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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.

Agent History[]

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[]

Rc1110

RC 1110 as lived in by Derik and Earwig.

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—something all dragonriders have, but the knowledge of which has been lost in Ninth-Pass Pern—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
18 9P | 2526 AL
21 9P | 2529 AL
  • E'rik and Skepnadth mourn a loss and honor the memory of the departed. (Prompt fic.)
2008 HST
March 11
March 12–April 17
May (probably)
2010
July
December
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
March 11–12
2012
May
2013
February
2014
March 18
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
Summer?
  • Mission to "Draconic Supremacy" with Agent Huinesoron.
September
Derik pony

Cutie mark: harp and rose

October
2017
September (probably)
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
2018
January
February (probably)
March
April
October 31
Gadrik recolorme

Gadrik

  • 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
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.
2021
July
September
  • Derik and Thoth file a complaint against a girl claiming to be their daughter from the future. Shiping is one thing; pushing it is another!

Mission Logs[]

Home: Response Center 1110, also on AO3.

Recruitment[]

Partnered with Earwig[]

Partnered with Gall[]

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