Through Time
The moment Tasmin stepped into Trent's quarters two little men, about a foot and a half tall each, lunged at her legs. Unperturbed Tasmin walked on and greeted Trent. The young boy threw his arms around her and gave her a tight hug.
"I hope this is not a hug of desperation," Tasmin said, as she stroked the boy's hair.
"Desperation?" Trent looked up at her. "I don't know what that is. I just want to thank you for taking me here. It is so great."
"Minis not giving you much trouble then?" Tasmin shook her right leg in a vain attempt to shake Hanibal off.
"No, they are brilliant." Trent loosened his embrace. "Hanibal, let go of Tasmin's leg. Cannibal, stop nibbling that."
The two mini-deckers did as they were told and retreated to a far corner of the quarters where half a go-cart stood surrounded by the other half of its parts.
"Good. I have two more minis for you." Tasmin opened the sack she was holding and showed Trent its contents.
"They are smaller than the other two." Trent picked one of them up. "This one looks just like dad. I've never seen the other one."
"The one you're holding is face. The other one is called stockwell. He could be a handful. He likes to boss people around."
"They're all a handful. But I can handle them," the boy hastily added.
Tasmin stroked his head again. "Is there anything you need. Sedatives for the minis?"
Trent chuckled. "No, I'll be fine." He put face on the ground and pushed him and stockwell towards the other mini-deckers. Hanibal and Cannibal eyed the newcomers suspiciously, though they seemed to have an instant liking for face. "But, can you tell me about your last mission. Did you kill any good Sues?"
"Sues are never good." Tasmin sat down and folded her legs to sit cross-legged. Trent followed her example. Tasmin leaned a bit forward and started in a conspiratorial voice. "These particular minis were rescued from a Sue that had the hots for Murdock."
"Allison must not have liked that."
"No, she didn't. She didn't like that at all." Tasmin chuckled. "Perhaps there's something good about certain Sues after all, the ones that can rile Allison."
Trent and Tasmin shared a laugh, before she continued to recount the mission.
-oOo-
"You've been a long time," Allison said when Tasmin walked back into their response centre.
"Had to make sure the boy was okay with two new minis." She looked around the response centre. "You could have cleaned up in here while I was a way.
"Could have, should have, started too. Then I found this." Allison waved a little booklet at her partner. "31 ways to kill a Sue. I mean, you have one."
"It's not like we actually have a pit of despair where we can throw Sues into in our fandom." Tasmin's eye fell on a red blinking light. She pointed at the console. "What's that?"
"That came in earlier. I don't think it's for us." Allison returned to her reading.
Tasmin walked over to the console and read the message. "Internal memo addressed to Allison Carter and Tasmin Haynes. Sounds like it is for us."
"It's a MASH mission. We're A-Team."
"That's what you think. Get up." Tasmin tapped the keys of the console and opened a portal.
Allison sighed and threw the booklet down on the sofa. She got up and jumped through the portal. Tasmin grabbed her duffel bag and followed.
-oOo-
"I hope were not going to work in MASH permanently," Allison said. "Olive green is not really my colour."
"Well, it's the most likely disguise for going into MASH fanfiction."
"We could have gone in as Koreans."
"I think we would be less conspicuous as nurses." Tasmin surveyed their surroundings. MASH was a situation fiction, which meant that there was very little need for fanficcers to describe as everyone would know what was there: the army green tents, the dirt roads, the vehicles, the people walking to and fro the hospital.
Hawkeye stomped past the two agents without taking notice. He seemed to be in a foul mood.
Tasmin checked the Words. "Apparently, Hawkeye is upset because Trapper left. He tried to hibernate until his next tour of duty. Guess he didn't think Trapper would have to do only the one."
"I thought Hawkeye had gone after Trapper and picked up BJ. Where's Beej?" Allison looked around for BJ.
"There's no mention of BJ. There's a mention of Frank though."
"Course there is. With Trapper gone, that means Blake has also just left and Frank has assumed command."
The two agents had followed Hawkeye as he headed to the operating theater. He nearly tripped over Frank lying on the ground.
Hawkeye: Frank, what are you doing! On the floor!
Frank: Uh, what the fuck you want Pierce? Ain’t nunna yo business!
"The Words say it's Frank; the man has the looks of old ferret face, but what is that he is wearing?" Tasmin exclaimed.
"Trainers, bling, and a baggy track suit. Frank's a chav." Allison nearly folded with laughter.
"He's a what?"
"Chav."
"I'm guessing that's some British slang?"
"Er, yeah. In your language I would say he's dressed for an Ali G lookalike contest. Or is that too British for you too?"
"No, I've heard of Ali G. He tries to talk like him too."
"I think that's customary for lookalikes. Remember all those Elvis impersonators that say 'thank you, thank you very much'?"
Tasmin glared at her partner.
Allison pulled a notepad from one of her pockets. "I'm already writing it down."
"And also make a note of the script format."
Frank's gangster talking got Hawkeye so riled up he was ready to start hitting him when Radar got the attention of the two doctors.
Hawkeye rolled his eyes, he hated having this little kid telling him what to do.
"Would now be a good time to tell you that I have left my Canon Analysis Device back in the office?" Allison asked.
Tasmin turned her head slightly to look at the partner. "Well, at least yours can't get broken. I don't think we need technology to make estimates of how out of character these guys are. Frank, not wearing his army greens, and talking like a reject from a hiphop video. He would be out of character, what?"
"83.4 percent," Allison replied. "Character rupture imminent. Take cover, now." Allison said the last words in a shrill voice and waved her arms about.
Radar cast a glance in their direction. "I thought I heard something."
"What did you hear?" Frank sneered.
"Choppers."
The two doctors went into the hospital. Radar looked once more in the direction of the two agents, shrugged and then followed the men inside.
"Okay." Tasmin lead out a breath she had been holding. "Let's not do that again in front of Radar. I think the SEP field won't cover us from his finely tuned hearing."
"He may not mind us much. Everybody is pretty nasty to him in this fic, and we've come to sort that out."
"I'm not entirely sure he instinctively knows that too." Tasmin held open the door to the hospital. "After you."
-oOo-
Frank and Margaret were making out in the washing up room.
"We haven't even seen the Sue yet, and so far the only one that was anything remotely in character was Radar." Allison scratched her head. "Are you okay?"
Her partner was staring at Frank and Margaret as they fell, passionately kissing, through the flap doors into the surgery.
"Oh-o," Tasmin said.
"Oh-o?"
"I think this is a troll."
"A troll?"
"A troll: a fic that is intentionally bad."
"I know what a troll is."
"Good. I was afraid you were going to repeat everything I said."
"What makes you think this is a troll?"
"Frank talking gangsta? Hawkeye wanting to hit, kick and stomp on people? Either it is a troll or this person is seriously confused with another Hawkeye."
"I don't think Last of the Mohicans' Hawkeye was that violent either."
"My point exactly."
"So, what do we do about trolls?"
"We find them, we charge them, we kill them."
"Nothing unusual there then."
Tasmin chuckled and opened up a portal.
-oOo-
Through the portal the agents stepped into the Mess tent where colonel Blake introduced a new doctor. Allison sighed and pulled her notepad from her pocket and wrote up the charge. She sighed again.
"When charging a troll, do we charge them with everything they did wrong, or do we just tell them on how many accounts they have offended good taste and canon?"
"We charge them properly."
Allison rolled her eyes. That was not an answer to her question. She derived an answer from the comment nonetheless: "The long version then."
The new doctor Blake introduced was called Alex Rodman.
Alex Rodman was only the hottest guy ever! He had striking good looks: dark brown hair, gray eyes, he was tall and fit, he had a firm jaw and stunning features! He was 20 years of age and totally sexy. All of the nurses were definitely checking him out and Hawkeye was totally jealous! Well, anyway.
"Well, that's too young to be a doctor," Tasmin said.
"Unless he is Doogie Howser after a make-over." Allison chuckled. She tried to shrug off her partner's glare. "Too young to be a doctor; too young to be a captain." She scribbled on the notepad.
Hawkeye stepped up to the young doctor and introduced himself. The two of them went to the Swamp together chatting along the way. Allison and Tasmin followed in silence.
They seemed to have a lot in common, both of them were doctors, both were in the army, both came from a small town, both were good looking, and both were funny!
Allison rolled her eyes. "Except for the doctor bit I have that in common with them too."
Tasmin raised an eyebrow. "You're not in the army."
"Feels like it though, all the time I spent wearing fatigues."
Hawkeye and Rodman had gone into the Swamp. Allison and Tasmin hung around outside looking in through the gauze. Suddenly the tent started shaking.
"Time rift?" Allison called at her partner while she ducked for the ground.
"That too," Tasmin answered. "Also something fell onto the tent."
A portal opened and burped out a girl. Hawkeye and Rodman started shouting, but the girl managed to calm them down with to the point and accurate answers.
Tasmin and Allison looked at each other.
"How did she get her hands on portal technology?" Allison asked. "I thought that kind of technology was classified."
"According to the Words hers is not for traveling into fiction, but for traveling through time. She made it herself."
"Would it be a very wild guess if I were to say that that is our Sue?" Allison picked herself up from the ground and made a few feeble attempts at dusting herself off.
"I'd say it's our troll, but it doesn't matter much."
Kristin: Yeah, it’s totally weird, I know, but since I’m here. Let’s hang out.
The agents ground their teeth as, to their disappointment, the fic did not take this comment literally. The Sue/troll explained that she was from the future, without there being any indication that she had ended up in the past, or freaking out about time traveling.
Frank, still in his Ali G get up, stomped past Allison and Tasmin and entered the Swamp.
Then Frank came in and stared at me.
Allison shivered. "The troll just changed face and now looks just like me."
Tasmin frowned. "You don't look like a mirror image of me. Oh, wait. The troll must have changed from third to first person narrative. That's very icky."
"Should we have brought a dummy? So it could take the brunt of this?"
"I think it's just temporarily."
"Let's hope so. It's no fun seeing myself as a Sue."
Tasmin opened her mouth to comment, but instead just smirked at the glare Allison threw her.
Frank then pulled out a gun and was firing it at Hawkeye!!! Alex yelled him to stop it but Frank wouldn’t! But Hawkeye crawled under the cot and hid from his shower of bullets, and instead, a stray bullet hit Klinger right in the stomach!
"If we had any doubts about this being a troll ..." Tasmin said.
"When do you ever have any doubts?"
Tasmin thought about this for a moment. "Never, really. Good point."
Klinger was taken to surgery, but died on the operating table. Frank threatened to kill anyone who ratted on him and ran off to the hills. The troll made up a story to tell colonel Potter, who had apparently only arrived at the MASH after the shooting took place (or he would have known the gun fire came from his unit) and bought the story. The troll told everyone all about 2007 and then went to bunk with Hawkeye and Rodman.
"Shouldn't we have come in and charged the troll before she had Klinger killed? Or will he mysteriously resurrect after she is gone?"
"Yep."
"I asked two questions. Opposite questions. You can't answer them both with just saying 'yep'."
"Yep."
"You're annoying the hell out of me."
"Yep." Tasmin chuckled. Allison threw her an evil glare. This made the taller agent chuckle more.
Allison grumbled. She made a kicking movement towards Tasmin's legs and then turned her attention to the Words. "At least the troll isn't getting any sleep. She's even recommending readers to get the same mattress as her."
"She what?" Tasmin looked up.
She missed her Sleep Number bed. It is a really comfortable bed, I would recommend buying it.
"At least we didn't trip over that author's note. She incorporated it in the text so fluently," Allison said sweetly. She jotted down a note.
Tasmin snorted in reply.
The scenery went momentarily black. When the light returned day had broke and the PA system was announcing new wounded. Hawkeye invited the troll to come and watch as they operated. On the way over to the surgery they ran into the ghost of Klinger.
"That's an original take." Allison chuckled.
"Oh, seriously," Tasmin sighed.
Klinger’s ghost: Krrrrristin……… you will trip and fallll in a land mind verrrry soooooooooon.
"Can't be soon enough," Tasmin said.
Klinger: Or you might be hit by an ammmbulance. I just know that something badddddd will happen. You must leave. NOWWWWWW.
"Hey, this ghost is stealing our business," Allison exclaimed. "The only reason to even go into these fics is the guarantee of witnessing, or partaking in severe bodily harm being inflicted upon the offending party. It doesn't do at all that someone should warn the troll off. And how does he know anyway?"
"Klinger's ghost would be an OC, and OCs can see us, and perhaps know what we're up to."
Rodman told the troll that she should leave because she was too hot to die. Then he kissed her. Then Hawkeye kissed her too.
"Excuse me." Tasmin stepped in.
Hawkeye quickly pushed the troll away from him and wiped his mouth.
"We're Protectors of the Plot Continuum and we're here to charge Kristin with crimes against fanfiction."
"You what?" Kristin screamed. "You can't do that. Guys, you'll protect me?"
Rodman and Hawkeye nodded and made a menacing move towards Tasmin. Within the blink of an eye she had her Colt M1911 pointed at Rodman and her Beretta 92SB at Hawkeye. Both men froze in their tracks.
"Don't even think about it, boys. Allison, charges."
"Kristin, we charge you with messing up the canon of MASH: you have Blake at the MASH while Trapper has left. You have Potter at the 4077 a day after Blake made some sort of announcement. You replace BJ with Doogie Howser. You turn Frank into a chav or homie, or whatever it was you were thinking of at the time." Allison paused a moment to wet her lips. "We charge you with making Hawkeye uncharacteristically hate Radar, and with making him kiss a fifteen year old girl. Hawkeye maybe running out of nurses to smooze, but that doesn't turn him into a cradle robber. We charge you with building a time machine. We charge you with tense shifts, lapses to first person narrative and breaking the fourth wall. We charge you with bad grammar and punctuation, and with using script format. Most of all, we charge you with malicious intend: you deliberately wrote this fic to be bad. We dub you troll. Your punishment will be death, and I'm not interested in any of your last words." Allison folded the notepad back into her pocket.
Tasmin moved the Colt so she had an aim on the troll and shot her through the head. The body fell to the ground and broke into thousands of little pieces of rock.
"Great," Hawkeye said. "As if we didn't have enough rocks here yet."
"As for you, Rodman," Tasmin said. "Allison, his charges."
"His charges? I don't have any charges for him."
Tasmin glared at her partner.
"Oh, you mean those charges." Allison pretended to know what Tasmin was talking about, and started reciting from memory. "Alex Rodman, we charge you with being a full surgeon and an army captain at the age of twenty. Although, I believe you got the rank when you got drafted."
"That's not important. He's too young to be a surgeon, so he's too young to be a captain."
"We charge you with being totally hot and have all the nurses check you out, yet getting your kicks kissing a fifteen-year-old. We charge you with ..." Allison thought for a moment. "With having no notable personality other than the things you have in common with Hawkeye. Er, that's about it with the charges. You're punishment is death. You're a waste of fictional space anyway. Tasmin?"
Tasmin shot Rodman through the heart. His body turned to dust before it hit the ground. The ghost of Klinger evaporated. Then the world shook violently and the agents were thrown to the ground.
"What just happened? Did the world just fold in on itself?" Allison asked. "I thought that wasn't possible in a stationary setting."
Tasmin scrambled up into a sitting position. She looked around. "Look, over there. It's Frank in a normal uniform, talking to Margaret. We killed the OCs and the canon just snapped back."
"You could have warned me about that. I think I got a whiplash." Allison rubbed her neck.
"I didn't know this was going to happen."
Klinger walked past the two agents in a red polka dot dress.
"He's back to his old self." Allison nodded. "Shall we get back to our old surroundings? By that I mean the response centre."
"Sure. You still need to clean up in there."
The agents get up and dust themselves off. Tasmin opened a portal.
"But first I've got to take a lie down," Allison said as she followed Tasmin through the portal.