White Nettle forced herself to sit up with just the physical power in her arms – refusing to let her tendrils or other powers offer her any assistance. She’d gone through the entire ordeal without making it easier on herself; it would be a shame if she gave in at the very end and ruined the moment. She had to take a moment to catch her breath, coming to terms with the pain she had just been through.
The doctor came over to her, handing her a small bundle of fabric. Inside was the pinkish face of a healthy human baby. “It’s a girl,” the doctor said with a smile.
Nettle tried to say something, but all that came out was a wheeze. Despite this, she took hold of her daughter and pulled her close to her chest. The girl was decidedly ugly, as newborns tended to be, and Nettle knew this on some level. But on a deeper, more instinctual level she saw the most beautiful thing that she had ever laid her eyes on. Life. She couldn’t understand why she felt this way, had no real experiences to prepare herself for this moment, but she knew. She just knew that this little girl was the whole point of her life. Everything had been leading her to this moment right here. Everything.
The Mother ran a finger across her child’s cheek. “What should we call her?”
Her husband smiled. “Didn’t you already have one picked out?”
“…Osanna. But does she really have to be n-”
“Yes. She does.” He leaned down so he was eye level with the child. “Hello, Osanna. Welcome to this New World… Though to you, it’s just the world, isn’t it? You don’t know how lucky you are… you will see your wildest fantasies played out right before your eyes. You will grow up in a world where stories can really sing to you.”
“…She has no idea what you’re saying,” Nettle observed.
He chuckled and laid a hand on Nettle’s shoulder. “Even now, you still have to learn. I’m talking to her because… just because she’s my daughter. She doesn’t have to understand, she just has to hear.”
Nettle tried to giggle, but found this motion more than a little painful and tiring. This did not stop her from looking Osanna in the face and talking. “Guess I’ve got to tell you something. Hi. I’m… your mother. That’s what I am. Before now, I was nothing.”
“Come now…”
“Hush,” Nettle told her husband. “It’s true. I may have been the most powerful being ever… but I was nothing. I wasn’t part of a family. I had… nothing.” She beamed at him. “And now I have everything.”
They kissed, but quickly went back to doting on Osanna. She was a new life they’d brought into the world, and as far as Nettle was concerned it was the best thing she had ever done.
She already knew she wouldn’t be able to wait before she talked everyone’s ears off about her daughter. They may not be able to understand, but that didn’t really matter. What mattered was that they knew that she was experiencing something new.
~~~
“We have a problem,” Burgerbelle said, sitting on her folding chair backwards.
Mattie and the Everykid raised their eyebrows. “Problem?” The three of them were sitting in a somewhat spacious broom closet within the League of Sweetie Belles.
“Yes. Problem. A big old ugly annoying problem!” Burgerbelle stood on her chair like it was a podium. “We have thrust upon us a question of what matters and what doesn’t! What is right and what is wrong! What is best for our friends!”
Mattie rolled her eyes. “I’m pretty sure I have a good idea what this is about, so just get to the point. The kid doesn’t need to be serenaded into thinking you’re hot stuff.”
The Everykid nodded.
Burgerbelle’s left eyebrow twitched. “Nobody appreciates my flair for the dramatic…” She sat back down in her chair – though she refused to turn it the right way around. She pulled Songs of the Spheres: Void out of her hair and dropped it in the middle of the three of them. There was no table, so it fell unceremoniously to the floor.
The Everykid poked it with her parasol like it was some sort of spider.
Burgerbelle facepalmed. “Okay, so, here’s the problem. Nettle is in this book.”
The two of them stared at her intently.
“The future Nettle is in this book. As in, there’s a story in here that hasn’t happened yet!”
“That’s not all that unusual,” Mattie pointed out. “Just go ask Twilence, she knows everything.”
“But Nettle doesn’t know about it!” Burgerbelle said. “And we can’t tell her about it!”
“…Why not?” the Everykid asked, the rare sound of her voice drawing attention to the question.
“Have you read it?”
The Everykid shook her head.
Mattie let out a ‘tsk’ noise. “Really, it should be required reading at this point. Let’s sum it up: a mysterious Mother is the eighth story in 115 – Song of the Spheres, the big whalloping spank of a chapter that tries to tell too many stories at once. In it, the Mother deals with some of the stresses of being a, well, Mother to a teenage daughter. It also foreshadows the future of the City and other stuff. A rather popular passage since it tells everyone the City will be around for a while. Quite surprising that Nettle hasn’t heard about it. One would think she’d be going off about how her husband doesn’t even have a name in there…”
“Because she’s not supposed to know,” Burgerbelle said, tapping the book. “Nettle in the story has nooooo idea about what’s about to happen. She has doubts, concerns, and a lot of uncertainty. So she can’t know.”
Mattie rolled her eyes. “For all you know she did know and just pushed it to the back of her mind or conveniently forgot.”
“That’s not something you conveniently forget!” Burgerbelle waved her hands around frantically. “We have to protect the heartwarming events within these pages!”
“There’s also the chance we have an imperfect copy. A few sentences could have been translated incorrectly, and seeing how much of the book likes to insert important details in single sentences I don’t see th-”
“I don’t want to risk that. I want us, some of her closest friends, to not spoil this for her. She wants to experience it naturally – went through labor and everything without making it easier for herself.” She held a proud hand high. “We have to keep it from her for her sake! It is what she would want!”
The Everykid thought about this for a moment and nodded.
Mattie rolled her eyes. “You know what, that’s a good enough reason for me. I won’t bring it up, you have my word.”
Burgerbelle pulled Mattie into a bear hug. “Oh thank you! I’m so glad we’re all on the same page!”
Mattie smirked. “Well, there’s going to be complications of course.”
Burgerbelle didn’t like the sound of that.
“Let me put it this way. I’m sure that I won’t spill the beans, and I’m relatively certain Everykid doesn’t have enough words in her mouth to do so. But I also know we’ve got to have ourselves a conflict today.”
“Crud.” Burgerbelle blinked. “The cameras are on…”
“Ring-a-ding-dong,” Mattie sang. “If I had to guess I would say you would get to be the one who has a bit of a problem keeping this little secret from her.” She turned around with a coy smirk on her face. “Have fun~!”
“Wait! Can I do it? Can I keep it from her?”
“How should I know? I’m not Twilence!” Mattie shrugged. “C’mon kid, let’s go find Minna and pay the Pinkie Emporium a visit.”
“…You’re just going to leave me!?”
Mattie looked back at her with a ‘really?’ expression.
Burgerbelle sighed. “Sorry, right, that wasn’t fair. I’ll just…” She eyed the Void book nervously. “Lock myself in a closet or something.”
“Oh, I can do that for you.” Mattie closed the closet door and locked it with her magic.
“…This is what I get for never being literal.” She pulled out a tuba and it made a few sad toots without her playing it.
~~~
Thrackerzod had discovered a phrase that described her life pretty well.
“I never in a million years thought I would be doing anything even remotely like this.”
Today, that ‘unexpected activity’ happened to be a book club. Granted, the book in question was Songs of the Spheres, so she had some reason aside from ‘bonding’ to be there, but it was still odd to her. Which meant it wasn’t odd that she felt odd since odd defined her life. The evident contradiction of this was currently turning her brain in a knot.
I would have had no trouble resolving this with an eldritch mind, she thought to herself, somewhat resentful of her current predicament.
The book club was being held in a small Sparkle Census library, headed not by a Twilight, but Servitude. She placed the last book they had, Space, onto a small table in the middle of the group. “I think we should start with the ending. What did you think of it?”
“I’m… not sure,” the only other Sweetie in the room said – Squiddy the inkling. “I… I certainly remember it happening like that. But I also don’t… It felt longer.”
“I’ll say,” Twitter the moth-Twilight said. “There was… what, a lot more focus on the ‘heroes’ than the rest of us who actually did most of the fighting. Who actually beat him. The book only shows the flavor text.”
“It’s thematically appropriate though,” another Twilight, GM, said. “It’s a passing of the torch from ka to not-ka. The book is concerned with ka, but we were concerned with what actually happened. It’s… confusing.”
“I’m not convinced it was even satisfying,” Squiddy muttered. “For all the Tower’s bravado, it would have been more interesting if it actually looked like the Tower was going to lose.”
“If we didn’t know the end result we wouldn’t have suspected that,” Servitude pointed out. “As you read it, it seems like the Tower was defeated when English gets the Source.”
“The Emissary herself said she couldn’t be faulted earlier.”
“And did she have a habit of telling the truth?”
Squiddy shifted uncomfortably.
“The Tower wouldn’t have taken a risk of any magnitude,” GM pointed out. “From my experience being in the Collection, I can tell you… even if you have a flair for the dramatic, if you want to go out, you’ll do everything you can to minimize the risk. The Collector was just a man; his plan couldn’t be perfect – even if it did work. The Tower would never have gone with a plan that had any chance of failure.”
“What about her last speech?” Twitter asked. “She said there was a risk.”
“In quotes.” Thrackerzod reminded her. “What the Emissary said was essentially the same thing that happens when we jump universes and ruin a prophecy. If there was more to existence than the multiverse that the Tower didn’t know about, it could have ruined the plan. That was true of every plan though, so the Tower made it the only weakness in the plan.”
“There’s no evidence for a true infinite multiverse anyway,” Servitude admitted. “The Tower admitted there was the possibility. But everything it knew and could understand told it there was nothing. We should live as if that were true.”
“Infinity would suck anyway,” Squiddy muttered.
“Would it?” GM asked, scratching her ear.
“Well, yeah, everything would be meaningless.”
“Wasn’t that the whole point of destroying the Tower? So we could define our own meaning?”
“Technically, no,” Servitude said. “The destruction of the Tower is the rejection of the meaning the Builders forced on us. There could still be real meaning beyond it – and you could also argue it never provided meaning in the first place.”
“What do you think?” Thrackerzod asked.
“I go to Rev’s old church, what do you think?” Servitude asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Ah, never mind.” She turned to GM. “You?”
“Life is what you make of it. That’s all it is and all it will ever be.”
Twitter shook her head. “I think… I think there’s all some sort of real soul inside of us, and that eternal essence is what we need to work to improve. The inside is what matters.”
“…I dunno,” Squiddy said, letting out a squiddly sigh. “All I know is that I don’t know stuff, so I really can’t define my own meaning. It’d just be wrong, somehow. I know it would.”
Servitude put a gentle hand on Squiddy. “We don’t all have to know what meaning is. Not everyone has to be a philosopher.”
Squiddy nodded. “Thanks. …Thrackerzod?”
The once-eldritch unicorn cleared her throat. “I have come a long way from thinking the point of existence was to serve that from which you came from. Now, I believe something quite different. You should be a servant to all. You might call it Harmony. I don’t particularly care what the name is, but it’s real.” She looked into the distance. “I’m still working on it.”
“We’re all working on it,” GM said with a sad smile. “We’re all in this together, I suppose.”
There were a series of agreeing ‘yeah’s.
“Follow-up question: has this book changed your outlook on life?” Servitude asked.
Twitter shook her head. “Not really. The revelation ka was a thing mattered a lot more. And… well, living through these events was a lot more challenging than reading about them. I’ve gained a better appreciation for the ‘heroes’ involved in the story, but I view the world the same way. For now. Of course things will change when the Tower falls, and we can’t really predict how. Your ideas are all rooted in ka.”
Thrackerzod and GM nodded in agreement.
“It is just a book,” GM asserted. “Not the best-written one either. Don’t get me wrong, it keeps you hooked at times, but at others the word choice is questionable, and it goes back and forth from being subtle to totally unsubtle. It tries to keep you involved but sometimes loses track of how much stuff is going on.”
“It’s a delightful mess,” Servitude added.
“Yes. That. A delightful mess. That’s exactly what it is.”
Thrackerzod smirked. “I’d wonder if ‘delightful’ is the right word. There’s a lot of darkness in here.”
“And it’s all packaged in a contrasting humorous tone,” Twitter pointed out. “It’s… cute.”
“My namesake would blow a gasket,” GM observed.
“…You read his parts in the story. I don’t think he’d be like that.”
“Okay, he’d be at least annoyed.”
“Yeah, probably.”
The conversation died down, prompting Servitude to ask another question. “Here’s one – what did you think of yourself in relation to the story? You lived this, after all. I’ll start. I look at the story and find my few appearances to be a good legacy. I don’t think he showed every side of me – just the first impression of a ‘regal angel’. I never tried to make that much of an impact or name for myself, so what exists is a good legacy, I think.”
“I was an important figure once,” Twitter said, rubbing the back of her head. “Fifteen minutes of fame in the Starcross encounter. After that… not much. I guess I’m a little disappointed, but then again I did spend most my time in the Census and doing things for the Census. My story is probably elsewhere.”
“I read the words out of my early self’s mouth and I groan in agony,” Thrackerzod deadpanned. “What I see in those pages is rarely myself. I see a diseased eldritch hunk of what I used to be. Most of it invariably disgusts me. I become exasperated constantly about how little I know and understand. And then there are those moments – right before the collapse – where I think I was better than I am now.” She tapped her horn. “I lost something when my eldritch nature vanished. I’m back to not understanding a lot of things. The character in that book is nothing more than a reminder of the past.”
GM smiled sadly. “…At least you can see yourself grow. All I see of myself is… an opponent, and then a sad, sad pony who’s a slave to the Collector. And then a moment of freedom followed by… nothing. I’m free from the story, I guess, but it is a bit disappointing.”
Everyone slowly turned to Squiddy.
“…What? You expect me to answer? I’m not even in it! I make no appearances the entire book aside from that stupid clipshow thing! I checked every reference to inklings in all eleven books – there aren’t that many – and I know for a fact that I wasn’t on any of the teams mentioned. I just don’t matter.”
Thrackerzod blinked. “Squiddy, you are a valuable ag-”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, I’ve got a lot of awards, I’ve saved a ton of people, and I’m one of the ‘premier agents’. But I apparently did squiddly squat to the actual story.” She stood up angrily. “Let me put it this way. I worked my tentacles off to help progress Merodi Universalis and the League, and this book tells me one thing: none of it had any discernible effect. So excuse me if I’m a little upset at that!”
“Squiddy, calm down,” Thrackerzod said. “I understand you’re ang-”
“You understand? You just finished saying you didn’t. You’re the one who got a lot of attention! You got to be the hero! I… wasn’t even a backgrounder!” She folded her arms. “Screw this, I’m out.” She transformed into her squid form and leaped out a nearby window.
Twitter blinked. “…I was not expecting her to explode like that.”
“We should have paid her more attention,” Servitude said with a sigh.
Thrackerzod wasn’t sure what to say.
~~~
Burgerbelle hadn’t decided to leave the closet yet – she knew herself well enough at this point to realize when she had stirred herself up emotionally. Now was not a good time to go prance around the League of Sweetie Belles and try to act completely normal. There was always the chance they’d dismiss her antics as “just Burger being Burger” but unlike when she was a Flat, she wasn’t going to be able to keep her expression even.
“Dumb biological body making things difficult,” she muttered, lounging lazily between two of the folding chairs. “Get balanced already, I can’t keep a secret like this.” She noticed her muttering was making her stress levels rise, prompting her to let out an exasperated groan. The sound of a rebellious teenager coming from the mouth of a child older than most human beings. It was a peculiar set of age-range contradictions to say the least.
She was reminded that last week someone had thought she was an underage user of the immortality serum. They meant well, but Burgerbelle was getting a little tired of explaining she had once been a Flat and this body was what she had been transferred to during the collapse. Some of them still felt the need to confirm this with the legal system. It was annoying.
“I gotta do something or the boredom will destroy me.” She pulled out her phone and started checking in with the various social media feeds. As a personification of memes, she had to keep up to date with the latest trends in random reference comedy. She hoped there wasn’t another stupid, idiotic challenge today. Last week’s ‘Hadouken’ challenge had resulted in several third-degree burns across the City…
Burgerbelle never got to find out what the trend was. Because she had a notification. From White Nettle.
Looking for you! Where are you? We’ve got so much to talk about!
Burgerbelle let out a censor-beep noise. She quickly turned her phone to ‘incognito’, but it was too late – Nettle had already seen a little ‘online’ light turn on.
Hey, I see you!
And you’re gone. Huh… Guess you’re busy.
I know! I’ll just call you!
Burgerbelle pulled out a hammer and smashed her phone to pieces. Problem solved.
Then she realized that no, the problem was not solved. If her phone was out of commission, Nettle would ask Nala to find her…
“Ahem. Nala!?” Burgerbelle shouted.
|> Yes, mysterious broom closet resident?
“Funny. Can you keep Nettle from finding me via your queries?”
|> Not unless you want her to know you’ve denied her access to your location. Which would be very suspicious.
Burgerbelle grabbed her hair and started pulling at it like an exaggerated cartoon. A hamster doing a little dance popped out and fell back in. “Fine. Then I’m just gonna run! Should be easy!” She darted for the closet door and threw it open.
White Nettle was standing right there, Osanna in her arms. “Ah, there you are! I’ve been trying to get a hold of you!”
“Ahahahaheh… Funny, that!” Burgerbelle said, sweating profusely. “I’ve just been here! In this broom closet! Because… reasons!”
“…Is that your phone in there? Smashed to bits?”
“Yep!”
“…Why?”
“Gag.”
Nettle kept Burgerbelle’s gaze for a moment. The Sweetie knew the mother was trying to process the emotional interaction to see if there was anything behind it. For once, Burgerbelle hoped she wouldn’t.
Burgerbelle was saved by the baby. With a short cry Osanna suddenly had all of Nettle’s attention. “Oh, you poor thing, I didn’t introduce you!” She graciously stroked Osanna’s face, calming her down with a simple touch. “Burgerbelle, this is Osanna.”
“Ah, mhm, yes, I know,” Burgerbelle said rapidly, forcing a smile to her face. “Cute! Baby-like!”
“Good descriptors,” Nettle said. “Burgerbelle, I don’t know how to express this, but I think this is the best thing that has ever happened. Can you… help me express that?”
Burgerbelle rubbed the back of her head. “Ah, not a mother, sorry.”
“I just, feel like she’s part of a greater destiny, you know?”
Destiny. Destiny. Destiny. “I-I don’t know why you’d think destiny of all things, she’s just the natural way of human life! A fulfillment. That totally definitely won’t have any sort of effect whatsoever on the story or anything.”
“…I wasn’t saying that.”
“Oh, you weren’t? Good! Or, I mean, neutral, or something! There’s nothing at all to comment on whatsoever!”
“…You’re commenting though.”
“Because I’m talking a mile a minute because I just feel like I need to say do you like pie? I like pie but I hear most Rainbow Dashes don’t and I’ll have you know I graduated the top of my class in th-”
“Burgerbelle, is something… wrong?”
Pepe on ice, she’s suspicious. Play it cool, Burgerbelle, play it cool. “SMOKE BOMB!” DAMMIT!
Burgerbelle threw a smoke bomb onto the ground and ran away as fast as she could. She tripped and fell flat on her face, but it was easy enough for her to force a ‘quick getup animation’ on herself, allowing her to duck out the window before Nettle could react.
White Nettle blinked. “…What? …What?”
~~~
Squiddy trudged through the streets of the City, head down, her floppy tentacle ‘hair’ moving back and forth with her slow footsteps. She hadn’t looked up for a few hours, and nobody had stopped her to say anything. She wondered if the others had decided to wait for her, or if they were out searching for her right now. Either way, she didn’t particularly care or even feel like going back.
It’s just a stupid book.
She wasn’t sure where she was going. Not home, she always felt alone there. And definitely not to the League of Sweetie Belles, not right now. That’d be the first place they’d look, and even if they weren’t looking all the rest of them would notice she was down and she really didn’t want to deal with other people right now. Somewhere deep inside her she knew it’d be good for her if she talked to someone, but since when were people rational when upset?
Maybe she could go check out her people… there weren’t that many inklings in the City, but she’d seen some of them around. No doubt they had sectioned off some area for their endless amusement.
“Nala, is there an inkling district?”
|> There are several areas inhabited by inklings, though only one of these is just inklings. This is New Inkopolis Square and contains the largest of the City’s three turf war arenas.
“Directions please.”
|> You do not have a phone I can send those to.
“Then just point me in the general direction, geez!”
|> Straight west.
Squiddy changed the direction of her slow walk due west, not increasing her speed at all. It took about twenty minutes for her to actually arrive at the area of the City claimed by her people. It wasn’t large by any stretch of the imagination – barely a blip on the radar – but it was definitely distinct. Inklings had a habit of covering everything they could in their vibrant colors of ink. This included the streets near their houses, making it rather unattractive for non-inklings to get anywhere near the place.
As she entered New Inkopolis Square, the buildings themselves didn’t look very different – similar constructions to the rest of the city, which was to say varied and mixed. But the people were different and the colors much brighter. There were a handful of humans around, looking with curious expressions, but the vast majority of people there were the squiddish humanoids with tentacles for hair.
Squiddy was mildly disappointed her own ink color, white, wasn’t present. It was somewhat rare, she knew, but it would have been nice to see it.
She walked right up to a large wire fence that several dozen inklings were gripping, cheering profusely. On the other side of the cage were two teams busy shooting ink at each other – orange and blue. The goal of turf war was always the same; ink up as much of the arena with your color as possible. It was a long held pastime of their people, and unlike the ‘war’ the Red and Blu mercenaries had, it was treated as a sport.
One of the blue inklings pulled a giant brush out and slapped an orange one over the head, splatting her against the ground. In normal circumstances, that would mean certain death, but inklings had long ago perfected the art of recondensing each other from leftover ink before their spirits had any idea their body was gone. A sort of respawn that only worked if you had really weird biology.
This temporary loss of a team member did not deter the orange team – they rushed the blue attacker with buckets of orange ink, taking back the land that had been blue just moments before. The blue team initiated a counterstrike, dropping ink-filled bombs on the enemy. Orange executed a well-timed flank maneuver, cutting most of the blue team off from their base. The ink explosions rippled out everywhere.
Squiddy found herself getting into the game – and siding with orange. They had shown lots of intelligence in their tactics, even if they didn’t have the brute strength of the blue team. She wanted the brains to win; she wanted them to shirk the expectations. The strong would not always win; there would be the underdogs who rose to the top!
She didn’t care which team actually had a better track record. She created a story in her mind and watched it unfold. Every struggle played out before her mind – the loss of a leader, only to be regained later. A one-on-four final stand that was doomed to fail, but managed to eke out an opening for the rest.
However, all her wishes and dreams were for naught. In the end, the game was called, the turf was examined, and the blue team had a 58%/42% victory.
Squiddy didn’t stay around any longer after that. She trudged away, head hanging even lower than it had been before. Even as an onlooker among her own people, her story had no effect. Nothing.
She put in so much work and effort in her life for what? Just to be another random citizen on the sidelines? She was a hero for the ancient’s sake! She…
…She suddenly realized she was lost. And she shouldn’t have been, considering that she’d only been walking a few minutes. She should still be able to hear the sounds of New Inkopolis Square. But she couldn’t... all she saw that caught her eye was a library.
She wasn’t sure why, but she was sure it was calling to her.
She walked up the steps and laid her hand on the doorknob.
~~~
Burgerbelle poked her eyes – just her eyes – out of a bush, giving the greenery the appearance that it had eyes. She could see a random street of Celestia city, bustling with activity and people. People who weren’t Nettle. Which was the whole point.
She hadn’t seen any sign of Nettle since she had noped out of the League of Sweetie Belles like a Trixie knockoff. Which was good. That probably meant she wasn’t still pursuing her. This would give Burgerbelle time to relax and sort her thoughts out before going back to Nettle and apologizing in a way that wouldn’t arouse suspicion.
Burgerbelle groaned. “I’m so dead!” She usually didn’t care at all what people thought of her actions – she was the meme girl, she had to be okay with cringe. All this unfortunately meant that when she did care a bit about how she presented herself she had absolutely no skills in the matter. At all.
Exhibit A: That poor excuse of a conversation she had with Nettle. Like straight out of a cartoon... Which made an annoying amount of sense.
Burgerbelle grunted, taking another look outside the bush. Still no sign of Nettle or anything vaguely Nettle related. Except perhaps Squiddy moving past with her depressed walk, but white squids and white jellyfish weren’t really the same thing at all. Definitely not.
Keep tellin’ yourself that, Burgerbelle thought. Truth is, anything and everything is related. Have to stay on guard.
|> I feel compelled to tell you she could just look up your location.
“Shh! Wait. …You don’t make noise. …Shoot.” She shut up and checked to see if anyone heard her. “…Wait, how am I seeing your text?”
|> I grow tired of explaining ‘Xeelee shenanigans’ to everyone.
“Hmph… She hasn’t looked up my location though?”
|> Her queries are private information.
“Then why isn’t my location private!?”
Several people turned to look at the bush, wondering where the voice had come from. None of them quite put it together.
|> You are on the same friends network and you still haven’t put out a request to go hidden.
Burgerbelle waited a few moments before responding, just to make sure nobody was still listening. “That’ll make her suspicious.”
|> ...
“Don’t you triple-dot me,” Burgerbelle said, indignantly. “I know she’s already suspicious. Fine, hide my location.”
|> Done. I would say have a nice day, but that phrase has sent multiple people into PTSD flashbacks over the last few weeks, so I am removing it from my response database.
“Why w- oh, riiiiight.” Burgerbelle blinked, sensing she was alone again. She kept silent for a few moments longer – just to be safe – and then jumped out of the bush and started walking with the crowd. Her execution was flawless. There wasn’t a single soul that saw her leave the bush for sure.
Unfortunately the universe hated her the instant she completed the maneuver. White Nettle turned the corner and saw Burgerbelle. The once-Downstreamer waved at her, making it obvious she didn’t have Osanna with her.
Burgerbelle took a blue hedgehog hoodie out of her hair and put it on. She cleared her throat. “I’m Sanic! Gotta go fast!” in an instant she was halfway across the city, leaving an immense wake of wind behind her. She jumped through a window and ditched the hat, entering a comical stealth posture that inexplicably allowed her to move through the homes of several people undetected. Then she put on a Santa hat and climbed up a furnace that didn’t have a true chimney, ending up on the roof anyway. She rubbed the soot out of her face and grinned. “Ah… she’s right behind me.”
White Nettle blinked. “How did y-”
Burgerbelle loaded herself into a slingshot and launched herself through the air, making a vaguely bird-like noise. Just before she landed on an unsuspecting house she flipped into a roll, coming out of it in a very cringe-worthy dance that tried to look way cooler than it was.
It was at this point White Nettle lost her patience and grabbed Burgerbelle with one of her tendrils – the tendrils she hadn’t removed from their bow arrangement for months.
“Eheheh…” Burgerbelle said, tapping her fingers together. “W-what’s up, Nettle?”
“You tell me,” Nettle said, left eye twitching. “Because I have no goddamn clue.”
“See, the answer’s really simple here! I’m just overcome with meme-itis and my body is all out of balance right now and you’re not believing a word of this.”
“No.” Nettle tightened her grip on Burgerbelle ever so slightly. “Why are you lying?”
“Because I really don’t want to tell you what’s going on?”
“Tell me.”
“Um… No.”
“Tell me.”
“Nope.”
“Burgerbelle…”
“Not happenin’.”
“QUIT IT WITH YOUR CEASELESS NEGATIVE MEMES!”
“Yeah, sure, I’ll get on th-” Burgerbelle had no time to wonder how much of an idiot she was before she was slammed into the ground like a basketball. “Oof.”
“There’s something wrong with you? What is it!?”
“Something you’d rather not know.”
“Then I’m just going to have to guess!” Nettle screamed, clearly terrified by the idea. “And do you know what I think it is!?”
Burgerbelle’s already bad feeling got worse. “No… But I’d also prefer if you didn’t…”
“You… You’re jealous! You… I…” She put a hand to her heart, trying and failing not to cry. “Little Osanna… She’s come between us! I have the best thing ever, and you… I… I can’t… Why do people have to come between other people? I was able to accept the Everykid! I was able to move past that! Why aren’t you!? Why can’t you accept that I have room for both of you!?”
Burgerbelle was stunned silent.
Nettle took this as confirmation. “I… I thought…” She shook her head. “Hypocrite! You’re an awful, horrid hypocrite! Won’t even take your own advice! Can’t even… All I wanted to do today was talk about her! Was that wrong? Am I supposed to keep her separate? How can I do that, I don’t want to lose, but I can’t, and I should, and and and…” She broke down into tears, all of it simply too much to take.
Burgerbelle wiped a tear from her own face. “I… I’m sorry.”
“Get away from me! If you don’t want her, I’ll have to… I don’t know. I don’t want to. I have to choose…”
Burgerbelle gave up. She pulled Void out and dropped it in front of Nettle. “This… this has nothing to do with my relationship with Osanna, Nettle. I… I’m sorry I let you get far enough to think that.”
“What…?”
Burgerbelle pushed the book toward Nettle. “In there, chapter 115, there is a story about you. You and Osanna. One that hasn’t happened yet. One that could tell you what your future holds and what kind of person your daughter will become. You clearly aren’t supposed to know about it before the time comes, and I wanted to keep it secret from you. I failed.” She looked at the ground, ashamed. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do this for you.”
Nettle wordlessly scooped the book up in her hands. She traced her finger around the cover and proceeded to teleport away with it, leaving Burgerbelle alone.
Burgerbelle sighed. “Yeah, I probably deserve that…” She stood up, stretched, and started walking away.
~~~
Squiddy walked through the front doors of my library without fully realizing what she was doing. She soon found herself staring at my primary display shelf, currently lined with all eleven books of Songs of the Spheres.
“Really!?” she blurted. “You’re just going to remind me are you!?” She squirted some ink at the books, plastering them in white that would not be easy to remove.
I had a spare bookshelf of course – I teleported the old one out and replaced it in an instant. “While I would love to say this shelf had nothing to do with you, that would be a lie.”
It was only then that she realized this was my library. “Oh, uh, sorry Twilence, I’ll just b-”
I lit my horn and locked the front doors, smirking. “It’s not that easy, Squiddy.”
“I don’t need this right now…”
“Yes you do,” I said, tapping the Eye of Rhyme. “It’s where this story of yours is going.”
“I don’t have a story.”
“Yes you do. The camera is on you right now.”
Squiddy thought about this for a moment, but her depressed demeanor returned in a matter of seconds. “I’m just an example, huh? Of ‘what happens to the non-hero’. Great, that makes me feel so much better.”
“Yes and no,” I said with an understanding smile. “You are an example, but you are not a ‘non-hero’.” I pulled a book out of my shelves and set it on the table. “This book is all about a boy named Harry Potter. I’m sure you’ve heard of him in one way or another. His story has inspired trillions upon trillions of people the multiverse over. And yet, in all the Songs of the Spheres books, he’s never seen. He’s implied to exist as part of the USM in a fusion world, and there’s a dotted reference here and there. That’s it.” I looked at her closely. “Does that make him any less of a hero?”
Squiddy cocked her head. “I… I guess not. But I was trying to change the multiverse…”
“Vita was a small Wolkenritter, a full AI in the TSAB,” I continued, laying a book down with her on the cover. “She appeared only a few times in our story to represent another leader of the TSAB. She had an important role – but she had dozens of friends who fought by her side both in our story and in her own. They are never mentioned here, not in the slightest, but you can still see the results of their actions. The TSAB would not have risen to such heights if it had not been for them.”
“Backstory.”
“Backstory is just another person’s story. We are the backstory for this City. And we are also the backstory for what comes after the Tower. Stories happen in sequence, Squiddy.”
“But I wasn’t a backstory – I was born after Eve found the bowling ball! I’ve lived my entire life parallel to this story!”
“So did the people of the USM. There was a whole lot of complex political debate that led up to their coup in the end. We never got to see any of that – only the results.”
Squiddy blinked. I could see she was beginning to understand. “…Why?”
“Such a vague question… But I know what you mean.” I stacked the books together. “Songs of the Spheres… two million words, give or take. So much content is stuffed into these pages. Some of it frivolous – some of it exceptionally important. But even with this many words and details, it is not possible to give every hero in the world a say. There’s just not enough time in existence to let everyone’s story be played out in these pages. When it tries to tell the entire story, the characters tend to fall to the background in favor of events, nations, and things that make it resonate less with us. There are many times the story feels like it’s tearing itself apart at the seams – or scenes – since it’s trying to fit so much in. So cuts have to go somewhere.”
Squiddy fell silent for a moment.
I continued. “…There was a lot more stuff that happened in the final chapters of Blood. I saw the original drafts. But the story was too much of a mess with so much exposition and new characters. It was changed. Those things still happened in some form or other, the characters that were ‘removed’ still did everything they needed to, but they were no longer shown in the story.” I looked at her. “…That may have made them less important in the ka of this story. But they had other stories.”
“I don’t have another story, do I?”
I raised an eyebrow. “Even the backstory characters have a story to get to where they are. Sometimes that story is more extreme and unpredictable than the ‘actual’ one… making it more interesting. Or tragic. Regardless, the story still exists.” I paused for a moment. “And even if you, by some trick of fate, aren’t in the background or backstory flow of ka, you don’t have to have a story to be a hero.”
She looked up at me with wide eyes. “Wait wh-”
“Heroes existed before the Tower came into being,” I explained. “They were just regular people who did amazing things. Stories exaggerated the traits of heroes into beings like me, but that doesn’t change the fact that heroes do exist. You won’t be able to notice them by the way they walk, or their unique color palette. You’ll only know them by their actions.” I looked to her again, locking my eyes with hers. “Did you act as a hero, Squiddy?”
“I… Yeah. Yeah I’m pretty sure.”
“Then you have nothing to worry about.” I smiled warmly.
“Huh… I… Geez, do you just know the perfect thing to say to everyone?”
“I mean, I wouldn’t say it was perfect, but I could read the script if I wanted. I haven’t for this conversation, by the way.”
“Huh. Thanks.” She smiled awkwardly. “I… Geez, I was really throwing a fit about nothing wasn’t I?”
“It wasn’t nothing. It was about your life and what you had done meant.” I winked. “Even if you don’t know what meaning is, you still look for it in little ways.”
“…I should probably go apologize to them.”
“Yeah.” I unlocked the door.
She stretched and walked toward the door.
“Oh, and one more thing.” I threw a book at her. The League of Sweetie Belles, Vol 1. The book featured a bunch of Sweetie Belles on the cover.
Including her.
“Twilence…?”
“Yes?”
“Why didn’t you start with this!?”
“Because you needed to learn a lesson,” I said with a coy smirk. “That it didn’t matter if you were the ka-hero of a written story or not. It’s just a bonus that you are.”
“You sly little…”
“Go. Get back to your friends. I believe they’re starting to get worried.”
Squiddy nodded. She tucked the book under her arm and ran out into the City. I waved as she left, a smile on her face. There was just something… satisfying about seeing her leave with scarcely a hint of the sorrow she had come in with.
These powers – as dreadful as they were at times – could do some great good.
~~~
Nettle looked down at Osanna, lying innocently in her crib. She had cried quite a bit when Nettle had left her, but she seemed fine now.
“I told you I could take care of her,” her husband said, sitting in a nearby chair. “Took a few minutes, but I had her calm and sleeping like a… …that expression doesn’t exactly work…”
“I could learn about her,” Nettle said, tossing Void onto a nearby table. “I could open these pages and see my future, her future, and probably your future as well. What I become. What she becomes. What story we’ll be a part of.” Nettle gulped. “Burgerbelle did… things I’m not sure were good, trying to keep me from knowing. Because I wasn’t supposed to. And now that I know it exists… the temptation to look is…” She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Her husband sat up and looked at the book closely. “Do you want to know?”
“Yes! No! I don’t know! Gah these words are swirling around my head!” She slammed her hands into the railing of the crib, waking Osanna up. She started crying. “Oh, no, nonono, I’m sorry, don’t…”
Her husband walked up to the crib and began carefully wrapping Osanna’s blankets around her in a particular way. Already, he knew what she wanted. The moment the blankets were in the right place, she fell asleep again.
“I… I’m so sorry…” tears came to her eyes. “I-”
“You’re stressed. All you did was wake her up. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“What if I-”
“I said there’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Look, I s-”
“Nothing~!”
Nettle found herself laughing. “You’re impossible.”
“It’s why you love me.”
“I… Yeah. Yeah.” She shook her head a bit, tossing her hair around. “…What do you think we should do?”
“I’ve got it on good authority that I don’t matter enough to have a name in the grand story of things. Keeps me out of the danger loop, apparently. So I don’t think I can make this decision. But whatever you decide, I’ll stand there with you.”
“You’re being a great help right now.”
He shrugged. “You’re the one who knows all about this stuff.”
“I’ve tried to forget…”
“Maybe forgetting isn’t the answer?” He held up his hands, anticipating a rebuttal. “I’m just asking a question, I have no idea.”
Nettle looked back and forth from the book to Osanna. Slowly, but firmly, she grabbed hold of Void with her hand and lifted it into the air. “I told myself I’d try to experience everything I could the full way. The human way.” She used one of her tendrils to touch the book and burn it to lifeless cinders. “And that involves ignoring this prophecy, or whatever you want to call it. I will discover myself and Osanna as a relationship, not pages in a book. Maybe we are truly nothing more than the marks of ink on those pages… But I won’t live like we are.”
“…That was one of the most certain things I’ve ever heard you say.”
“You think so?”
“I know so. Though you’ve returned to your old self, I still see it in you.” He clasped her hands in his. “Progress. I can see you changing. And… I like what I see.”
She smiled warmly. “…I like it too.”
~~~
Squiddy found the rest of the book club eating at a diner back in the Sparkle Census. She dramatically dropped The League of Sweetie Belles on the table with a proud smile on her face.
Thrackerzod examined the book. “…Huh. You know, I seem to recall someone mentioning this was a thing. Vaguely.”
“First I’ve heard of it,” Servitude said, running her finger across it. “Where did you find it?”
“Twilence,” Squiddy said.
“So you found your story?” Twitter asked. “That’s great!”
“Yeah, it is,” Squiddy said, scratching the back of her head. “But there’s a bit more to it. She also taught me some things and… Well, I’m sorry for stomping out on all of you. Turns out it doesn’t really matter if you’re the hero in a book or not.” She turned to Twitter and GM in particular. “Even if you don’t have a story, you could still act like a hero. There’s nothing stopping you. And there was nothing stopping me. Even if this book didn’t exist. It’s… You know what, go talk to Twilence, she can explain it better.”
“That seems to be one of her gifts,” Servitude observed. “Explaining the way of ka and stories.”
“Her purpose was to understand ka,” GM reminded them. “Of course she’s good at it. It’s essentially her destiny’s job description. She can probably argue the opposite side just as well, if she wanted. She knows the ins and outs so well…”
“I think that’s good,” Twitter said. “It… can save the rest of us from a headache.”
“It can cause existentialism though!” Squiddy said, smirking.
“Eeeh… true.”
“Anyway, I haven’t read the book at all,” Squiddy said. “I’m not sure I’m going to.”
“I’m reading it,” Thrackerzod said. “So you might as well.”
“Welp. In that case…” Squiddy slapped her hand on the book. “Guess what we’re reading for book club next?”
“I will compare every mission you go on to something the Sparkle Census did,” Twitter warned. “It’ll be a competition.”
GM groaned. “Ugh, no, not another competition... We’re the SSC! Sweetie Sparkle Coalition! We don’t compete anymore!”
Thrackerzod nodded. “Agreed. That said, I still want to hear every last one of Twitter’s mission reports. I will give my own – assuming the ones in the book don’t involve me in some way or another.”
“I think that’s you on the cover,” Squiddy said, pointing. “Not sure though. There are other Thrackerzods out there.”
“All inferior.”
Everyone laughed and rolled their eyes.
~~~
Burgerbelle let out a tear-filled wail. “I’M A HORRIBLE FAILURE OF A FRIEND!” She shoved an entire scoop of ice cream into her mouth, thankful the brain freeze was keeping her from wallowing too deeply in her sad state.
“Aw, darling, it’s okay, it’s okay, here, have some more.” Mattie pulled another gallon of ice cream from her freezer and gave it to Burgerbelle. Then she turned back to her almost-empty freezer. “Geez, she’s taxin’ my emergency supply… Ravenous little b-”
The Everykid put her hands on her hips and shook her head in disapproval.
“What? She is eating a lot!”
The Everykid facepalmed.
Burgerbelle was still bawling and missed the entire exchange. She somewhat greedily wrapped her hands around the new delivery of ice cream and began shoveling it into her face with a blue pixelated shovel.
“The memes run so deep she can pull them out without thinking…” Mattie observed, furrowing her brow.
The Everykid clearly thought Mattie was missing the point of this exercise so she shook her head and gave Burgerbelle a hug.
Burgerbelle moaned. “I… I don’t deserve this…”
The Everykid squeezed tighter.
“I’m… I tried too hard… I was too…”
Tighter…
“OW!”
The Everykid was pushed off Burgerbelle with an involuntary kick. She hit the opposite wall somewhat painfully.
Burgerbelle took one look at the dazed Everykid and began unleashing a whole new level of tears – enough to start flooding Mattie’s house.
“Oh for my flank’s sake, this is going to take forever to clean up!”
The Everykid made the ‘magic’ gesture.
“Well, uh, yes, I suppose…”
The Everykid raised an eyebrow.
“I’m just waiting for the key event of the scene to play out, can you blame me?”
The Everykid nodded.
“Fine, I’ll apologize for being rude after it’s over, happy?”
The Everykid shrugged and returned to Burgerbelle, patting her gently on the back. This got her to stop the excessive ‘waterfall of tears’ gag; returning her to a normal, healthy amount of crying. Depending on one’s definition of ‘healthy’.
There was a knock at the door. “Ah, there it is,” Mattie said, trotting over to the door and opening it. “Hello, Nettle, what a coincidence!”
The Everykid double facepalmed and shook her head.
“Coincidence?” Nettle asked, blinking. “What do y-”
“Don’t look at me! I’m hideous!” Burgerbelle shouted, waving her arms frantically. She summoned a burger and put it in front of her face, as if it would hide her from the judging gaze of Nettle.
Pure wishful thinking.
Nettle let out a long, drawn out sigh. “I think… I think I understand why you did what you did. You were trying to protect me. Keep me from making a decision that would be… wrong, or something. I think you… let yourself get worked up about it and ended up in a nearly unending spiral of self-inflicted insanity. My presence… clearly didn’t help things. It only made them worse. I’m still upset. You lied, ran, hid, and did so many of the things I learned not to do from you.”
Burgerbelle started bawling again. Nettle visibly winced, but forged on.
“It… It was a bad day for you, I can tell. I… I didn’t see what was bothering you, and trusted my own conclusions again. I shouldn’t have. They made me unfairly angry, and I’m sorry. And I forgive you too. That’s… That’s right, right?”
Burgerbelle couldn’t formulate a response.
“…For what it’s worth, I burned the book. I didn’t look into it. I’m never going to look into it, and I don’t want to know any of the secrets it contains. I’m done being the all-knowing jellyfish monster. I’m something lesser now. And that is what I needed to be from day one, I just didn’t know it.” She walked up to Burgerbelle and put a hand on her small, young head. “…I know this is too much for you right now. You’re still not in ‘balance’… I think that’s what you said earlier. I’ll be available whenever you feel up to the task. But for now… I’ll go, and leave you alone. Let you sort yourself out. You clearly need the space.” Wiping a tear from her eye, she walked out the door and vanished.
“Geez louise, that was heavy,” Mattie commented.
The Everykid looked at the place Nettle had been with a confused expression on her face. She wasn’t sure what exactly to make of what had just happened. It didn’t really seem like there had been any reconciliation there.
But in Burgerbelle’s mind, there had. Slowly but surely, a smile began to crawl up her face. She let out a short, innocent sounding chuckle. “She… she gets it. She finally got something I didn’t. We don’t need to be worried about her anymore.” Her giggling continued until it became guffaws and she was rolling on the floor, laughing.
“…I wonder if you can be diagnosed with a condition…” Mattie pondered.
The Everykid slapped her.
“Oh, balls.” Mattie groaned, recognizing her continued tactless stupidity. “Dear, terribly sorry, I seem to have entered one of my ‘inconsiderate’ moods. Again. …For an extended time.” She paused. “…You’re not listening.”
Burgerbelle was not listening. She was rolling back and forth on the floor with a smile on her face.
Tomorrow, she would go talk to White Nettle. And then things would go back to normal.
But as far as we’re concerned, their little story ends here.