Chapter 4: In which an unpleasant Stu-thor comes to a sticky end...
Oh, now that was just. Plain. Wrong. Mary felt as if her mind had been reduced to a quivering puddle in the darkest corner of her skull, praying desperately for some bleach. The fic was like... like some deformed love-child of "Luthien" and "Tea-setting Neville". Brekke and Mirrim weren't her favourite characters, but she would admit to having a soft spot for F'nor and Canth. Even so, that wasn't the point. Not even Toric deserved a Gary Stu like that! She scanned the titles of the Stu-thor's other stories. Hmph. Deserving or not, it seemed like not a single 9th pass character, Toric included, had escaped unscathed.
Well, there was only one answer. Mary Sue quickly sent a follow-up e-mail to her mystery friend.
Josh flexed his puny muscles, and read his most recent batch of e-mails. One in particular was rather intriguing. Not that it was at all believable, but the thought of actually going to Pern in person, and meeting all his favourite characters... ooh, he could write a story about that all right! Featuring himself, the one and only Josh Benford, rather than just a proxy Gary-Stu. Hmmm.
Josh read through the e-mailed instructions one last time, then pulled his well-thumbed copy of "People of Pern" off his bookshelf. He clearly visualised his destination, and the people he wanted to introduce himself to, and started to reel off the required phrases.
"...take me to Fort Hold, right now!"
After a moment of blackness, a beautiful landscape appeared in front of his eyes. Grass, a river, trees. He spun round to look for the hold itself.
He was standing right beside a rocky cliff that looked as if it could have been where Fort Hold was meant to be. But as for the Hold itself... well, it just wasn't there.
"I said, take me to Fort Hold, right now!" he shouted, hoping this time it would work properly. The scenery flickered once, but remained suspiciously unchanged. Confused, he listened as his words echoed back to him.
"...right now... now... now."
Whoops.
Still, he was actually on Pern, and the 21st century would be pre-thread, right? He worriedly glanced around, not sure which way was east. Well, there didn't seem to be any tell-tale shimmers of grey haze or anything, so he guessed he was safe. And that wasn't all! He could see actual, living, breathing, flying firelizards! Maybe he could find a clutch of eggs, and impress some?
Josh started to walk towards the group of firelizards, slowly and quietly so as not to disturb them. But they must have spotted him, as the entire group vanished before he got halfway. Disappointed, he sat down on a nearby rock and wondered what to do next.
He didn't have to wonder for very long. A sudden squarking alerted him to a brown flit flapping overhead, eyes whirling the orange of alarm.
"Hey little guy, I won't hurt you," he said, trying to emote some friendly thoughts. But the creature just blinked between again.
The implication that the arrival of thread hadn't been responsible for inspiring that skill in firelizards was completely lost on him. A species can't evolve an ability like teleporting over night, after all. If Josh had had time to think things through properly, he might just have realised that some other menace might still be lurking on the surface of Pern.
Such as a nasty, vicious, very fast predator.
Disappointed that his warning had been ignored, the brown flit returned to his fair. They'd seen the newcomer arrive, and it seemed to have the same kind of ability as themselves. But if it was stupid enough to sit on top of the monster's feeding grounds, well, that was just too bad.
AN: There are a few deliberate mistakes in this chapter. If you spot them, you'll understand why! If not, just rejoice in your innocence, and be happy you can still wear lavender.
As for the pre-thread predator (Let's call it Velocigomphio acanthacrypto, at least until someone pulls me up on my misuse of Latin...), well, it's something I've been musing about for a while. We do know that the Pernese fauna is pretty limited in scope, and that there are other creatures in the fossil record. Of course, fossil records are decidedly patchy things at the best of times, and, with the whole population geared around fighting thread in the first pass, any amateur paleontologists never really got much of a look in! Still,despite having absolutely no real evidence, I say it's a plausible idea, and I'm gonna hang onto it! Anyone else who wants to play with it is more than welcome.