Insert Epic Space Opera Here

by Library Arcanium

Adrian and Tash take a short break to do some stargazing and get away from everything, but Phoenixia's disappearence still haunts Adrian and with a startling discovery, a clue in the form of a new threat appears on the horizon. ACMSES Story.

2. Chapter 2: Spelling It With Numbers

Disclaimer: 7th Librarian and I don't own Star Wars. Whaddya know?

A/N: So, it's been three and a bit years. This is where 7th Librarian dropped Season 2 of the Anti-Cliché and Mary-Sue Elimination Society, and I decided to pick up the reins. Which means finishing this story.

Just a bit of explanation – since Season 2 marched on without this story, this chapter starts right after chapter 1, and then jumps through about six months, to allow the other stories to take place during it, before we officially kick the Season 2 finale off in chapter 3. It's fairly clear, but there will always be a few people who get confused.

So, this is chapter 2. And this is Mei1105 saying read on my pretties!

Insert Epic Space Opera Here

Chapter 2: Spelling It With Numbers

"Meeeeh..."

"Tashy? Time to get up Wildflower."

"Muufuuu..."

Adrian smirked. He knew just what his girlfriend was trying to say. It went something along the lines of "fuck off, I'm trying to sleep."

"We've got important things to do today."

"Muuuuuhhh..."

Deciding to take decisive action, Adrian fisted the duvet in both hands and whipped it off her with a sharp motion. The resulting shriek from the naked woman was enough to raise the dead.

"ADRIAN!" Red faced and now totally awake, Tash curled up instinctively against the cold – unfortunately for her, as she had been sleeping on her front, and all she succeeded in doing was causing her boyfriend's smirk to widen.

"Mmm...now there's a sight," the Librarian drawled.

"Gimmie my blankie!" Tash protested, rolling over and cuddling her pillow in a stubborn manner. Black smears rubbed off on the fabric and she groaned as she realised she had not taken her make up off before crashing into bed last night. Thinking on it, she couldn't remember much of last night after the hectic battle in the Star Wars fandom. They had parked the ships, and at that point the adrenalin had worn off and Adrian had been forced to carry her back to their bedroom.

She checked the alarm clock through foggy eyes and groaned. It was seven forty in the morning. They had got back less than five hours ago.

"We have a meeting in twenty minutes to discuss what we found last night," Adrian informed her. "Harriet called it as a matter of upmost urgency. We can't be late."

Tash scowled, and wondered for the millionth time how he could stand there looking fresh as a daisy with no sleep under his belt.

"Fine, I'll get in the shower..."

"You don't have time for a shower and breakfast Wildflower."

Tash gave him a look as she pawed on the bedside table for her hairclip. "If Harriet is running the meeting, she will understand why I need my Lush time. Especially after last night." Scooping her hair back and out of the way, she rummaged in the drawer for clean underwear. "Make yourself useful and go get me toast, a glass of water and my pills from the kitchen."

She paused as she saw him smirk again. "And no. You cannot join me!" She closed the bathroom door with a little more force than necessary.

Despite Adrian's grievances, they did make it to the meeting with two minutes to spare, and toast still hanging unattractively out of Tash's mouth. In an act of childish defiance, she had scooped up the pillow before leaving, and made a point of putting it firmly on the boardroom table as she sat down, before nuzzling her damp head of hair back into it and closing her eyes. Important meeting or not, she was tired, and her pride would be damned if she took orders from a man...even if he was sexy, adorable and made her feel tingly in all the right places...

"Surprise Boob Hug!" Harriet made her grand entrance, throwing her arms over her friend's shoulders – unfortunately since Tash was nearly flat, her hands wound up in her solar plexus rather than the targeted boobs.

"Hati baby, with you, it's never a surprise," Tash said sweetly, before burying her face back into the pillow. Harriet ceased her groping and took her place at the head of the table.

"Right! Who are we missing?"

The boardroom table was almost half empty, and even as she spoke, Red and Gareth meandered their way in, carrying Starbucks trays in their arms.

"Aha! Our libations!" Harriet beamed. "Thank you my underlings! Gareth, consider your budget restored!"

The mad scientist beamed and began scheming how to get hold of fifty toilets and a tonne of rocket fuel.

Minutes ticked by as the hot drinks were dished out to the sleepy agents, and Harriet grew steadily more and more frustrated. Finally she walked over to the projector screen on the wall, and pressed a button, causing it to roll back upwards into the ceiling. Behind it a glass screen revealed the tank below, and as if summoned by the new light, Fish Finger paddled past.

"New trick I've been teaching her," Harriet explained, banging a fist on the glass. As a Liopluerodon, Fish Finger did not have the greatest range of hearing (indeed, her sense of smell was the best sense), but it was enough to detect the vibrations in the water, and she swam off into the murky depths of the tank.

Pressing another button, Harriet opened up a hatch in the wall, and the Liopleurodon reappeared, clutching something small and orange in her mouth. She dropped it somewhere on the floor of her tank before swimming away. There was a clatter, and from the hatch in the wall appeared the rusty and very wet megaphone. Harriet seized it and leaned out of the door.

"ATTENTION ALL AGENTS! YOU ARE LATE TO THE EMERGENCY MEETING! IF YOU ARE NOT IN THE BRIEFING ROOM IN THE NEXT TWO MINUTES I'LL...I'LL..." she grinned with a sudden idea. "SEND (A) TO WAKE YOU UP!"

Within the next five minutes, the briefing room was full, some agents out of breath from running, others glaring hatefully at (a), who had come out of the whole incident looking smug.

"Just here to help, everyone," she smiled.

"You flashed me!" Stephen's voice was high pitched.

"Yeah me too!" Dave sounded appropriately scandalised. The digital Mary-Sue shrugged.

"It seemed the easiest way to get your attention..."

"Alright," Harriet got to her feet. "I call this meeting –"

"That is obscenely early..." Inara muttered under her breath, and a few people grumbled in agreement.

"– to order," Harriet continued, tactfully ignoring her. "I apologise for the hour and the short notice."

"Yes, why wasn't there a memo sent around?" Kyle asked, not bothering to muffle a yawn.

"Because Kyle, that's why it's called an 'Emergency Meeting'," Michael sighed, rubbing his eyes. "Emergency, generally implies that there wasn't time to send a message around."

"No need to be rude Michael. I was just curious..."

"Alright, shush!" Harriet pressed a finger to her lips, and gave them all a frown "Stop arguing. The sooner we get this done the sooner we can all go back to bed. (a), you can go now. Do something useful..."

"Can I tell everyone on Suebook about my new position?" the Sue asked hopefully. Harriet facepalmed.

"...sure. Why not? I'm sure they'll find out sooner or later."

"Yay!"

She vanished in a flash.

"Okay what is (a) doing here?" Ben was the first to ask. "And why has she been popping up all over the place this morning?"

Feeling a sting as he remembered setting Judas Phoenix into motion earlier that morning, Adrian brushed it off. "That's not important right now. We've got bigger problems."

It took all of half an hour to explain the previous night's encounter with the star destroyers and the sword-shaped station in the middle of the suns, the yawns eventually dying down as everyone sat up and started paying attention as it became clear that this was no small task.

"So!" Harriet rose to her feet with a grin. "This should be straightforward then! We can't have a Sue or Stu running around the Star Wars fandom with a massive plothole generator large enough to take an entire army through! So, a group of us plothole in there, pay the Sue a visit, then be home in time for the Test Match!"

Rolling his eyes, Adrian pressed a few buttons on the view screen. "It's not that simple, Harriet. The scans show that the entire station is warded against plot holes. And I speak from experience when I say that these wards are like nothing I've ever seen before. There's no way we'll be able to plothole our way in."

"So we take a few ships and fly our way in!" Harriet gestured grandly, almost spilling her Frappuccino all over her dozing second in command. "Dock with the station – take the Sue out, be home in time for the Test Match."

"You can't fly a spaceship," Adrian reminded her patiently. "None of you can."

"I can drive a car!" Harriet protested. "That can't be so different! Tashy can't even drive a car, and she can fly the Manta!"

"Yo!" hearing her name being called, Tash raised a hand, her face still buried in the pillow. The sweatdrop on Adrian's head grew fatter.

"I will debate the definition of the word flying with you later," he addressed the leader. "The point is, no one is going in there without some serious flight training first. And it wouldn't hurt for you all to have weapons training either."

"And then we go on the mission and watch the Test Match?"

"Training will take at least a week!"

"Why don't you want me to watch my Test Match?!"

Perhaps getting tired of the circular conversation, Michael slithered between the two pink-faced leaders and pushed them gently back into their seats.

"Where exactly is this space station, Adrian?" he asked, trying to draw a compromise. "If we can find a close enough place to plothole into, maybe we won't need to fly far at all?"

Obligingly, Adrian pressed another button on the screen to draw up the star chart for the area of space that they had been cruising through the previous night, before running the search for Sueish activity. To his confusion and dismay, the screen flashed once for a moment, before the dialogue box pinged back empty, the message "No Anomalies Detected" flashing forlornly at the bottom.

"What?" Kitty ears twitching in confusion, the Librarian pressed a few commands, only to be rewarded with the same information. "It has to be there! We were in this area of space!"

"You didn't get coordinates?" Tash lifted her head in surprise. Her boyfriend met her with a dry look.

"Did I stop in the middle of a space battle with an entire fleet's worth of fighters to check exactly where we were?"

"Scuse me your majesty…" Tash huffed, going back into her pillow. Around her, several Society agents tutted and began to fidget impatiently, and Adrian's cheeks went pink.

"It has to be there!" He protested. "How do you hide an entire space station?!" His eyes narrowed and he whirled in the direction of the holoprojector. "(a)!"

With a pop, the digital Sue appeared on the table behind him. "(a) your service!" she giggled. "That is never going to get old!"

"What have you done to my scans?!" Adrian growled, his hands on his hips. Pouting, the silver-clad Sue tilted her head.

"Me? I haven't done anything. Well that's not true actually. Since leaving you twenty minutes ago, I have found three viruses in the computer system and quarantined them, read everything in the digital archives and organised everybody's mission reports, added some extra RAM to the central database so that it doesn't lag when you're all streaming videos, and changed every calculator in the Library so that they all spell 'boobies'." She giggled again. "I'm so clever!"

"So you haven't tampered with Adrian's scans?" Harriet asked, trying to diffuse the clearly frustrated Librarian.

"Why would I do that?" (a) asked, in a politely curious voice. "That would be unhelpful."

Adrian groaned, head in his hands as he sank back into his seat. His girlfriend leaned forward and began to rub the tip of his tail, causing his fur to flatten.

"Well then, as the help system," Harriet said pointedly. "Is there anything that you can tell us about this patch of the Star Wars fandom that we might find helpful?"

(a) seemed to think about this for a heartbeat, before she shrugged. "There is no data."

"There has to be!" Tash was getting similarly frustrated now. "We saw that station with our own eyes."

"There is no data," (a) repeated.

Harriet narrowed her eyes. "(a) can you search that area of space for a star in two halves?"

There was another pause. "There is no data."

"Can you find any star in that area of space?"

"There is no data." The Sue blinked at her. "Can I go back to Suebook now?"

"Yeah, off you go," Harriet waved, and with another cheerful giggle, (a) vanished.

"Well that was pointless," Rhia huffed from the other side of the table.

"I don't think so," Harriet smirked at the table. "I think that was most illuminating." She turned to her charge. "Emily, I need you to get to set up a programme for the Library computer systems."

The red-haired girl beamed. "Search programme?"

"Bingo," Harriet nodded. "Sweep every inch of that fandom if you have to. I want you to find that star. However it's hidden, I doubt it'll be able to survive a deep probe. In the meantime, I am going to put together a list of agents who will begin having regular flight simulation training – yes Adrian, you can organise that, and some weapon training sessions. It will keep you busy. Emily, from now until this Sue or Stu is found, your mission when you're not at school, is to find that station. Tashy stop drooling on your pillow – it's unattractive. Yes Alice, I know you can't fly a spaceship, you can stop waving your hand at me. Ben, you have five seconds to get those headphones out of your ears, or I will find somewhere more uncomfortable to put them."

She drew herself up to her full height. "We might have temporarily lost the Sue's whereabouts. And we might not get an exact location for days...weeks...months...I don't know. But that does not mean that you don't need to take this seriously. I expect to see everyone in their appropriate training sessions, in addition to their usual duties, regardless of how early it is, or how unlikely it may seem that we will find the Sue. Our success rate recently has been low. I will not have it continue, especially not in a fandom this size. Anyone found slacking off or sleeping on the job," she glared pointedly at several dozing faces around the table. "Will be disciplined by me."

It was remarkable how quickly everybody sat upright. Smile turning abruptly pleasant, Harriet clapped her hands.

"Well, if that is everything, you can all expect a full mission list to be issued within an hour, which should be just enough time for you all to get dressed and have breakfast before the Test Match. Dismissed my underlings!"

OOO

"I'm going to kill you," Emily growled. "I'm going to set Trojans on your limbs and stick a Worm up your ass..."

"Excuse me?" A single plucked eyebrow arched over the rim of a mug of tea as Harriet stalled in her leisurely walk to the flight simulation room. She had no idea where this room had come from, nor any of the training rooms that they would be using after lunch, for they had never existed before – she had strongly suspected for a long time that Adrian had the magical ability to pull any room he wanted out of his arse. If she asked him for a cricket pitch he probably had three of the bloody things stashed away.

Groaning in frustration, Emily threw up her hands and leaned back in her seat. The monitor room was empty for once, as the rest of the agents scrambled to do their assigned duties. Harriet had split every agent into one of five teams – two flight squads to engage with whatever enemies that they might encounter in space, a Strike team to get onboard and arrest the Sue or Stu, a Retrieval team who would act as evacuation and medical support back in the Library, and a Comms team to manage the communication between the teams. The two flight squads were making haste to the flight simulation room, while Harriet hoped that the other three teams would be heading to the wardrobe as instructed – they had a large number of flight suits to assemble.

"For a race who are supposed to be superior and intelligent, (a) is actually one of the dumbest beings that I have ever come across!" the twelve year old exclaimed. "You know she said she set every calculator to spell boobies?"

"Yeah?" Harriet frowned, curious as to why Emily was getting so worked up about such a juvenile prank.

"She wasn't just talking the big calculator covered in stickers that sits on your desk to help you work out the budget," Emily informed her gravely. "Computers? They're full of calculations. Every program in a computer has a calculator, running numbers in order to make the system work. (a) just reprogrammed most of our computer system to spell boobies. I have yet to work out if this was a deliberate effort to piss me off, or if she's just that brain-dead stupid."

There was a giggle from the speakers, and a row of hearts crossed the screen, reforming to spell out the seven letter menace.

"Teehee! It's funny because I've spelt it with numbers!" the Mary-Sue's voice tittered.

"It's not funny, (a)!" Emily snarled. "I've got enough to do without you screwing around! Now I've lost most of the day because I'm going to have to reboot the entire computer system!"

"An entire day?" (a) asked incredulously, before giving a mocking tut. "Phoenixia would have done it in half an hour."

"Well Phoenixia isn't here now, is she?!" Emily bellowed. "I'm here! And I'm sorry that I am not her! I wish everyday that I was her! But I'm not! And it's only because I am not her that you are not out on your ass already! Now get out of my sight or I will email you to the sickest internet trolls that I can find, and I will enjoy what they do to you!"

Perhaps sensing that she had crossed a line somewhere, the hearts on the screen vanished into pixels.

"Emily," Harriet approached cautiously, but Emily's fight seemed to have drained along with (a)'s presence.

"I'm fine!" She protested, but the way she scrubbed her hand over her face betrayed the lie.

"Don't lie to me, it's insulting," Harriet said bluntly, parking herself on the counter in front of the younger girl. "I don't wish that you were Phoenixia, and I am not sorry that it's you here, and not her. So why are you?"

The look on Emily's face was strained as she tried to hold her composure. But Harriet's gaze was unrelenting, and the youngest Foxblade crumbled to it.

"It's all because of me that she isn't here," her voice was quiet with anger and self loathing. "She lost control because that tree fell on me and she thought that I was dead," her voice broke. "If I'd just left when Tash told me to, or not fallen for Runoa's stupid trap then she'd still be here!"

She scrubbed hard at her face, destroying the evidence of tears the instant that they appeared.

"And then what?" Harriet asked quietly. "That thing inside her – those sorts of things don't go away. She'd have come home...for a day, or a month, or a year, until it took over again. And then what would have happened? If she'd been on a mission when it happened, the Sue might have died. A canon character might have died? One of us might have died? Who's to say that you made the situation worse, when you have no idea of knowing how worse it could have been at another time or in another place?"

She leaned backwards against one of the monitor screens. "Phoenixia made the choice to run. I only hope that wherever she's run to, she remembers eventually that she is loved here. And when she does come back, she'll want her computer system in top shape. That's your job now."

Emily still looked to be wallowing in self pity, but she gave a sigh anyway. "Okay..."

She squeaked as the leader pulled her into a hug.

"I'm definitely not sorry that you're here," Harriet repeated. "And no one else is either." She stroked Emily's hair gently, before releasing her. "Now enough misery. We've got work to do. A lot of work to do..."

OOO

Two days later, Harriet did not need hard work – she needed a miracle.

Learning to fly in a straight line stopped feeling like an achievement after most of the flight squads had taken twenty four hours to do it. The only positive outcome was that every one of them was now familiar with the eject buttons strapped to their wrists, and their reflex time was impressive. For two hours every morning, every piloting agent had been tucked away in a section of the Library, in a flight simulation pod, training themselves in the art of space battles.

If art was really the right word for the mess that they made…

Aside from the Comms, Strike and Retrieval teams, the only other people exempt from the training were Tash and Emily, both whom would be piloting the Manta. As they both knew the controls back to front and inside out, there was no need for them to be trained. They had vanished off that morning, with determined looks on their faces. Harriet pitied whoever or whatever was on their hit list today.

Inside the pods, it was a chaotic explosion of laser fire, fireballs and spaceships performing stunts that would have made George Lucas weep. Now that they had mastered flying in a straight line, Adrian was expecting them to learn evasive manoeuvres, which left all the agents weaving around virtual space like a bunch of drunken pixies. His expectations were being quickly dashed.

"DRAKE!" Dave finally gave into frustration and screamed as his ship was incinerated for the fifth time. "YOU'RE DOING THIS ON PURPOSE NOW!"

"I'm not!" the response came through his earpiece. "You keep getting in the way! ACK!" he gave a girly scream as another fighter swept in and blasted his craft into smithereens. "JESS!"

"I'm sorry, Drake," Jess said in a completely unconvincing tone of innocence. "You got in the way."

There was a cacophony of explosions, and a craft overshot the fireball before it burst outwards like a miniature sun.

"Woo!" Rhia cheered. "Awesome!"

"How are you doing this?!" Ben demanded, struggling to hit the ship that danced in and out of the crosshair on his weapons. He checked the little score chart in the corner of his screen and saw that Society chef was outstripping everyone else in the battle by miles.

"Easy!" Rhia said. "I just imagine that the ships have the faces of someone I hate printed on them. Right now each of those ships has Roxelana's face on it for me!"

There was a long silence, and then Ben finally shrugged.

"Alright then Neb, eat laser fire!"

The ship exploded into colourful pixels in his viewscreen.

"Oh I rock so hard!"

The battle cry was taken up, and red and green laser fire exploded through the screens as the agents went trigger happy on their targets.

"Take that Leonor!"

"See you in hell Ocean!"

"Die Katy Perry!"

"Death to UKIP!"

"So long Stephanie Meyer!"

"Goodbye Ben!"

"Cristoph! You're on the same team!"

Fortunately Harriet's cheerful voice appeared in everyone's ears.

"Time to power down my underlings! It's lunch time, and Alice and I bought everyone Subway!"

Five minutes later, there was a crowd of appeased agents lounging beside the pods with delicious warm bread stuffed to capacity in their hands.

"Mmm...shooting each other made me hungry..." Ben said, biting his sandwich in an over exaggerated fashion. Cristoph scowled at him, not noticing the mayonnaise dripping from his own sandwich onto his ninja garb, leaving a nice white stain against the black fabric.

"Well, I don't see any of us going toe to toe with canon characters," Michael admitted. He was not actually flying, but instead watching the battle footage playback on his laptop for his own amusement. "But for a mission like this we should be okay."

Harriet paused in the action of trying to lick teriyaki sauce off her chin, and beamed.

"Then we shall have this mission wrapped up in a jiffy!" she looked up from another bite just in time to see the two new arrivals. "And what do you two young ladies look so happy about?"

Emily was grinning like she had just won the lottery, and Tash was shimmying her way between the pods – something she only did when she was in an especially good mood. "We've just had a very productive morning, my dearest secret lover!"

"Oh really?" Harriet arched an eyebrow, and noticed the small rectangular plastic dangling from Emily's hand by a small chord. "What's that?"

Smirking wider, Emily held up the memory stick, and grinned at Tash, who did a small jig as she answered.

"Its (a)."

Clearly that was not what anyone had expected to hear. Several of them had forgotten how to chew, and bits of half masticated sandwich lay on display for the world to see.

"Yeuch! Guys!" Emily pulled a face. "Chew with your mouths closed!"

"That's (a)?" Harriet finally managed to articulate.

"Well...it's not (a) (a)," Emily explained. "(a)'s still in the Library computers and all over the multiverse. This is the copy of her that was in the Manta. I worked out how to extract her from the vehicles. Straight after lunch, we're going to do the same to the Phoenix Zord."

Chortling now, Harriet handed over their sandwiches, and plucked the memory stick from Emily to get a better look at it. It was a standard four gigabyte flash drive. Nothing special about it at all.

"How did you manage to get something as big and complex as (a) into a four gig memory stick?"

Pausing before taking a bite of chicken and bacon, Tash beamed. "We compressed her into a ZIP file. It's like the best diet she's ever had!"

As everyone giggled, a huffy voice appeared over the tannoy system.

"Well at least I don't need a diet!"

"OI!" Tash snapped, dropping her sandwich and placing her hands on her hips, even though (a) was not physically present in the room. Emily scowled, and took the memory stick back of Harriet, shoving her sub into her rucksack for later.

"Right...'scuse me everyone. I'm going to go flush this memory stick down the loo..."

And she stomped off.

Alice, who like Michael was not flying, and whose sandwich consisted of nothing but cheese, cheese, cheese and more cheese, frowned as she realised something

"Hey, y'know who else is missing? Kitty boy."

Sure enough, the fluffy eared Librarian was conspicuously absent, and everyone paused in eating, peering around as though they suddenly expected him to pop out of the ceiling.

"I didn't see him come out for lunch..." Michael muttered, getting to his feet. "Did anyone see him get out of his pod?"

There was a round of head shaking, and Michael marched over to where he knew Adrian had been seated for the last two hours. Rather than opening the pod and startling him out of his simulation, he un-tinted the plastic bubble over the top of the pod, allowing him to peer inside.

He doubled over in silent laughter, and waved everyone over.

"You've gotta see this!" he gasped, and everyone abandoned their sandwiches and raced to have a look.

In the squishy chair of the pod, the Librarian was hunched over his controls, his eyes gleeful as he twisted left and right, the racing car noises purring from his throat and completely undermining his serious expression.

"Nrrrrrrrrrr-nrrrrrrrr-nrrrrrrr..." Adrian trailed off seeing the amused faces of the Society watching him from outside. He blushed.

"Oh like you've never done it!"

OOO

"A week in and scan still ineffective..." Harriet muttered to herself, as she was born through the corridors on her litter. "Mind you, it's a big patch of space to search. At least everyone has mastered the art of dodging while under laser fire...I should cut training sessions back to one hour..."

The sounds of shouting echoed ahead of her, and she wondered if Emily was having another shouting match with (a). The younger girl had become fiercely protective of the computer system in Phoenixia's absence, and (a) seemed to have taken her ejection from the Manta and Phoenix Zord as a personal insult, leaving the two locked in a furious rivalry.

Her slaves gave yelps of distress, startling her from her thoughts. With a sway and a bump, they were forced to drop the litter at the side of the corridor as Harriet's furious distant cousin stormed up the corridor like a force of nature.

"Whoa Louise!" Harriet stopped the agent dead in her stride as she rubbed her shoulder from the graceless depositing of her litter. "That's an impressive shade of pink you're sporting there. What's eating you?"

She received a filthy glare in response. "Go and ask your bitch of a second in command! And while you're at it, teach her to better respect her elders!"

And she stormed off with a fury that could melt steel.

"Riiiight..." Harriet said slowly, straightening herself on her litter. "That doesn't sound good." She clapped her hands. "Boys! To the kitchen! I require a cup of tea and a chat with my Tashy baby before she gets into trouble." She broke off as her phone beeped to indicate the scheduling of a new mission in the Tales of the Otori fandom. "Oh…too late."

OOO

"Are you still awake?" Wrapping her dressing gown tightly around her waist, Harriet peered into the monitor room. The screens cast dark shadows onto Emily's face, but Harriet knew that not all of those came from the bad lighting. "You've had a really long day today, totalling Tashy's spaceship and all."

"It's not totalled!" Emily protested tiredly. She rubbed a hand over her face. "Not completely. We can fix her. She'll be back in working order before we find this Sue in Star Wars...if we find this bloody Sue in bloody Star Wars."

She angrily dismissed another failed search from the screen.

"We will find the Sue in Star Wars, Em," Harriet said. "You don't need to stay up at nights to do that...and you don't need to go running off into dangerous fandoms to prove a point."

Emily gave an impatient groan. "I think considering that I was in a building today with six Sovereigns and the Lieutenant Mary Sue and came out alive, I did okay."

"We have those entrance exams for a reason, Emily," Harriet said firmly. "Nobody is dismissing you. We all know that you have worth. But being an agent isn't about being capable. We're the Anti-Cliche and Mary-Sue Elimination Society. And a Society isn't one person. We work as a team. We consult. We plan, and we do things together."

There was a long silence, broken only by the continuous hum of the monitors. Harriet considered leaving and heading off to bed, but as she turned, Emily spoke.

"I didn't want to ask for help," she admitted. "I don't want to be the person that everybody helps all the time. I know I'm the youngest person in the Society, but I don't need to be babied."

"This isn't about babying you," Harriet soothed, turning so that she was half in and half out of the door. "Emily, we don't take anybody into the Society under the age of thirteen. It's not a personal attack on you. It's just a standard we have to adhere to."

"Besides," she added with a shrug. "It's only a few months now. Enjoy your freedom while it lasts. And anyone who still thinks that you're a child after you become an agent is an idiot of the highest order. Because after everything that's happened to us in the last season, none of us are children anymore."

OOO

Adrian had many training rooms. Nobody knew quite why he needed so many training rooms, and when asked, he would merely smile in a mysterious manner.

Adrian liked his mystery. When you lived with people who watched you eat crisps, go to the toilet and get your tail jammed in doors (not at the same time thankfully), your mystery tended to disappear somewhat, and it made him feel good that he still had some things in his arsenal that could genuinely make people scratch their heads and wonder. It gave him a sense of power.

Currently, he was in full mystery mode, striding back and forth along the short line of agents. The Strike Team had gathered in one of the training rooms for a little bit of weapons practise at the Librarian's insistence. The holo projectors hummed on the walls, occasionally flashing silver hearts across the floor as (a) became bored with the lack of action.

Adrian locked the door firmly, before turning to his students.

"Line up guys, and show me your weapons."

The Strike team consisted of Michael, Tash, Aster and Kyle. It had been decided that any more agents would be too risky, and as four of the strongest, their efficiency would more than make up for their lack of numbers. Glancing anxiously at one another, everyone did as they were told, some squeezing their beloved swords and staffs tightly as though afraid they would lose them forever. Adrian sighed.

"Relax. I'm not going to do anything. I just need to put a little spell on them so that they can stand up to lightsabers. Right now most of you would be left clutching a handle where your blades used to be..."

"We're not getting lightsabers?" Michael asked in a disappointed tone. The Librarian shook his head.

"Lightsabers are impossible to use to their full efficiency unless you can use the Force. None of you are Jedi so you're better off using a weapon that you're used to," he pulled a face and pulled out a lightsaber of his own. "And then there's this problem..."

Depressing the switch, the blue blade shot out of the end, complete with sound effect. In unison both Tash and Aster tilted their head sideways, their eyes wide and unblinking as they stared at the blade.

"Shiiiiiiny..." they cooed in unison.

"My point exactly..." the Librarian deadpanned, extinguishing the blade and reattaching it to his belt.

"Wait, you can't use the Force," Michael accused with a frown. "How come you're allowed to use one?"

"Number one because I'm badass like that," the Librarian smirked. "And two, I've had enough practise that I'm not going to chop my own ears off with a single swi-iiiiiinnng..."

He trailed off, his eyes rolling back into his skull as Tash took a fuzzy ear between her thumb and forefinger and gave the tip the tiniest of rubs. The Librarian went boneless, flopping against her and nuzzling his head into her chest.

"Okay Mister Badass Jedi Kitty, time to pop your ego."

"Mmm...nyeeeh..." Adrian shook his head free and twitched his ears back upright. Thoroughly embarrassed now, he made his way to the first person in the row – Michael – pressed a finger to the diamond blade and muttered a few words. It glowed white for a moment before fading again.

"Shiny," the Chief Agent remarked. Adrian flattened his ears against his head.

"Not you as well!"

It took very little time to strengthen everyone's blades, but it was still long enough for each agent to grow restless. Tash and Michael had abandoned all pretence of maturity (not that they had much in the first place) and were play fighting with each other. Adrian clapped his hands to bring them to order.

"Right, here's how this training is going to work. I can't work on you all individually – we don't have enough time. So we're going to do something different."

He snapped his fingers and this time, the lights dimmed, and the back wall slid away to reveal a long dark space beyond it. Scattered lighting slowly came on, revealing blank walls with pipes, boxes, barrels and debris littered across the floor.

"Oh look. Convenient chest high walls. I wasn't aware that Star Wars had merged with Call of Duty," Michael snorted. "Are we going to have to stare up each other's buttholes as we crawl through the grass too?"

Adrian tactfully ignored him. "That is your obstacle course. The way out is on the other side. We're going to do this for as long as it takes you all to get from A to B in one piece." He grinned abruptly. "Have fun!"

And he blurred into flash step before vanishing from sight.

"Hey!" All four agents protested, but the lights were already dimming, and there was a distinct hum as the holoprojectors whirred to life. From the walls, panels slid open and mounted gun turrets twisted into view.

"TAKE COVER!" Tash barked, as the holograms appeared –standard Imperial Stormtroopers, and (worryingly enough) a few generic looking Jedi thrown in to the mix – and the turrets opened fire with a shower of lasers. All four agents smacked to the ground and scurried for cover behind the littered debris.

"I love chest high walls!" Michael shouted. "Chest high walls are the best!"

"Ow! My hair!" Aster screeched, putting out the smoulders on the end of her ponytail.

"Can anyone see an opening?" Kyle asked, sounding far less ruffled than the rest of them, and attempting to reinforce his box by turning his omni-weapon into a shield.

"No, but I can see my imminent death!" Tash shouted back. "Is that helpful?"

"Not really, no!"

There was a crack as the pipe which Tash was hiding behind finally burst, steam hissing out in a cloud. Cover exploded around them, sending splinters of wood, metal and concrete everywhere.

"We need to get past them!" Michael shouted, partially distracted by the approaching Stormtroopers and Jedi – annoyingly enough, the lasers seemed to pass right through their holographic forms.

"Great – you go first!" Aster suggested, her expression as deadpan as her face.

"I can't move! You go first!"

"You have the Darkness!"

"You're a flipping Goddess!"

There was a startling silence as the lasers all shut off simultaneously. The petrified agents raised their heads, only to be confronted with the barrels of several blasters. As one, the Stormtroopers all raised their helmets – it was beyond disturbing to the Strike team to find an army of (a)'s faces staring at them from beneath.

"Teehee! You are now my prisoners!"

With a series of laser fire, all four agents lay twitching on the ground as the stunning charges raced up and down their bodies. Adrian strode up to them, as the holographic debris reset itself to pristine condition.

"We've got a long way to go," the Librarian sighed heavily.

OOO

"Anything?" Harriet asked, already knowing what the answer would be.

"No," petulantly, Emily prodded at the monitor screen. The monitor room had become something of a second bedroom in the weeks since the initial alert, with Emily's spare pillow and duvet resting on the sofa for when she felt the need to take naps during a search. Still, at least she had time to nap in between school and studying for the Society entrance exam now that she wasn't up at all hours playing TF2 with Passion. She was still curious and a little worried as to why he had suddenly disappeared from their online lives a few days ago. "But I heard something very interesting in the corridor earlier. You might not want to barge into Rhia's room with a mission tonight – sounds like she's finally getting lucky."

"Oh?" Harriet liked a gossip, particularly about her underlings. "With Cristoph?"

"Well I can't think of any other reason she would be moaning 'my ninja!' in the throes of passion."

Harriet snorted. "Wehey! At least one of us is having good sex." She stretched. "I'm on monitor duty in three quarters of an hour – how about I pull up a chair and order us some Nandos?"

"Sounds like a plan!"

OOO

Wrestling with the zip on her bag, Emily ducked into her registration class, elbowing one of the boys out of the way as she cleared the door. Her maths textbook – a heavy unwieldy thing that put JK Rowling to shame – tipped to the side, threatening to pull the zip open again. Cursing, the girl swung her bag onto her desk, determined to fix it before first period.

As the other students meandered in, bleary eyed and with the usual resentment that everyone felt on a Monday morning, she caught sight of the tall dark-haired form of Becky, and waved her quickly over. It was completely unnecessary, for the girl made a beeline for her anyway, a sheepish expression on her face.

"Hey Em. Hangover gone?" she casually sat on the desk next to Emily, even though that was not her usual spot. It didn't matter – Mr Williams was always late to registration, and the bell had only just gone. She slipped a hand into her pocket. "Think this belongs to you," she whispered, passing a ball of fabric and wire under the table. Emily smiled sympathetically and returned her own neatly folded piece of lace.

"Thank you," Emily replied, stuffing her bra down to the bottom of the rucksack, and rearranging the textbooks on top of it. "And yeah, I'm much better now. Spent most of yesterday with a banging headache...and then I got called into work afterwards. That was a bitch."

Becky tilted her head. "You work at a library, right?"

"Yup," Emily nodded, popping the word as she began fighting with the zip again. She was in a fortunate position to be at school in a city where there were three libraries and she could afford to be ambiguous – not that any of her classmates ventured into libraries in the first place.

"Well at least it was quiet," Becky pointed out bracingly. "My 'rents were out of town and my brother spent all Sunday playing Call of Duty – I got no sympathy from him. At least yours was peaceful."

Emily to reflect on the way she had charged into Baker's Street and melted several doors. "After a fashion," she muttered.

"Did we really do that thing with the traffic cones, or was I imagining that?" Becky asked, scratching her head.

"No we did," Emily nodded. "That wasn't the weirdest though – Mike called me last night – someone super glued his drawers shut. He's been wearing the same underwear since the party."

"Eww! Bet he's going mad," Becky leaned over the huge guy in the seat next door to try and catch a glimpse of Mike, just as the zip finally gave up struggling on Emily's bag. With a grin of triumph, she moved to slide it under the desk.

A foot came out of nowhere and kicked it from her hands. Something inside went crunch, and she prayed that it was not any of her Society tech.

"Oh I'm so sorry Emily," came Natalie's falsely sympathetic voice. "I didn't see you under there, being so short and all."

Pulling her head up from under the table, Emily pasted her most winning smile on her face. "That's okay Natalie. I mean, if I had a nose that size, I'd struggle to see past it too."

It was clearly too early in the morning for Natalie to have a decent comeback – she just turned puce as a few girls a few desks over began to snicker, and lifted her chin. "You'd better watch yourself, Foxblade."

"Why wouldn't I watch myself?" Emily smiled in pleasant mock confusion. "I'm rather attractive, don't you know."

With a noise that sounded a lot like "Ugh! Freak!" Natalie swanned off into the back of the room to take her seat. A few seats away in a cluster of boys, Emily caught Mike's eye, and got a thumbs up from him.

Becky snorted. "How the hell do you do that? Do you have comebacks prepared on cards in your pocket or something?"

"Nope, just constant exposure," Emily shook her head. "The only way to survive in my household is with quick wit and sarcasm."

Her bag began to vibrate, and she almost dropped it in surprise. It seemed her phone was not damaged at least from Natalie's large feet, and she tugged it out to have a look. Emily had spent the better part of the months since passing her entrance exam creating a Plot Summary app, which could be downloaded to phones or tablets for agents to use in the field. Currently they were still in beta, being a bit more basic than the full plot summary, and still containing several bugs, but they were enough for her to get important updates while she was in school.

Her stomach gave a funny little flop when she read the message.

"Everything okay?" Becky had made to go to her own seat, but the expression on her classmate's face stopped her in her tracks.

"Fine," Emily said automatically. "I just need to go. Family emergency."

The lie rolled off her tongue, and she felt a little guilty that Becky believed her so quickly.

"Want me to tell Anna and Miki?" she asked, knowing that both of Emily's best friends were in different registration classes.

"Please," Emily shouldered her bag and kicked her chair back under the table. "I'll text them later. Wish me luck!"

Becky did, even though she clearly wasn't sure exactly what she was wishing her luck for. But Emily knew that luck was what she needed right now, as her phone screen zoomed in on a chunk of space, where a split star burned away like a candle flame.

The time had come.