A Plague of Mary Sues

by Alexandra Spar

The Decepticon base is experiencing an infestation of Mary Sues via a random plot hole, or "warp gate." Luckily for the Decepticons, the plot hole also sucks in Alex the Lab Tech.

1. Entr'acte with champagne

Disclaimer: Transformers is the property of Hasbro; Alex is the property of Alex and the British Crown.           

            Alex woke up, and wished she hadn't. The world seemed to have become a great deal colder and harder during the time she'd been out, and as her eyes managed to slide into focus, she noticed that it had also grown noticeably larger.

            Rubbing her head, she sat up. She was on the floor of a room roughly the size of a college gymnasium, windowless, without decoration save for a panel roughly halfway up one wall—she judged it to be roughly twenty feet off the ground—which looked vaguely like an intercom station. Where the hell am I?

            Wherever she was, it was cold. Her thin lab coat didn't do much against the chill, but she rolled down the sleeves and pulled it tighter anyway. The last thing she could remember was sliding her ID card in the lock to the basement labs and finding herself faced by something out of a bad sci-fi movie: a cannon-looking thing about as long as a Metro car, festooned with blinking lights and cables and things that went ping. She remembered thinking This isn't right, there should just be the old equipment in storage and the vending machines down here, not a giant laser, I wonder if the facilities manager knows about this? before everything went first brilliant pink and then black.

            Alex looked down at herself. If she'd been hit by a blast from that thing, she should be reduced to her constituent molecules by now; the only thing that seemed out of the ordinary was...

            Oh dear.

            She peered down the front of her shirt, and hurriedly buttoned the lab coat. Those weren't there last time I looked. I would have noticed.

            That explained the odd heaviness on her chest. Her shirt, a boring article of clothing with a V-neck and elbow sleeves, was now strained to bursting point over a pair of double-Ds which were causing severe structural strain to her back. She looked further down, and was not entirely surprised to find that her skirt had become six inches shorter and her shoes had turned themselves into five-inch spike heels.

            She felt gingerly at her hair, which had been twisted into a knot at the back of her head, and pulled a few strands free; the normal dishwater-blonde had gone a brilliant blinding silver. I bet my eyes are a different colour too. Either startlingly bright green or gold.

            Getting to her feet, not wobbling at all on the ridiculous heels, she made her way over to the wall with the intercom panel on it. Either she had shrunk noticeably as well as becoming anatomically incorrect, or the individuals who had built this room stood roughly thirty feet tall.

            As if something was listening to her inner monologue, a panel in the wall slid aside, revealing a doorway occupied by two gigantic metal...things. Robots, she assumed. They were basically bipedal, if a little angular, and festooned with unpleasantly functional-looking weaponry. They looked down at Alex with an expression normally reserved for people who have just discovered an unexpected weevil in the flour tin.

            "What the slag are you?" one of them asked. The voice was a male tenor, rasping as if its owner's throat was sore, and slightly petulant. He took a step forward into the room, towering over her, his wings framing him symmetrically with a rather pleasing effect.

            "I'm Alex," said Alex, craning her neck to look up at him. "What the hell are you, and where are we, and why am I here?"

            "It's a female humanoid," said the other giant robot, who looked a lot like his companion except for his blue paintjob. "Must be another Mary Sue."

            "Oh, slag," said the first robot, pointing one of his arm-mounted guns at her. "Not again."

            "Hey!" Alex backed away from the gun barrel, which was as big around as her waist. "Don't shoot me, I didn't do it, whatever it was!"

            "That's funny," said Giant Robot # 2. "It sounds different from the others. Less...squeaky."

            "I don't care," said Giant Robot # 1. "It's a squishy, and I don't want it wandering around the base. Time to exterminate." He sighted down the barrel.      

            "What the hell is a Mary Sue?" demanded Alex, backing off some more. "Where am I?"

            "It doesn't know," said # 2. He bent down, plucked Alex off the floor between his thumb and forefinger. She yelped, but was bright enough not to struggle; the floor was now better than twenty feet straight down. His fingers weren't squeezing her at the moment, but she was extremely aware that he could turn her midsection into pulp without trying very hard. She was lifted up level with his face, which was white, angular and currently set in an expression of mild curiosity. He didn't have eyes so much as flat glowing red panels, but she could feel him watching her. "Maybe it's not like the others. It hasn't started doing that thing where it leaks from the eyes yet."

            "I'm not an it," said Alex without thinking, clinging to the robot's thumb. "I'm a she. My name is Alexandra."

            "Are you sure?" said Robot # 1, whose red non-eyes were narrowed a little. "Not 'Princess Darkjewel' or 'Starlanna Prime'?"

            "Er, no," said Alex. "Just Alex."

            "It's definitely different," said the one who was still holding her. She was now almost ninety percent convinced that this was a dream, and therefore went ahead and said, "Hey, giant robot? I said I'm a she, not an it, and I'd really appreciate you either putting me down or letting me sit on your shoulder, because this is not doing my liver any good at all."

            Giant Robot # 2 stared at her, and then, amazingly, chuckled. "It...she...has a death wish," he remarked, but nevertheless set her down on his shoulder, where she scrambled into the shelter of one of the weird air intake-thingies framing his face. Having something to hang on to gave her a sense of security, despite the fact that he could easily drop her if he shrugged.

            "What's your name?" she asked, throwing caution to the winds. "I can't just keep saying 'giant robot number two,' it sounds dumb."

            He peered at her, red eye-things somehow managing to look thoughtful. "I'm Thundercracker," he said. "This is Starscream. We're Decepticons."

            "Oh, wonderful," the other one complained. "Tell it all about us, why don't you? Come on, let me shoot it."

            "Not until we find out how she got here," said Thundercracker, the vibrations of his voice making Alex's teeth buzz. "If she's not like the other Mary Sues, then there might be something else at work here."

            "What's a Mary Sue?" she asked again.

            "You look like one," Thundercracker told her. "At least your physical construction is similar to the other ones. Your, ah, torso."

            "Oh," said Alex, having a nasty feeling that she was going pink. "Right. I'm not normally like this. I don't wear these shoes, for one thing, and I wouldn't be caught dead at work in a skirt this short."

            Robot Number 1—Starscream—stared at her, fingering his chin. "It certainly doesn't talk like the others," he mused. "I suppose you'd better take it to Megatron."

            Alex sighed. "What's a Megatron?"

            "You'll see," said Starscream, with a nasty smile. He turned and walked out of the room. After a moment Thundercracker, with Alex still clinging to his air-intake cowling, followed.

            It was an odd sensation. Despite their mass, the robots moved remarkably smoothly, and the impact of Thundercracker's feet hitting the floor didn't do much more than jar her slightly. She concentrated on staying where she was and not looking down as they passed through several corridors—all of them vast, shiny and cold—and eventually entered another huge room. This one could have fit a good-sized football stadium in it, if you took out all the giant shiny consoles and screens and things that probably went ping. Several more giant robots were sitting at the consoles and fiddling with things, but Thundercracker and Starscream (she couldn't help laughing silently at the names, despite the fact that at least one of them wanted to kill her) made straight for the central screen and the robot who was standing in front of it.

            This one had his back to them. He (she assumed it was a he, like the others) was done in tasteful shades of white and grey, and featured a cannon the size of the thing she'd found in the basement lab on one arm. He was also a little bit taller than either of the two she'd met so far, which added to the air of menace hanging about him.

            "That's a Megatron," said Starscream to her very quietly, before approaching the white robot with a large false grin. "Mighty leader," he said, his voice subtly more annoying, "we have captured another humanoid intruder."

            Megatron turned round slowly, and Alex found herself clinging to the edge of her air-intake cowling with white knuckles. He looks like the Sphinx, she thought. Narrow red eyes regarded her with undisguised malice, from a face that was all sharp angles and steep planes under its sculptured helmet. From this angle, the cannon-thing decorating his right arm looked roughly the size of a nuclear submarine.

            "Thundercracker," he said, icily. "What is the humanoid doing on your shoulder?"

            Her captor wisely said nothing, allowing Megatron to reach out with an enormous steel hand and pick her out of the cowling. Behind him, Starscream's grin turned into a real one, clearly expecting her to be summarily executed. Megatron tilted his hand palm-upwards, and opened his fingers. She staggered forward and sat down in a hurry, legs dangling beside his thumb. As Thundercracker had, he brought her closer, red eyes boring into her. It was beginning to become clear that, if this was a dream, it was an incredibly lucid one.

            "I say we kill it," said Starscream. Megatron's expression didn't change; he continued to look at her as if she were a mildly interesting cockroach.

            "Look," she said, hanging on to his thumb, "I don't want to be here. I don't know how I got here in the first place, and I don't know why I look like this—this is not my body—or why you all think I'm something called a Mary Sue. I just want to go home, all right?"

            "Where did you come from, human?" asked Megatron, still looking down his nose at her.

            "The basement of my building," she said crossly. "I had gone down to get a candy bar out of the vending machine on my coffee break, and the damn vending machines had disappeared and been replaced with some kind of giant lasery thing, and there was a big pink flash. That's it. Then I was here."

            Megatron frowned. "You didn't get sucked into a swirling vortex of terror?"

            "Not that I recall," she said. "And my name is Alex, by the way, not 'human.'"

            "Do not talk back to the Leader," snapped Starscream, emphasizing the first syllable of the title a little too much.

            "Shut up, Starscream." Megatron continued to stare at her, although the mild disgust in the stare seemed to have been replaced with curiosity. "No vortex of terror, no falling into a swoon of delirious fear, no being drawn through a portal by the need of a stranger?"

            "What the hell are you talking about?" she demanded.

            "You can't talk to us like that!"

            "Shut up, Starscream."

            Alex had the feeling that this exchange wasn't uncommon around these parts. Megatron looked over her head at Thundercracker, who hadn't moved since she'd been plucked off his shoulder. "She's not like the others," he said.

            Thundercracker inclined his head. "I know. And neither I nor Starscream seem to have been affected by her presence."

            "That much is obvious," said Megatron with distaste. "You're not reciting bad poetry or flopping about with attitudes of tragic lovestruck despair." He set Alex down on the edge of the console. "We'll keep her for the time being," he announced, "until we can analyze her to find out what kind of warp brought her here."

            "Are you sure that's wise, Megatron?"

            "Shut up, Starscream, and go prepare the scanners."

            Alex sat down, hugging her knees to her chest to try and conserve heat. The ridiculous breasts made this more difficult than it should have been. She watched the blue-white-and-red robot stalk away with an air of maltreated exasperation.

            "Scanners," she muttered. Visions of horrific alien abductions flickered through her mind. "What sort of scanners?"

            Nobody was listening. She hugged her knees closer and rested her chin on them, wondering if she'd ever see her nice, normal, boring lab again.

            In a few minutes Starscream came back into the room, still looking as if someone had taken the last cookie out of the cookie jar before he could steal it for himself, and picked her up off the console. "You watch what you say, human," he snarled, holding her between thumb and forefinger as if she was coated in something unpleasant. "I am not as merciful as Megatron."

            She was being squeezed hard enough to make any response impossible, merely nodding. He carried her at arm's length out of the control room, down another corridor, and into yet another giant echoing steel room. This one featured a lot more scary equipment, including (she was interested to note) giant glass beakers bubbling with glowing blue and pink liquids, and a gigantic microscope of some kind. Starscream dumped her unceremoniously on the stage of this last, and flicked a few switches.

            Alex curled up, gasping, trying to get some air back into her lungs. By the time she could breathe again, something was happening all around her; the stage of the alien microscope dealie had begun to glow an unpleasant shade of yellow. Starscream moved away from the console and began typing something into a computer terminal.

            Oh boy, she thought. Well, this isn't the stupidest way to die I've ever heard of, but it's got to be one of the weirdest.

            And then there was nothing at all left to think.

            "I really think you should just let me destroy it," Starscream said some time later, leaning against the console with his arms folded and facing his leader. Megatron, fingers steepled, was ignoring him, as usual. "I mean, it's a squishy. So what if it's not one of the Mary Sues?"

            "Shut up, Starscream," said Megatron automatically. "Hmm. Perhaps it would be educational for us to observe the Alex interacting with the real Mary Sues. Clearly the behavioural patterns are different, but we don't know how the Mary Sue species responds to non-Mary-Sue female humanoids. All the literature on them suggests they prey specifically on males."

            "Why are you so interested in the slagging Mary Sues? I could've taken care of them with a single clusterbomb!"

            "Starscream, have you ever, even once, thought before shooting something? If we destroy all our test subjects, we won't have any way of gathering information on them, and we won't be able to come up with a way to fight back." Megatron got up. "Go polish your wings, or something. You bore me."

            Seething, Starscream turned on his heel and strode away. The Decepticon leader smiled to himself, the sort of smile generally seen on great white sharks just before they burst out of the water and bite helicopters in half.

            When Alex woke up for the second time, her first thought was Oh, no, not this bloody dream again, but she became aware very quickly that things weren't quite as they had been. They were softer, for one thing. She sat up and looked around.

            "Oh my Christ," she said after a minute. She wasn't alone, but the things she was sharing this...cage, she realized after a moment...with weren't giant robots. For a moment she thought they were animated Barbies, but realized that even in the dim dead days of the 1980s Barbies tended not to have floor-length multicoloured hair. They were dressed in extremely impractical clothing which featured spike heels, large amounts of cleavage, and the sort of blast armor which left large areas of chest, midsection and thigh totally unprotected. One or two of them were wearing lab coats similar to her own, and in the corner the one with frothy pink hair was dressed in a diaphanous flowing thing which wouldn't have been out of place in Dracula.

            "What are you?" she breathed. As one, the impossibly lovely women turned to stare at her. Pair after pair of enormous, brilliant eyes gave her the once-over; after a moment, every single one of them started twirling a lock of hair around her index finger.

            "We are prisoners," said the closest one, whose skin was the colour of fresh cream and whose hair was a vivid unnatural red. Her eyes, predictably, were pools of emerald mystery. "I am Princess Aurelianis of the Vircanii."

            Cute voice, thought Alex, if you're an anime heroine. Her own voice was low and unmusical in comparison. "You're the Mary Sues," she said as realization dawned. "What did you do to them? They talk as if you're some kind of dangerous infestation."

            "Alas," said Princess Aurelianis, "I know not why they have cast us into durance vile. We were all drawn here by some mysterious force which tore us from our homelands and cast us into this strange world of steel and excitingly romantic danger."

            "Not a big laser thing which flashed pink?"

            "It was a swirling vortex of terror," said the Princess, sounding a little miffed. "Where are you from, sister? What is your homeworld?"

            "Earth," said Alex evenly. "My name is Alex, and I'm a lab technician."

            "You're not a healer?" asked one of the other lab-coated beauty queens. "We're all healers, as well as warriors, scholars, linguists and fighter pilots. Do you know kung fu?"

            "No, but if you hum a couple bars I'll pick it up," said Alex absently. "I can do you a mean real-time PCR cycle, though."

            "What is this Pee See Are?"

            "Polymerase chain reaction. Science," she added, with air quotes. Their faces brightened.

            "Ah, you are a scientist, of course! You must be able to use your genius-level scientific knowledge to heal as well as to defend!"

            Alex manufactured a grin. "Of course," she said. These bints are insane. "What did you think of the Decepticons?"

            There was a collective sigh. Mary Sue after Mary Sue clasped her hands at her considerable bosom. Alex stared.

            "Megatron's so handsome," one of them (black hair and blue eyes) said. Her neighbor (purple hair and eyes) glared.

            "Starscream's better-looking. And cleverer."

            "Megatron!"

            "Starscream!"

            "Thundercracker," said another woman (green hair and blue eyes). "I can't bear being apart from him. He completes me."

            "Er," said Alex, raising a finger. "He's a thirty-foot-tall alien robot. You're a—" she estimated—"five-foot-four humanoid female. Does anyone besides me see the problem here?"

            Thundercracker's admirer sighed again and pressed her hands to her heart, or where it presumably was underneath the mountains of breast. "Love will find a way," she said, dreamily.

            "Okay, that's it, I'm gonna puke."

            "Oh, are you ill?" asked one of the Mary Sues, concernedly. "We can help. Generally we only minister to gorgeous men who refuse to admit their vulnerability, but I suppose we can make an exception in your case. After all, there's nothing wrong with needing help, even if you are an independent woman who doesn't need to rely on other people."

            Alex stared at her. "Uh, no thanks," she said. "A momentary lapse. Look, what is it that you people do? On your respective planets, that is."

            She wished she hadn't asked. One after one, the women explained their roles as master healers, instructors in the martial arts, professors of science, ninth-level practitioners of magic, makeup artists, musicians, fashion designers, aerospace engineers, and bestselling authors. Alex wondered vaguely how anyone else on their planets ever got to do anything.

            "But," said Princess Aurelianis, sweetly, "what we love most is to help others. This is why we feel we were drawn here. They need our help."

            "To do what exactly?"

            "To find their inner peace," said another Mary Sue, pinning her brilliant pink curls into a careless knot. "They are tormented souls. They need love."

            "Love," repeated Alex.

            "And care. They run themselves ragged, you know. They deny they're in pain, but we feel it. We're all T1 empaths, by the way."

            "Good for you." Alex got up and stretched. "Er, do any of you have any more, um, concealing clothing? I'm freezing."

            "Concealing?" asked a green-haired kung fu expert. "What do you mean?"

            "As in, not showing quite so much pale goose-pimpled flesh."

            "Ah, you mean "seductively mysterious."

            "Whatever."

            There was a pause. Eventually a blonde Mary Sue at the back of the room came forward bashfully. "I'm only a seventh-level judo expert," she admitted, "and I'm still in final training at the Academy of Medical Arts, but my advisors say I'm doing extremely well."

            "Excellent," said Alex, hands on hips. The blonde proffered something small and black, which she took, and after some experimentation determined that it was a unitard of some kind. She pulled off her lab coat and stepped out of her skirt, causing every other Mary Sue in the vicinity to turn away, aghast. Unconcernedly she pulled off the shirt, which ripped itself directly down the middle as she tried to ease it over her monstrous knockers, and slipped into the blonde's garment. Naturally it stretched to accommodate her new curves, and—looking at herself in the reflective plastic wall of their prison—she had to admit she looked all right. The material was unreflective, managing to play down her more ridiculous assets, and it was much warmer than her shirt and skirt had been. She slipped the lab coat on over the unitard and shoved her hands into its familiar pockets, pleased to note that her pipetter head and her collection of pens had survived the journey into this world. Her hair was still ferociously tied and pinned into its knot. She had no intention of letting its silvery glory free.

            Astonishingly, the blonde also had a pair of ordinary boots to offer—ordinary in that they only had a three, not a six, inch heel. Alex gratefully slipped her feet into them and tossed her discarded stripper shoes aside. "Thank you," she said. "What's your name?
            "Er," said the blonde. "Linda."

            "Linda."

            "Yes, it's not very good, is it? I'm going to change it to Moonstrike Brightblade when I graduate, of course."

            "Of course," said Alex, sighing. Linda seemed as if she might conceivably have more than sixteen brain cells to her name, but she was already well on the road to ruin.

            Across the room, outside their enclosure, the door whished open. Alex recognized the white-and-grey eminence that was Megatron, and thought fast.

            As the giant robot approached, she struck a pose of what she considered urgent yet sexy importance. "Look, my sisters!" she cried. "Over there! A man who needs your help! No one else can save him!"

            As one, the Mary Sues flocked to the other corner of the cage, fighting with each other to get close to their imaginary patient. Alex was left standing on her own, hands on her hips, watching them with a mixture of horror and amusement.

            An enormous black hand on the end of a rectangular white forearm descended and picked her out of the cage. She found herself once more sitting on Megatron's palm, this time much more comfortably. "Hello," she said.

            "How did you do that?" he demanded. "Normally I have to shake them off my fingers!"

            "I'm extremely clever." Alex looked over his thumb at the Mary Sues, who were still fighting one another in their effort to get closer to the corner she had indicated. "Look, what on earth are you keeping them for? Why don't you just send them back to Happy Moron Land?"

            Megatron narrowed his glowing red eyes, but she refused to flinch. "I've tried," he rasped. "Besides, they're a danger to my Decepticons. I have to study them to find their weakness before I destroy them."

            "Their weakness is that they're idiots," she said.

            "In a way." Megatron turned, carrying her away from the cage. "However, they have an extremely strong effect on my warriors."

            "What...sort of effect?"

            "I expect you can guess,"said Megatron. She thought for a moment.

            "Oh dear. You don't mean that you giant robots....fall prey to their ideas? You become what they want you to be?"

            "Yes," said Megatron. "Last time a Mary Sue arrived we had Starscream malingering for weeks—coughing miserably and complaining that he was too weak and feverish to get up and fight—just so that the little female squishy would sit beside him and 'comfort' him."

            "You're robots. You can't get fevers. You don't breathe. Why would he be coughing?" She ignored the "squishy" comment.

            "Exactly!" Megatron gestured with his free hand, turning left along the corridor. "It's completely illogical!"

            "Besides, Starscream kept threatening to kill me," she pointed out.

            "Yes, because I put him on waste-disposal duty for a month after that episode," said Megatron. "I believe he learned his lesson."

            "Ah," said Alex. "Well...what are you going to do with them?"

            "I was hoping you could help with that," said the white robot. "In terms of finding out how to defeat them."

            "Common sense seems to work. Oh, and they don't like female nudity."

            Megatron paused for a moment, and she could almost see his thought processes before he decided to discard what he'd just heard. "We've found out how you got here," he said, a little brightly. "It was a similar warping to the ones that have brought the Mary Sues here."

            "It was a giant laser cannon," said Alex flatly. "They all said they fell into some sort of romantic horror vortex thing."

            "I know," said Megatron. "However, the ion signatures we retrieved from you and from the room where you apparently arrived are almost identical to those we found on the Mary Sues. You may not have come from the same place, but you got here through the same hole."

            "Oh," said Alex. "Any chance you can send me home?"

            "Not until you find a way to stop those wretched females affecting my warriors," said Megatron coldly. "If you don't agree to help us, I'll be happy to put you straight back in the cage with them."

            "Hey, hey," said Alex hurriedly. "Did I say anything about not wanting to help you? I'm your grade two lab technician."

            "Very well," said Megatron. "What do you require?"

            "I require a bloody thermal blanket," said Alex, "and maybe some food. And a jeroboam of Veuve Clicquot. And a carton of Camel Lights."

            Megatron set her down on a large metal table. They seemed to be in the lab she'd passed out in, the one with the massive microscope assembly. "As you wish," he said. "Human concessions will be sent for. In the meantime, why don't you get to work?"

            She was doing a complicated dance on the giant keyboard when one of the robots entered the lab, carrying something wrapped in white cloth. The computer program was extremely simple, dating back to BASIC, and she was able to put in a few very boring programs to run sums and calculate probability curves for her ideas, but it was jolly hard on the thighs. Each key was about a foot square, and even with the fragment of a glass stirring rod she'd found, it was difficult to type by doing Irish step-dancing. She reached the end of the line and hopped off the keyboard to look up at the robot. This was one she hadn't met before.

            "Human food as required," it...he...said in a toneless, overprocessed voice. She regarded him thoughtfully. He looked rather like a big navy-blue Walkman with legs, if you added a head and a dark-blue pepper mill on one shoulder.

            "Thanks," she said amiably, as he set his bundle down on the table and unwrapped it. It turned out to be a fully-set banquet table for about thirty people, complete with large roast turkey, multiple side dishes, and what remained of quite a nice dinner service. He fumbled by his side and produced a bottle of champagne which, while it looked like a toy in his enormous fingers, reached to Alex's waist. She looked up at him in admiration. "My God," she said. "Thank you."

            The giant robot nodded, then fumbled a bit more and produced a tan-and-white package scarcely the length of his last little finger knuckle. Alex seized it. "I didn't expect this," she said. "Tell Megatron I'm very grateful. And can I get some source of fire in here?"

            The robot inclined his head and stalked off again. Alex ripped the cellophane off the carton of Camels and extracted a pack. She stuffed it down her cleavage and walked over to the massive bottle of what turned out to be, rather than Veuve Clicquot, Krug. "Shit," she said, well aware that the bottle would have bought a laptop easily. "Maybe I won't leave after all."

            Some time later, Starscream came into the lab, still trailing a thundercloud. Alex was perched crosslegged on the table, eating stolen turkey in an industrious sort of way, cigarette sending a delicate line of pale blue smoke into the air. She looked up as he approached, and waved the cigarette at him amiably. He scowled.

            "You haven't registered any fluctuations in the energy signatures around here, have you?" he demanded.

            Alex swallowed. "Not as such, no. Your power consumption is something extraordinary, though. I mean, what sort of generator do you have to keep this place running?"

            "That is none of your concern, human," he retorted, scrolling through her makeshift computer programs. "Damn."

            "What?" Alex chained another cigarette and walked over to the keyboard. Starscream was scowling at the screen with such vitriol that she half expected to see two smoking holes appear on its surface. She found what he was looking at.  "Oh, hell, what does that mean?"

            "It means," said Starscream, "that something else has come through the same warp which brought you here." He straightened up and made to leave.

            "Hey, hang on," Alex called. "Take me with you. I might be able to get some information out of whoever it is."

            Starscream glared at her. She shrugged. "Look, if it's another Mary Sue, I know how to deal with them."

            "So do I," he said, running a finger down one of his arm-rifles. "Very well. But don't get in the way."

            "Wouldn't dream of it," she said, and clambered up his arm to sit in the shelter of his left air-scoop, cigarette clamped in the corner of her mouth. He stalked out of the lab, managing to convey disgust at her presence with every step. She sat back, comfortably, and blew smoke rings.

            The room where she'd found herself originally was not noticeably improved by the addition of a six-foot platinum blonde with tits which apparently defied the laws of gravity. She was wearing a black PVC outfit festooned with buttons and zippers and buckles, a matched pair of shiny silver blasters, and a pair of thigh-high heeled boots. Her large eyes were a peculiar shade of violet.

            Alex stared down at her. She felt Starscream shudder slightly, and peered out of the air-intake; his red eyes had gone dull, and he was shaking a bit. "Hey," she said. "Starscream."

            He staggered backwards and fell with a clang against the wall, almost dislodging Alex, who yelled and clung to the edge of the cowling. The woman-thing tilted her head and advanced on them, hands open in greeting. As Starscream slid down the wall to sit in a gigantic metal heap on the floor, Alex clambered down from his shoulder and hopped free.

            "Who're you?" she demanded, and chained another cigarette. The blonde looked down at her from her lofty heels.

            "I am Lady Darktalon," she said, in a voice like wet silk over smooth slate. "Is your companion ill?"

            "No," said Alex firmly. "How'd you get here?"

            Lady Darktalon thrust out a hip and shook her hair out of her face. "I was on a routine secret mission to destroy the evil force of the warlord Nentar, when all of a sudden I became aware of a force calling to me."

            "Let me guess," said Alex, ignoring Starscream moaning behind her. "You were drawn into a vortex of mysterious danger by the desperate need of someone beyond the world divide?"

            Lady Darktalon scowled at her. "Who are you, little woman?" she asked.

            "Alex," said Alex, and exhaled through her nose. "And no, I don't know kung fu, nor do I have advanced doctorates in several different fields, and I certainly don't have mystical telepathic powers, just so's you know."

            "What is your purpose, then?" asked the Mary Sue, looking over Alex's head at the limp form of Starscream. "I really think your companion is in need of aid."

            "No he isn't," said Alex automatically. Starscream groaned and began to cough weakly. "Oh, good grief, this is ridiculous," she added, stalking over to him. "Stop that."

            Starscream's eyes flickered a little. "So...weak..." he muttered. "Can't....see..."

            "Can't do a very good Shatner impression, either," said Alex. "Get up and secure the intruder."

            He just groaned. Lady Darktalon pushed past Alex and knelt down beside Starscream's face, which was now at ground level. "Relax," she said gently. "I will help you."

            The Decepticon coughed some more. Alex thought absently that he must be channeling Chopin. "Who...?" he managed. Lady Darktalon put a slender hand on his shoulder.

            "You mustn't talk," she said. "I shall summon my magical healing powers to help you."

            "Don't...leave me..." Starscream groaned.

            "I'm here," the Mary Sue comforted him.

            "You're...so beautiful...."

            Alex fought down an urge to retch. What I need now is a folding chair, she thought, and stepped back a bit from the touching tableau. She nearly fell over something.

            That's funny.

            Er...what I need now is a pair of really cool sunglasses.

            The room went suddenly darker. She felt a lightweight frame settle on the bridge of her nose. Life suddenly had become a great deal more interesting.

            "I will ease your pain," the Mary Sue announced, and rose to her feet, placing her fingertips to her temples. "Ast tasarak sinuralan krynawi....ast kiranann kair..."

            WHANNGGGGGG.

            Alex put down the folding chair as Lady Darktalon crumpled to the floor. The faint strains of music that had been filling the air cut off suddenly.

            Starscream sat up, rubbing his head. "What the slag happened?" he demanded, his voice back to its normal rasping petulance. "Who's that?"

            "Lady Darktalon," said Alex, nudging the fallen Mary Sue with her boot. "She was just about to heal you of your sudden attack of pneumonia."

            "My what?" Starscream demanded, sounding revolted. Alex chuckled.

            "You don't remember? You collapsed and started to cough and talk...like...this."

            Starscream covered his face with his hands. "Not again," he said, sounding pained. She sighed.

            "Never mind, it's over now. I expect you'll want to put Lady Darktalon with her colleagues."

            Starscream looked down at her. "You stopped it."

            "I hit her over the head with a folding chair, yes."

            He narrowed his eyes. "Thank you," he said.

            "Hell, you could have stepped on her, if you hadn't been under her thrall. Come on, I want to get back to my dinner." She climbed up one of his arm-rifles and took up her position on his shoulder. "Hurry, before she comes to."

            Starscream picked up the limp form of the Mary Sue and examined her. "I don't think she's going to wake up that quickly," he said. "Where did you get the chair?"

            "I don't know," she admitted. "I just thought, hey, I need a folding chair, and there it was. Same with the shades."

            He dropped Lady Darktalon and plucked her off his shoulder. "You're one of them!" he hissed, staring at her in horror. "You're able to magically make things appear!"

            "Put me down," she said, wriggling. "Are you strangely attracted to me?"

            "No!"

            "Are you suddenly filled with the desire to have me take care of you?"

            "No!"

            "Are you smitten with my beauty and capability and power?"

            "No!"

            "Then I'm not one of them," she said. "Do you mind? My internal organs are very crushable."

            Starscream continued to stare at her for a moment before letting her scramble back up his arm. "You're sure?"

            "I'm sure," she said, settling back into his air intake and lighting another cigarette. He picked up the Mary Sue and got to his feet, wordlessly, and deposited her in the cage with the others before returning Alex to the lab.  She clambered back to the table and returned to the turkey carcass. "This is good. Where'd you lot steal it from?"

            Starscream ignored her, standing there with his arms folded and staring into space. She poured herself another glass of Krug and sat down, crosslegged, regarding the giant robot. I could kind of get to like it here, she thought, if they keep providing this kind of rations. And if I could get some human-sized furnishings. Like maybe a bed.

            "You're immune to them," said Starscream suddenly.

            "Mmff?" She swallowed.

            "To the Mary Sues. They don't affect you."

            "I'm a human female. The only interactions they'd have with me would be designed to show off how clever and multitalented they are compared to me."

            Starscream sat down, which was helpful, since now his face was only fifteen or so feet above her. "I don't understand you." 

            "Nobody does. I'm like the wind, baby," she said, and sipped champagne.

            "Huh?"

            "Nothing. Earth TV." Alex licked her fingers. "Is there something I can help you with?"

            "What?" he asked, distractedly.

            "You're just sitting there and staring at me, and I know you're not doing it out of interest. You don't even like me. So, what are you going to ask, so that I can answer it and you can go away."

            Starscream frowned down at her. "How do we get rid of the Mary Sues?" he asked.

            "I expect you can shoot them, or step on them, or dip them in acid, or remove their arms and legs and watch them bleed to death," she said, taking another bite. "You were the one who wanted to shoot me, remember?"

            Starscream ignored this. "But they're going to keep showing up," he said. "Whatever warp gate keeps dropping them off in our storage room is still open."

            "Well," she said, "in that case, why don't you just seal off the storage room?"

            "What, and have it explode in a few months when the pressure is too great for the walls to withstand it?" he retorted. She had a sudden mental image of a compressed wad of Mary Sues exploding out of the storage room, and suppressed a giggle.

            "Okay, okay, bad idea. You could put a big vat of acid in the room and just leave them to it."

            "Not bad," he admitted. "Although perhaps a video tracking system connected to an autogun would be more efficient."

            "Hell, just put a bear trap on the floor. If they all come through in the exact same place, it should be easy enough just to put some sort of extermination device there and forget about it."

            Starscream tapped his fingers on the edge of the bench, causing a plate to fall off the purloined table and shatter. "Where do they all come from?" he wondered.

            "Beats me. Really awful stories, perhaps."

            "That's it!" He thumped the countertop. Alex had to leap over to rescue the champagne bottle. "They're creatures of the imagination! Only somehow they've been given physical forms."

            "If you say so," Alex yawned. "What's the plan?"

            Starscream sighed. "I'm sure Megatron already has one," he said. "And, as usual, it's going to be up to me to point out the flaws in his logic." He got up, looking slightly puzzled, and put his hand to his throat.

            "What is it?"

            "Nothing," he said after a moment, and left the room.

            Alex reflected that, for a giant robot, he was remarkably moody. She yanked the tablecloth from under the remains of the place settings (after some inspection, it turned out that the table and its burdens had been taken from the Plaza Hotel), rolled herself up in it like a blanket, and curled up beside the keyboard. It had been a very long day.