not only for letting Merle escape, but for the fact that she knew about her existence before starting on this mission.
Louise gripped the plothole generator and, slipping around the cell door, ran full-pelt down the corridor. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Merle scrambling to her feet, and heard in the distance her angry protests at her prisoner's escape. She didn't stop until the sound of approaching guards caught her attention.
"Sod this," Louise would take all that Tash would throw at her. She knew what Merle could do, and didn't particularly want to be on the receiving end of it again. Raising the plothole generator to eye level, she gently squeezed the trigger, and the gateway to the Library opened before her. Swallowing hard, for Louise had never gotten used to plothole transportation, she stepped into the vortex and to safety.
Landing hard on the Monitor Room floor, Louise panted for breath. A pair of hands soon grasped her shoulders. Looking up, she gazed into the familiar face of her best friend, Alice.
"Dumpling, you're alive!" she greeted the exhausted agent with the usual glomp.
"Yes Alice," Louise choked "I'm very much alive. Now where's my inhaler?" a small aqua-blue medication dispenser was handed to her as Alice pulled her to her feet, and she was led gently to a chair.
"Are you alright?" Tash's voice was concerned, but held a level of authority. Louise looked at her and sighed. She was going to have to explain everything eventually, and now was as good a time as any. "I'm ok..." she gazed at her friends gathered around her. Alice – with whom she was almost as close as a sister. Dave – who had been many a source of puns and amusement, and Tash – her shoulder to cry on. And yet, Louise didn't feel like opening her past to everyone. Alice probably already knew a large majority of it...
"Alice, Dave, do you mind giving us a moment?" Tash's interruption had spared her from the impossible decision. Alice and Dave, whilst clearly worried about Louise's condition, yielded to Tash's authority as Librarian and left. "Now, Louise..." Tash turned to face her, "would you mind telling me what the hell happened?"
Louise sighed. Where to begin? "Well, it all started when I was at college..."
"GET DOWN!" Carter yelled across the battlefield. Louise peered over the top of a large rock. She could see the battle clearly from her vantage point, but could do nothing about it. The Goa'uld forces advanced on the weakening SG personnel. A staff blast impacted the stone in front of her, and Louise ducked out of sight again. Around her, the sounds of battle continued. She jumped as a young Air Force man was launched over her rock, and landed dead at her feet.
She knew that she was there under orders from Tash to find the newest Sue to appear on the radar, but she hadn't been expecting to land in the middle of an alien battle. Keeping her head below the surface of her rock, Louise peered around the edge.
"Oh crap!" she whispered. The battle was not going well. Dead SG personnel littered the floor, whilst the Goa'uld mass marched on. In the midst of the Goa'uld forces stood a young woman. She wasn't a Jaffa, but she wasn't a slave.
Her hair, pulled back in a perfect plait, drifted gently in the breeze. Her petite figure contrasted greatly with the hulking forms of the Jaffa around her. In fact, as Louise spotted her, the Jaffa warriors moved into a protective formation around the woman. She looked around at the carnage that her guardians had wrought. She was dressed in very anachronistic clothing for the technology level of the local population, Louise noted as she peered around the rock.
The society agent stared at the woman. She had all the makings of a Mary-Sue, but how to get past her bodyguards. Since none of the other agents had reported her, Louise knew that she was an unknown Sue to the Society. This must be the one she had been sent to capture.
"Oh crap," she repeated, reaching for her communicator. She had to tell Tash that the Sue had already corrupted the fandom. Her hand slipped into her pocket. "Oh... crap!" Louise's hand grasped thin air. She'd left her communicator back in the Library.
-x-
Back in the Library, Tash had come across Louise's communicator.
"Oh, bollocks! Louise, you idiot!" Tash yelled at the universe in general.
-x-
Louise continued to peer around her shield. The battle was still going badly. The remaining SG personnel had turned tail and bolted for the Stargate. She could just see them through the trees. A man was standing at the dialling device, inputting their intended destination. Louise hoped they would make it home. She turned back to the Mary-Sue, who was now ordering the Jaffa warriors around. Ok, she thought, this has gone too far. She knew she couldn't approach the Sue directly, for fear that her muscle would perceive her as a threat, so she watched from a distance.
The Sue gave the appearance of great wisdom, and yet couldn't have been older than Louise herself. As she talked and ordered some the Jaffa to pursue the fleeing soldiers, the Sue flicked her hair across her shoulders. Despite being several inches shorter than the majority of the male Jaffa, the Sue radiated a palpable aura of strength and authority. She ordered the Jaffa around as if she were their God, instead of the Goa'uld.
Louise watched, incensed that this Sue was manipulating one of the fundamental rules in the fandom. She heard, in the distance, the sound of the Stargate activating, and prayed that the SG personnel had made it safely home. Home... that was something that couldn't be contemplated now... She focused on the Sue, surrounded by her bodyguards. How on earth was she going to capture this one?
The roar of a ship's engine caused Louise to look up. Just surfacing from behind the rim of the surrounding hills, a Goa'uld Al'kesh, a medium ranged bomber, zoomed overhead. Louise hit the deck. The last thing she wanted was the Goa'uld becoming aware of her; she was going to have enough problems capturing this Sue as it was. From the looks of her, she was at least a level 5 if not higher. Tash clearly didn't know the strength of this Sue; else she would have sent a more experienced agent into the fandom.
Realising that there was no way she was going to be able to take the Sue in her current location, Louise sidled back into a clump of bushes. She would have to come up with another plan, and quickly. She looked up from within the bushes, watching the ship head into the upper atmosphere. If there was a Goa'uld Ha'tak, or Mothership, in orbit... Louise couldn't bare thinking about the kind of trouble she may end up in. She turned her eyes back to where the Sue had been standing... she was gone!
"Oh crap! Tash is really gonna kill me" she peered out of the bushes, looking for any sign of the Sue. "Oh double crap!" If the Sue was in charge of the Jaffa on the ground, she was no doubt in command of that ship, and any mothership that might, or might not, be in orbit. Louise knew she had to get up there, but how? She wasn't prepared to take the standard route for non-Jaffa – as a prisoner. There must be an alternative.
Walking into the clearing, she looked at the chaos. The land around the battle was littered with bodies, both Jaffa and human. If the Sue was willing to adopt the persona of a God to rule over the Jaffa, she clearly had to be stopped. Louise stooped, and pocketed a couple of PP9's. She checked the current magazines of each of them, and gathered a handful of extra ones, just in case. Deciding that she didn't have time to be picky about using clothing from a corpse, Louise swallowed as she stripped a dead SG soldier of his vest, sliding the spare ammo into the pockets, and swung the vest on. It was a little tight for her, but it would do. She tried not to look at the faces of the fallen as she picked her way across the carnage.
After the hell she had been through with Alice on her first mission, she had wished for a quieter, more peaceful fandom. Why did she have to end up here? Louise sighed, and trudged into the forest on the opposite side of the clearing. "And we're walking" she murmured to herself, with a wry smile on her face. She didn't know where she was going, or what she was looking for, but less than an hour after leaving the site of the battle, she had found it.
Hidden, behind a large amount of fallen branches, was a Goa'uld Tel'tak, a cargo ship, exactly what Louise needed.
A twig snapped in the trees behind her, and she whirled around, pulling the pistol up to defend her. Had a Jaffa found her? Had she inadvertently walked into a trap?
"Wait" a small voice called from within the trees. It sounded human enough. "Please... don't shoot."
"Who are you?" Louise demanded, her voice less confident than she intended.
A thin, gaunt-looking man staggered out of the trees. He certainly wasn't Jaffa. Louise's hand gripped the handle of the gun. The man's hands were outstretched, palms forward. "Please..."
"Who are you?" she repeated.
"My name is... Sebastian" the mere fact that he paused before his name put Louise on the back foot. She raised the gun again.
"Really?" she sounded so suspicious, even to herself. The man before her dipped his hand, and then looking up at her more serenely spoke,
"My name is Menes" Louise's hand tightened. Sebastian's voice was different. She had heard those kinds of voices before. "You're Goa'uld" she accused.
"NO!" Sebastian looked furious. "We are Tok'Ra."
Louise nodded with immediate understanding. The Tok'Ra; a splinter faction of the Goa'uld, who took willing hosts and despised all that the Goa'uld were. She soon realised that this could be a very fortunate meeting. She needed to get to the mothership no doubt in orbit, but she also needed a pilot. This Tok'Ra, with the right words, could be exactly that.
"My apologies Menes, I didn't mean to offend you. My name is Louise, and I'm a..." she paused. How to explain the society to a canon character... "I'm a bounty hunter, and my quarry has just escaped me. She is... working for the Goa'uld," she lied smoothly.
Menes / Sebastian staggered slightly. Louise caught him under the arm, and felt the wet warmth that could mean only one thing. "Oh my God!" she exclaimed, "You're bleeding"
"I took a staff blast to the shoulder in the forest. The Jaffa were taking..." he winced.
"Carefully, carefully" she soothed as she sat the Tok'Ra onto the damp earth.
"The Jaffa were taking orders from a young girl" the words came out rushed. It was only then that Louise realised that the symbiote wasn't talking anymore, Sebastian had taken over again.
"The exact same one I've been sent to capture. Sebastian, I can stem the bleeding, but I need your help," she pulled a wad of fabric from her pocket. "Always keep a hankie in case of emergencies." Sebastian looked confused as she pressed the material onto the wound. "Be grateful this wasn't any further to the left, a couple of inches you'd have been dead." As she finished fastening the handkerchief to his shoulder, Sebastian took her hand... "Thank you" he whispered.
"I'm not doing this merely out of kindness, Sebastian" Louise stated, "I need a pilot for this damned ship" she hit the cargo ship, and then regretted it. That thing was hard. Shaking her hand at the pain shooting through it, Louise extended the other one to help Sebastian to his feet. "I have no idea how to pilot one of these, and I need to get to the mothership that's in orbit"
"Out of the question" Sebastian was clearly not fond of her idea. "We'd be killed the moment we got on board." He had a point; she had to give him that. She sighed, "Look, I need this. That girl is very dangerous, and I need to capture her as soon as possible. If you are too worried about getting caught, ring me over and then leave. I don't really care"
"Very well" Sebastian sighed in resignation of his role, "but don't expect me to come rescue you when you get into trouble." He sounded so sure that this would be the fact; Louise almost chickened out, but then she realised that if she got into serious trouble, help would no doubt come in the form of fellow agents of the society. Although technically this wasn't her first mission, she was under no illusions that someone, most likely to new Librarian, would be watching her progress. After the trouble she and Alice had gotten into, she was surprised to even be allowed into another fandom, let alone on a solo mission.
It didn't take long for Louise and Sebastian to get the craft flight-worthy. It took a little clearing of the branches from around the ship, but soon Sebastian was sitting behind the controls, and the Tel'tak was lifting majestically from the forest.
"Sebastian," Louise started as the ship finally cleared the trees, and began its trek up to the awaiting Ha'tak. Her pilot looked up. "I know you don't want to get into a fight with the Jaffa, but I..." she didn't get to finish the sentence.
"Look, Louise... was it?" she nodded in response, "I hate the Goa'uld about as much as the next Tok'Ra, but I am not willing to go on a suicide mission to capture a runaway little girl."
Louise, standing behind him, was checking she had all that she needed. Pistol, check. Prohibitors, check. Plothole generator, check. Communicator, nope – she remembered that she'd left that back in the Library. Tash really was gonna kill her.
"We're approaching the Ha'tak" Sebastian announced, breaking into Louise's reveries and worries about Tash's reaction when she got back to the Library. Looking through the window of the cockpit, she could see the giant mothership looming up as they drew nearer.
"Can you ring me in?" she asked, knowing the fact that their presence was not likely to go undetected for long. Sebastian looked around; it was clear on his face that he was nervous about this mission. From the state Louise had found him in, he had clearly barely escaped his last encounter with this Mary-Sue, and he obviously didn't fancy a second round.
"I can get you in, but I don't know whether I'll be able to get you out. Once you're in, you're on your own." His voice sounded hollow, as though he were sentencing her to death. Louise's hand folded around the plothole generator nestled in her pocket. If worse came to worse, she always had an escape route back to the Library, but she wasn't about to tell him that. "Don't worry," she reassured him, "I'll be fine. I've done this kinda thing before."
As Sebastian brought the ship to a gradual halt, Louise approached the ring platform with a little trepidation. She already knew that the Sue had corrupted the fandom, forcing this group of Jaffa to worship her and not their "Gods" the Goa'uld. She took a deep breath, and then the final step. "Wait!" Turning, she saw Sebastian's worried eyes; he handed her a small Tok'Ra communicator. "I'll be fine." Her voice was falsely confident. He activated the rings, her vision blurred, and before she knew it, she was standing in a corridor.
The corridor was mercifully deserted, but Louise didn't know how long it would remain so. An area of darkness drew her attention, and she sidled into the shadows. Lifting her gun, she crept back into the half-light of the corridor. To her left, a door stood half open with voices coming from within. Moving silently closer, she heard the familiar deep tones of a male Jaffa, and the higher shriller voice that could only belong to the Sue.
"I don't care if you have searched the forest...I want him found!" the Sue was yelling.
"Yes, Lord Merle" the Jaffa sounded nervous, and a little frightened. Louise fought back the gasp that was threatening to escape. She knew that name, but was praying that she'd misheard it. The Jaffa didn't hang around long, and she was forced to press herself into the shadows to avoid being seen. Once the Jaffa had fled out of sight, she turned her ear back to the doorway. "Lord Merle" as the Jaffa had called her, was talking again, although it seemed to herself.
"Soon, we shall have all that we need to crush those..." Merle's voice was less shrill that before, almost hushed in a whisper. She was cut short by a loud bang from several floors below. Louise threw herself back into the shadows, as Merle ran from the room. Despite the rush, her hair was still in a perfect plait, and flowed down her back in undulating ripples. Her hips swayed rhythmically. It was almost hypnotic...
-x-
"Oh, for cryin' out loud Louise! Get a grip!"
-x-
Louise blinked, and the spell was broken. She watched Merle disappear around the corner before following in her wake. After what felt like miles of corridors, and what were definitely too many near misses with patrolling Jaffa, Louise came across the origin of the loud bang. A laboratory. She almost snorted in surprise. It looked like a 20th Century science lab. Merle was stood in the very centre, yelling at some white-coated humans. They all looked terrified.
"WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU DOING?" she was demanding; her voice was back to its shrill, bat-destroying pitch.
"Lord Merle..." the lead scientist was pleading, "the chemicals you provided have proven to be a more volatile combination than previously expected. We..." Merle glared at the poor man. "We are working, right now, on an alternative."
"THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE, FOOL! MAKE IT..."
A young scientist ran up from the back of the room. "My Lord, we have a success." He sounded so pleased with himself that he completely missed the look of horror on the lead scientist's face. Merle, however, did not.
"Get him out of my sight," she gestured at the lead scientist, "and make sure I never see him again." The Jaffa immediately converged on the man, and dragged him out of Louise's line of vision. Merle followed the junior scientist to the back of the room.
"Oh crap," Louise slipped her arm around the door frame, and fortunately lifted a white coat from a peg by the door. Sliding her arms into it, she strode into the room. The Jaffa didn't bat an eyelid. She walked up behind the gathered scientists until she was mere metres from Merle. Her hand slipped into her pocket, and around the prohibitor located there. She knew she would only get one shot at this.
Merle was appraising the work of the young scientist with a disdainful look on her face. Despite the look, Louise noted, the Sue was still a very attractive young woman.
"I want ten times this quantity by noon tomorrow." At her words, the scientists scattered. Louise wasn't ready for them. As they knocked into her, she was pushed closer to Merle, and to the scientific equipment she was now studying. Sliding around the edge of the lab table, Louise glimpsed a bright blue liquid in a glass conical flask. Merle picked up the flask, swilling the liquid around inside. She was gazing at the contents with an almost longing expression on her face.
Louise slid to Merle's blind side. With her eyes fixed on the flask, she hoped that the Sue would be distracted enough for her to clip the prohibitor onto her wrist and get out of the fandom without any trouble. Although, as she was about to find out, trouble seemed to follow Louise around. The bang, as she was about to realise, had been from a large number of exploding flasks. Placing her right foot down, she heard a loud crunch of glass. Merle looked around and spotted her.
"You!" she cursed
"Merle Ravensclaw!" Louise's voice was shakier than she had heard it in a long time. She pulled the prohibitor from her pocket. "The society would like a word with you." She stepped forward, wanting to get this over with before the rapidly approaching Jaffa reached her. Merle had other ideas. With a heave, she pushed Louise to the floor. The agent landed amidst shards of glass. She reached for the lab bench to pull herself to her feet. Upon returning to the vertical plane, she launched herself at Merle, prohibitor in one hand, and her pistol in the other. She levelled the weapon at her quarry. "The time for running is..." Louise crumpled to the floor as a blast from a zat'ni'katel hit her in the back.
-x-
Back in the Library, Tash had been joined by Alice and Dave, and there was presently a huge argument about the sanity of attempting a rescue.
"They're going to kill her" Dave was protesting, defending Alice's initial request to head into the fandom herself. Tash, as Librarian however, wasn't backing down.
"One, we would risk losing you both as well, and you know much less about the fandom than Louise. Two, she went through a lot worse with you, Alice. She'll cope."
Alice and Dave were not happy, but once Tash had spoken there was little they could do about it. The three of them returned to watching the fandom.
-x-
Louise came to in a small dark cell. She immediately rummaged in her pockets and found that both her prohibitors had been taken, along with copyrights and scene transition. This day was just getting better and better. She continued digging into her pocket. There was one thing that could get her out of this mess, right here, right now. But it too was missing. Great! She lay back down on the hard ground. It wasn't earth but metal. Great, a prison cell on a Goa'uld mothership, taking her goodness knows where, and she didn't have her plothole generator. Wonderful!
Footsteps attracted Louise's attention away from the pessimistic wonderings. She lay, resigned to her fate, gazing through the bars of her cage. A slight figure, cloaked in black, turned the corner at the end of the corridor. Despite being in silhouette, it was impossible not to recognise the petite and yet well-formed shape of Merle. As the Sue approached the cell, Louise saw that in her hand was the plothole generator, she could have jumped for joy.
"Well, well, well," Merle's voice was like oil-slick. "A rat caught in a trap"
"Yes, well done Merle. Now, give me that," Louise gestured at the plothole generator, "and I'll leave." She realised that she was never going to catch Merle now, so better to accept a gracious defeat for now, and return to the Library the moment the opportunity presented itself.
"I want to know how you managed to get on my ship," Merle crouched, lupinesque, in front of the cell.
"I won't tell you," Louise was defiant, and yet utterly terrified.
"I know you are from the Society, and therefore you have come to take me in. I cannot allow that. You have a lot to be grateful for, Mirani." Louise gasped. She hadn't been called that in over five years, long before she had joined the society, when Merle's original author had been Louise's best friend.
"Merle, things have changed. I'm not the cowardly little girl I was back then. You have corrupted enough fandoms to be locked in the basement for the rest of time. You have interfered enough here that it has appeared on the Society's radar. If I don't bring you in, someone else will follow me. You will be stopped, Merle." Louise was almost shocked at her defiance. Merle laughed; a mirthless laugh that sent shivers down the agent's spine. She had almost forgotten how malicious and vindictive Merle could be.
"You're not getting away from me this time." Merle opened the door to the cell, and Louise retreated to the far side. "HA, look at you, running away like you always did." Louise braced her foot against the wall. She would only get one shot at this. As Merle approached, stupidly leaving the cell door open, Louise pushed herself off from the wall, and launched her body into Merle's. Knocking the plothole generator to the floor, she slid unceremoniously to a halt, a few metres from the generator, and right next to the open cell door. Merle had likewise ended up sprawled across the dirt floor.
Years of dodging the bullies at school, and then later dodging bone-crushing hugs from fellow agent, Alice, had given Louise a generally unnoticed dexterity. She recovered first from the impact, and soon had the plothole generator in her hand. She was willing to lose her prohibitors and other equipment in exchange for a speedy and preferably safe return to the Library. She would no doubt get a grilling from Tash, not only for letting Merle escape, but for the fact that she knew about her existence before starting on this mission.
Louise gripped the plothole generator and, slipping around the cell door, ran full-pelt down the corridor. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Merle scrambling to her feet, and heard in the distance her angry protests at her prisoner's escape. She didn't stop until the sound of approaching guards caught her attention.
"Sod this," Louise would take all that Tash would throw at her. She knew what Merle could do, and didn't particularly want to be on the receiving end of it again. Raising the plothole generator to eye level, she gently squeezed the trigger, and the gateway to the Library opened before her. Swallowing hard, for Louise had never gotten used to plothole transportation, she stepped into the vortex and to safety.
-x-
Landing hard on the Monitor Room floor, Louise panted for breath. A pair of hands soon grasped her shoulders. Looking up, she gazed into the familiar face of her best friend, Alice.
"Dumpling, you're alive!" she greeted the exhausted agent with the usual glomp.
"Yes Alice," Louise choked "I'm very much alive. Now where's my inhaler?" a small aqua-blue medication dispenser was handed to her as Alice pulled her to her feet, and she was led gently to a chair.
"Are you alright?" Tash's voice was concerned, but held a level of authority. Louise looked at her and sighed. She was going to have to explain everything eventually, and now was as good a time as any. "I'm ok..." she gazed at her friends gathered around her. Alice – with whom she was almost as close as a sister. Dave – who had been many a source of puns and amusement, and Tash – her shoulder to cry on. And yet, Louise didn't feel like opening her past to everyone. Alice probably already knew a large majority of it...
"Alice, Dave, do you mind giving us a moment?" Tash's interruption had spared her from the impossible decision. Alice and Dave, whilst clearly worried about Louise's condition, yielded to Tash's authority as Librarian and left. "Now, Louise..." Tash turned to face her, "would you mind telling me what the hell happened?"
Louise sighed. Where to begin? "Well, it all started when I was at college..."
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