Derik

Derik is an agent in the Department of Mary Sues. He is written by Neshomeh.

Agent Profile
Derik is assumed by his author to have been about 34 (Gerard Butler's age when filming the 2004 PotO movie) at the time of his recruitment, give or take. His current age is impossible to tell for certain due to his badfic origins and wibbly-wobbly HQ time. He could actually be a late-twenty-something or early-forty-something.

Appearance
Like most dragonriders, Derik is tall and well-muscled, particularly in the chest and shoulders. He has a dark complexion and a square jaw. Almost the entire right side of his face is covered in Threadscar. His eyes are mismatched due to the fact that the right one is damaged and blinded, which gives it a milky blue appearance. His normal eye is hazel. Other people have remarked that he resembles Gerard Butler, but Derik disagrees.

Though he is no longer a dragonrider, Derik still wears his fur-trimmed wherhide flight jacket most of the time. The shoulder knots are simply bronze for his deceased dragon and gray for his never-specified Weyr, which happens to suit HQ perfectly.

Personality
Having lost his dragon means that Derik lives on the edge of sanity. He clings to his sense of duty to keep himself balanced. During missions, he goes by the book and tries to maintain a cautious, focused approach, and he keeps meticulous charge lists, even if circumstances conspire to prevent him from ever reading them in full. However, he is easily pushed into rage or grief when Suvian antics hit a little too close to home, and he has a personal vendetta against Mary Sues that gives him a special zeal for executions.

Between missions, without some specific purpose or expectation to fulfill, he tends to be depressed and hostile. He keeps himself busy with canon research, Indoor-Rules Quiddich and other physical exercise, and, if all else fails, getting drunk with his partner and teammates.

He identifies strongly as a Pernese man. His rebooted past includes Harper training, and he has demonstrated that Pern's musical heritage holds value for him. He has a trained singing voice (a clear, high-ranging baritone, nothing like that Butler fellow, thankyouverymuch), but he is reluctant to put it to much use, perhaps due in part to his strange status as a Phantom of the Opera photocopy. Having once met a mostly in-character Leroux!Erik in FicPsych, he is not at all comfortable with the parts of himself that recall Erik. However, if not for his dragon's death, terrible music and doggerel verse would be his top berserk buttons.

Origin and Recruitment
Derik was recruited by Jennifer Robinson from the crossover "Harry Potter and the Dragonriders of Pern" on March 11, 2008. He had been cast as the Weyrleader, rider of bronze Skepnadth, and went by the name of E'rik at the time. Essentially, he was a Phantom of the Opera look-alike dragged in by the Weyrwoman Sue to make her look good. He didn't have very much to do, and Jenni talked him into helping the PPC agents assigned to the fic. During the process of taking down the three Mary Sues in the story, the Weyrwoman's Sued golden queen attacked Skepnadth and killed him.

He slipped into a catatonic state and spent the next couple of months in FicPsych, where the 2008 Macrovirus Epidemic passed him by. He was shaken back to reality by an encounter with the original Leroux!Erik and later wandered into a Reality Room, where his appearance and background got rebooted into their present canon-respecting state. Meanwhile, the 2008 Mary Sue Invasion had begun, and he came out swinging and fought his way back to FicPsych. Of course, having been immobile for weeks, he then passed out on their doorstep. When the department itself was attacked, though, he roused to help defend it.

Jenni initially nicknamed him dragonrider!Erik to distinguish him from Leroux!Erik, Gerard Butler!Erik, etc. Following the convention of shortening the aforementioned to Lerik and Gerik, dragonrider!Erik became Derik.

PPC Career


His career so far is a bit short due to time slippage. Living with a kender can be very distracting, and he went on only two recorded missions with Earwig in the time they were partnered. In 2011, he was assigned with Gall Knutson to conduct her evaluation, but it seems the time in their mission has an odd relation to time in the rest of the multiverse, because although it began in March 2011, it seems to have ended in the middle of 2012. Upon their return, they were officially partnered together.

The Narrative Laws of Drama seem to think Derik should be tortured with badfic involving dragons and the Phantom of the Opera. (Mercifully, not at the same time. Yet.) For better or worse, he has proven incapable of harming anything draconic, whether it resembles Pernese dragons or not. As Gall once pointed out, though, they are dragon experts, so that part makes some sense. As for the other part, he has an eerie insight into the PotOverse that may or may not purely result from the canon knowledge he gained in the Reality Room.

Derik's life has taken an interesting turn as of October–November 2017, when he met Thoth at a Halloween costume party. The Thousand Son and the ex-dragonrider turned out to have a surprising amount in common and quickly recognized each other as kindred spirits, though actual friendship turned out to be a bit trickier. When Derik joined Thoth and his partner Tom Andrews on a mission, Thoth recognized Derik's latent empathic ability&mdash;something all dragonriders have, but the knowledge of which has been lost in Ninth-Pass Pern&mdash;and offered to train him to develop his psychic talent. Or, at the very least, to gain some control over his volatile mood swings. Although skeptical, Derik has accepted.

To make things even more interesting, it's no secret that Gall has a serious thing for him and has tried everything short of jumping him to get his attention. What started out as simple lust and stubbornness on her part seems to have evolved into something more like actual feelings. As of mid-2018, Derik appears to have found some of his own for her, too. In March 2019 they became parents to Gadrik. Because of course it would be March.

Timeline

 * Ninth Pass, Pern
 * Born in Southern Boll Hold a year before the start of the Ninth Pass.
 * 16th year of the Ninth Pass | 2524 After Landing
 * Discovered on Search at the age of seventeen. (Prompt fic.)
 * 18 9P | 2526 AL
 * Suffers a near-fatal Threadscarring at the age of 19.
 * Skepnadth participates in a mating flight. (Prompt fic.)
 * 21 9P | 2529 AL
 * E'rik and Skepnadth mourn a loss and honor the memory of the departed. (Prompt fic.)


 * 2008 HST
 * March 11
 * Recruited by Jenni Robinson from "Harry Potter and the Dragonriders of Pern." Assumed to be about 34.
 * March 12–April 17
 * In a catatonic state in FicPsych throughout the Macrovirus Epidemic, but instrumental in defending the department from an invading army of Mary Sues, as recorded in "Gestalt Therapy."
 * May (probably)
 * Partnered with Earwig Slugthrower.
 * First recorded mission with Earwig.
 * 2010
 * July
 * Spotted at Rudi's in DIA: "Introductions." (Cameo appearance.)
 * December
 * Second recorded mission with Earwig. They recruit Gall Knutson.
 * Interlude: "One Tech's Nightmare."
 * 2011
 * January
 * Earwig wanders off and winds up on a "training exchange program" with Agent Brightbeard. He does not inform Derik, who is left to stew and struggle with his grip on sanity.
 * February 5
 * Attends Henry Robinson's second birthday party.
 * March 11–12
 * The first third Some anniversary of Derik's recruitment. Partnered with Gall for her evaluation.
 * First recorded mission with Gall.
 * 2012
 * May
 * Officially partnered with Gall.
 * Joins the All-HQ Australian Indoor-Rules Quiddich League in "Recruitment: Team Blast Hardcheese," mostly to prevent Gall from being in charge by herself.
 * Interlude: "Morning After"
 * Second recorded mission with Gall.
 * Squares off against old friends from FicPsych in the first AHAIRQL match of the season, "Physical Therapy vs. Blast Hardcheese."
 * 2013
 * February
 * Attends Agent Supernumerary's tenth anniversary party.
 * 2014
 * March 18
 * Strikes up an awkward conversation with Constance Sims and Dafydd Illian while dressed as the Dread Pirate Roberts at the 2014 Purim Party.
 * 2015
 * Mission to "The Empty Vessel" with Diocletian and Ithalond. (Dunno if this will get written, but I'm counting it as having happened anyway.)
 * 2016
 * January
 * Takes part in the Third PPC HQ Hunger Games, coming in 12th place out of 48 after getting stabbed in the back by Henry Asclepe (who took second place).
 * Summer?
 * Mission to "Draconic Supremacy" with Agent Huinesoron.
 * September
 * Takes part in the Fourth PPC HQ Hunger Games, coming in 7th place out of 48 after losing a lightsaber duel with Kyaris (who won).
 * October
 * Helps to exorcise the Everfree Forest in pony form.
 * 2017
 * September (probably)
 * Learns how to make Viking bread. (Prompt fic.)
 * October 31
 * Attends the 2017 Halloween Party dressed as a Green Lantern and gets roped into a drinking contest with a Space Marine. He loses, of course. Meanwhile, the authors Ironic Overpower decides to throw all of Derik's major traumas in his face. In the throes of sloppy, drunken oversharing, he manages to bond with Thoth. Gall does not help at all.
 * November
 * Mission to "the company of thorin oakenshield with future giants," aiding Tom and Thoth with a 40k x Hobbit crossover.
 * Begins training with Thoth.
 * 2018
 * January
 * Mission to "The Phantomess of the Opera and the Half-Blood Prince."
 * February (probably)
 * Helps Gall try to remember what she's forgetting. (Prompt fic.)
 * March
 * The 11th: Another anniversary. But this one is different. Better.
 * The 17th: Fails to see the appeal of Gall's sexy leprechaun outfit. (Prompt fic.)
 * October 31
 * Attends the 2018 Halloween Party dressed (or mostly not dressed) as Jason Momoa's Aquaman with Gall as a sexy Little Mermaid. Gall is obviously pregnant and thrilled about it. Derik is terrified.
 * 2019
 * March
 * Gadrik is born.
 * October 31
 * Attends the 2019 Halloween Party ostensibly dressed as a lumberjack, with Gall as herself and seven-month-old Gadrik as a baby Gronckle.

Mission Logs
Home: Response Center 1110, also on AO3.

Recruitment

 * "Harry Potter and the Dragonriders of Pern" (Harry Potter x Dragonriders of Pern), Agents Ilraen and Supernumerary (DIC) with Nurse Jennifer Robinson (FicPsych) and a few volunteers
 * In which nothing goes as planned.


 * "Gestalt Therapy" (FicPsych)
 * In which the events of March and April, 2008, make the Department of Fictional Psychology a difficult place to recover from badfic.

Partnered with Earwig

 * Mission 1: "The Smasher" (Super Smash Bros.)
 * In which a kender is the brains of the operation and the team gets some unexpected help.
 * Stu: Spidey3000
 * Mission 2: "The Girl and Her Dragon" (How to Train Your Dragon)
 * In which only the agents can prevent forest fires.
 * Sue: Kana Horrendous the Third
 * Interlude 1: "One Tech's Nightmare," with Agent Techno-Dann and Gall Knutson
 * In which it is seen that a dragon is far too big for HQ.

Partnered with Gall

 * Mission 3: "The Adventure Begins With One Step" (The Lord of the Rings)
 * In which Gall returns to make Derik's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day even worse.
 * Interlude 2: "Morning After"
 * In which everything looks different than it did the night before.
 * Mission 4: "Never Let Go" (The Phantom of the Opera)
 * In which the agents face the Music of the Night.
 * Mission 5: "The Empty Vessel" (The Lord of the Rings), Derik with Agents Diocletian and Ithalond (DMS)
 * Incomplete, but presumed to have taken place.
 * Mission 6: "Draconic Supremacy" (The Silmarillion), with Agent Huinesoron (DOGA)
 * Incomplete, but presumed to have taken place.
 * Mission 7: "The Company of Thorin Oakenshield with Future Giants" (Warhammer 40,000 x The Hobbit), Derik with Agents Tom Andrews and Thoth (DF)
 * In which brothers are found in unlikely places.
 * Interlude 3: "Lessons," Part 1, Part 2, Derik with Agent Thoth
 * In which my goal is more than a thought, I'll be there when I teach what I've been taught. (No, you didn't listen again, you didn't listen again.)
 * And in which I know that this is the way for me to go; you'll be there when you know what I know, and I know.
 * Mission 8: "The Phantomess of the Opera and the Half-Blood Prince" (Harry Potter x The Phantom of the Opera)
 * In which Faust is referenced a lot, but a devil's powers are borrowed anyway.
 * Interlude 4: "Presentation: 'The Spires of Prospero'," Derik with Agent Thoth
 * In which there's something here as strong as life; I know that it will reach you.