The Sue was one of those types.
The type where it is clear beyond all possible doubt that the Suethor is trying hard to make the most evil, and of course thereby stereotypically Goth (because everyone knows that's True Evil), character she can make. Rather than having the intended affect of frightening, dark allure, however, the reader is left with a foul taste in the back of the mouth and a burning desire to stab out their own eyes- or perhaps someone else's, if enough brain cells are left to remember that self-harm is not a good idea.
Despite being a wolverine, she was slender and with the standard Barbie-doll-style chest/waist/hip measurements, with her taste in clothing tending towards a lot of black lace and chains and spiky things.
Her fur was as black as the darkest night or the wings of a raven, mirroring the color of her dark soul, with no lighter mask or stripe as had normal wolverines. Her eyes were a wonder in themselves, as one was blood-red, like the blood of her unwitting victims (because of course, she's a vampire), and the other a deep purple, both with silver flecks shimmering like tiny stars in their unique, evilly glowing depths.
When she wished, she could sprout bat wings at will and fly through the night in pursuit of her next meal. But tonight, Akasha Twilight Bloodsoul was hunting to satisfy a different desire... for she knew, at last, where her true love awaited her.
The true love in question was unaware of his wonderful destiny at the current time, and actually was just in dire need of a nap. It hadn't been a very good day; first the hostages had escaped, then several members of his horde had somehow managed to drop various heavy objects on his footpaws. Their corpses were now lying, in pieces, around the camp, but it hadn't made him feel much better.
Gulo the Savage stumbled into his tent, mumbling dourly under his breath and hoping that a little rest and solitude would make the world seem brighter. Or perhaps killing and eating something might do the trick. But first, a nap. He yawned widely, revealing a fearsome, stained, and very very sharp set of teeth, and happened to glance up...
. . . and there she was, a slender, breathtakingly beautiful she-wolverine, with unnaturally long fangs and lustrous ebony fur. She was also right on top of his bed, lying in a very... interesting... position (black lace can be surprisingly bad at modesty) and grinning at him in a way that he really didn't like. At all. It was rather predatory, and not in the sort of way that he usually smiled at things.
She purred, baring her vampire teeth in a smile that was now blatantly seductive.
Gulo turned rather green, swayed on his footpaws, and ran screaming out into the night.
Captain Shard of the mighty White Horde, dozing by his campfire, was rudely awakened when his leader seized him by the shoulders and shook him hard enough to dislocate every bone in his body. "Help me, help!" Gulo was howling frantically, and was that... panic in his voice?
"Wh... what's going on, my lord?" the fox managed to stammer out, when the wolverine released him and he managed to get his spinning senses under control.
Gulo crouched on the ground next to his captain, curling up as small as his massive frame would allow. "I... I think it be one of those Mah-Reh Soo things. Shard, thou hast no idea... it's hideous... and it... it.. she... wanted..." He whimpered.
Shard sighed, and rose, risking his paw in that he dared to pat his leader comfortingly on the shoulder. Surprisingly, though, Gulo did nothing, and indeed he gave a soft, shaky sigh as the white fox kept patting. Unlike Gulo or the other vermin, Shard, like very few other canonicals before him, was aware of the alternate dimensions, and of the way the denizens of one particular universe could alter this one, for good or, more usually, for ill.
"I'll call the Sue-slayers, Lord," the fox announced, and strode off into the shadows. He never liked showing the other soldiers his cell phone. They wouldn't understand, and plus they'd probably use up all his free minutes.
The mission was categorized as 'extremely urgent,' although Shard's exact words to the receptionist were, "Thou shalt save my master Gulo from this foul menace, freakish otherworld beings, or we shall drag you from your home, devour your living flesh, and roast thy mates and children over a slow fire and consume them too. Make haste!"
There was some, to put it mildly, mad dashing about after that message came through, simply because the receptionist was a newcomer and had been particularly terrified by the book Rakkety Tam, but after a few slaps from the senior creatures at the Sue-slayer base, the timid mouse calmed down and explained just what Shard had wanted.
"Hm," mused the senior Sue-slayers. "A Mary-Sue chasing after Gulo the Savage? That can only mean one thing. . . ."
"That the Sue is a wolverine herself?" the twitchy receptionist asked.
"Oh, yes, that too. But no, that means that not only will our Sue-slayers be fighting off a Sue, but also a whole army of cannibalistic vermin that will tear them limb from limb and devour them, bones and all, as well as fighting off Gulo the Savage himself, who has a reputation of doing the most horrible things to his victims."
The receptionist blinked. "Oh."
The senior Sue-slayers then began to ponder which one of their recruits seemed best suited for the job . . . they would need to be very experienced, that's for sure . . . they would need to have their own personal weapons that would be perfect for warding off such creatures . . . and they would need to be crazy enough to accept such an obviously suicidal mission . . . and possibly such an annoyance around headquarters that, if they did fail in their mission, no one would particularly miss them...
The choice was obvious, in short...
"Wait," said Arawolf Beechclaw as she tramped through Mossflower Wood, her partner, the lanky ferret Kelaiah, keeping pace alongside. "So who is this Sue's victim?"
"Oh, uh," was all Kelaiah said as he tried to hide the file in his own knapsack. "I never said."
"Kel," Arawolf growled, narrowing her eyes suspiciously. "I don't like that tone in your voice. Who are we rescuing from Sues? TELL ME!" The last two words were a snarl; the marten's famously short temper was nearing its end.
"Uhhh . . . it's . . . nobody," the nervous ferret replied, still keeping a protective paw over his knapsack and backing off a few paces.
"NOBODY?!" screeched Ara, leaping forward to close the distance between them; he saw with further worry that one paw was clenching the hilt of her scimitar. "Kel, how can we save nobody from a bunch of Sues?!"
"Now, Ara," Kel said, suddenly serious and reproving. "I didn't say we were fighting a whole bunch of Sues. I said just one."
The pine marten opened her mouth to speak again, but then closed it, a look of realization on her face. "Hold on," she said slowly. "You never gave me any specifics about this mission. You just waltzed into into the room, tossed me a bar of my favourite chocolate and said, 'New mission. Let's go'. You tricked me!"
"'Tricked' you?!" retorted Kelaiah, feeling a bit insulted.
"You distracted me with chocolate! Dark chocolate! The kind with nuts and bits of fruit in it, which you know I adore! That's evilllllll," the marten hissed, narrowing her eyes and pointing a sharp claw at the ferret. "Using chocolate as a distraction. Just eeeeeevillllllllll. . . .yes, evil... the ferret tricked us, didn't he, precioussss... we doessn't like tricksy ferretses, no..."
Kel rolled his eyes, frustrated, and now more than slightly disturbed. "Oh, for cryin' out loud, Ara! You never would have taken this mission if I had told you what we were doing-"
"AHA!" shouted the marten triumphantly. "You admit it! You really did trick me! Now you have to tell me who it is we are rescuing from this menace of a Sue or out comes the Flying Guillotine-!"
Just then, at that moment, a deep, guttural voice sounded from behind them.
"Good day."
Both ferret and marten spun around to find themselves face-to-face with Gulo the Savage himself.
Ara's eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets with horror. "Meep," was all the marten could utter.
"Now what are two lovely likkle critters like yerself doin' out here at this time o' th' night?" the huge wolverine purred.
"Hey," Kel said slowly, narrowing his eyes suspiciously. "That isn't how you talked in the books."
Gulo blinked. "Oh. Right. Ahem. I was, er, practicing for a play. Heh."
"Riiiiiiight," Kel replied. He glanced at Ara, and his worst fears were confirmed: his usually fearless partner was utterly terrified.
"Anyway," the big wolverine went on. "It hasn't been very good these past few days, the hostages needed for my WRFNF club have escaped and-"
"Wait, your what?" Kel interrupted, not sure if he heard right.
"'Woodlanders Are Friends Not Food Club'," the wolverine explained pleasantly. Then, as though on sudden impulse, he added brightly, "Hey! We're supposed to bring non-white-furred friends with us to the next meeting! That's why we had the hostages, to be our friends! But since they escaped, why don't you be our friends?"
Ara blinked, swallowed audibly several times, and voiced once again a tiny, feeble, "Eep." The fur was bristling all along the nape of her neck, and her normally pricked ears were flattened against the sides of her head, giving her the overall appearance of an animal caught in a trap.
"Um," said Kel, deciding to handle the polite aspect of the conversation as his partner seemed entirely comatose. "I don't think-"
"Oh come on! It'll be fun!" And with that, Gulo seized them both and propelled them towards the meeting place.
"Hello, everybeast," said Gulo as he stood up in front of his horde, all of whom were seated around a campfire. "My name is Gulo."
"Hi, Gulo!" the white-furred vermin replied in unison.
"Now," the wolverine went on. "I have not eaten another creature in two weeks."
The white vermin cheered. "You're an inspiration, Chief!" they yelled, clapping their snow-colored paws.
"Thank you, thank you. Now who's next?" Gulo said, clasping his own gigantic paws, his gleaming eyes scanning the crowd. Naturally, his eyes fell on the few creatures that weren't white-furred. "You!" he said, pointing a very sharp claw at Kel. "You're next!"
The ferret gulped as willing white paws seized him and shoved him forward to the front of the crowd. Gulo took Kel's former place by Ara, causing the marten to "meep" and move sideways so fast it would have put a crab to shame.
The male ferret twitched and rubbed the back of his head, the usual feeling of sharp prickly-ness going up and down his back whenever he was supposed to give a speech. "Um, hi, I'm Kel-"
"Hi, Kel!" the vermin chanted in unison, sounding unusually friendly.
"Um, yeah, uh," Kel replied, blinking furiously. "I have never eaten another creature. Except for fish. And crabs. And lobsters. But -- they don't really count, do they? Er, ah heh. Right, um..."
The white vermin stared at the ferret, causing him to feel even more hot pricks at his back--
--then one of the female ermine rushed Kel and gave that ferret a big fat glomp!
The next thing Kel knew, two burly male white foxes had hoisted him onto their shoulders and all the white vermin were parading him about, screaming at the top of their lungs, "For he's a jolly good fellow, for he's a jolly good fellow..."
Ara was shaking all over, her skinny body fairly drenched in a cold sweat. Few things terrified her, as is usually the way with psychopaths. Wolverines, however, happened to be one of them. The size, for one; he could snap her spine in one paw without even trying, and the strength and stamina in that monstrous frame. She could sprint fairly quickly, but she was not built for endurance; running away would give her a few minutes at most.
And... and... oh, merciful Nyarlathotep... those fangs... the claws... the cunning, sadistic, never-sated hunger of a predator that knew its prey was sentinent, and then enjoyed slowly tearing it apart all the more...
The marten's breath was feeble, almost gasping, and a hollow, nauseous feeling rose up from the pit of her stomach as her eyes were drawn inexorably to the huge beast standing beside her. Gulo's eyes were fixed on her partner, who was still being carried on the shoulders of a joyfully singing mob, the female ermine beside him, and had a huge, delighted grin plastered across his muzzle; the wolverine did not even glance at her, but she felt all the more frightened.
Two weeks... The words forced themselves into her cringing mind and stayed there, taking absolute control of her thoughts and kicking over the furniture. He hasn't killed for two weeks...
Her claws, sharpened as always, were digging deeply into her palms as her paws reflexively clenched. Ara was unconscious of it until a message of none-too-mild pain made its tentative way into her preoccupied brain, and looked down, unclenching her paws, to see tiny spots of blood on them.
Owch, she thought, though grateful for the distraction. Didn't know I could do that. Heh, I guess sharpening them works then. Can't wait to try it on- oh hells, oh bugger oh bugger oh bugger-
Gulo's massive head had swiveled around, and bent towards her. The wolverine's eyes were slowly widening, as his nostrils flared, seeking out some scent or another, though what he was doing and why she couldn't possibly-
Her eyes, apparently far quicker on the uptake than her brain, had flicked downward to her palm once more-
Blood.
A maniacal grin spread slowly across the Savage's features. His gaze was fixated on her now, holding her like a deer in the headlights, as his tail began to lash furiously.
At that exact moment, Kelaiah trotted over, out of breath but still smiling cheerfully, gave Ara a friendly cuff on the shoulder, and said, "See, you're all right, he isn't so-"
His brain suddenly processed the situation: Gulo's rather unsettling grin; the statue-like Ara unmoving under his touch; the tiny flecks of blood on her paw...
"Uh oh," the ferret said feebly, all the blood draining from his face.
The wolverine's smile grew even wider. His teeth were certainly impressive, but Ara's only reaction was another tiny whimper.
"Heeeeeeeeere's Gulo!"
Fortunately, the other vermin had also noted this, which resulted in all of them exchanging wide-eyed gasps and screaming, "Intervention!"
In a tidal wave of white fur, Gulo was pinned down, the wolverine roaring, "JUST ONE NIBBLE!"
Ara never ceased to amaze Kel. And how did she amaze him now?
She screamed like a damsel in distress.
However, the ferret had little time to take much notice of this, because the female ermine that glomped him eariler lifted her head from the fray and shouted, "Run! Get her outta here!"
There was nothing else to do except grab Ara by the paw and pull her as far away from Gulo as possible, hoping that adrenaline would aid them in their run.
Gulo flailed around, trying to throw his hordebeasts off of him. "COME ON!" he yelled. "JUST ONE LITTLE TASTE!"
"Now, now, my lord," soothed the female ermine, who had positioned herself on the wolverine's chest. "Just remember: woodlanders and other living creatures are friends, not f-"
But the white ermine never got to finish his sentence, for at that moment Gulo finally gave one surge of energy and threw all his beasts off of him and charged after the fleeing marten and ferret.
Kel and Ara had actually made good time in running, but Gulo was soon gaining on them, foamy white drool cascading from his mouth, his dark eyes gleaming with ravenous hunger, his long tongue hanging out from between his knife-like fangs.
Ara was panting, almost crying with sheer terror as she ran, and screaming dementedly at her partner. "Run faster! Faster! Can't you go any faster?!"
Gritting his teeth in both terror and anger, the male ferret nevertheless put on an extra burst of speed and, tightening his grip on Ara's paw, made a sharp turn into the trees, deciding that the best thing to do would be to outsmart the wolverine rather than outrun him. Already Kel had formulated a plan to get Gulo to run into a tree, hopefully knocking him unconscious.
Then he stopped, collapsing back against the massive, mercifully concealing trunk of an ancient oak, and yanking his arm around to pull Ara behind its shelter as well. Kel's chest was heaving with exertion, but he was quickly calming down, starting to breathe more easily.
Ara, on the other hand, was still utterly petrified, her eyes wider than Kelaiah had ever seen them as she hissed, "Why are we stopping?! We have to get out of here!"
"What? We can't do that!" Kel hissed back.
"Why not?! We came here to rescue a canon character from a Sue, not to get eaten by a crazy wolverine!"
"That crazy wolverine is the canon character we're supposed to save from the Sue!" Kelaiah snapped, unable to hold it in any longer. He then felt some of his irritation tempered by the wonder at just how big Ara's eyes could get.
Then, all of a sudden, her expression changed, to one of almost perfect serenity. A little smile appeared on her muzzle, as a low, slightly manic giggle escaped her lips.
"Oh," she said, giggling a little more. "Oh. Well, that's all right then. C'mon Kel, let's get going, our work here is done. Sweet Cthulhu on a bike, I need some hot tea and a book right now- Hey! Bugger off!" she growled as he grabbed her paw, halting her walking away.
"Oh no you don't!" he snapped. "Creepy mood swings or no creepy mood swings, what did I just say?!"
She rolled her eyes. "That Gulo is the character being attacked by a Sue, yes, I know. I really don't see why we can't just sit back this one time and let the little bint finish him off. Live and let live, y'know?"
"And what happens if she doesn't finish him off, and we have not one, but two immensely evil wolverines terrorizing Mossflower?"
Ara paused, narrowing her eyes into the Death Stare™. "Er..." she snarled, trying to borrow some time. You could practically see the gears turning in her head.
Kel rolled his own eyes, avoiding the Death Stare™. "Look, let's just wait for Gulo to calm down and then we'll see about this Sue, alright? We just-AUGH!"
All in several moments, Kel felt shocked terror as Gulo himself came charging out of the foliage, sheer panic as he tackled Ara out of harm's reach, and annoyance when the ferret realized that she still had blood on her paws, thus making it easier for the wolverine to smell them.
Gotta get bandages, Kel's mind hurriedly thought, but there was little time for that as he scrambled to his feet as Gulo charged them again, desperately trying to haul Ara up with him. The pine marten actually grappled at Kel's tunic, and for one split second Kel thought he saw tears in her eyes, but it must've been a trick of the light or just the ferret's imagination-
SWIPE!
Kel had tripped over his own tail, but that turned out to be a good thing since it made him avoid the swinging arm of Gulo. But the action had brought Ara back down with him, and both mustelids scrambled backwards on the ground as the gigantic wolverine (who seemed even bigger from their position on the ground) again raised his clawed fists to pound them into oblivion.
"STOP TRYING TO RUN AWAY!" Gulo roared, looking quite demonic.
Ara gave another damsel-in-distress scream as she and Kel rolled back and forth to avoid the wolverine's pummeling fists. As they rolled about on the ground, the white vermin stood mere feet away, calling out to the ferret and marten:
"Please don't take this personally!"
"He just gets a little crazy when he smells blood, that's all!"
"Don't worry, sweetie, he's actually quite nice!"
"He just never had a good relationship with his father!"
Suddenly Shard looked up, and gasped.
"Er, my lord?" the white fox said, daringly tapping the wolverine's massively broad back.
"NOT NOW!" Gulo bayed in reply, still trying to pound Kel and Ara.
"My lord?" Shard tried again.
"NOT NOW!"
"BUT, MY LORD!"
"WHAT?!" Gulo whirled around with an angry roar--
--and froze.
It was her.
"Gulo, daaaaaah-ling."
All feasting thoughts of blood and meat fled the wolverine, just as he himself fled from the area, screaming shrilly, the wolverine-Sue charging after him gleefully, while the white vermin gave chase, shouting encouraging things like, "We'll save you, my lord!" while simultaneously keeping a safe distance from the vampire.
Kel blinked, quite in shock, and slowly began to realize that he and Ara were not only still laying on the ground, but that Ara's arms were locked around him in a death grip, and she was hiding her face in Kel's bony shoulder.
Carefully, the ferret tried to extricate himself from the marten, but at first she refused to let go.
"Um, Ara?" Kel said, finding his voice, which was unusually difficult as the Death Grip was seriously affecting his ability to breathe. "Ara! The big bad wolverine is gone now!"
As soon as she realized this, the pine marten practically jumped away from Kel, snarling viciously. Ever since the incident with Sky, a ferret-Sue who had attempted to infiltrate the ranks, there'd been rumours as to exactly why Ara had been so ferocious in destroying the threat to her partner, especially when they had faced Sues ten times worse in the great war for Redwall, and both had been furiously denying the allegations for weeks. The fact that Ara had done her best to personally dispose of the worst of the hecklers had helped, but not for long, and she'd ended up with little to show for her effort, save continued annoyance and several new restraining orders.
Kelaiah prudently took several steps back, keeping a wary eye on Ara; you couldn't see martens blush under their thick dark fur, but the look of mingled embarassment, shame, and sheer homicidal fury on her face wasn't difficult to misconstrue.
"It's... okay..." he said gently. "I understand you were..." He trailed off. The words "scared" and "Ara" just didn't seem to fit in the same sentence.
"You know they're going to have a sodding field day over this," she spat. "And Adverk told me I had to stop dismembering my colleagues, because we're kind of understaffed right now, and he's in some kind of inter-organisation betting pool that he can keep more Slayers alive longer than anyone else, but look, I kind of panicked, okay?" The last word became a snarl; not for the first time, he noted that she had very sharp teeth.
"Sure. Fine," Kelaiah answered quickly, trying to channel his old middle school guidance counselor. "Um... do you want to tell me why you're so... er... troubled?"
Her eyes flicked back and forth nervously, as though seeing wolverines lurking in the shadows behind every tree. "Well..." she said awkwardly. "When I... well, my human self, technically, but you know how fandom alter egos work... anyway, when I– no," she growled suddenly, "when she was in eighth grade, she was just utterly, completely obsessed with Redwall, and Rakkety Tam had just come out a year or so ago. So she had this really big, really strict science teacher. He enjoyed yelling at the class, he hit the desks with yardsticks-" she gave a convulsive twitch- "to scare us, and he really, really looked like a wolverine.
"I'm serious; his body shape was the same, his bloody hairline was even in the shape of that facial stripe wolverines have over their eyes, and I'm fairly certain his teeth shouldn't have been that pointy. I- hellgates, it's not me– she got grades in the high 90s the entire year, because she was convinced that if she failed, he was going to eat her."
She had looked vaguely moved by her creator's trauma at the start of this revelation, but her expression finished as a look of such outstanding surliness and hatred that it would have curdled milk.
Kelaiah couldn't suppress a tiny giggle. "Well, technically," he couldn't resist adding, "if I was a wolverine I wouldn't look twice at you, you're really just fur and bones."
Ara's glare did not change a fraction, and she merely spat, "She's gotten over it. I don't get all the latest updates on whatever crazy mind-feed we have, so I get stuck with all her old emotions and she uses it to–" She cut herself off there, with a low snarl of fury, and refused to clarify.
Kelaiah blinked, and decided to try comforting his friend, daunting as the prospect currently seemed. "But it's gonna be . . . not like that, alright?" He almost said, "It's gonna be alright", but he decided that that was a clichéd line, and so opted for a more realistic one. "You have me with you, remember? I mean," he added, a slight blush about his face (which he was glad that his fur covered), "you've watched my back several times before; do you really think I'd not do the same for you?"
Ara looked almost touched, but she hid it by giving a playfully sarcastic smile (which, as most all of her smiles did, showed quite a few teeth) and rolling her eyes.
"But anyway," Kel went on in a more business-like manner, striding over to Ara while fumbling with his pack. "We've got to get your paws bandaged. That way Gulo won't-"
As if on cue, Gulo himself came tearing through the woods, screaming blue murder and waving his claws about as he cleared a path for himself. The two mustelids, completely caught off guard, screamed, Ara lunging at Kel in another Death Grip. Kel, however, managed to keep one arm free. This turned out to be a very good thing, because Gulo's charge and Ara's lunge had sent the two teetering over the edge of a steep cliff. (While it was certainly odd to have a cliff in the middle of Mossflower Wood, especially one overhanging a fathomless abyss, the presence of Sues tends to do funny things to the geography, and it isn't always sparkling azure lakes or fields of wildflowers.) Reacting purely on instinct, Kel scrabbled in his pack and yanked out his trusty grappling hook, which seemed to hook on to the cliff edge all by itself, causing Kel and Ara to swing dizzingly in midair.
From up above, Gulo's screams receded into the distance while the gleeful cries of the Sue and the shouts of the white vermin came and went. Kel blinked, his heart pounding against his skinny chest, his right arm groaning in protest as it held onto the rope while the rest of the ferret's body was weighed down by Ara's extra weight.
Honestly, Kelaiah thought irritably. You'd think that a creature this small and skinny wouldn't be weighin' us down so much. What does she eat, rocks? ...Actually, I don't want to know what she eats besides chocolate. Suethors, maybe? Wait, and does that have anything to do with how she grins and licks her lips if you even say the word 'brains–'
The mind is quite apt to go off on random tangents in dangerous situations and remain there for quite a while; in this case, however, Kel's reverie was sharply interrupted by his arm, which had finally got through to the rest of his brain and was screaming at him to bloody well do something about perhaps not dangling off of a cliff. Several ways of heaving himself up over the edge of a cliff using nothing but one arm, while still holding on to a one-hundred-pound-or-so deadweight, and a terrified one at that, occurred to him, but none were really practical (most involved being lifted up by a helicopter at the last minute).
"Um, Ara?" Kel gritted to his partner, although he was so tense that it came out as more of a squeak. "Ara? . . . My arm's starting to hurt. . . . We're gonna fall. . . ."
Suddenly the rope jerked a little.
Kelaiah squawked, his eyes popping out of their sockets. Looking up, however, he saw to his relief that some of the white vermin had returned, including the female ermine that had glomped him earlier.
"Hold on!" the ermine called down to them. Turning to her fellow snow-furred vermin, she barked, "C'mon, you lot! Heave ho! Heave ho! Heave ho!"
The vermin pulled obligingly, and within minutes the two Sue-slayers were back up on the ledge, Ara on her paws and knees, frantically gasping and trying to still her heart, which was threatening to break through her ribs and out into the world.
"Thanks," gasped Kelaiah gratefully, but then Ara spoke - and grabbed Kel by sinking her claws into his arm and shoulder. Her voice was little more than a hiss, with a low growl rumbling just below the surface.
"So," she snarled, "it's gonna be all right, innit, O bestest friend? And you call running for our lives from a starving wolverine and nearly falling off a sodding cliff 'all right'?"
"Ara..." Kel gasped out. "It was an -ow- accident... I -eech- freaked out too, y'know, and- ow ow owww I can't take it anymore, why do you have to sharpen your claws so much?"
Ara shrugged, but, in the pause his screech afforded, released her grip. The ferret sighed softly, massaging the shoulder with his other paw. "Sorry..." she muttered. "Look, I had about one nerve left that wasn't broken, and having to go through yet another near-death experience about two seconds after the first one kind of broke it."
Kelaiah, who was now swiftly learning to deal with her frequent homicidal rages, nodded understandingly and decided not to berate her over it, especially now that he understood how tense the current situation was making her.
"Are you all right?" the ermine said suddenly, crouching down to sit next to Ara. "I face stuff like that a lot, more now than ever, really, Lord Gulo's new morals make him a bit twitchy sometimes..." She gave a slightly embarrassed smile. Ara curled her lip in a faint sneer, but did not pass comment, to which Kel breathed a soft sigh of relief. "Anyway," she continued, "what I meant was that I think I understand how nervous you are right now. But could you answer a question for me? I don't know if you can answer, but... What exactly is wrong with that she-wolverine? Lord Gulo doesn't scare easily, and she makes me a bit nauseous, quite frankly..."
Ara took a deep breath and smiled, feeling soothed already. The ermine was technically an original character, having never been mentioned specifically by the Author, but nevertheless she still had a pretty good hold on what was left of the canon. It was the former aspect that made her aware of the sense that something was not right, but that also kept her from receiving too much of the warping effect that Sues invariably had on canon. Said effect, however, had played merry hell with the ermine's accent. As speech patterns and brain function went, though, that was getting off relatively lightly; it was probably a wonder she wasn't singing "I've Got A Lovely Bunch Of Coconuts" and dribbling.
"Well, for one thing," Ara began, deciding to test the basics first, "she's a vampire, a blood drinker."
The ermine shrugged. "We all do that. Why treat it as something special?"
Ara nodded encouragingly. "Exactly. Now, do wolverines often have fur and eyes in colours like that?"
Her new student's eyes narrowed darkly. "Certainly not. It's really kind of creepy."
Off to the side, Kelaiah rolled his eyes. Ara was all but inducting the ermine by teaching her about Sues, and he was unsure if that was a good idea, or indeed even allowed under the Rules. The lesson, however, was rolling on regardless.
"One last thing," the marten concluded. "Have you ever seen another beast, particularly a wolverine, dressed like that?"
The ermine rolled her eyes. "Of course not! All that black lace, all those spikes and chains and skulls and funny silver symbols..."
Ara mentally debated for a moment whether to explain crosses and ankhs, but decided that Mossflower Wood had enough going on at the moment without introducing human religions. "Oh," she added instead, "and she can probably sprout wings, too. Or turn into a a bat, or something."
The ermine blinked, uncomprehending. "What? Did you say wings?"
"Never mind."
It was a few moments later, after Ara had finished filling in the ermine on Sues and whatnot, with some help from Kelaiah, when Captain Shard himself came jogging up, gasping and furiously trying to smooth his fur out. Freeta was behind him, obviously fussing over her handsome husband, telling him with the air of a mother hen with her little chick that he mustn't exert himself. The marten and ferret exchanged a small grin.
"I'm fine, I'm fine," the white fox snapped, waving his mate back and ignoring her injured expression, "now, to business. It would seem as though ye know something about Mary Sues, ye be dressed alike, you carry weapons and be not at all terrified by a horde of flesh-eaters; therefore, ye must be the Slayers I called for. But from what I have also heard about the past few minutes, ye be not as good as I had hoped..." He let the sentence trail away, and the eyes glaring down at them above the long white muzzle were cold and hard.
"A mere accident," Ara returned immediately, standing up slightly taller. "If thou know'st so much about Sues, thou shouldst know what they do to the surrounding land, including random cliffs which nobeast could help falling off of. And would even ye, a captain, stand against Gulo in his blood-rage?"
Kelaiah blinked; he'd almost forgotten Ara's taste for slightly-medieval speech, mostly as it was often eclipsed by her greater taste for British swear words. Nevertheless, he was quietly grateful that it seemed to be coming in handy, for the fox nodded and inclined his head the tiniest bit in acceptance.
"So," Shard continued, "I would have talked with thee before now, had I seen thee, but I have been keeping an eye on the Mary Sue. She yet remains where she found Lord Gulo, and she sits and grooms her fur, talking of darkness and doom and despair. I would not mind this so much," he added, "had she not attracted and then drained the lifeblood of two of my soldiers, who were foolish enough to wander near and stare at her."
Both Slayers rolled their eyes.
"Well, then," Kelaiah replied, "let's roll."
("I can tell you always wanted to say that," Ara sniggered in his ear.
"Actually," Kelaiah replied, "I've always wanted to say 'cover me' in a battle, but I bet that'll happen later in this fic." And with that, the male ferret stared nobly ahead and proceeded to ignore his partner.)
Shard drew his curved blade, and gestured with it for the two Slayers to take the lead as he and Freeta fell in behind. But just as they set off, Ara paused, looked over her shoulder, and beckoned to the ermine; the female immediately trotted up to join them, bowing respectfully to the captain and his mate.
"Since I told you," the marten said to her, "there's no sense in leaving you here, and we could use another beast. Since technically, canon shouldn't be involved, we can't bring the horde, only those that know about Sues in the first place. That means Shard, apparently Freeta, and now, you, specially as you aren't wholly canon in the first place."
The ermine bowed again, smiling from ear to ear with delight; Kelaiah grinned back. "Thank you so much," she answered. "My name's Kaval, by the way. And I think you might like to know that I'm pretty good with these," she added, indicating the quiver of white-fletched arrows slung over her back.
"Here," was Ara's only reply, as she dug briefly in her pack and tossed a head of garlic towards Kaval. "Rub that on the points. I can't wait to see what it does to vampire-Sues," she added with an evil grin, pawing her scimitar hilt.
"So that's part of why her bag always smells so creepy, even though it's a good idea," Kel muttered, though no one heard him.
"Art thou quite done now?" Shard growled impatiently. "Our quarry awaits, and methinks Lord Gulo's mind doth crumble further by the second."
"More than it has to begin with?" Ara whispered grumpily, but her partner merely shushed her as, with Kaval alongside the two foxes, they strode off away through the trees.
The captain nodded approvingly as he watched the marten and ferret conferring quietly; some great plan was evidently in motion. Despite his initial displeasure, he found that somehow, his mind would not let him resist; he wholly and instinctively trusted the Sue-Slayers. Whatever they were thinking of, it could do nothing but succeed.
Akasha sat within the confines of Gulo's tent, impatiently awaiting her true love's return. Surely he had been intimidated by her grace and beauty and felt ashamed of himself, humble earth-being that he was, to be in the presence of a lovely otherworld creature such as herself.
But no matter, she had decided that Gulo was the one for her, and so shall she get what she wanted!
However, something was not right.
The Sue sensed something... she was not sure just what she sensed, but it was something...
Something... dark... even darker than her... something that... that would... try to... get in her way...
The wolverine-sue only gave a sniff of derision. Who cared? So what if some creature (or creatures) were out to stop her? Nobeast could stop her. Nobeast...
"Hey I'm curious about something," said Arawolf, turning to Shard with a furrowed brow.
"And what is that?" replied the white fox.
"What's up with Gulo's sudden vegetarian diet thingy? I mean, what inspired it?"
At this, Shard, Freeta, and Kaval all exchanged darkly significant looks, but all they would say is that they had all promised each other never to discuss it.
"Whatever," said Kel. "Let's get on with the story, we've been procrastinating long enough!"
The small group of Sue-Slayers stood outside Gulo's tent.
Kel held in his paws a sack full of garlic. Ara stood at his side, holding a stick of dynamite, giggling maniacally.
"Ara! Shuttup!" the male ferret hissed.
The marten glared at her partner, put nevertheless obliged.
"On the count to three," Kel whispered, putting the garlic sack into a sling. "One. . . ."
"Two. . . ." Ara counted, putting her dynamite into a sling of her own.
"Three!"
Simulataneously, each Sue-Slayer slung their weapons into the tent's entryway with as much force as they could muster.
The ensuing explosion, in both power and sound, made the notation BOOM! a little inadequate.
The group was flung backwards as burning garlic blasted everywhere, creating an even worse smell than before; but somehow, inexplicably, failing to set alight any of the surrounding woodland.
When the dust had settled, Kel, Ara, Shard, Freeta, and Kaval all sat up, and beheld a scene of wreckage.
"Is it . . . dead?"
The five creatures gave a start. Looking over their shoulders, they saw none other than Gulo the Savage peering timorously from around a tree. Ara squeaked and grabbed Kel's arm, causing the ferret to wince.
"It appears to be, my lord. . . ." Shard said, helping his wife up.
"Aye, appears to be. . . ." the white vixen said shrewdly.
Almost on cue, a sleek black form rose from the destruction, not one wound nor even the tiniest speck of dust marring the gleaming ebony pelt. Gulo whimpered.
"Bugger," Ara growled, and pulled a matchbook, another head of garlic, and several more sticks of dynamite from her bag, grinning savagely. "Explosions are almost as fun as guillotines," she added, but no one was listening. All attention was focused, horror-laden, on Akasha.
"Mortal fools!" she snickered. "Did you really think that would defeat me? Come on, daah-lings," the wolverine purred, "how could you possibly expect-"
She got no further, as Ara seized the opportunity, howled, "NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!" at the top of her lungs (presumably for lack of anything more original under such short notice), and flung several more sticks of garlic-rubbed dynamite straight at the Sue. For once in her life, her aim, due to fierce determination or, more probably, just sheer dumb luck, was true.
But when the last echoes of the blast had died away and the smoke had cleared, the coughing, tired group of heroes was met with a still-smirking, still utterly unscathed Sue, standing in the middle of a sizeable crater. The dark smoke still curling around her only offered further dramatic effect, and her shadow-hued fur practically sparkled.
"-something as clichéd and disgusting as garlic to kill a real vampiress?" she finished, without missing a beat.
Ara shrieked with fury.
"As for your other attacks, I am already far beyond the grave," Akasha intoned, in a voice so melodramatic that the levels of sheer gloom and morbidity it contained were probably fatal on their own. "I have long escaped the spectral reach of Death himself, and I shall do so throughout the long and lonely eternity I stalk this blood-drenched mortal plane... but I shall be alone no longer, Gulo my savage love!" she declaimed.
Gulo slumped back down against the tree trunk, buried his face in his huge, long-clawed paws, and sobbed with despair.
Kel's mind was racing - which turned out to be a good thing, because he came up with a good idea all the more quicker. Turning to the others, he said pointedly, "Well guys, I guess its hopeless. We may as well surrender."
"SURRENDER?!" shouted Ara, infuriated. The word 'surrender' wasn't actually in the pine marten's vocabulary. "Whaddaya mean 'surrender'?! I have no intention to let this-MMRRFF!"
Kel placed one paw roughly over Ara's mouth while his other grabbed the arm that was reaching for her Flying Guillotine. For a brief moment, the two mustelids struggled, but when Ara finally broke free, it was only to hide behind her ferret-friend, because the Sue was approaching.
Now normally, Ara wasn't afraid of Sues . . . but this Sue, well, she was still a wolverine, after all, and ridiculously tall for that matter. Plus, she gave off the same sinister aura of evilness that The Other Mother did.
Meep, thought Ara. The narrator had to reference her? She's right up there with Palpatine on the Scale Of Creepy!
The wolverine-Sue leaned over the two Sue-Slayers, lowering her long, lacy eyelashes over her ginormous red-and-purple-silver-flecked eyes. Kelaiah noticed that there was something about her features that possessed the same type of sinister majesty that Maleficent possessed.
"I think the ferret has the right idea," the Sue murmured throatily. "It is indeed hopeless for any of you to fight me, so you may as well surrender. And as for you, my fine lady," she added to Ara, who meeped and hunched lower behind Kel, "True, I cannot attend to you now as I would normally like - simply because I don't want to delay my destiny with Gulo any longer. But this is a warning to both of you: stay out of my way. Just try.
"I'll get you, my pretty, and your little pine marten, too!"
And then, with a laugh that would've made the just now quoted Witch proud and green with envy (not that she wasn't already green), Akasha suddenly sprouted a pair of large, leathery - but still beautiful - wings, flew at Gulo, seized the male wolverine (who squeaked and whimpered, his lower lip trembling), and flew off into the night-sky, gliding gracefully across a ridiculously large and full moon.
Back down on the ground, all of the canons were quite bewildered by the fact that wolverines could now apparently sprout bat wings.
Ara, in the meantime, was berating Kel for giving up so easily (not that she cared for Gulo, but because they had passed up the golden opportunity of killing off such a Sue). "You bleeding idiot! Why'd you do that? How are we going to explain this to the Boss? I mean, sure, there's no love lost between me and Gulo, and the bugger deserves it after trying to kill us and all, but sheesh, what about all that talk about saving a canon character at all costs? What's the matter with you?!"
She continued on like this for awhile before Kel shouted, "ARA! I have a plan!"
"Oh, NOW he tells us!" the pine marten sarcastically replied.
Meanwhile, while Kel explained his plan, the three canon characters were busy discussing this new development concerning flying wolverines.
Freeta turned to Shard, saying, "Think'st thou that Lord Gulo could do such a thing? He would be the bane of land and air..."
Before Shard could answer, Ara turned and shouted, "I should bloody well hope not! And speaking of blood," she added, her signature maniacal grin spreading across her features, "since we can't get rid of her directly, let's cut this horror off at the source!" With that, the marten began brandishing the Flying Guillotine with a very bloodthirsty grin.
"Perhaps I be mistaken," Shard said dryly, "but methinks that by 'source,' you doth not mean the place where a river begins."
Ara continued to beam. "Give the fox a prize! Now c'mon, troops, we've got a Suethor to kill!"
"NO," said Kel, grabbing hold of the war-crazed marten. "We were sent here to kill a Sue, not a Suethor! We're not allowed to kill Suethors at all! It's in the handbook!"
"Oh, bollocks to the handbook!" said Ara, yanking her arm away. "And besides, I thought that was part of the plan you just told me?!"
"No," Kel repeated, exasperated. "I said we were going to find the Suethor's original file for this fanfic, and delete it! How could you get 'kill the Suethor' in there?"
"Well. . . ." said Ara, clearly on the verge of coming up with an explanation or two, and glaring savagely to fill in the intervening time.
"Wait," interrupted Kaval. "What's this about Suethors? Are these another type of Sue? And just what is your course for getting rid of this . . . freak of nature?"
Unable to find a comeback, Ara took over the task of answering. "Well, since garlic, sunlight, and things like that haven't had an effect, the only thing we can do is is cut off the source, like I said before. Technically, we've got two sources: the person who created the Sue in the first place, and the file that keeps what the Suethor wrote about the Sue. Now, if you ask me a guillotine'd solve all our problems, but noble ol' Kel-Kel here has refused to follow through with that, so our only option is to delete the file."
Kelaiah's eyes widened at Ara calling him 'Kel-Kel', and, like always, he gave a violent tremble of vicious, incredible, RAMPANT-RAGING ANGER . . . but then the ferret decided to let it pass: Ara wasn't having a very good day, after all, and it was sort of his fault. So he guessed he deserved that.
"Plus," the marten continued, turning to her ferret-friend with a grin, "we might get the chance for some more references! When d'you reckon I'll get to say 'There is no spoon?' "
Kel blinked. "Wha. . . .? Eh- never mind! Let's just go kill off the Sue, alright?!"
And, with that one irritable shout and a noticeable lack of any kind of dramatic one-liner or accompanying soundtrack, the final stage of the mission had begun.
Kaval edged back from the void, her eyes wide. "Found it," she announced, somewhat redundantly; everyone else could quite clearly see the pit in the middle of the forest floor. It was a beautifully precise circle, completely and utterly black, and without any apparent depth to it. If you turned your head, squinted, and thought about fanfiction from just the right angle (in other words, the wrong one), it would seem to vanish.
It was a plothole quite unlike any other, at least within the confines of this fic. It was, in fact, the Master Plothole, and was not only safe to travel through (well, probably), but it would also lead them straight to the Suethor's file source.
This could be construed, all things considered, as rather too convenient, but the sudden unexplained presence of slender-yet-buxom flying vampire wolverines, midnight of fur and impossible of eye colour, had led the laws of probability to finally take the day off, presumably in attempts to cope with the headache.
Ara struck a noble pose. "Leave this one to us. Kel laughs in the sparkly face of Suedom... and then I gouge its oversized eyes out." She grinned wildly, and, from the depths of her bag, produced a spork. It was, admittedly, a metal spork, and the tines appeared to have been sharpened considerably, but a spork it was nevertheless. Brandishing it proudly, she turned to Kelaiah, waiting for him to deliver his part of the impromptu speech.
Kel, however, simply said, "Cover me," and dove right in.
Ara rolled her eyes, remembering how her partner had said he had wanted to say that in a battle; perhaps he had realized that a battle was unlikely to happen at the moment, and he obviously didn't want to miss the opportunity. Hmph. There was just no helping some people.
The marten looked into the plothole; it was unclear as to whether the plothole looked back. It was an odd show of reluctance for the normally brash and bloodthirsty Ara, but, to her, this didn't sound like a very good idea. For one thing, she wasn't actually going to get to kill anything. She wasn't even going to mortally wound anything. Nor dismember, disembowel, decapitate, mutilate, maim, or any of her other usual pastimes. She wouldn't even be able to stab anything with her knitting needles.
Shard, Freeta, and Kaval hung back, watching her expectantly.
"Aren't you lot going to insist that Kel and I can't do this alone, and you're coming with us to the death, no matter what, through thick and thin and all that rubbish?" Ara growled, looking around. "Power of friendship or some such load of– oh, right," she recalled, "you're all actually characters, 'course all this computer-y business is going to fill you with some kinda unnameable existential dread..." The trio of uncomfortable expressions on the faces of the white vermin suggested this was rather close to the truth. "And me 'n Kel are alter-ego manifestation wossnames, we grew up bending those rules... oh, right. Kel. Oops."
And, with that, Arawolf gritted her teeth, faced the plothole again, and leapt.
"Oh there you are," the ferret snapped irritably.
Arawolf blinked. She was sitting on the floor (or at least it felt like a floor) of a very black room (or at least it could've been a room). And yet, despite the vast darkness that surrounded them, the pine marten could see her Sue-slaying partner as clear as day.
"Um... where are we, exactly?" Ara asked tentatively, getting to her footpaws and trying to get her bearings, if getting one's bearings was possible in a place like this.
"At the entrance of the Suethor's files," Kelaiah answered, his voice somehow dramatically forboding.
Ara blinked yet again. "We are? I don't see any entrance."
"Well first we need to get pass the locks before we can actually see anything," the ferret explained, dialing something on his lazer.
"And... where do we put in the password?" said Ara, presuming that in order to get past the locks, a password would be needed.
"Right here," Kel said, pulling a thin wire out of the lazer in his paw and plugging it into the insert beneath a small screen and keyboard that either Ara just now noticed or just now appeared. "Alright, here's what we do: since we don't know the password and we can't waste any time in guessing it, we'll just have my lazer read through all the codes and data and blah blah blah, and then... that's it."
"Okay then," nodded Ara, smiling. "How long will that take?"
"Oh," Kel took a good long look at his lazer's screen before replying, "A good long time."
Ara blinked, her smile beginning to fade. "A good long time? And how long is a good long time?"
"Oh... about a couple hours."
"WHAT?! KEL, WE COULD GUESS THE ACTUAL PASSWORD IN A COUPLE OF HOURS-!"
"Could we really?" the ferret challenged.
The marten opened her mouth, then closed it, opened it, and closed it again. "Okay fine, we couldn't. Ugh, this going to be very anti-climatic." And with that, she huddled on the black ground, resting her chin on her palm.
Kel also sat down, drumming his claws.
Silence.
Finally the male ferret turned to his partner and said, "Have you ever had childhood memories that just stick with you, no matter what they are? Like with me, there's this one memory of this anime version of 'Heidi', where she's been sent to live with the girl in the wheelchair, and while she's sitting at the table, she looks over and sees a roll basket and - now before, earlier in the movie, it established that Heidi had a thing for rolls - so she looks over and says 'Mmm, what a niiice frrreeesssh roooole', and she begins to reach over and take one, but then the governess or whatever she was just comes out of nowhere and sa-slap! and Heidi just gets this look on her face and sits back, her shoulders kinda hunched and her lip pouting. It's one of my funniest memories."
Kel finally stopped talking and looked at Ara, who stared back with an incredulous look on her face.
The ferret suddenly felt very awkward, and rubbed the back of his head. "Ummm..."
Ara lowered her forehead to the ground. "Oh, sweet merciful Cthulhu..."
Meanwhile, Gulo the Savage found himself within the confines of a castle that looked suspiciously like the one in that Van Helsing movie, although there was a notable lack of Hugh Jackman in the vicinity. He was seated on a four-poster bed with blood-red velvet coverlets, and from what he could see, there were no windows around, for no windows were necessary, because his "beloved" Akasha had the ability to walk through walls (or at least she could slide through very thin cracks in the wall, like how some vampires do).
And that said "beloved" was making her way over to Gulo right now.
The wolverine had never been more afraid in his entire life. For the first time, he knew what real, unadulterated fear was, for here, right in front of him, was a creature that he couldn't defeat in any way, shape or form. And what's more, he suddenly found himself speaking words that weren't produced by his own brain:
"I know what you are."
As soon as the inexplicable sentence left his mouth, the Savage bit down, with an intensity rather true to his title, on his own tongue, and then had to stifle a very un-intimidating yelp.
"Say it," Akasha purred.
"Vampire."
I did say 'disgusting, malformed succubus from the deepest pit of Hellgates,' didn't I? Gulo asked himself, and then, with a sinking feeling, realised the answer was a resounding 'no.' What did that bizarre word he'd uttered even mean?
"Soooooo," Kel drawled after awhile.
Ara continued to sit hunched on the floor, looking more like a stormcloud by the minute.
The ferret barely kept back a giggle: comparing somebeast's bad mood to a stormcloud always tickled his funny bone.
"So what do you want to do in the meantime?" Kel finally said.
The pine marten looked at him for a moment before replying, "I'd like to point out that our authors must be suffering from a horrible, insedious lack of imagination."
Kel blinked. "You may be right with that..."
Suddenly the lazer gave a beep!
Each SueSlayer jumped up.
"We're in," Kel said.
Ara gripped her scimitar and guillotine, a smile beginning to creep its way up her muzzle.
The two mustelids crept their way towards the open doorway, which was very much like the room they had been sitting in: completely black with no distinguishable shape or form.
As they entered, however, strange beings suddenly arose in front of them. Shadowy, phantom-like beings, all sparkling like a clear midnight sky, sending a nasty sensation of love and admiration down the spines of our two heroes.
"Kel," Ara said. "What are they? And where are we? I thought this was the place we'd be able to delete the Sue-!"
"Shh! I'm working on it!" the ferret hissed, furiously punching buttons on his lazer. Finally his brow smoothed out. "Oh. . . ."
"What?" whispered Ara. "What?"
"This isn't where we delete Sues." Kelaiah still had enough sense of drama to know that a portentous pause was required here, and followed suit. "...It's where we create them."
"WHAT?!"
"SHH!"
"What?" hissed Ara. "How could you bring us here when-"
"I don't know, it must be a malfunction or something..."
"Oh that's just great, and what do you expect us to do, go back out there and wait for another couple of hours while we fail on this mission and Gulo becomes that little bloodsucker's puppet, even though he deserves that and more, but still! By this point I'm just gonna kill her out of boredom!"
"Wait a minute," Kel interrupted. "Ara, I just had an idea. Do you remember our first mission together?"
"Yeah, sure I do, but what's that got t-"
"Do you remember the way how Linwe Seregon was? The way she couldn't be killed by anything except..."
Arawolf paused, considered her partner for a moment before looking at the hideously beautiful dark sparkling shapes. When she looked back at Kelaiah, her signature wolfish grin had appeared.
"Y'know, I think this will be climatic after all."
Akasha gently but firmly pressed Gulo back down on the bed, her lips so close to the terrified wolverine's that a crowbar could not have been slid between them.
Fortunately, such delicate, time-consuming methods had never been a concern of our two heroes.
"AKASHA TWILIGHT!!"
The wolverine-Sue whipped her head around, enraged that her precious moments with her beloved Gulo had been interrupted again.
"I HAVE BEEN HUNTING FOR YOU!" the thunderous voice rang out, clanging majestically even more so than the Abbey bells– not that Akasha had ever heard Redwall's bells, nor had the inclination to.
KABOOM!
With tremendous force, the wall Akasha and the still-terrified-but-greatly-relieved Gulo were facing was kicked in, and there stood a most amazingly horrendous sight:
Another wolverine, male, and... one of those types.
The type where it is clear beyond all possible doubt that the Suethor--
("Hey!" Ara snapped, baring her teeth. "Remember who actually made this up before I come over there and make you!"
"Sorry," Kel muttered. "But what better way than to give the Sue her double?")
--is trying hard to make the most evil, and of course thereby stereotypically Goth (because everyone knows that's True Evil), character she can make. Rather than having the intended affect of frightening, dark allure, however, the reader is left with a foul taste in the back of the mouth and a burning desire to stab out their own eyes- or perhaps someone else's, if enough brain cells are left to remember that self-harm is not a good idea.
Even though wolverines were, by nature, muscle-bound and inclined towards being unnervingly tall, this particular fellow made Gulo seem about as imposing as a dust bunny. Every muscle was clearly defined under his sleek pelt; some were so well-developed they seemed to have muscles of their own. His taste in clothing tended, rather worryingly, towards black leather pants and chains, and enough spiky things draped over his bare chest and arms to outfit a decent-sized army of punk rockers.
His fur was as black as the darkest night or the wings of a raven, mirroring the color of his dark soul, with no lighter mask or stripe as had normal wolverines. His eyes were a wonder in themselves, as one was blood-red, like the blood of his unwitting victims (because of course, he's a werewolf), and the other a deep purple, both with silver flecks shimmering like tiny stars in their unique, evilly glowing depths.
("Kelaiah," Ara growled as she watched, tapping her claws together in an idly menacing sort of way, "I have the most annoying feeling I've heard this before, and since I don't touch the kinds of things I'd have to remember this dreck from with a fifteen-foot halberd, I'm starting to wonder who's been messing with my chocolate..."
"Shh! You're messing with the drama!" was all the ferret could think of as a reply.)
Although he could not sprout bat wings at will and fly through the night in pursuit of his next meal, the wolverine-Stu could leap so high and run so fast that he might as well be considered a flyer. But tonight, Alurto NewMoon Bloodheart was hunting to satisfy a different desire... for he knew, at last, where his true love awaited him.
"Wait, WHAT?!" shouted Ara (who had been standing behind Alurto), looking back at the text. "HEY! I created him with an urge to KILL Akasha, he can't just turn around and fall in love with her, right?! RIGHT?!" she yelled, whirling on Kel.
"Er, well..." was all the ferret could think of to say, rubbing the back of his head.
Akasha stared wide-eyed at Alurto, all lustful thoughts for Gulo slowly but surely ebbing away from her mind. This might have been a slow process under different circumstances, but considering how much of the Sue's brain was actually in use, it took about three seconds.
"So... it is you whom my heart desires," she breathed, heading towards the werewolf-wolverine-Stu.
"And it is you whom I've been searching for all the few minutes of my life," breathed Alurto, heading towards the vampire-wolverine-Sue.
Kel grimaced; suddenly the atmosphere in the room was taking on a romance of the sticky sweet kind. "I think we better grab Gulo and get going," he hissed in Ara's ear.
The female marten gave a violent snort and a grudging nod; where was her violent, gory battle twixt vampire and werewolf?!
Tiptoeing past the two Sues (who were now within each other's embrace and whispering sweet-but-still-somehow-dark nothings to one another), the ferret pulled Gulo up from the bed by his paw, careful not to cut himself on the normal wolverine's claws. He noticed that Gulo's paws were trembling as he led him out.
"That... that... that..." the poor creature stammered once they were out of the room.
Kel and Ara looked back at the doorway, which had thankfully closed on its own, thus shielding them from any further hideousness the two Sues would do. Even the marten Slayer, shockingly enough, looked a tad sick.
"Shh, its okay, Gulo," Kelaiah soothed. "Its okay, we're gonna get you back home now, alright? Come on, there's a good wolverine..."
"Isn't that an oxymoron?" Ara grumbled, just loudly enough for Gulo to hear. Fortunately, even she had enough sense of self-preservation not to voice her actual thoughts, which were more along the lines of, He's weakened now, let's finish him off and dump the body in an inter-fandom ditch somewhere! In pieces. "Actually, let's put each piece in a different ditch. I'm not taking any chances..."
She did not realise she had, in fact, started voicing these thoughts until she saw the look her partner was giving her; even Gulo's dazed trauma had a flicker of confusion breaking through. "I'm practising for a play," she told the wolverine, trying to sound convincing, and figuring using his previous bizarre excuse against him was about the best revenge she'd get at the moment.
He nodded his great, broad-muzzled head understandingly, clearly not having listened, and turned back to the continuous ramble of comforting nonsense Kel was keeping up.
Just then there was a strange sort of rumbling.
At first it went unnoticed by the three animals, but very soon they began to feel the quick, steady vibrations.
"K-Kel," Ara said, arms swinging about as she tried to keep her balance. "What's going on?"
The ferret looked back over his shoulder at the door, and saw strange pink beams of light stretching forth from its frame, along with pieces of wispy clouds and rainbows.
Kel's eyebrows shot up; once he had seen a parody comic of Twilight, and one of the boxes held a smiling Bella and a corpse-faced-but-still-sparkling Edward frollicking amongst wispy clouds and rainbows.
"Er, I think we'd better make our way outside," he said, grabbing hold of the arms of both Gulo and Ara, running towards the nearby staircase.
As the trio made their way down, the rumbling became more violent, pieces of rubble were beginning to fall from the ceiling, and the pink rays and wispy clouds and rainbows were seemingly chasing our hereos (if you can call Gulo a hero) in hot pursuit.
Feel like I'm in Ocarina of Time, thought Kel as he made a leaping jump over a particularly large piece of burning rubble. Somehow that made things seem easier to the ferret.
As for Ara and Gulo, well...
The three creatures were still just inside the castle before the tower finally exploded in a burst of pink and rainbows, causing the whole building to collapse. Fortunately, Kel, Ara and Gulo managed to make it out the split second before they would've been crushed by the falling stone.
They didn't, however, escape unscathed.
"Ugghhh," Kel moaned, propping himself up on his skinny paws, shaking loose pieces of rubble from his fur. "Is everybeast okay?"
"Eeyeah," Ara wheezed, coughing dust and sparklypoo. "What was that?!"
"I think," the ferret began, furrowing his brow, "I think . . . they killed themselves with love."
". . . . what?!"
Kel tried thinking of a way to explain himself. "Well . . . have you ever heard of 'a joy that kills'?"
Arawolf blinked . . . then shuddered and began muttering, "I don't want to know, I don't want to know, keep away bad images, baaaaaaad..."
The male ferret gave a small laugh, then realized he hadn't heard a reply from their rescued victim yet. "Gulo? Hey Gulo, where are you-OW!"
Ara had taken yet another Death Grip hold of his arm. He began to ask what was the matter, but then he saw the wide-eyed look of fear in her eyes.
Following her gaze, Kel looked over his shoulder . . . and saw Gulo, staring at them with . . . with . . . was that . . . hunger?
Within the space of a millisecond, Kel realized that he and Ara were pretty scratched up, and that meant that they were pretty much covered with blood, and that meant...
"Heeeeeeeeere's Gulo!"
Waiting had been awful for Shard, Freeta and Kaval. Not knowing whether or not they would ever see their beloved ("Er, dost thou thinkest that's stretching the point a bit?" questioned Shard) leader again, whether the two Sue-Slayers would suceed in their plan or not, or if that . . . that . . . thing that was a poor excuse for a wolverine would be banished forever from the world was pure torture.
Just when it seemed like it had taken too long (them not knowing the average time it took to kill the average Sue), one of them, Kaval, noticed a certain type of movement in the Master Plothole.
"Look! Captain, I think I see something!"
The two white foxes hurried forward--
--only to hurry even quicker backwards to avoid being stampeded over by the frantic (and blood-covered) Kelaiah and Arawolf Beechclaw, and by Gulo the Savage, who was hot on the two smaller creature's tails.
Now before, when Gulo had first started chasing the two Slayers, Shard, the only creature who knew how to properly handle his horde leader during one of his bloodlusts, had not been present. This time he was.
"Lead him back to me!" Shard yelled to Kel and Ara; no way was he going to chase after Gulo.
The two Slayers did as they were told; or at least, Kel did. Ara was just hanging onto the ferret's arm like before, sobbing and squealing and snarling for her companion to run faster.
The male ferret made a beeline for Shard, and just before he would've collided with the fox, turned sharply to the right, leaving Shard clear in Gulo's vision.
Even though the sight of a blood-lusting frothing-at-the-mouth beserk wolverine struck fear into the handsome white fox's heart, he still remained outwardly calm and, reaching beneath his cloak, produced an item sure to soothe his warlord's frantic behavior.
Gulo froze at the sight of the item, his eyes growing larger, his mouth hanging lower, until finally:
"CHEETOS!"
Shard swiftly tossed the bag away so he wouldn't get all that horrible yellow dust all over him. Gulo chased after it like a dog and tore the bag open, stuffing his face in a very disturbing way.
Kel and Arawolf, who were standing a good thirty feet away, could only stare, speechless. Finally Kaval came over to them, murmuring, "We'd better clean those wounds before milord picks up the scent again."
Ara nodded, slowly, her eyes still glassy with fear; she blinked, and then, improbably, began to laugh, a rapid, high-pitched bark that was still unhealthily close to hysterical. "Blood and Cheetos," she gasped after a moment, then lapsed into more half-mad giggling. As the marten's laughter was usually guaranteed to be entirely mad, this was rather worrying, more so as this went on, and on.
She was still watching Gulo, a dark, hunched, distant shape making ghastly crunching sounds, and she was staring with an intensity usually reserved for deer in approaching headlights, and she was still laughing. The sound was slowly being drilled into the brains of everyone listening; it had the never-ending insistence of the water-dripping torture, and was beginning to cause the pain of the bamboo splinters under the fingernails.
Kelaiah was looking drawn and frightened, wanting desperately to help her, but he could see in her face that even putting a paw on her shoulder was even more likely than usual to get him disemboweled– and this time, she probably wouldn't even notice she'd done it.
And the whole time, Ara laughed, and laughed, and laughed.
Then, quite suddenly, Kaval stopped binding a shallow cut on the marten's leg, unbent, and slapped her quite hard across the face.
The giggling stopped, but did an echoing encore for a few more seconds in the ringing ears of everyone else.
Ara made a very small noise, not quite a whimper and not quite a whine, slowly raised a paw to her stinging cheek and muzzle, and collapsed on the ground in a dead faint.
Kel stared at Kaval, stunned and... awed.
The female ermine, however, simply went on binding the scraps and cuts on the ferret and unconscious marten. When she was done, she straightened up, wiped her paws and said, "There. All done."
"...eh yeah, thanks," was all Kel could say.
"Thank you for your help," the ermine went on, "Er, I take it the... 'Sue' is destroyed now?" She still pronounced the word carefully, as one might with a word in a foreign tongue, but she knew enough now to sound distasteful.
"Yeh-yeah," the ferret nodded.
"Good," Kaval smiled. She looked over at Gulo, Shard and Freeta: Shard and Freeta were still standing well away from the wolverine, tossing more bags of cheetos towards him, wincing as their Great and Fearsome Leader devoured the crispy yellow-orange junk food.
Somehow the sight of cheeto-dust covering Gulo's mouth and claws was a scarier sight than seeing him covered in blood and guts. No one particularly wanted to contemplate why.
"Well, since the captain and his wife are busy tending to Lord Gulo's needs, I suppose I'll be the one to reward you," went on Kaval, snapping Kel out of his horrified staring. "What do you wish? Just tell me?"
The ferret stared into the white-furred face of the female ermine who had helped him and Arawolf on their dangerous mission, and thought that that face was a rather nice face, all things considered...
Kel smiled. He knew just what to ask for.
Arawolf Beechclaw yawned; that had been one crazy dream she had had. More like a nightmare, actually, what with the wolverines, and the Sue she hadn't managed to personally kill, and all the teenage vampire romance... eurgh. Well, at least she was awake now, and she'd forget about it soon enough. With another wider, more langourous yawn, she completely failed to sit up and stretch her arms.
She was already sitting up, for one thing; for another, moving her arms at all was currently not an option.
Ara looked down at herself.
Thick fabric, up to her chest. White. Straps. Not so good with the breathing.
"What the-?!" the marten yelped. "A straitjacket?! Which one of you sons of shoggoths had the death wish to bloody put me in a bloody straitjacket? HEY! If I don't get an answer in the next five seconds, I'll... oh, blast it, I'll– I'll bite your legs off!"
She continued in this vein for the better part of the next ten minutes, and spent the next fifteen cursing them all in a mix of surprisingly good Latin and something that sounded like it should have twisted the vocal cords of anything even vaguely humanoid into knots. The names of Yog-Sothoth and other such eldritch personages popped up frequently, suggesting Ara had memorised more of the Necronomicon than was, for normal folk, compatible with sanity.
"Heh heh," Kelaiah chuckled quietly. "Thanks, Kaval."
"No problem."
A/N (Wolf): Well, this was an adventure, and no two ways about it. Mostly because I am, in fact, a lazy and rather unreliable git at times, and had an unfortunate tendency to vanish for months while this was in progress, without any kind of warning. Kelaiah has been forgiving beyond words, and I am sincerely sorry–however hollow this may ring– that I made him worry so much.
Confessional aside, it did feel good to finally finish this– we started it eons ago, one day, out of boredom, from a list of possible further assignments Kel had concocted. It wasn't numerically first in said list, but I said, "Hey, let's do this one!" And lo, for it was done. I think the most unsettling bit was to come back after one of those prolonged absences and find that he'd put in a Twilight reference. Which fit and all, because we were poking fun at the seductive powers of vampires, but we started this back in the Dark Ages, before Twilight had swept the nation off its feet. Ah, for those halcyon days of yore... But I digress.
Since I've got into the habit of doing disclaimers: any of the usual Monty Python, H.P. Lovecraft, Douglas Adams, or other sci-fi/pop culture/certain Disney movie references you may recognise are obviously not ours, and the Redwall 'verse, of course, is Brian Jacques's. Come to that, we could probably be sued for copyright infringement of Cheetos, but haven't multinational food corporations got anything better to do? But you never know, so– we don't own them. We just eat them, to our arteries' collective dismay.
The story that Ara tells about her author's teacher is, you will probably not be surprised to find, true. I was a titchy, overimaginative eighth-grader who lived, slept, and breathed Redwall– what do you want from me? (Yes, yes, I know, some updates more than once a geologic era would undoubtedly be nice...)
A/N (Kel): Heh heh, yes, well, while I do admit I was upset and worried that Wolfy here had vanished without warning for like a thousand years, I am still very happy and grateful that we finally managed to finish this up, and that its a great relief to find that my partner-in-SueSlaying was merely being lazy rather than dead.
Other than that... oh yes, and one more disclaimer: the idea to have Gulo give up his cannibal ways for junk food was actually inspired by Kenzie Farsight's fic "The Insanities", so give her some credit as well.
Hopefully you all enjoyed this, and... I can't think of anything else to say. Other than:
ARA FAINTED AND KEL DIDN'T! ;) XD (Heh, sorry Wolf, couldn't resist.)