A/N: I've had this plot bunny for a while as a Mary Sue parody and I just had to actually write it. Reviewing would be lovely, m'dears. This is the prologue, so keep in mind that future chapters will be longer. Warning for language and some raunchiness.
Disclaimer: Who doesn't own anything affiliated with Tolkien? That would be this humble, teenage Suethor. So don't Sue me.
Prologue: Dumb and Dumber
Everyone has bad days.
Those days can start off inconspicuously and veer off into the realm of "humiliating" and "just no good whatsoever", i.e. realizing you had spinach (or a similarly gross food) stuck in your teeth since breakfast and no one thought to tell you, you run into your ex with a new girlfriend who doesn't have spinach stuck in her teeth, and to top it all off, you walk around for half the day without knowing your fly is down. Or maybe you just woke up feeling like you were dragged through hell and back by your hair during the night and just stumble around in a miserable daze, maybe stopping to cry a bit in the bathroom for good measure.
And there are terrible days, which are hopefully few and far between. Breaking bones, someone dying, losing your job, getting dumped…those are the terrible days.
And then there are the days that are so utterly awful they veer into an indescribable and surreal territory where you're kind of okay with how things are going because you can't actually believe what's happening.
Catherine Ellis, who frequently had bad days and infrequently had terrible ones, experienced twenty-four hours of the latter that were so awful, they ended up setting the scene for the rest of her life. But that comes later.
She had not in fact, done anything abnormal that night before going to sleep. There was no tearful, violent confrontation with her abusive stepfather, no tragic suicide attempt, no mooning over how much she wished she lived in a medieval time frame without conveniences like plumbing, toothbrushes, and the internet just so she could drool over Orlando Bloom in leggings (and everything the leggings showed off) and a tunic. Catherine was rather happy with her lot. She spent the night curled up in bed watching Netflix before dosing off and slept like a log. Her hair was still in a sweaty ponytail from working out, she was wearing one of the embarrassing childhood t-shirts she hadn't brought herself to throw away (complete with cartoon character and ambiguous stain) because she had forgotten to do the laundry, and she was enjoying her Friday tradition of buying junk food she avoided the rest of the week and shoveling it into her mouth with alarming speed.
So Catherine was understandably surprised when she woke up on something cold, wet, and unpleasant, and opened her eyes to reveal more cold, wet, unpleasantness, i.e. trees and humidity. Catherine sat up, trying to make sense of her surroundings. She was certain she was seeing more trees than she had ever seen in her life, which made no sense, because Catherine did not live anywhere near trees. She could be in a park, but parks were usually better tended to than the thick tangle of roots and mosses she was sitting on.
Catherine kept looking around, and was just wondering if whoever had dragged her out to this remote forest-like location was about to jump out from behind one of those godforsaken trees and kill her, when she saw the Sues. The scream that escaped her was a thousand times louder than it would have been had she been spotted by a serial killer.
"Oh good, she's, like, awake. And she's twenty-percent less pretty, smart, and charismatic, and thirty percent less good at singing and fighting, just like you wanted, Evelyn," said Sue Number One with a vapid smile. She approached Catherine the way one would approach an interesting zoo animal that might bite, one hand extended.
"Hello," she said, "I'm Cerena Chandelier Chlamydia the first, fairest of all French princesses. My stepmother abused me terribly for my great beauty, you know, but I think I'm, like, so ugly. I mean, my eyes are pink and glow with the light of a thousand magenta fireflies, except for when they're purple when the sun shines on them at a fourty-five degree angle or I stand on one leg or when mercury is in retrograde. And my opalescent hair is just the worse, especially how it cascades down my back like a waterfall of a thousand white butterflies and—"
"Thank you, I get the point," said Catherine, biting out a smile that felt like a grimace. She considered pointing out that France wasn't actually a monarchy, but Chlamydia's—ahem, Cerena's—opalescent hair, which was weirdly pale and shimmered with an array of Barbie-esque colors reminiscent of twelve-year-old Catherine's first eye shadow palate, was giving her a head ache. As was looking at Cerena Chlamydia's body, which defied gravity so much it was scary rather than sexy. If Catherine's breasts had been that large and her waist was that tiny, she would be crawling around on all fours.
"And what's your name?" she asked Sue Number Two, who was glaring at her distrustfully. Her sapphire blue eyes were shining with the light of, like, the prettiest ocean ever, of course. Catherine was sure if she looked hard enough, she'd probably see unicorns swimming inside her irises. "Syphilis? Gonorrhea? Blue Waffle?"
"Very funny," said the Sue with a scowl. Catherine guessed she was the alpha, the greater evil of the two. Her blue-black hair, which she probably thought looked like a thousand raven wings or a swarm of beautiful black wasps or something equally ridiculous, looked a little like oil to Catherine. Maybe a nice, thick black mud.
"My name," said Black Mud grandly, spreading her impossibly twig-like arms, "is Evelyn Delilah Rose. And you don't need to know anymore for now."
"You should probably look at your reflection," piped up Cerena Chlamydia helpfully, puffing her unnatural chest out and batting her eyelashes at an invisible love interest. Catherine's nose wrinkled. "So you can think of a really good description of your, like, legendary beauty before we get to that elf city. River-dale."
"Elf city," repeated Catherine suspiciously. A horrible idea was starting to come to her, one that made a lot of sense and yet no sense whatsoever. She pushed it out of her mind, stumbling over to the convenient pond good ol' Cerena Chlamydia had pointed out.
If Catherine had liked kissing her own ass in the same manner as her companions, her description of her reflection would have probably gone something like this: Her hair shone with the lowest lights of fire, glowing like the prettiest embers in, like, that Doom Mountain, and the sun didn't reflect off it so much as it seemed to burn within it. Her eyes, a perfect mossy green, called to mind the forests of Murkywood (you know, the one where Leggy-poo lives), and her body was curvaceous, slender, and supple, with a Kardashian ass, Marilyn tits, a Bardot waist, supermodel legs, and undoubtably a porn star vagi—
"Will you fucking stop it?" Catherine snarled at Cerena Chlamydia, who stopped her narration of Catherine's looks abruptly and blinked, eyes shifting from magenta to lilac in her confusion.
"Now you'd better listen up, Mary Sues," Catherine growled, balling her hands into fists and advancing with murder on her face. "If you don't change me back to the way I was this fucking instant, I swear to God I will rip your throats out with my teeth. Don't think I can't do it," she snarled when Evelyn sniggered. "I doubt anyone will hear you scream in the middle of this stupid forest."
Evelyn seemed to realize that Catherine meant business, and even though her fighting skills were better than those of an army of ninja wizards, Mary Sues aren't the brightest bulbs in the socket and Catherine's bared teeth were rather threatening in any case.
"You can't turn back," she said instead, frowning, "Though why you wouldn't want to be, like, the most beautiful creature in Middle-earth besides us beats me."
"What did you say?" Catherine whispered dangerously, still advancing.
"You can't turn—"
"What did you say about Middle-earth?" Catherine's suspicion had grown into ninety-nine percent certainty. If she got that last one percent from Evelyn, she was going to spill some sparkly Sue blood all over the nice dank forest floor.
"We're in it, silly!" giggled Cerena Chlamydia, shutting up when Evelyn glared at her. Catherine didn't explode immediately. She reached out one perfectly manicured hand (Catherine didn't even remember to trim her nails most of the time, but in a day of such wretched unnaturalness, she had greater concerns) and reached for Evelyn's throat, bringing ol' Mud Hair's face as close to hers as she could.
"Are you meaning to tell me," she said slowly, voice soft with danger, "that you dragged me away from everything I love and into another world without indoor plumbing, electricity, or modern conveniences of any kind and riddled with incredibly dangerous creatures and circumstances, to be a Supporting Sue on whatever sick little adventure you two have planned?"
"Yeah!" Cerena Chlamydia chirped, beaming at her. Evelyn wrenched herself free with a snarl.
"God Cerena, shut up!" She turned back to Catherine with dangerous eyes. "Yes. And you'd better cooperate too, unless you want to be stranded here forever."
"Let me guess," said Catherine, raising an eyebrow and ignoring the threat, "we just conveniently happened to land here in time to make it to Rivendell for the formation of the Fellowship of the Ring, so you can get your nasty little hands into Legolas' pants, now didn't we?"
"Um, obviously," said Evelyn, rolling her unnaturally large eyes. "Well, at least I think. That's how it happens, doesn't it? And any second now some hot, hot elf will come riding along and take us to Rivendell, and then we can become a part of the Fellowship and, like, have silly antics with the hobbits and fall in love with Leggy Weggy and live, like, happily ever after."
Catherine blinked at her.
"So, just to be clear, you have no idea what year or day it is, you have no idea where we are, and you don't know how to get to Rivendell."
Evelyn just stared moodily at the ground, arms crossed.
"You have any better ideas?"
Catherine ignored her.
"Well, what the fuck do you need me for? You already have Miss Opalescent Venereal Disease!"
"Yeah!" chorused Cerena Chlamydia. "Wait, what?"
"Stop, darling, before you hurt yourself," said Catherine, rolling her eyes. "Look, you don't need me. You are…" Spitting out the next part without gagging was brutal, "beautiful and talented. Why do you want me here? Just send me home so I can enjoy my weekend."
"Duh. We need you to be less beautiful than us," said Evelyn like it was the most obvious thing in the world, "That's why you're a Supporting Sue. You'll make me look even hotter, kinder, and wiser when we're finally rescued by hot, hot elves and they'll be more likely to fall in love with me." When she talked, she got a scary gleam in her eyes and rubbed her hands together, almost drooling as she thought of said "hot, hot elves". Catherine thought she looked a lot like Gollum thinking about claiming the Ring from poor Frodo.
"That's your plan?" Catherine asked, unable to believe that the two great nimrods before her were actually for real. Both Sues nodded vigorously. "Right, okay then. Farewell, fair maidens," she said, sarcasm dripping from every word. "Hope I don't see you around."
Catherine promptly tried to traipse off into the woods and leave Dumb and Dumber behind her, but Evelyn called after her.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," she said, smirking maliciously. "You wouldn't want something like an orc to find you in such a vulnerable state, now would you? You might give them the wrong impression."
"What the fuck are you on about—oh," Catherine finished looking down at herself in dismay. She was completely, five hundred percent, buck ass naked. How this fact had escaped her until that point was beyond Catherine, but that was hardly the weirdest thing about her day. To add to her pain, her naked body was utterly, well, gross. Her proportions were now so unnatural it was a marvel she was even able to walk. Her chest alone—which now looked like it had been inflated by a bicycle pump—should have toppled her.
Which sucked, really, because Catherine was actually at peace with her old body. She was tall, slim enough and admittedly smaller chested, but she liked that about herself. It made it easier to run without putting one of her eyes out. And if she was going to survive her encounter with the insipid ditzes she was stuck with, running would probably be necessary.
"Where are my clothes?" she asked, turning angrily to face the Sues again. Cerena Chlamydia giggled.
"We cut them off and threw them into the pond while you were, like, asleep. I mean, you wouldn't want a hot, hot elf to see you in that shirt, now would you?"
"Really, sweetie, you actually owe us for saving you from such a fate," said Evelyn with a saccharine smile. "You can repay us by accompanying us to Rivendell and making us look even more beautiful by comparison. Honestly, you're so lucky you have us to guide you."
Maybe it was Catherine's imagination, but Mud Hair was starting to remind her more and more of Regina George. She half expected poor Cerena Chlamydia to announce that her unnatural breasts had, like, ESPN or something.
"Why should I go with you?" she asked, trying to keep her voice reasonable. "You don't even know where Rivendell is."
"Of course we do, silly," said Cerena Chlamydia. "One of my abilities is like, navi…naviga…GPS," she finished lamely. "In addition to cooking, singing, drawing, dancing, fighting—"
"Are you serious?" Catherine asked, perking up. "You really know how to get out of here?"
"Obviously," said Evelyn with another eye roll. "I mean, the plan was to wander around and hopefully become more and more distressed until hot, hot elves showed up to rescue us and fall immediately under the spell of our beautiful, distressed…beauty. But it's clear you aren't going to cooperate with that perfectly sound plan."
"Damn straight I won't," said Catherine gruffly. She was considering her choices silently, wishing more than anything she had another option—any other option—than travelling with the two Sues. Honestly, if an orc did come along, she'd probably be happy to let it kill her. But Catherine didn't want to spend days trying to make it to civilization on her own, and on that front, the Sues were honestly her best chance. She had no choice but to deal with them.
"I can't exactly show up at Rivendell naked," she ventured, sighing in exasperation when Dumb and Dumber snickered.
"You can have my cloak, I suppose," said Evelyn with a long suffering sigh of her own, unfastening her cloak, which thankfully was just white and not pink or glittery in any way, unlike Cerena Chlamydia's. "I'm sure the elves will shower me in beautiful gowns when we arrive in Rivendell, to commemorate my beauteous…beauty."
"Sure, honey," said Catherine, with a stiff and painful nod. "That will definitely happen," she added under her breath. "Alright, Chlamydia. Lead on."
"Wait…" said Cerena Chlamydia, mouth hanging open. "We don't know your name."
"I'm Catherine," Catherine said, ignoring Cerena's immediate shocked gasp.
"But that's, like, so ordinary," she said, gazing at Catherine with tears brimming in her sparkly pink eyes. "That's so, so tragic. I'm sorry!"
"Please don't touch me. Or breathe on me," Catherine said, stepping deftly out of Cerena Chlamydia's groping arms. "And it's better than being named after an STD," she added under her breath for good measure.
"I know!" squealed Cerena Chlamydia, shocking a flock of birds into the sky and making Catherine feel her ears, expecting to find blood. "We'll just call you Kitty! That's like, so cute. And when you meet your hot, hot future husband, he can call you Kitten. Awe, that's so sweet."
"He'll call me Kitten if he has a death wish," said Catherine, recoiling in horror. "I suggest you do the same. Now, can we please get the hell out of here."
"Okay, Kitty," chirped Cerena Chlamydia, looking at Catherine like she was a beloved pet. Evelyn sniggered. "Let's go to River-dale! This is going to be the, like, awesomest road trip ever!" Catherine could actually hear the multiple exclamation points in Cerena's voice. What was it with Sues and excessive punctuation?
As they walked (the Sues with exaggeratedly swaying hips, Catherine dragging her feet like she was marching to her doom), Catherine wondered what exactly their reception at Rivendell would be. If elves started falling all over her lovely companions and Sue-induced orgies began breaking out in the halls, she would throw herself off a bridge.
Then again, there was always the chance that the border watch would shoot them on sight.
One could always hope.
A/N: Questions, comments, concerns? Please leave a review, and make this lil ol' author the happiest girl in the world. Thanks for reading, lovelies!