With all the discussion about what does and does not constitute a Mary Sue story on the list lately, I thought I'd offer my own silly interpretation of what exactly a Mary Sue story is. It took courage to share this brief insanity. I hope everyone enjoys reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Well, actually it's by me (L. Gay Palmero), but I'm ashamed to admit it and I took Pseudonyms 101, so... Obviously Davis/Panzer Productions would want to have nothing to do with this. Do not hold them responsible. Equally obviously, I was insane when I wrote it, so you can't hold me responsible! This is not intended to infringe on any copyrights. I was just having fun. (In fact, I had so much fun, I wrote four others... which I will not inflict on you at this time.) Be nice. I'm a much better poet and proofreader than I am a comic writer. Oh, well...

This should probably get a G rating, but since there's a teensy bit of implied sex, I'll make it PG. Enjoy! Feedback welcome at gay@texas.net.

Perfection is naturally to be flaunted. Mary Sue flaunts it. She has practiced her come-hither stare until no man is immune. She cultivates friendships with women as well, in order to control their jealous natures. She always tells herself that she can't help being desirable, and thus keeps her own sense of naivete, in itself a most desirable attribute, in tact. She is, in short, about as calculating as anyone could possibly be.

There are many who think that Mary Sue herself is fiction. They are wrong. I am a Watcher. My ancestors have watched Mary Sue down through the centuries. She is as desirable, as brainy, as perfect as the writers say...with one addition to her perfection that no one has ever guessed: she is Immortal. She has inside her the blood of kings. She is a princess of the universe. So it is no surprise that she is continually saving it. Nor is it any surprise that she is continually forming relationships with all the most desirable men in history. She is Mary Sue. It is in her nature.

These then, are the Chronicles Of Mary Sue. I write them down here for the first time, because the truth should be known. Let the reader (and all fan fiction writers) beware...

His designs became known to his wife, Queen Guinevere, who probably shouldn't have cared since she was carrying on with Lancelot, but she wanted to have her cake and eat it, too. And so she became very angry. With cold cruelty, she sent her lover to dispose of Mary Sue. Instead, Lancelot succumbed to her beauty and seduced her. The queen became livid with fury when she found out. First the king, then Lancelot. It was not to be borne. She devised a hideous plot and invited the girl to court. Once there, Mary Sue was accused of treason and burned at the stake while all the court looked on and wept that so young and beautiful a creature should be so foully done to death.

This was Mary Sue's first death. Many more were to follow. The death was painful and slow, and she was slow to recover from it. She awoke, buried alive in a coffin with an uncomfortable buzzing sound in her ears. Then there was the thud of a shovel against the coffin lid and an oath. She heard the shovel thrown aside and then saw the lid wrenched open and looked up into the handsome if angular face of the king's foster brother. He smiled at her mischievously and helped her out of the coffin. "Sorry about this. Bummer of a way to die, as they say in Scotland. Godforsaken place, Scotland. No Immortal worth his salt would want to be from Scotland. Egypt and the Holy Land are bad, but there are parts of Scotland I wouldn't give you the hind parts of a rat for."

Mary Sue only looked at him, piteously silent in her confusion, and sadly aware that she had no clothes on since her shift had been burned away in the fire.

The Immortal, whose buzz had died away once she had identified him, smiled again. "Oops. I forgot. You don't have the slightest idea what's going on here, do you? And this is going to be one long explanation. Let me see..." He paused, seeming to notice for the first time that she was naked. And not finding it at all indecent. "Wow! Do you know how long it has been since I've seen..." He trailed into silence, recognizing the indelicacy of the situation. "Well, we'd better find you some clothes first. More's the pity." He took off his cape and wrapped it around her. "Do you know who I am? Well, that's a stupid question, of course, you know who I am. I mean do you know what I am?"

Mary Sue shook her head numbly. All she knew was that the man was handsome and talked way too much. And she was cold, and she should be dead, and she'd just been rescued from a coffin that had clearly been buried for a few hours at least. "Am I dead?" she asked desperately, "Is this hell?"

"With me in it? More like Heaven." The Immortal smiled again. "No, you were dead. Now you're alive again. You see, you're Immortal. So am I. You must have heard my buzz when I was digging you up."

"That was you?" Mary Sue dealt first with the easiest information to assimilate. It would take her a little longer to accept her Immortality.

"That was me. You see, I died several thousand years ago at the beginning of the Bronze Age. And then I became one of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse and did terrible things..." He trailed off again with a strange expression on his face. "Why am I telling you all this? I don't usually talk about it. It's something I'd rather forget. But you... You're so easy to talk to...I feel as if you won't condemn me for my past."

Mary Sue laid a gentle hand on his arm, glad that her natural ability to reduce generally intelligent self-sufficient males to mush had returned. "It's all right. Whatever you've done I'm sure it was necessary and if it wasn't, I forgive you unconditionally. Now tell me what an Immortal does."

The king's foster brother who had always looked disturbingly younger than the king, even though they should both have been in their forties, sighed. "Well, this is the bad news. Basically what we do is run around chopping other Immortals' heads off and getting their power. Because you see," his voice turned solemn and slow, deepening to a hushed whisper as if this were the most important information he had to impart; he spoke in all capitals, "There Can Be Only One..."

Mary Sue blinked. "Only One? You mean, only one Immortal? Why?"

"Because... Well... Just because." The King's foster brother sighed. "I've never quite gotten a handle on that part of it. But when there's only one left, he or she will have all the power of all the Immortals ever born and will become ruler of the Universe. So if it's someone who is evil, that's just too terrible to contemplate. So I'm glad I found you before that rat Perceval did. You don't want to associate with him. I know. I associated with him for a couple of hundred years and would like to forget the experience, thank you."

"Perceval? He's an Immortal?" Mary Sue remembered Perceval coming to her cell the night before her burning. It had been a glorious night. He had been a glorious knight. She had always liked him the best of all the knights at court. The king's foster brother, who went by the name of Kay though she now suspected that wasn't his name at all, had never said two words to her. And if he had, she was certain they would have been bitingly, wittily sarcastic. She had never liked him very much. But he was handsome...

"Yes. His real name, or at least the name he went by when I knew him, is Kronos. And you'd have thought, after all we'd been through together, that he'd have been happy to see me again, but no...First he knocks me off my horse with a nine-foot-long spear and then he tramples me! Twenty-one times! It's a good thing I still recover from death fairly quickly, or they'd have buried me, and then I'd have had to dig my way out. Fortunately though, I woke up in Arthur's tent just a few minutes later. But revenge was out of the question since everyone thought Perceval was so great. Someday, I'll find someone who can take that jerk's head."

"So we chop off people's heads?" Mary Sue had finally managed to assimilate that part of the conversation. "Is that the only way to kill an Immortal?"

"That's right. But don't worry. I'll show you everything you need to know. Just like someone showed me. Can't remember who it was, right off the bat, but someone did show me..." He took her arm and smiled down at her. "You'll have to lay low for a while since everyone thinks you're dead. I hope you don't mind."

"Not at all." Mary Sue unconsciously turned on the full power of her charm. "As long as I'm with you."

Kay's brain completely turned to mush and he led her away.

She learned everything she needed to know about how to survive as an Immortal from Kay, who had been born over four thousand years before and was already the world's oldest living Immortal. She didn't discover his real name until centuries later when she met him again in the company of a Scot who wasn't at all ashamed to admit that he was from Scotland, and actually was rather proud of the fact. Thus, Mary Sue was the innocent cause of a quarrel between them that would last for several years. But that's another story. And this one is not yet finished.

After several years, she emerged from her enforced confinement as her own niece, a beautiful convent-bred girl whom Kay had met on a quest. They pretended to be married. Everyone was jealous of Kay, especially Kronos/Perceval, who could hear her buzz and knew the truth: that she was the true Mary Sue, perfectly Immortal and immortally perfect. She could sense that he was plotting against them both and knew that she would have to take his head in order to keep herself, Kay, England, the world, the galaxy, and the universe safe. She also knew that he was so strong that even Kay, the world's oldest living Immortal, whose true name she still didn't know, was afraid to challenge him. Perceval was evil. He was unscrupulous. He was more than just a damn good swordsman. He was even more than an Immortal. He was evil incarnate. Or he would be someday, not too long after he was finally dead. So Mary Sue plotted, too... She plotted to kill him and gain his power, because after all, there could be only one, and she had to kill someone sometime, and she'd really rather not have to kill her friend and mentor and pretended husband, Kay. Much better to leave that to someone else to do. She had a vague sense of loyalty after all. So she would kill Kronos/Perceval in preference, if she could.

However, before her plans could come to fruition, a great miracle challenged England, Arthur, and the Table Round. The Holy Grail entered the halls of Camelot, passed through, and was gone. All the knights of the Round Table except Arthur went off in search of this wonder, hoping to find it again somehow. And miracle of miracles, after many years several of them came back. And then after several more years, Sir Bors, cousin of Lancelot, himself returned and told the tale of the finding of the Grail and how Galahad and Perceval had died. Mary Sue privately thought it was a lot of bull, but she smiled and pretended to be glad.

Then disaster struck. Kay returned home at last, and all seemed well, until the evil woman Kassandra came to court with a box that -- she said -- contained a head and would only open at the hand of the greatest knight in Arthur's realm. No one could open it until Kay, who had learned a lot of different ways to pick a lock over four thousand years, managed to pry it open, and inside was the head of the king's son. Kassandra, in triumph, pointed an accusing finger at Kay and said, "It is he who has robbed you of your son, my liege! He killed him! You have harbored a viper in your bosom!"

"Time to go. Nice knowing you, Arthur." Kay grabbed Mary Sue's hand, and while all the court sat in stunned disbelief, made good their escape.

But Mary Sue refused to follow him to France where they would be safe. "Is this how you gain power, Kay? You run away from the battle? If you're innocent, why not fight and prove yourself?"

"Not that old myth about trial by combat again? For a reasonably intelligent girl, you can be an annoying product of your times sometimes, Mary Sue." Kay allowed her to slide down from his horse, knowing he couldn't force her to go with him to safety. "Besides, I'm not innocent. I did take his head. I'm glad I did. He was Immortal."

"Then how could he be the king's son? You said only foundlings could be Immortal." Mary Sue was astonished and vaguely disillusioned, though willing to forgive.

"He was adopted. Arthur didn't want anyone to know, so I kept it a secret. But I came across him after he'd been killed by a giant, risen up in fury, and then killed the giant. He had a disgusting habit of sleeping with anyone he killed, and I decided it had to stop. So I took his head."

Mary Sue curled her lip with all the disdain of an Immortal who has never taken anyone's head herself. "Then he had only just become Immortal and you killed him. That is unworthy of you. And so is this running away. I will stay and face this Kassandra."

Kay shrugged. "Hey, it's your Immortality. If you want to get yourself killed, that's your problem. It's been nice knowing you." He rode away.

But Mary Sue returned to the court and was surprised to be charged with witchcraft. "It was her," Arthur cried at sight of her as she trudged wearily through the gates. "She bewitched my foster brother and made him do this terrible thing. Burn the witch!"

Not again, was Mary Sue's last thought before they grabbed her, bound her to the stake, and set her ablaze. Bummer, as they said in Scotland at that time. But she had learned the secret of recovering quickly from death and rose from the ashes of her own stake to stalk Kassandra.

But the Immortal woman with an everlasting grudge knew that Mary Sue was Immortal and challenged her to single combat. The court amused at the thought and still reeling from the shock of seeing Mary Sue walk away from the stake agreed to let the challenge stand. The women drew their swords and began hacking at each other in a fury terrible to behold, screaming epithets at each other.

"You're married to a murderer!" Kassandra screeched. "He killed me! He killed me over and over again! It was terrible!"

"People under stress do terrible things sometimes!" Mary Sue answered back, swinging at Kassandra's neck. "It was in the past. Forget it!"

"I can't forget it! It was the worst experience of my Immortal life! I shall never forget or forgive!"

"Then I'll kill you!"

It was a very real threat for Mary Sue was Mary Sue and so wielded her sword with such consummate skill that Kassandra knew she was doomed if she couldn't escape. So the Bronze Age bitch cheated. She pulled a dagger and threw it into Mary Sue's chest. As the beautiful young thing staggered and fell heart-rendingly to the ground and all the available males in the court gathered around her, heartsick to see her dead on the ground, Kassandra clambered over the castle walls and escaped.

Mary Sue recovered quickly. Her survival was accounted miraculous. She was soon worshipped as a saint by the entire English court. And after a little while, she was able to win a pardon for Kay from the king. When her erstwhile mentor and lover returned to the court, he fell on his knees before her, even though it was something he'd never done in his life before and hoped he would never have to do again, and thanked her humbly for all she had done for him and all the pleasure she had given him. Her first adventure ended with a passionate kiss and a discreet boudoir fade-out.

Such was and is the power of Mary Sue...