You know, it must really suck to be a Mary Sue. Not only does almost everyone (except for a few select weirdos) hate them, they face staggering unemployment rates and contempt on all quarters. The lucky ones manage to sneak themselves into the work of inexperienced writers who don’t know much about what they’re doing, but this never lasts long, as generally writers will expand, improve, and ultimately disown their formerly beloved Mary Sues. As a direct result of this growing phenomenon, more and more Mary Sues are wandering the streets, looking for love, respect, a steady fic, and- while they’re at it- a miracle.

The characters used are not by any means related to any particular fic I’ve read…or they aren’t yet, anyway. They are, for the moment, only prototypes, and will later be introduced in greater detail. And when that happens, God help you, ‘cause I sure won’t. :P

As a general note, Nameless Azn Girl and I have been trying to kill each other for years. Surely just a little more insanity won’t hurt. The more “canonical”, so to speak, OC’s mentioned come from other works of mine; while some of their fics have since been deleted, they can still be found in Vertigo, Evitcepsrep, and The Dark Shadow Slayer Owner’s Guide.

And now, after all that, I suppose you sort of want to actually know what happens.

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It was a bad day for Nameless Azn Girl.

Leaning forward, she rested her elbows on her desk, massaging her temples. Bloody hell, as if it wasn’t bad enough that she had to put up with her psychotic bitch of a writing partner almost every day, now she had this to deal with. Across the desk from her was a group of lovely, distressed girls- distressed, but not panicky. With the blind faith of fortunetellers and very small children, and also the aid of a certain one of them who could see the future, they knew that everything would eventually work out in their favor.

“Explain to me again why you’re here,” Nameless Azn Girl said now, knowing full well that she’d regret it. The lead girl, who was the only one actually sitting in a chair, leaned forward, her large blue eyes radiating intensity.

“We’re looking for an author,” she said for the fiftieth time in as many minutes. “However, considering what we are, it’s been…difficult.” The girls standing grouped behind her sighed softly in unison, causing Nameless Azn Girl to wish she could sink her claws into their perfect scalps and yank until her fingers were bloody.

“And why,” she said slowly, “why did you come to me?”

“Your friend Dark Shadow Slayer, she-”

“She’s not my friend. And I’m not a Suethor.”

“You’re not?”

“No! I can’t stand your kind! What the hell made you think I did?”

“Just hear us out,” the girl said persistently. “Your friend Dark Shadow Slayer-”

“I already told you she’s not my friend. And I can’t help you.”

Nameless Azn Girl turned back to her computer dismissively, considering the matter closed; but the blue-eyed girl, whose name was Mentia, and who in addition to being gorgeous had a courageous nature, didn’t go away.

“Please,” she said. “Everyone else is turning us away. Your friend Dark Shadow Slayer-”

Nameless Azn Girl exploded.

“Look, she’s not my friend! She’s never been my friend! She’s a psychoneurotic bitch with hostility issues who likes to chase salesmen and girl scouts away from her door with a sword, her writing is gloomy and creeps hell out of me, she creeps hell out of me, she keeps accusing me of leaning towards Suethorism, she lets her characters hunt telemarketers and then drinks orange juice out of their skulls-”

“I did hear something about the telemarketer hunting,” one of the girls in the background said doubtfully, “but I didn’t think it was actually true-”

“Are you kidding?” another said. “She chased us away from her door with a sword, remember?”

“And a scythe,” another put in, almost reminiscently. “Screaming like a banshee. All our combined powers and our Mary Sue auras didn’t make the least bit of difference because in an author’s household, none of it actually works. For god’s sake, even the canonical OC’s have more power than us in an author’s household!”

“That wasn’t Dark Shadow Slayer,” Mentia interrupted. “We never even got to see Dark Shadow Slayer. She sent a couple of her characters to make us go away, remember? And then when we didn’t believe them when they said she was in a meeting they headed straight for their weapons and chased us away.”

“Which ones were they, anyway?” one of the girls in the back asked.

“Beats me- that white-haired girl, you know, the slutty one, and that one who got killed by a security guard, of all things, she must have been pretty weak to let that happen-”

“That’s Nada and Damaris,” Nameless Azn Girl managed to say between gritted teeth, “and if you ever let Dark Shadow Slayer hear you calling her characters slutty or weak, you’ll be dead before you hit the ground. Now go away and stop bothering me.”

“But where can we go?”

“I don’t know! Try ViralMancer or something!”

“We did,” Mentia said rather plaintively, her beautiful eyes clouding over as the memory of it came back to her. They had been hoping to find work with the author ViralMancer, so they had tracked her down and gone to the apartment she was rumored to be living in. They’d knocked on the door with high hopes, and then the door had swung open to reveal a small-boned, Asian-looking girl, shorter than all of them, looking up at them with a stuffed sea turtle clasped in her arms, her dark violet eyes uncomprehending.

“Why hello there,” Mentia cooed, leaning forward to look this little girl in the eye. “Can I speak to your mommy?”

“Don’t have a mommy.”

“Your big sister?”

“Don’t have a big sister.”

“Your author?”

“Don’t have an author.”

“No?” Mentia stood back, frowning a little; was this the right place? “Well, I’m looking for the author ViralMancer. My friends and I are Mary Sues, and we’re looking for an author who will let us work with them on various pieces of original fiction.”

The girl blinked up at her and the others, not relaxing her grip on the sea turtle.

“Get stuffed,” she said. “I’m a fanfiction author.”

And with that the door slammed, damaging Mentia and co’s pride no end.

“Really,” Nameless Azn Girl’s unsympathetic voice said, cutting across this painful memory. “You tried, did you? Did you by any chance mistake her for a child?”

“Well…yes,” Mentia admitted. “We all did.”

“She hates that,” Nameless Azn Girl said, almost conversationally. “She’s not even that short. If you lot didn’t wear those ridiculous stilettos that make your legs look about a mile long it might not have happened.”

“But it makes us look good,” Mentia said with the air of one who Knows. “And it is important to consider appearance when attempting to find an author.”

“I’m sure,” Nameless Azn Girl said, rolling her eyes. “Well, I can’t do anything for you. Find someone else. What happened to your original authors anyway?”

“We don’t know,” Mentia said, hoping to play for sympathy. “We are orphans, all of us. We don’t know who our authors were.”

“Fuck. I’d been hoping I could call them up and bitch at them.” Nameless Azn Girl massaged her temples for a few more minutes, then reached for the phone, whacking each of the buttons with an almost vindictive pleasure. She listened to the ringing for a few moments, and then someone picked up.

“For gosh sakes, what do you want,” the person on the other end of the line shouted. “I keep telling you I don’t give a damn about Thor Heyerdahl and I swear if you try selling me even one more papyrus boat I’m going to come over there myself and ram it up your plankton-encrusted ass-”

“Nice talking to you too, Dark Shadow Slayer,” Nameless Azn Girl said, cutting across this tirade. “What’s this about plankton?”

“You heard me. Some telemarketer keeps calling me about papyrus boats, so last time I had Sorrow and Zencho throw him into the ocean, where there was a bunch of plankton. He hasn’t called back yet.”

“That’s great,” Nameless Azn Girl said, wondering why she didn’t just tell the goddamn truth every once in a while. “Now, I want you to do me a really big favor and take this group of Mary Sues off my hands.”

“Why the hell would I want to do that?”

“Because you’re the one who sent them over here in the first place!”

“I didn’t send them. I didn’t even talk to them. They probably thought we were friends and decided to try and use my name to get you to cooperate.”

“Look, enemies or not, I’ve been dealing with them for the past hour-”

“56.72 minutes,” Mentia interrupted.

“-56.72 minutes, and I think it’s only fair that you take them for a while, god knows it’s not as if you have anything to do-”

“Nada and Damaris already chased them away once and they’ll do it again, and I’ll be damned if I talk to a bunch of blathering Mary Sues-”

They squabbled for a few minutes, with the Mary Sues politely looking as if they couldn’t hear a word of the conversation, and then Dark Shadow Slayer yelled something about a mud-sucking porno writer and Nameless Azn Girl yelled something about a psychoneurotic bitch, and they both slammed down the phone.

“Have a good chat?” Mentia said brightly, and Nameless Azn Girl made a mental note to strangle her later. No, she did not have a good chat, but she did have a plan.

“I think she’s coming around,” she announced, as if she and her “friend” hadn’t just been at each other’s throats. “But of course she’s never going to admit it. Here”- she scribbled a note on a random scrap of paper, folded it in half twice, and shoved it into Mentia’s hand- “take this note and go over to Dark Shadow Slayer’s place. Don’t be discouraged if she and her characters try to tell you that you’re unwelcome, and to go away. They don’t mean it, they’re just testing you. Just stick around and keep asking for work, and you should be fine.”

“Oh, thank you!” Mentia cried, eagerly clutching the scrap of paper. “You see, everyone, I told you Nameless Azn Girl could help us!”

And they all charged out of the room. Alone, Nameless Azn Girl stretched, laughing a little. Unless she missed her guess, her “friend” Dark Shadow Slayer would be very busy in just a few minutes’ time.

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R&R!