8. The Massacre at the Tomb
This is the eighth part of the compiled, spliced, and edited log of the “2008 Mary Sue Invasion” role-play. It concerns those who take part in the Massacre at the Tomb of the Unknown PPC Agent. The writing in this section comes from the following Boarders:
- Trojanhorse and Paddlebrains (Agents Trojie, Pads, Gypsy, and Cray, and Marsha)
- Tawaki (Honesah and Daleks)
- Cassie Cameron-Young (Agents Cassie and Nat)
- Pigeonarmy (Agents Murtagh and Titus)
- JulyFlame (Agents July and Library)
- Laburnum (Agents Skyfire, Stormsong, Foxglove, and Laburnum)
The Tomb of the Unknown PPC Agent was... urple. With wilver splashes. And it was full of Sues; messed-up, panting, injured Sues, yes, but with fire in their eyes and hairspray making a misty aura around them. And with weapons in their hands, some of which had blatantly been stolen from the PPC agents they’d killed.
‘Oh no,’ said Gypsy, sliding down off Marsha’s back and hefting her shotgun professionally. ‘You bitches do NOT get a Famous Last Stand. Not here. Cray!’
Her partner looked up woozily.
‘How much of a psychic whammy d’you think you pack?’
Dunno...
‘Cos I need you to let all HQ know what’s going down here. We need backup, and we need it yesterday.’
The others could feel Cray drawing a huge psychic breath, before ALL AGENTS TO THE TOMB OF THE UNKNOWN PPC AGENT! Sues are massing for a last attack! GET YOUR BUTTS DOWN HERE NOW!
‘Yeah, that ought to do it,’ said Trojie, catching the Bad Het agent as she fell, her last ounce of strength gone on that cry. She draped Cray over Marsha’s brow horns. ‘Marsha, love, you need to get her back to Medical. I don’t care who or what you plough through, but get her there, and then stay there yourself.’
‘Mum, you’re going to need me!’ said Marsha.
Pads regained her human shape and turned to her partner and the Triceratops. ‘Go, Marsha. No time to argue. And remember,’ she added as the dinosaur began to walk away, ‘Mother knows best!’
‘Lock and load guys,’ said Gypsy, as the Sues started moving towards them. ‘Cassie, Nat, weapons out.’
The DMS Agents didn’t need to be told twice, indeed, had had their weaponry out for some time now.
‘Form a line,’ Gypsy gritted out, taking charge like the Unification War veteran she was. ‘If we die, we die with dignity, as PPC Agents. Hold the line, all of you. We’re not letting them get out of here alive.’
It wasn’t a pretty sight, at least not to the two newbies. Trying not to look at the eye-watering colours on the Tomb was a challenge in itself, seeing as the edifice took up a huge amount of space. What space was left was packed with Sues.
Sues who were about to attack them.
“Only fifty-odd?” Cassie tried to joke. “Guess you underestimated, Nat.” Her voice was shaking, although her hands seemed to be a lot steadier.
“Yeah. Wish I hadn’t.” Nat sounded just as unnerved.
“How many arrows have I got?”
“Eleven. Including the one you’re about to fire. Me?” Cassie leaned back to have a look.
“Eight.” Nat’s face took on an expression of near-panic.
“Shit.”
“We have swords.”
“Call me a coward, but I’d rather stay as far away from the action as possible.”
“Don’t blame you.”
They were interrupted by Gypsy. “Cassie, Nat, weapons out.” The girls nodded and nocked their arrows, moving into the line that Gypsy was forming. The red-haired Agent looked along the line and said, ‘If we die, we die with dignity, as PPC Agents. Hold the line, all of you. We’re not letting them get out of here alive.’
“That’s good to know,” Cassie muttered.
Trojie nudged her sharply. “Quit that and concentrate.”
Cassie frowned, but drew her bowstring back and aimed for a particularly colourful Sue, waiting for the signal.
“FIRE!”
Titus and Murtagh ducked into the Tomb, where an agent decked out in Western garb was giving a pep talk to a ragtag line of PPC Agents. Beyond them, a large number of Sues were getting into formation and loading their weapons. Murtagh reloaded and cocked his Magnums, and the two Agents joined the line.
Titus began singing quietly under his breath. “Hear me now, oh thou bleak and unbearable world, thou art base and debauched as can be...”
Murtagh smirked. “No Sue leaves this room alive, by the golden helmet of Mambrino.”
Titus continued singing as the Sues lined up, giggling in a disturbingly sinister way as they readied their weapons. “And a knight with his banners all bravely unfurled...”
There was a shout from a young-looking Sue in Star Trek uniform...
Titus shouldered his crossbow. “Now hurls down his gauntlet to thee!”
...and the Sues charged.
Titus pulled the trigger, taking out a Heroes!Sue readying a fireball. “I AM I, DON QUIXOTE, THE LORD OF LA MANCHA, MY DESTINY CALLS AND I GO!”
Murtagh began picking off Sues with his Magnums, and the rest of the line did the same with their weapons. “Good night, ladies.”
Titus, running out of crossbow bolts, stopped singing for a second, threw down his crossbow, pulled out his sword, and smiled menacingly.
Titus charged the Sues, singing at the top of his lungs. “ONWARD TO GLORY I GO!”
The two girls had managed to get lost on the way to the cafeteria after they had left the DMS Agent with the Slayer!Sue.
It wasn’t until they were in a part of HQ they didn’t recognize did they realize how far they likely were from the cafeteria.
That’s when they heard the psychic scream demanding backup in the Tomb.
“Yagh!” July shuddered and stopped in her tracks. “Didn’t like that.”
For once, it Library who grabbed her partner’s wrist and began to pull her along. “July, we’re needed. Let’s go!”
“But—”
“That was a call for help!”
“I’m not denying it’s a call for help, but I’ve gotta tie my laces!”
Library sighed, and let July tie her shoes.
July grinned once she finished. “Alright, let’s get now!”
The two ran with the intention of reaching the Tomb, and upon reaching it, they gaped.
“Urple! It’s urple!” July’s voice oozed with pure fury. “The bed sheet is one thing, I can stand that, even the occasional glitter and funny looking sky, too, but the TOMB DOES NOT GET PAINTED URPLE AND WILVER!”
“No, it doesn’t,” Library agreed.
“Urple!” July wailed. “I can’t believe this...” She swore, a strange mix consisting of words that normally weren’t swears and the rest the foulest ones in the English language.
“July, watch your mouth. Look, there’s Trojie, and I think that’s Murtagh and Titus over there—”
“God damnit, they’re dead! Urple!” Still swearing, July rushed in, swinging her sledgehammer as though it didn’t weigh even an eighth of its twenty pounds.
Library sighed as she reloaded her gun and followed.
Seeing Titus charge the Sues, and sensing that the others were about to break formation as well, Gypsy yelled ‘After him! Push it forward! Keep the line together! If you’re out of ammo go for close-combat weapons, but stick together, you sons of mothers!’
‘Daughters!’ roared Paddlebrains, taking human shape briefly to wrestle a chain-gun from a Sue before going dog again to tear her throat out.
‘And sons,’ said Titus in between song-lyrics, grabbing the chain-gun and leaping back into the line. ‘Everyone GET BACK!’ he roared, firing into the Sue masses.
Trojie belaboured Sues left, right and centre with her length of chain, knocking them back, dazing them, so that Absinthe, green fur bespattered with blood of all shades of red and glittery pink, could tear them to pieces. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Cassie and Nat tentatively reaching for their swords, their mini-Balrogs already launching themselves into the fray.
‘Think faster, you two!’ Trojie called, decking a Picard’s Daughter Sue who was sneaking up on them with a phaser. ‘She almost had you!’
Gypsy was in her element, whirling and lunging with her now out-of-ammo shotgun as a club.
Absolute madness.
That was the thought going through Cassie’s head as she fired her last arrow, narrowly missing one of the Agents. Beside her, Nat had also run out of arrows.
Cray’s mental shout for help had brought several Agents running, and now someone had called for close-combat weapons. As the girls reached for their swords, Greenlead and Giml charged past them and leaped onto a couple of Sues who were closing in.
Behind them, Trojie bashed a sci-fi-looking Sue and yelled at them to think faster. Taking her advice, Cassie and Nat drew their swords and began lashing out.
Stabbing one particularly persistent Sue, Cassie managed to wave to Nat, who was a few feet away. Physically pounding the enemy was strangely therapeutic, even if it was starting to make her muscles hurt a lot.
A strangely familiar whirring noise caught her attention. Looking around, she saw a TARDIS materialising nearby. She watched carefully, only to panic a moment later as she saw what was coming out of it.
“Once again,” she said, “exterminate only the Sues.”
“WE O-BEY.”
Nat, who was trying to free her sword from the body she’d just impaled, was deafened as Cassie shrieked into her ear, “OhmygodtheyhaveDalekswe’reallgonnadie!”
“What?” she yelled back, not having caught a word of that.
Cassie just pointed, looking absolutely terrified.
Nat heard the metallic voices before she caught sight of what had frightened her partner so much.
“EX-TER-MIN-ATE! EX-TER-MIN-ATE! EX-TER-MIN-ATE!”
“Oh, my freaking GOD!”
“Will the pair of you just shut up?” one of the older Agents roared. “If they were here to kill us, half the PPC would be dead by now.”
“They’re on our side?” Nat spluttered.
“Yes! Now get back to work!”
The PPC agents let out a ragged cheer as the Daleks started to mow down the Sues, only ....
‘Stop, my creations!’ A Sue in a weird wheelchair thing emerged from the gloom.
‘It can’t be,’ said Pads, wiping blood from her face and squinting. ‘I ...ing can’t believe it.’
‘What?’ asked Gypsy, staring as the Daleks turned and faced the new Sue, without firing.
‘It’s a bloody Davros-Sue.’
Around the now distracted Daleks, the Sues streamed towards the PPC.
‘Back in line, kiddies!’ roared Gypsy.
The PPC scrambled to regain their battle positions and close ranks again. More Agents were still pouring through the door; Agents July and Library scrambling to positions with the Bad Slash agents. Library began firing methodically into the attacking Sues, while July contented herself with whirling her sledgehammer around, and herself at the same time, due to the joys of centrifugal force – one of the few Laws of Physics that the Laws of Narrative Comedy had seconded, rather than replaced, in HQ.
Someone shouted to get back into line, and both girls felt firm hands pulling them along. Finally regaining her power of speech, Cassie shrugged off whoever it was and snapped, “I can walk, you know!”
“Whatever, just stay in line!” was the reply.
Snatching the chance to look around, Cassie noticed that just about every able-bodied PPCer had arrived by now. Waving her sword, she threw herself into battle once more. Some guy was singing nearby, and people were joining in. Nat yelled, “What the hell is he on?”
“No bloody idea!” Cassie shouted back.
This time though, despite their apparent defeat of the Daleks, the Sues had not the numbers nor the heart left to fight as they had.
Titus was singing ever louder now, and as the PPC agents ran out of ammunition and the Sues seemed to get weaker and weaker, they started joining in with him.
“Hear me, heathens and wizards
And serpents of sin!
All your dastardly doings are past,
For a holy endeavor is now to begin
And virtue shall triumph at last!”
Library, the only Agent to have ammo left, had unbeknownst to the other agents, taken a careful aim on one Sue in particular. The Davros-Sue went down in a blaze of pink glitter, and the Daleks suddenly regained their sense of purpose. Honesah directed them against the last few ranks of desperate Sues, and as the singing of the PPC reached a crescendo, they dropped their weapons and began to can-can; high on a combination of exhaustion, adrenaline and glitter, as Sue corpses dropped at their feet in a hailstorm of Dalek fire. Murtagh and Titus, slightly aghast, stood to one side, Titus mouthing “You can’t can-can to ‘Man of La Mancha’, it’s disrespectful!”, and Murtagh methodically finishing off the wounded Sues, but the power of the Narrative Laws of Comedy was driving most of the Agents present, including Lux (who’d been ambushing and molesting Sues, flushing them towards the armed Agents) who was acting as choreographer and director.
Nat saw her partner’s expression and helped her over to the nearest wall, then leaned back next to her. Another Agent was there as well, looking horrified at the scene which was unfolding.
For their part, the two young women had collapsed in helpless laughter at the sight of all the agents, who had just been battling for their lives, doing the can-can.
With a soft, organic noise, Pads straightened into human form, spitting glitter. Trojie, beside her, pulled a face.
‘That stuff cannot taste good.’
‘It doesn’t. Got a toothbrush on you?’
‘Nope,’ Trojie answered, giving her partner an incredulous look as, around them, the last Sues fell.
‘Bugger.’ Pads began rolling a cigarette and eyeing the carnage. ‘Funny thing, adrenaline,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ Trojie admitted.
‘Sort of gets your libido going...’ The Animagus agent gave Trojie a hopeful look.
‘If you think you’re getting a snog with a mouthful of glitter you can think again.’
“Sensible lady,” came a hoarse voice from behind. Agent Skyfire limped up, wiping her sword on one of the few clean spots of her uniform. Her mouth was completely dripping with glitter. She spat hard. “It tastes vile. Remind me next time; even if a Stu looks worryingly like your old true love, kill him before he gets his tongue in your mouth!”
Stormsong glided up beside her, bickering with Foxglove even while helping her walk. The girl in question was clasping her hand over one side of her face, from which blood was oozing – red blood, not glitter.
“No, no, a thousand times no! I cannot in good conscience allow thee to do that. Thou wilt get thine eye rebuilt and that is final!”
“Awww, but I really wanted a glass eye! I could take it out and hide it in people’s drinking glasses ...”
“And that is precisely why I will not allow thee to get one!” The weasel shook his head at Trojie and Pads. “Bah, adolescents.”
“Where’s Laburnum?”
“I’m here!” called the agent in question from across the room, where she was trying to dislodge her axe from a wolverine-Sue’s skull one-handed. Her left hand was dangling uselessly. “Second time I’ve had that damned arm broken ... and of course I had to go and ruin the bloody pelt,” she muttered.
The girls were laughing hysterically, partly from overwhelming relief that everything was over and partly because they were too tired to do anything else.
However, as Nat finally began to calm down, she started paying more attention to her surroundings. More Agents were arriving, most of whom were looking disappointed as they realised that the battle was over.
Cassie was now sitting, her legs having given way a few minutes ago, and Greenlead was settled next to her. The mini looked quite content, chewing on something Nat really didn’t want to know about. The sight jogged her memory; she didn’t recall seeing Giml after the fight had started.
“Stay here,” she said to Cassie, who nodded and let out a weak giggle. “I’m going to look for Giml. Are you gonna be ok on your own?”
Cassie nodded. “I’ll be fine. Just knackered.”
“I’ll be back as quick as I can,” Nat promised, before heading into the crowd.
Cassie took a few deep breaths and leaned back against the wall. She scanned the room, looking for the Agents who’d helped them out, and breathed a sigh of relief when she saw them, upright and apparently unharmed. She closed her eyes for a few moments, only to have someone tap her on the shoulder.
“You ok?” She looked up and saw a youngish man looking down at her.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” She recognised him as the one who’d led the charge.
“Here.” He offered his hand, presumably to help her up, but she just shook her head.
“I doubt I’ve got the energy to stay standing, to be honest.”
“Have it your way,” he shrugged.
At that moment, Nat emerged from the horde of agents, carrying Giml, who appeared to be unconscious. She sat down next to Cassie.
“Is he ok? What happened?” The mini stirred, opened his eyes and grinned at her.
“Apparently someone trod on his whip. He went berserk and ended up with a faceful of glitter. Then someone hit him.”
“How did anyone get close enough to hit him?”
“No idea.” Apparently recovering enough to sit up and talk, Giml waved at Greenlead and hissed, looking smug. Greenlead replied, and the two started an argument. This sent Cassie off into giggles again.
“What’s so funny?”
“You know they act a bit like the people they were mistakes of?”
“Yeah...”
“I think they’re arguing over how many Sues they killed.”
Nat took a moment to work this out, and then grinned. Cassie settled herself again and asked, “So what now?”
“I guess we wait until they’ve all calmed down, and then offer to help out with whatever needs doing,” was Nat’s reply, as she gestured at the Agents.
“Ok.” Both Assassins settled down to watch the scene.
