siriusblackrose: Mary-Sue is intended as a parody or deconstruction (or something) of Mary Sues, if that helps. I'm afraid she does play a moderately significant role, though (I wrote the entire story offline – not sure if that's ok or what). There may be "straight" Mary Sue characters but those are unintentional.


Then, for some reason, we were in the Forbidden Forest. Somewhere in the distance a unicorn was drinking Professor Quirrell's blood, but nobody seemed to care. Sally put her hands over her ears and shouted something too obscene to repeat here.

"What –" I began.
"Who the hell just fixed my telepathy? It was fine before – now I'm subjected to your bloody stupid thoughts in every last detail! Why in the name of moronium are you all thinking about women in bikinis?! Even the girls! Sheesh."
"I admit it's a chronic problem for me," said Spike, "but you didn't need to tell everyone about it."
"Well, I am a lesbian," said Meg. "You got a problem with that?"
"Calm down, everyone," said Harry. "We can handle this rationally. For starters, this type of telepathy doesn't exist in this universe: the version we use is voluntary and only works when you're –"
"– looking someone in the eyes," Sally finished. "That's fine and dandy, but telling me I can't do what I'm doing doesn't help me in the slightest. You never thought of that, naturally, because you're distracted by the imaginary women in bikinis. What am I supposed to do now that the plot has gone off the rails and isn't tailored to showcase your rationalist theories? Oh, and your Occlumency thingie doesn't keep me out. At all."
"Weren't we supposed to find out what's killing the unicorns?" I asked. No one listened to me.
"At least you don't have a useless power any more," said Beanbag. "Like the rest of us."
"You have got to be kidding me – how on earth is it useful to know about everyone's rubbish sexual fantasies? It's not, that's how. Also, how come the women are always the ones who get stuck with useless psychic stuff, while the men get all the cool, useful powers? Well, you folks aren't all that useful, but you know, in properly done superhero works. I guess it's because I'm supposed to be more in tune with others' emotions. Well, I say your emotions can all go to hell!"
There was a brief period of silence, during which we all stared at each other and the trees turned into chainsaws.
"We seem to be suffering from canon defilement," said Mary-Sue, who had somehow grown a new pair of shoes; the new shoes had pink snakes all over them. "Canon defilement is when canonical events, rules and characters are, you know, defiled. I take great joy in defiling canon, but it seems you lot are trying to usurp my role. I shall have to do something about this. Perhaps I'll just kill all of you... but that would be too stereotypical, and I'd show myself to be flawed, which would be unacceptable. Whatever shall I do?"
"How'd you get those shoes?" Harry asked. "You can't just materialise stuff out of nowhere. That violates the Law of Conservation of Mass."
"I can do anything I want because I'm awesome and you're not," she snapped.
"Besides, the universe doesn't work according to the laws of anything in particular," I said. "We figured that out ages ago, remember?"
"Mrrowr?" said Mouse.
Hewlett turned into a printer and started printing off sheets that materialised out of nowhere, making horrible noises as he crumpled them up.

In the middle of this unproductive exchange, a further distraction appeared. A woman's voice shouted: "Chainsaws?! Not chainsaws again! If they send me to one more stupid chainsaw forest, just one more, I'm going to bring back one of these and they can talk to that."
"That's weird," said Sally. "Where is she? I don't sense –"
The owner of the voice stepped out from behind a tree. "Yeah, no kidding. That's what this here tin foil hat is for." She tapped her head, which was indeed covered in tin foil; pale hair peeked out around the edges. "Sure they call it some kind of technobabble thingamajig, but at the end of the day it's just a tin foil hat. By the way, Miss Jones, you're under arrest."
"Huh? I am?"
"Unauthorised use of pseudoscientific abilities. I overheard the conversation."
Harry broke in. "You were here this whole time and you only just now noticed the chainsaw trees?"
"They only just now turned into chainsaws. When I got here they were trees. It's a shapeshifting forest. Those are so last year, you know?"
"Also, since when are 'pseudoscientific abilities' a crime, and how do you know Sally wasn't making it up? It's well known that only one kind of telepathy exists in this universe and it isn't the kind she claims to have."
The strange woman facepalmed. "This universe? I don't know what you're talking about, and I don't want to know, but you're right – I'm an idiot. As usual." I was surprised; I thought I was the only idiot around here. She took off her hat, revealing shoulder-length sandy hair that looked like it had just come out of a hat.
When she spoke again, her tone was exasperated. "Yes, she's telling the truth. Nice to know my hair's a mess; I figured it would be. Also nice to know I look good in this outfit. Why do they make me wear this stupid skin-tight getup and then expect me to go out in public with my head uncovered? No respect for us women, I tell you. Well, I'm going to play annoying music in my head for the rest of today, and you get to listen to it, Sally."
Sally looked incredulous. "So you're... but I thought I was unique. We're all unique. Isn't that right, Lily?"
Now it was my turn to look incredulous. "You're asking me? I don't know anything and I have no idea what's going on half the time, never mind right now. Reality in these parts is almost always out to lunch, so I gave up trying to think logically about five jillion years ago."
"What in the name of cat barf is that supposed to be?" demanded the tin foil hat woman, pointing at Hewlett who began to beep furiously and spit paper everywhere. "No, don't tell me, I know now. Good grief, how unscientific. Hewlett, dear, don't you know you're illegal? Yes, shapeshifting violates the law of conversation of mass, and artificial intelligence hasn't been invented yet so no mechanisms for it are present. Even if it's, shall we say, artificial stupidity rather than intelligence."
"Hey, wait a minute," Harry broke in again. "Are you saying the laws of physics have to be enforced by someone or else they don't apply? That's nuts. I mean, magic is weird to begin with, but if some law doesn't apply in a given situation, then it just doesn't apply. Right?"
For the first time I noticed the logo, or whatever it was, on Tin Foil Woman's outfit. (It was a dress, actually, with a skirt that came to her knees.) It was a toilet roll inside a not sign. What the heck? What did she have against toilet paper?

She made some kind of disgusted noise. "I dunno. I haven't slept since, like... what year is this again?"
"2015," I said.
"2015?!" Harry repeated. "I thought it was 1992."
"The Roman Empire never ended," said Spike, "so it must be either 138 or 115, depending on which of you is correct."
"You're all wrong," said Beanbag. "It's obviously twenty minutes into the future."
"That's a relative time, not an absolute time," said Meg. "'The future' isn't a year, in case you hadn't noticed. You need to decide which future before you start talking about –"
"Okay, that's enough." Tin Foil Woman sounded coldly authoritative again. "I give up. This entire region of reality is under arrest, I reckon. You guys haven't got a clue what's going on because this place is so bloody confusing that it must have been designed by magic mushrooms that were high on stupid pills. I think they get a kick out of sending me to places like this, but I don't know what they're thinking because of all their fancy technology stuff and whatnot. It's not fair, you know?"
The trees were rainbow lasers instead of chainsaws. The wind blew through the trees, but the noise it made sounded like music; an ominously alien kind of music, but music nonetheless.

Meg was glaring at Tin Foil Woman. "Let me get this straight. Have you been –"
She cut her off. "Yes, I have, and I've been reading everyone else's minds too so don't get the idea that you're special. Save your breath, Big Bird: I already know you think it's unethical because you're still closeted and all that jazz, but you know what? I don't have a choice. It's my job to scan for subversive thoughts, and if I pick up other stuff along the way, too bad. It was either this or be locked up. So I'm making you angry – do I look like I give a flying frog? Go ahead and set yourself on fire, see if I care. I've seen worse. Do you know what they do to us? It's unspeakably awful."
A heavy silence settled over our region of the forest, broken only by the wind-music and the faint buzzing of the "trees". They looked kind of like lightsabers with branches. It didn't have any mass or weight, of course, being merely the absence of sound, but it stood in stark contrast to the lively dialogue that had until now animated the party. Meg looked really upset.

At length, Spike broke the silence. "Whoa, what? That's your job? Babylon 5 called, and they... yeah. You know."
"I'm not from Babylon 5. I'm real, and I don't just mean 'real', I mean real with a capital S. That is to say, I don't know either. They keep flip-flopping about what we're supposed to do, and I swear, sometimes they just want us to go around being evil and creepy for no reason. What was I doing again? Oh yeah, I think the noodles are about to boil over and we need to put old moldy t-shirts in the salad, but we have to chop them up first and –" she interrupted herself as Mary-Sue and Draco reappeared from the Porta-Potty that had somehow materialised in front of a tree. "Snakes? Snake hair? How can this be?! You're an abomination! a crime against nature!" She devolved into incoherent yelling and ran off into the great wide nowhere.