Author's Note:

Sorry about the delay, it's been a busy week. I hope that people enjoy the next chapter. I just thought I'd clarify that Raoul is an original character.

Chapter #6:

After they had told us everything that they knew about the Sue Joanne and Mitch exchanged looks.

"It's the same Sue," Simon exclaimed. Kip looked over at him sharply.

"I knew it," she crowed, "you are looking for Nicole."

"Well of course we are," Joanne burst out, her temper getting the best of her as she rounded on Kip fiercely, "she's our friend and we know the kind of witch hunt that your Section likes to pull. I'm not going to let you do that to Nicole. I know that there's a reason she's doing this."

"What reason could there be?" Kip demanded. Joanne sighed and I knew she was going to tell them everything that she knew.

"Lass," Gimli whispered to me, "let's take a walk."

"Without the others?" I asked softly.

"While no one is paying attention to you," he explained, "Joanne and Mitch could come but I couldn't get them away without drawing attention." With a nod I began to follow Gimli. Together we slipped, unnoticed, out of the room. Then we went outside, into the dark night.

"Where are we going?" I asked with a slight shiver.

"To see Nicole."

A few minutes later we were walking along the outside of the city, not far from where we'd set the traps for the Sues the last time I'd been to Middle Earth. I saw a figure in a cloak hunched over a fire.

"Who's there?" the voice asked.

"Gimli and Amy," the dwarf replied. The figure pulled their hood off and I saw Nicole's worn face grinning at me.

"I suppose I was right in guessing that you, Mitch, and Joanne wouldn't come here alone," she mentioned as she motioned for Gimli and I to sit down around the warm fire.

"A Section 1 Agent named Kip and a man named Simon," I told Nicole. I looked over at her, worried by what I was seeing.

In the harsh flickering light of the fire I could really see just how gaunt and painfully thin Nicole's face was. There were large the circles around her green eyes and her eyes themselves were bloodshot, probably from lack of sleep. She looked older then she had when I had met her, and not only because when I had met her she had been undercover as a High School student.

"Are you all right?" I asked.

"I've been better," she admitted bitterly after a pause, "but it's ok, I'll be fine." She looked into the fire, thinking. "Agent Kip," she sighed finally, "I should have known. Kip's the best at her job. And I'm sure by now she'll have figured out that I'm here somewhere."

"How would she know?" I asked.

"She's just good at finding people," Nicole shrugged, "she'll figure out that the Mary Sue is the one that I'm after. It doesn't take a genius. Kip will have me thrown into a dungeon while the Sue remains free." Nicole grabbed a stone and threw it off into the dark in frustration.

"But you know how to fight this Sue," Gimli pointed out, "this woman must realize that you can help."

"Kip is one of the best," Nicole said with a shrug, "but she knows nothing about Mary Sues. The section Kip works for don't deal with Sues often and so they tend to write them off as harmless annoyances. Granted they normally are nothing more but… well," she sighed, "once in a while they're dangerous. Like this Sue, she'll be hard to defeat. But it can be done if you know how."

"But you do know how?" I asked. Nicole laughed for the first time.

"Yes," she confirmed with a smile, "but it won't be easy."

"I didn't think it for a second," Gimli told her with a smile of his own, "but I hope at least it's fun."

"Oh don't worry," Nicole assured him, "it'll be a lot of fun."

"That's the Nicole I know," I said. It was the first time since this whole mess had begun that I felt as if things would actually turn out all right.

--

Eowyn woke up with a pounding headache and a chain on her ankle. She also vaguely remembered being captured my, of all things, a Mary Sue. Yes, this was the recipe for a very bad day and Eowyn knew it before she'd even sat up.

"You're awake," Eowyn started and looked over to see a girl, a young girl, sitting next to her. The girl was also secured to the wall by a chain attached to her ankle. The girl had curly black hair and a serious face. Her eyes were green and seemed somewhat familiar to Eowyn, though she couldn't place them.

"Who are you?" Eowyn asked.

"I'm Rebecca," the girl said, "the pig keeps me a prisoner."

"The pig?" Eowyn asked.

"That's what I call the Sue," Rebecca explained with a small grin, "she wants me to call her your highness or other such nonsense but I always call her a pig. It's because she likes pink so much and always wears it. Also because she hates to be thought of as a fat slob." Eowyn couldn't help but to grin back at the little girl.

"My name is Eowyn," she told the girl.

"You made the pig angry," Rebecca said in awe, "she was really pitching a fit. I haven't seen her that mad in years. It was brilliant!"

"Well," Eowyn told the girl softly, "I'll bet it'll make her even more mad if we escape." The girl's face fell.

"I want to but I haven't been able to," Rebecca said softly, "I used to try but the pig said that she'd hurt my dad. She has him too I think."

"I'm sorry Rebecca," Eowyn told her gripping the child's hand gently. Eowyn was filled with rage at a creature who would do something like this, to the girl, to her father, and to Eowyn herself.

"We'll save him too," Eowyn promised the girl, "we won't leave without him."

"Thank you," she said.