The Destruction of . . .

Forever Knight in the Twilight Zone

A Forever Knight/ Twilight Zone crossover

PPC’d by Death.

Disclaimer: I own Death and the story she originated from, Agent Random and the chameleon. Aside from that . . .

Use of copyright notice is not meant to infringe on existing copyrights by James Parriot, Tri-Star Pictures, Paragon Entertainment. All other product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. No part of this may be reproduced in any manner without permission of the author. This is non-profit only, and is intended for entertainment (and Sue-ridding, continuum-cleansing) purposes only.

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The Voice Rod Serling:

You're traveling into another dimension; a dimension of not only sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land, whose boundaries are that of imagination. As the sign posts up ahead, your next stop: The Twilight Zone.

Submitted for your approval: a fan fiction. A Mary-sue. A girl who has decided to trespass on the very soul of time and space itself. She tried to make the perfect character, but ending up being slaughtered with all the rest. For her it is beyond real. But she is just an extra in . . . the destruction of the Forever Knight Twilight Zone.

—

Death had a mission. She had a disguise. She had various weaponry. There was only one thing she was missing.

A clue.

Oh, it wasn’t that Death wasn’t familiar with the universes, she was – intimately so. Both had ended, and she had had to take care of their TV-carcasses. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was . . .

"Work, you stupid cockroach-driven portal devise! You must be from Buffy-verse – nothing ever works properly there! Come on!"

Power can do funny things to people, including make them totally incapable of using even the simplest devices.

Feeling a bit sour, Agent Random, who had been assigned to make sure that Death made it to her first mission with Headquarters intact, activated the portal, showing Death once again how to use it. They couldn’t have her using her Death transporting-thingy (as she always called it) in universes. That was almost Sue-like.

Only most ‘Sues weren’t completely and utterly bonkers. At least, not in the way that, before a mission, they would say:

"Off we go into the thing that is blue and up there and starts with a ‘y’ that I can’t remember thingy!!!!" and, hopefully, wouldn’t use so many exclamation marks. Okay, maybe they would, but that really wasn’t the point. Was it. Was it? *Hint, hint, nudge, nudge* . . . never mind.

Agent Random sighed and pushed Death through the portal. She looked down in the general direction of her partner, a chameleon. "Well at least we go rid of her for a few days. What do you say we go and celebrate?" The chameleon didn’t say anything, which Random took for a ‘yes.’

"Okay, let’s go," Random headed off, never noticing that her partner was, for some reason, not there anymore . . .

Death landed at the beginning of the story in a bedroom. It was the kind usually associated with Forever Knight fans around the world. Pictures of LaCroix positively littered the room. "Hmm," Death muttered, biting the end of her pen. "Interesting. Subject seems to be one of the Cousins. As long as she doesn’t call LaCroix ‘Nunkies’ though, she might still be sane. I don’t like her already." Death began writing in her notebook, then paused for a moment to look at the Words. What she saw there surprised her: there was no detailed description of the room. These were dangerous times when a fan fiction could so throughly create a setting without the author’s intervention. Death made another note, before turning back to look at the Mary-sue, whose name was Marie.

Marie, after thinking uncreatively about Nick’s personality, reached for her glass and took a drink at the same time as the vampire. She disappeared in a cliched "sudden blinding light." Death stared, and took out her portaler, intending to follow Marie, wherever she had gone. She stared at the device in her hand, then back up at the TV-screen. Riiiight. How in the world would she follow the Sue without breaking too many rules, but still not doing it the right way? (The ultimate objective, in Death’s opinion.) Of course.

On the screen, Nick moved his hand. At the very same time, Death moved hers . . . a sudden blinding flash of light later, she stood in the Raven, several feet from the Sue and Janette. Back in Marie’s room, the chameleon saw Death leave and sat there, flicking it’s tongue for a moment, until it finally managed to copy the TV and follow its fellow agent.

Janette was leaning over Marie, looking at her inquisitively. "Mmm, interaction with a canon character," Death muttered, looking at her notebook. Unfortunately for her, the light had been so bright it had bleached the normally-black pages into an ugly greenish-brown color, that might have reminded a sane viewer of the color that children so often make when mixing paint of the three prime colors with the attention of making something very pretty that was red and yellow and blue all at the same time.

Ignoring the author’s words that had so randomly popped into her mind, Death began to pay attention to the story again.

"Hello, are you alright?"

"This isn’t happening," Marie said. "I must have hit my head on something. Yeah, that’s it."

"Maybe you *drank* too much" said the vampire, sadly neglecting a much needed comma.

Death sighed as they two made pointless conversation, and pulled out her Character Analysis Device. She really should check out how badly Janette was doing. Death randomly pointed the CAD.

[Janette DuCharm. Vampire female. Canon. Out of Character 25%.]

Death sighed. All together, 25% wasn’t as bad as it easily could have been. She would have to stay in this Universe. Oh, well, at least the CAD worked. Most likely because she, alone of most other agents, hadn’t an idea how to use it, and therefore it was easy for her.

Finally, something Death had heard came back to her. Had Janette just said ‘alright’? Really? That was interesting. Usually the words the vampire used actually existed, although they were occasionally not in English. This was somewhat fishy.

Death smelled the air. Mmm, blood . . . wine . . . sweat . . . no fish. Well, actually, that guy over there had eaten fried trout for dinner. Death nodded. Yep, it all made sense this way. Definitely fishy. And she didn’t like fish.

Janette managed to politely kick Marie out of her club, and sensed LaCroix behind her. Death didn’t wait around to see what happened there (probably something to bring out the LaCroix-lusting of the Cousins) and followed the Sue instead.

Marie wandered about Toronto, managing to get food, sleeping in a library, and then finding Nick’s loft by way of a cab (she never knew the strange thing driving it was Death) all purely from a map of Toronto, and her memory of Nick’s loft. It was a good thing the girl was a fan, or she would have been frightened, alone, intelligent enough not to bother Nick, would have called the police to get home, and not involve herself in the affairs of vampires. As it was, she knew exactly how dangerous the situation was, and therefore felt it necessary to put herself in the middle of it.

Death wrote all of that down and took the back way into Nick’s loft. Hey, easy is as easy does. Funny how she could never get that expression right. Death settled down in the couch and began to draw an intensely detailed picture of Nick’s ceiling in her notebook. Over the intercom came a voice. Death waved at Nick (who couldn’t see her) as he crossed the room. "Hello?"

"My name is Marie. I need your help, Nick. Please," she urged, while holding back her tears.

"Take the elevator up."

Death nodded to herself and made a note. The Sue was right. She did need help . . . but not Nick’s.

Nick, being the nice vampire that he was, opened his heavy steel door for the Sue and allowed her to come in. Marie walked directly (and rather rudely) over to Nick’s couch and sat down, not noticing the PPC agent who scrambled over black robes to get out of the way.

Marie sobbed her heart out, telling him she knew all about him, and how he, Janette and LaCroix were vampires. Worse yet, she made Nicholas say ‘alright.’ But despite her pitiful (and rather short) gesture (which Nick had almost no reaction to) Death was stuck on a single point.

"If she knows about the show," she murmured, writing in her scorched book, "she should know about the Code. And the Code for vampires says that they would have to kill any mortal with that kind of knowledge. Now, I know Nick wouldn’t, but LaCroix seemed to know what was going on . . . well, I’m glad someone gets the story." She set her book down, and paced behind Nick and Marie, muttering angrily under her breath as Nick took the Sue in his arms. Death could just barely see the anger in his eyes from where she stood. Poor vampire. He probably had to deal with so many! Of course, other universes had it worse . . .

Back in the blackest part of the loft, where Death had left her notebook, the chameleon crawled. It was hungry, and didn’t tend to like fan fiction very much, being a lizard and not needing fictional romances in the same way as so many human writers seemed to. He looked lazily over the pages and then started to munch on them.

When the chameleon looked up again, he saw Natalie examining Marie for any way she could be medically unstable, which would somehow have given her knowledge of Nick? And, of course, the Sue claimed that she was not crazy.

"Ah ha!" Death said. "So that’s your problem!" Natalie, dear Natalie, who could withstand a vampire’s hypnotic suggestion unfazed, looked up and directly at Death. "Oops." Death snapped her fingers and disappeared.

Nat sighed. Her eyes must have been deceiving her – it was just a shadow.

The chameleon went back to eating. People were so dull.

—

When Death had finally rescued her poor bleach-burned, chewed notebook and gotten back to the story, two entire chapters had passed, and . . . no, that couldn’t have been right. Death checked the words again. Oh, yes, LaCroix had kidnaped Marie.

Death groaned. It wasn’t that she didn’t think LaCroix deserved to be in the story – he was a wonderful person (well kind of) and had managed to play a game around Death in his own time, but . . . kidnaped? That was not his style.

LaCroix landed in the backyard (excuse me, back yard) of a Victorian-style house. Death, who had been waiting for him, followed the vampire and Marie (who he was carrying) inside. LaCroix gently uprighted (the author seemed to not know that ‘uprighted’ wasn’t a word) Marie, giving him an extra hand so he could open the door without breaking the lock. "Cutting it a little tight, are we?" Death noted, as the sun rose a moment later. From a warm nook in a couch, the chameleon raised its head, spotted the sunlight, and headed toward it, avoiding the large, clumping feet of a human, vampire, and . . . well, whatever Death was.

Marie started trembling. Oh, yeah. Now she was scared. But LaCroix, in his gentle assuring manner (Death snorted) said: "It’s alright. I won’t harm you."

"No, but you’ll harm the rest of us by continuously saying ‘alright’, which isn’t even a word." LaCroix ignored Death, or perhaps didn’t see her. Most likely, both.

Marie didn’t seem to believe LaCroix either, but he mesmerized her. Death groaned. Not mesmerized! The word was hypnotized! How hard was that to remember? Mesmerize had a slightly wrong definition. Besides, all the legends pointed to . . . but this was real. Right, Death, keep your mind of the present.

LaCroix closed the blinds, seeming to not realize that this put him directly in the light as the sun had already risen. He gazed into Marie’s eyes. The Sue saw something deep in his, and it touched her. He was not so cold. Just because LaCroix was evil, and had only ever loved one woman, and was a serial killer beyond belief . . . well, he was kind of a nice guy.

Death simply stalked out in disgust, stepping on the chameleon’s tail on the way out. It glared at her with one rotating eye, and crawled into the room. Well, if Death wouldn’t PPC, then it certainly would. Pulling out a mini notebook, it scribbled in chameleon language, and then pulled out a tiny CAD, pointing it at LaCroix.

[Lucien LaCroix. Vampire Male. OOC 60%. CHARACTER RUPTURE.]

Stupid humans. Why did they do things like this?

The chameleon rolled its eyes, a rather amazing feat for anyone who has seen such a lizard do so. They had amazing mobility. It changed colors to match the floor and slunk closer as Marie wondered if LaCroix was just using her to get to Nick. Well, we can certainly hope so, the chameleon thought with amazing clarity. It paused. Had it just thought in Human? No, that was impossible.

Death skimmed over the words. Ah, yes: Nick and Natalie studied the diary that LaCroix had supposedly used to bring in Marie, Nick angsted, and they decided that "LaCroix had become very depressed and lonely." How amazingly perceptive of them. She made another note. Meh, boring. What was the ‘Sue doing? Feeling overwhelmingly bored, and wondering if this was the reason why many PPC agents had partners – to make their lives more interesting – Death headed back to spy on the Sue.

"I may not know a lot about your past but I can see through your soul, which tells me enough...And, our specious connection, do you not feel anything towards me?" Death winced. Dang it – it was a bad time to come in. Did the Sue really, really, hate the English language? Did she want to kill it?

No, answered the last lingering sane part of Death’s mind. All she wants is LaCroix.

Unfortunately.

Well, it does make our job easier.

Shut up.

Marie tried to look away from LaCroix, but he was too strong, and she gave into him. LaCroix kissed her gently, and she returned them with passion. He turned her head gently, then gentle whispered to her not to be afraid, and gently bit her.

Death rolled her eyes in a poor imitation of the chameleon. Well, at least he was killing the Sue for her . . .

LaCroix bit his own wrist and dribbled the blood into the Sue’s mouth.

Death jumped up. "Okay, stop it, that is just disgusting! I mean, come on! That’s worse than all the ‘gently’s! Stop it already! Geez, I mean, you couldn’t just kill her, you had to try and bring her over! Have you any idea how much more work that’s going to cause me? No, I suppose you don’t, do you? And I’ve seen the end of this story, it’s not even really the Twilight Zone! That would be having you FK people be watching the real world on TV. But are you? No!"

LaCroix slowly turned his gaze on Death, dropping the Sue. His mind was reeling from the Sue’s influence, and he couldn’t think straight. What was going on?

Marie woke up, she was thirsty. She lifted her gaze and stared at Death. Ah. Food. Marie charged –

But Death, knowing the ‘verse, had come prepared, and pinned Marie against the wall with a cross and garlic. "Marie No-last-name, you are hereby charged with being a Mary-sue, using the ‘word’ ‘alright’ multiple times, making canon characters say it, knocking a bunch of people and especially LaCroix out of character, having a stupid way of getting to this universe, claiming this is Twilight Zone and then making it not Twilight Zoney, hating the English language and occasionally forcing it to suffer, making LaCroix love you more than the only one he ever loved, telling people about your reality, not having many descriptions, making your story so boring I had to totally ignore part of it, and, oh, yeah, resisting arrest. For these things the punishment is Death. That’s me. Do you have any last words?"

"I’m hungry! Help me, LaCroix!"

Death paused, staring at the Sue for a moment. Talk about sorry last words. Shrugging, she shoved a wooden stake through Marie’s heart and pushed her out the door into the sunlight.

Only one last thing. "Er . . . hey, LaCroix, look into my eyes. Now forget all of this." LaCroix stared at her, and, having snapped out of the Sue’s power, was not amused. Nor was he hypnotized. Death sighed. It never worked.

Hearing Death’s sigh (which was quite impressive, considering what it was, exactly) the chameleon looked up from its place underneath the couch. LaCroix heard it and turned. " . . ." the chameleon said.

LaCroix got a glazed look in his eyes. " . . ."

Death glared down and Agent Random’s partner. "How did you get here?" she demanded. The chameleon didn’t answer. It never did. Shaking her head, Death got out the portaller and glared at it. "If you don’t take us back to Headquarters right now," she said, "I will personally give you to LaCroix. And I mean Evil LaCroix."

It was amazing how quickly they got back.