Mission: Dreams

[rc45]

Title: Dreams
Author: Jakoby
Obligatory Linkage: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4842735/1/Dreams
Sporked by: agenttrojie and tea_fiend
Sporkage rated: M
Sporkers' notes: Agent Oscar of the Division of Mpreg gets a permanent partner at last - Agent Iza, formerly of the Department of Mary Sues. Contains spoilers for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Iza appears courtesy of sedri, who also gave us a shiny beta.



February 2009 HST

Agent Oscar Henson approached Response Centre 794 carefully, for two reasons.

The first was that somewhere within its depths his new partner presumably lurked. Having spent the past few months getting a crash course in agent psychology from Agents Trojanhorse and Paddlebrains - veteran Slashers and eccentric even by DBS standards - he held some justifiable reservations about just what this new partner would turn out to be. Although so long as it wasn't Lux, he was reasonably confident he'd survive the next few minutes.

The second reason was his underwear. Closely resembling a scrap of silk and several bits of string, and not worn by choice, it was rather the worse for wear thanks to his recent sojourn to Jurassic Park. He thought longingly of showers, baths, hot water and soap as he squelched his way down the grey and featureless corridor to the door, string in hand.

Taking a deep breath, he slipped inside, and looked around with some trepidation. As he was not immediately engulfed in a rib-crushing hug and stealth-groped, the breath was released as a sigh of relief, and he relaxed slightly.

'Hi!' came a voice from somewhere to his left.

Oscar spun around, senses still on red alert for possible incoming raptors, and found himself face to chest with someone. Said someone turned out, once he'd backed up a tad and looked up, to be a skinny, black-haired girl who looked almost entirely human save for the ridges on her nose.

'Hi I'm Iza! I used to be in Bad Slash and then I got transferred to Mary Sues and then back to Bad Slash after I turned out to be not very good at killing things and then the Lace said you needed a partner here in Mpreg so here I am!'

Oscar blinked.

'You must be Oscar,' she added, holding out a hand and grinning.

'Er, yes,' said Oscar, still a bit taken aback by the flood of words. He ignored the hand for now, lest it be a prelude to some sort of inappropriate touching; one could never be too careful, after all. 'Er, this might be a bit rude, but, er-'

'I'm Bajoran,' she said, clearly having been asked this before. 'And you? Are humans normally that short?'

Oscar winced. 'I'm from the Labyrinth continuum,' he said, declining to mention his parentage. 'So, er, have you done much Mpreg work before?'

'Only once, when I was still in Bad Slash. I've had the training, though. I think it's going to be nice to be in a little Division and have specialised missions!' she added. 'Have you done a lot?'

'I trained with a pair of Freelancers in the DBS,' said Oscar, sitting down somewhat gingerly in the chair by the console. 'We did Mpreg missions in LotR, Stargate Atlantis, and Harry Potter, and they used to drag me along to general Bad Slash missions as well.'

'Sounds like fun! So, what supplies do we get? I guess we'll have a debugger and canon sources, right? And a bell, book and candle, 'cause we have to do exorcisms, right? I'm quite good at those so if you wanted to handle the debugging when we're on a mission that would be great though of course I could do that too if you wanted, I don't mind either way. Which bunk is yours?'

They both turned to inspect the RC. Oscar hadn't really had time to personalise it much - the only clue that it wasn't completely uninhabited was the open cupboard in which his backpack and debugger resided. And the piece of string tied to a nail next to the door that led to his former partners' RC.

'I've been sleeping in the bottom bunk,' he said, without adding 'because it's the easiest one to fall into and I can't actually reach the other one'. 'Feel free to take the top one and to, er, you know, unpack any of your stuff, or anything. I've got to go and change, I've just come back from the Crichtonverse. Make yourself at home.'

'Okay!'

Oscar scuttled off gratefully to the bathroom to attend to his pressing lingerie issues. He had managed that, and was just wondering if there was any point trying to locate a laundry-room in HQ, and whether or not Trojie would want the highly impractical underwear back again (unlikely, given her expression when Pads had given it to him), when there was a slightly muffled BEEEEEEEEEEEP! followed by a delighted squeak, the noise of something being tripped over, a yelp-thud-yelp, a dragging noise, and then a loud and worried intake of breath.

Oscar yanked his trousers up and belted them. 'What is it?' he called, hurrying back into the main room. 'Are you okay?'

'I tripped over the chair,' said Iza, not looking up. 'Ooh, we have a mission in the Potterverse! It's Harry having a baby and the father is Snape!' She looked up suddenly, a puzzled look on her face. 'But ... they're enemies! Snape was in love with Harry's mother! And is about thirty years older than him!'

Oscar frowned, peering at the fic. 'Have you done any Potterverse badslash before?'

'A couple, and I know the continuum pretty well if I do say so myself!' she said, going to her bags and extricating a copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which she flourished.

She looked, Oscar thought, altogether too enthusiastic; even more so than he'd been when he'd graduated from the Nursery. Still, he supposed she knew what she was doing, and it was possible the unnatural cheer was some sort of defence mechanism. He rolled up his sleeves and skimmed through the scant details provided by the intelligence report.

'We won't need the debugger,' he said after a moment. 'And I'm not sure which book, so we'll need them all.'

'Okay!' came the cheerful response. 'Where do you keep them? Only I had a look around while I was waiting for you and I couldn't find any books at all and I thought, that's strange, because Sedri's response centre was absolutely full of books and I got to hit all sorts of people with them. It was fun!' she finished, grinning.

Oscar gave her a sideways look. Either a defence mechanism, or she was on some very hard drugs. 'I, er, don't have any.'

'That's okay, I've got a full set!' she said, waving PoA at him again and spilling the contents of her bag over the floor. There were indeed a lot of books in the resulting heap. Oscar bent down and picked up Deathly Hallows.

'This one's probably best for Snape,' he said. 'Given it's all about his doomed canonical love.'

Iza beamed at him. 'And that will be really effective at warding off the influence of the Author!' she said. 'Shall we go? This is going to be fun.'

Oscar headed over to push buttons and twiddle knobs in order to distract himself from the urge to call his shiny new partner a thundering loony. A moment later, a shimmering blue doorway heralded the beginning of his first mission as a fully-fledged agent. He gulped, grabbed his exorcism kit, and waved Iza forward with as much grace as he could muster.

'Thanks!' she said, and hopped through.

They found themselves outside the hospital wing of Hogwarts, where Severus Snape was attempting to wear a hole in the floor with his feet.

'Who's doing charges?' Iza asked, whispering lest the canon hear her. Oscar pulled out his notebook and waved it by way of answer.

'Extreme pacing?' he quoted a few moments later, as they watched Snape dash heavy-footed back and forth. 'Is that like 'extreme sports'?'

'Maybe,' Iza hissed back. 'Maybe he's practising for the Wizarding Olympics?'

'So, what's he here for, anyway? Is there anyone in canon that Snape cares enough about to extreme-pace around the hospital wing for?'

'Lily Evans, maybe,' said Iza doubtfully. 'But I'm sure this isn't Marauder-era.'

The answer came through from the Words, but it did not bring the serenity and comprehension the Agents could have hoped for.

Severus was mildly annoyed that Miss Granger was allowed to stay when he had been evicted but he knew full well that she was able to be calm and collected, exactly what his husband needed at this moment in time.

'Miss Granger?'

'His husband?'

'I'm not sure I like the sound of this,' Oscar decided.

'How can he have a husband?' Iza asked, and wrinkled her nose in confusion, although the gesture was hard to spot given that the organ in question was in a sense pre-wrinkled. She scratched her head. 'Although he is evil, I mean sort of, so maybe he's like a mirror canon?'

'Er, maybe?' Oscar hazarded, attempting to process this. He was interrupted by a CAPSlocked shout from within. 'Ah. Oh dear...'

“SEVERUS FUCKING SNAPE!! IF THIS KILLS ME IT’LL BE ON YOUR CONSCIENCE!!

'That sounds like Harry. Is Harry married to Snape? But Snape dies!' Iza protested. 'If Harry's old enough to be married and having a baby Snape shouldn't be here!' She waved her copy of Hallows at the canon in question, who fortunately didn't notice.

'I think,' Oscar said, tapping his notebook thoughtfully with his pencil, 'that there's a charge here somewhere. Either premarital sex, possibly with a minor, or trading the Battle of Hogwarts for asswombs.'

'How about both? I like both.'

'Both it is.' Oscar noted them down, and then looked at Iza quizzically. 'Actually, I've just had a horrible thought,' he said, grimacing.

'What?'

'Harry's allcapsing. That suggests we're in OotP-era. Which makes Harry...'

'Fifteen,' said Iza.

'I suppose we could just pray that it's not Harry and the author's just got such awful style that she allcapsed dialogue anyway?'

Unfortunately, the Words put paid to that notion.

No, Severus knew better than to anger a very pregnant and very pissed off Harry Potter.

'So it is Harry, then,' said Iza, with surprising tranquility. Oscar admired her fortitude in the face of wtf.

“ARGGGGGGGGGGH! SEVERUS GET IN HERE!!”

The agents slipped in behind Snape, and were greeted by the sight of a reclining and, yes, very pregnant Harry Potter. He was bitching mightily, but that wasn't too far from canon, really, and so Iza remained quiet, taking in their surroundings, as Oscar jotted down a few minor charges.

Then came the birth.

“Now then Mr Snape, are you ready for your child to be delivered?”

Snape's stomach expanded alarmingly, but the Word World quickly realised its mistake when he began musing internally on the happy fuzzy feelings engendered by Harry having taken his surname. None of the canons seemed to notice his stomach growing and then shrinking again, but Iza winced, and Oscar made a note of it.

On the plus side, it was mercifully short, as births went. On the other hand, the infant appeared on cue, which was, as Iza whispered to Oscar, a pretty good trick, if utterly impossible for a natural birth.

Healer Davies eased the crying bundle out of the young man and handed it to the nurse to cleanse.

'Eased. A full-sized newborn child. Out of the rear-end of a boy,' Oscar hissed angrily.

'Well, we assume it's a child,' Iza hissed back. 'But all we know is it's a 'bundle'. It might not be so big. Or so human. It could be anything in there.'

'I suppose you're about to say we're only assuming it's coming out of... where I just insinuated it was coming out of, too,' Oscar retorted under his breath. Iza gave him a happy nod and a smile.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, the Words resolved Problem A by stating that the bundle was in fact a child. The question of which particular part of Harry's body it had been eased from remained unsolved, however.

“We made him, my darling. The most beautiful product of both of us.”

'It's a product? Like for hair?'

'No, a boy, according to the Words,' Oscar said, distracted by the charges, which were flying past faster than he could write them all down. 'And since when was anyone Snape's darling? I don't think I've ever seen him so out of character.'

'We could check!' Iza said brightly, and pulled a CAD from her pocket. 'What's the most OOC you've ever seen him?'

Oscar instinctively hunched over, attempting to assume the 'duck and cover' position whilst remaining mission-functional. 'Those things are dangerous,' he muttered.

'And useful,' Iza retorted. 'Oooh, that's not good,' she said, after having peered at the readout.

'What's not?' he asked, trying not to let the worry show in his tone. When she didn't reply, he nudged her hip with his elbow.

'63.005% OOC,' she said at last, still fiddling with buttons.

'I think we need to get in there,' Oscar said, swallowing nervously. Iza looked at him.

'What's the matter?' she asked.

'Nothing,' he said. 'It's just... this is normally the point where everything goes wrong.'

'Don't worry, I'm sure we'll be fine. AVAUNT!' she bellowed, without taking a breath. 'O foul and slanderous Author-wraith, harbinger of fluff and saccharine-poisoning, herald of OOC, instrument of evil and creator of Mpreg, I hereby bid thee AVAUNT!'

Whilst Iza got on with the screeching and shouting, Oscar snuck up and stole the baby. All the canons were apparently transfixed by the Bajoran's performance and OOC enough that they did not do what canonically they would have done; that is, draw their wands and hex the living daylights out of her.

'I do both conjure and abjure thee to leave this place forever! By the almighty power vested in me by the Protectors of the Plot Continuum, AVAUNT!'

Oscar ignored the racket, and the ringing of the bell, and the menacing waving of Hallows, and peered at the infant. It appeared to be a normal newborn, red-faced, wrinkled and covered in unknowable oozes, and didn't show any inclination to, for example, explode, or start ripping out throats. This was a bonus.

He looked up to find Healer Davies, who was not a canon character and therefore not possessed, bearing down on him. Still functioning at least partially on the survival instincts required in the Crichtonverse, Oscar's response to potential attack was to throw, with surprising accuracy, the copy of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire that he'd been resting his notebook on.

It hit Davies squarely between the eyes and he dropped like a stone amid the collapsing canon characters, who were busily disgorging the Author-Wraith.

'Neuralyser?' Iza called across at him. He slung the baby over his shoulder, praying it wouldn't suddenly decide to regurgitate fluids over him - not that his uniform could get any filthier, all things considered - and tossed her the one out of his pocket.

'We're going to need to fix Harry up,' he added. 'Here, I'll take him and the baby to Medical.'

'Okay!' Iza said. 'But what do we do with this one?' she added, poking the prone form of the uncanonical Healer with her toe.

'Rip out his throat?'

Iza paled. 'I'm not... very good at killing people. That's why they moved me back to Bad Slash. All the blood, it's just... horrid.' She shuddered, looking nauseous.

'You don't like blood so they put you in Mpreg?'

'I know, Sedri thought it was strange too, but I talked to the Male Gingko and he explained it all and there's not usually much blood, really, because the wombs aren't like normal wombs and the births are always extra special and the babies come out really weirdly clean so I should be okay.' She shuddered a little. 'Why should we kill him anyway?' she finished, twirling the neuralyser thoughtfully in one hand.

'I don't know,' Oscar admitted. 'But my ex-partners used to do it a lot with noncanons. Er. I suppose we could, er, recruit him?'

Iza nodded solemnly. 'He could be very helpful in Medical. He knows how to deliver babies from bottoms, which is a very valuable skill, probably.'

'Well, we could use it, certainly. All right, I'll take him back with me,' said Oscar. He looked from the baby to Harry and then to the Healer. 'I, er, may need to do two trips.'

'No, do it like this,' Iza said, opening him a portal and heaving the Healer through it with minimal ceremony. 'Here,' she added, hauling Harry up by the collar of his shirt and handing him to Oscar.

'You don't believe in treating them gently, do you?' he said, taking the weight of the comatose Potter over his free shoulder.

'No!' said Iza, waving him goodbye. 'See you soon!'

'In a second or two,' Oscar agreed, and staggered through the portal.

A second later he was back, sans baby and Healer, and with a very aggressive fifteen-year-old Harry trying to pull out of his grip and scrabbling for a wand he wasn't carrying. Oscar deposited him in the middle of the room with his fellow canons, and dropped back behind Iza, fumbling his sunglasses from his pocket.

'Thank Glod for the temporal uses of portals,' he said fervently.

Iza gave him a dazzling smile, and turned her attention to the other canons, who were beginning to stir. She brandished the neuralyser. 'Hello!' she cried, deeming this the most expedient way of attracting their attention. 'Everyone look this way, please, while I close my eyes and push this button-'

FLASH

'-and now listen carefully. I'm not quite sure what you're all supposed to be doing because I don't really know when this is, but since you're all here at Hogwarts I think maybe Hermione and Harry are still at school, so maybe he was hexed?' She considered the now docile and dazed canon, and nodded. 'Yes, you were hexed, by, hmmm, by Malfoy, probably, because he called you something really horrible that I can't quite remember, and Snape had to carry you here, and it was horrible, being in his arms, that bit's very important, and you never ever want to touch him again or be his darling. A squinty-eyed toad, maybe that was it. Oh! I nearly forgot, you haven't had a baby either. Any of you, ever, especially not with each other. Okay? Great!'

'All done?' Oscar asked warily.

'Yep!' Iza skipped across the room to retrieve her books, and Oscar conjured the portal, marvelling at the abnormal ease with which the mission had proceeded.

Heading back into the RC to a continuous, cacophonous BEEEEEEPing noise was almost a relief. It meant that things were in fact proceeding as normal.

'Oooh!' said Iza, bouncing across the floor towards the console and investigating. 'Do you know anything about a continuum called Merlin?'

'Not a thing.'

As normal as normal could ever be in HQ, in fact.

Comments

[cassie5squared.livejournal.com]

Well done, nice and to the point. And funny, as ever.

Although just one hiccup I noticed: All the canons were apparently transfixed by the Bajoran's perforrmance and OOC enough that they did not do what canonically they would have done; that is, draw their wands and hex the living daylights out of her. (Emphasis mine)

[agenttrojie.livejournal.com]

Er, oops?

*goes to fix*

[sedri.livejournal.com]

*hangs head* I missed it. I shall prepare to be burned at the stake.

[agenttrojie.livejournal.com]

You'll have to wait in line for stakes - I *wrote* it ....

[cassie5squared.livejournal.com]

'63.005% OOC,' she said at last, still fiddling with a but

And on second readthrough, I spot that. I assume the last word is intended to be "button"... did I get sacked as a beta without anyone telling me?

[agenttrojie.livejournal.com]

ARGH.

No, you aren't sacked, it's just we needed Sedri to give us a read over for the Iza characterisation so we thought we'd kill two birds with one stone and get her to beta at the same time :)

[sedri.livejournal.com]

I deserve the NOOSE. What was wrong with me that day?

Scratch that, I know exactly what was wrong - I got too swept up in the story and only read it once.

Trojie, Pads; I have failed thee. *hangs head*

[agenttrojie.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

No noose, and no fail either.

We will all accept this as an opportunity to learn, and move on :)

[sedri.livejournal.com]

*looks small and miserable and pitiful* Does that mean you'll hire me as a beta again, despite my awful and most shameful failure? *quivering lip*

[agenttrojie.livejournal.com]

Of course!

[sedri.livejournal.com]

YAAAAAAAAY! :D

[hsavinien.livejournal.com]

Oscar admired her fortitude in the face of wtf.

Sounds like the beginning of a surprisingly-functional partnership. ^_^

[agenttrojie.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think these two are probably going to be the most stable and ... well, I hate to use the word normal, but ... normal of our PPC pairs. By which I mean they're not in weird, snarky love, constantly fighting amongst themselves, alternating between arguing and dancing, or a hermit and her cheerful doormat.

[hsavinien.livejournal.com]

Heheheh.