THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS BOTH SPOILERS FOR THE MISSION AND SUBJECTIVE COMMENTS. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

I had a few concerns with how your characters acted, both with each other and by themselves. First off was this one line in particular:

"Gall . . . when I was aware of anything, I was afraid. I believed you would leave me to rot and murder Vanya without charges. Why didn't you?"

There's nothing wrong with the line by itself. The problem for me was that I never really believed that Gall would 'leave him to rot.' Everything she had done up to that point never really reached a level of antagonism where I might accept that she'd leave him in the lurch. Gall seemed like a typical snarky headstrong partner. I would've bought her prematurely finish the mission without him, but not abandoning Derik entirely. The above line could be exaggeration on Derik's part, of course, but I did not see anything that would indicate it as such.

The other major problem I had with this piece was with Derik himself. It was never really explained why (or I just didn't see where) he was having such a problem on this particular day. The point where he starts crying is never really touched upon after that moment despite Gall's little comment at the end of section suggesting it might be. I found myself not really caring about him, which in turn hurt my enjoyment of the back and forth agent banter (which, I should note, was otherwise very good.)

Sorta related (in that Derik is involved) was the bit where he was knocked out. The whole section in his head doesn't really add anything to the overall plot. The lines near the end of that about Derik's duty felt a little too cheesy to me to be taken seriously.

There were some excellent bits of dialogue, particularly with Derik and Gall are doing their disapproving father/rebellious daughter thing. I really enjoyed that dynamic when the previously mentioned issues weren't getting in the way of it.

The mission as a whole just felt average to me. The fic being sporked did not really hook me in any particular way, which normally isn't too much of a problem if the agent interactions are solid or the jokes are golden. Had your agents been more consistent in their characterizations, I probably would have enjoyed this much more.

PC

Gall makes for a very fun and different PPC agent! We see often enough an agent who tries to reign themselves in to avoid assassinating the Sue too early, but I think Gall is the first one I've seen who just outright doesn't care about the rules. She's going to be difficult to keep under control, for both you and Derik, I think. I'm glad you included a scene with an example of why bringing "pets" on missions is frowned upon. Hopefully Gall takes that into account at least sometimes.

Ah, the old String-Them-Between-Things-That-They-Geologically-Compressed-So-They-Get-Torn-Apart-By-The-Canon-Rearranging assassination . . . is getting a little too old for me, honestly. I was hoping you would just flat-out feed Vanya to the canon werewolves, so I'm glad you at least gave them a small appearance to dispose of her glittery bits.

Also, I got angrier and angrier at the similarity between "Vanya" and "Vania" as the mission continued. I know that isn't a legitimate criticism against the Suethor in any way, but the spellings and pronunciations are just WAY too close. Makes me uncomfortable.

"....as though the proximity to canon caused a gravitational effect sheering it out of alignment..." Should be "shearing". I think it slipped through your spell check.

Also, and the opposite of a mistake:
"You're insane," Gall commented. "Your plan is insane."

I got a chuckle out of your correctly using your/you're so pointedly! Now if we could only drill that into the badfic writers' heads.

I do get a feeling we're all suffering from mission-length inflation...

Anyhow. I didn't particularly like Gall to start with - no particular reason, she just bugged me - but she seemed to improve over time, so that's good. I did enjoy the puppet-theatre moments - although, as I'm sure you're already aware, doing it too often would wear mighty thin - and the fact that you kept neatly in the bounds of what each agent knew (the line about the dragon's name comes to mind; and speaking of which, how many Sues are that insecure that they name their CAFs 'Mine, y'all!'?)

Oh, and Selene says... well, actually she says 'YAAAARGH LEMME ATTEM CALLING THEMSELVES VAMPIRES KILLKILLKILL', but she's insane these days. If she wasn't, she'd say she was amused to see her assassination method catching on.

(Of course, it was actually Dafydd's idea, but hey - she's an old-fashioned vamp-girl, all the ideas are hers in her head)

hS in't good at reviews

I wondered when this would come out! It's still a fun read another time around! :D