095 - Creators
Creators
Pinkie woke up with a large yawn. She bounced out of her bed with a big smile, welcoming the sun of a brand new day on Equis Vitis. Most ponies would get their manes ready at this point, to clean up their appearance before heading to work. Luckily for Pinkie she was naturally poofy and clean unless there was some blatant reason not to be, so she could skip past the boring stuff and get right to breakfast. Or get to breakfast and then skip the boring stuff. She didn’t have a schedule and she liked it that way.
She walked right up to the fridge and threw it open. She took out some chocolate pudding. It sure was nice to not have to worry about health problems from sugar intake. It was great to be Pinkie Pie, and she was loving herself today more than usual. Her smile was larger, her attitude bouncier, and she was even humming a melodic tune.
She also took the vanilla pudding for good measure. Why not double up? There was no reason whatsoever not to.
She closed the fridge. Standing behind the door was a lanky human woman with a black dress, purple hair, and razor sharp teeth arranged menacingly in a slasher smile.
“WAUGH!” Pinkie screamed, tossing the puddings into the air. The chocolate landed on her head and the vanilla on the strange woman’s.
The woman put a finger in her hair and licked the vanilla off of it. “Hm. Delicious.”
“Right…” Pinkie said, getting over her initial surprise. “Hi! I’m Pinkie Pie! Who are you?” Without letting her smile falter, she added, “and what are you doing in my house?”
“Magane Chikujoin,” she said, bowing. “I have come with rather important information.”
“Information for me? …Normally I’d go ‘but I’m just a pastry chef’ but that’s definitely not the case right now.” She giggled. “Captain Pinkie Pie, ready to receive.”
Magane’s grin widened unsettlingly. “Aw, but just giving it up to you would be no fun!” She jumped onto Pinkie’s table, legs spread and leaning forward like some sort of yoga pose. “No intrigue, no reward for being clever, no interest to the story.”
Pinkie’s ears perked. “I’m listening.”
“See, ka is a difficult thing to overcome.”
“The moment you become Aware of its presence, the rules keep you from acting on it, I know.” Pinkie smirked. “You should consider manipulating events to allow ka to become public knowledge. Rescinds most of the rules.”
“If I wanted that, I’d just stick around here and live my life. Altho~ough, I might do that anyway,” she said with a sing-song voice. “This is something else. And I’m going to break the rules to accomplish it.”
Pinkie shook her head. “You can’t break the rules.”
Instantly Pinkie felt something shift in the world around her. Her stomach did a flip-flop and a dark feeling manifested in the back of her mind. Magane felt the same thing – but instead of making her smile vanish, it just made it widen. “A lie about a lie…” She leaned into Pinkie so close their faces were almost touching and snapped her fingers. “It turns inside out on itself.”
The rules changed.
“Unnamed Earth 1092,” Magane said, pulling back. “My homeworld. I don’t particularly care that much for it, but there’s some interesting things going down there you should look into.”
“Do you have any idea how dangerous what you’ve just done is!?” Pinkie blurted. “You… reality warped a rule away! I didn’t even know that was possible!”
Magane grinned. “I know exactly how dangerous it is. Why did you think I did it?”
She chuckled. “It is chapter ninety-five after all! The fifth nineteen! You needed something special. My Infinite Deception of Words could give you that!”
“Unnamed Earth 1092, I got it, I’m going to have to go there now, but really! …Oh, wait, right, you’re clearly a psycho. Never mind.” She pulled out a hammer. “Say nighty-night.”
“I’m going to leave now.”
“No you’re not!” Pinkie realized what she’d just said. “…Ponyfeathers.”
Magane made a mocking shrug. “A lie about a lie…” She vanished without a trace.
“Right. Time to go to Unnamed Earth 1092.”
~~Dark Mode is Highly Recommended™ for this chapter~~
Your name is Pinkie Pie. It is not currently your birthday or anything, but it’s a very special day nonetheless. Today may seem like any other day to most other people, but to you it is closely related to that ever-mysterious number nineteen, one you have become especially well-acquainted with over the years. You are the Bard of Space but that really doesn’t matter right now.
You are currently in your kitchen, which has all the basic necessities a party pony could ask for in her home. A fridge, a table, a truly absurd number of pastries strewn about the room, and a number of posters showing people that you think are having a good time. Pictures of your best friends and family are spread along the walls in a way that other people might consider cluttered, but you consider beautiful.
You have a variety of interests, a lot more than the average pony due to your hyperactive nature. You, above all else, love throwing parties of virtually any kind that isn’t ‘distasteful’ in some way. The art of party throwing is a skill you have honed to perfection in your many years of life, and it is what you got your cutie mark in oh-so-many years ago. You also like playing the yovidaphone, though you only do that when other people aren’t watching because the multiverse has decided that is the one instrument you will never be good at. You also like playing games, baking, hanging out with your friends, adventuring, bouncing around for seemingly no reason, messing with people both with practical jokes and mind games, surprising people with parties, and a tremendously long list of other interests that would take far too much time to get into detail about.
You have just had a rather disturbing run in with a mid-tier reality warper who you’re pretty sure has killed people just because it amuses her.
What will you do?
PINKIE: How about we skip past all this and just get to the story?
-==>Pinkie: retrieve arms from magic chest.
Despite there being no magic chest in the room two minutes prior, you are able to find your magic chest and dig through it. You remove two fake arms and put them into your syllad- er, your mane. That works too.
Having had it up to here with these antics, you make a rash decision.
-==> Pinkie: dance like a loon and make outdated 80s references!
That is such a stupid idea that you stand boggled for several seconds.
Hey. Hey wait a minute. Where are you going? Get back here, I’m not done!
PINKIE: I’m going to give myself a command, thank you very much. Ahem. Forward arrow, Pinkie: gather team and go to Unnamed Earth 1092.
-==> Pinkie: gather team and go to Unnamed Earth 1092.
You can’t do that!
PINKIE: Yes I can.
RENEE: Dear, who are you talking to?
PINKIE: Hold on a minute, we need to fill in the description. Today is going to be one of those days.
…You are currently standing on the ground floor of Renee’s castle of dimensional mishaps. There are a copious number of Expedition teams leaving and returning from missions to other universes. You make note of Corona leaving for another universe and Pidge the primary technician fretting over the inexplicable flickering of the lights. You are currently standing there with the rest of your team, the Primary Team, known to some as Pinkie’s Party.
They’re all looking at you expectantly, waiting for some explanation or guidance.
-==> Pinkie: realize your first name is a valid troll name and wonder what your last name could be.
PINKIE: Hey, Vriska, would Pinkie Piepie be a valid troll name?
VRISKA: Uh, yeah. Why a-
PINKIE: Also we need to go to Unnamed Earth 1092 before more shenanigans happen. Like, stat.
-==> Pinkie: as punishment for rushing the story along, do the chicken dance.
You erupt into a spirited rendition of the chicken dance, in the middle of which you grab a dimensional devi-
Would you stop doing that!?
PINKIE: No.
FLUTTERFREE: Who are you talking to?
PINKIE: We have a narrator today. For now, anyway. I was serious when I said it was going to be one of those days. Anyway, we’re on Unnamed Earth 1092 now, get on with it.
JOTARO: Yare yare daze…
Fine, if this is where you want to go, this is where you want to go.
You are currently on Unnamed Earth 1092. Specifically, you are on a street corner in a Japanese city that probably doesn’t even have a proper name. There are billboards everywhere showing the most popular anime and manga characters around. So kawaii.
-==> Pinkie: examine billboards.
You recognize almost none of the characters until you come across a digital display featuring a badass team consisting of three cute colorful horses, a huge brute of a man, and a fairy in orange clothing and gray skin.
Yeah, this is totally just an image of you five.
VRISKA: Huh. Haven’t seen that before.
FLUTTERFREE: Didn’t we see a team a lot like us somewhere else…?
NOVA: Did we? If we did I don’t remember it that well.
PINKIE: We did. It just wasn’t important. I don’t think that’s them. See, Nova has her screen and Flutterfree’s a ‘vampire’. That’s definitely us.
NOVA: Guess I know what we’re investigating today.
FLUTTERFREE: …Think we’ll find G. M. Blackjack?
PINKIE: I don’t know. I’m using all my Awareness to keep the Narrator from screwing with us.
-==> Pinkie: examine the digital display.
You look at the billboard, the translation spell mentally converting Japanese into something you can read. It tells you it’s from a story called Nevrim written by one Marcius Fiddlebiscuit.
VRISKA: …Fiddle8iscuit?
NOVA: Nevrim? Like, that world we spent years on?
PINKIE: Gotta love the crazy offscreen adventures we have. To Marcius Fiddlebiscuit!
-==> Pinkie: get distracted by a café on your way to finding Marcius Fiddlebiscuit.
PINKIE: Ugh, those croissants look so good…
VRISKA: Pinkie… are you getting random commands in your head?
-==> Pinkie: lie like you’ve never lied before.
PINKIE: Sure.
That’s not a li- oh. Oh that’s funny.
VRISKA: It’s that orange fucktard… He’s free and messing with my – our – story again! I am going to find him and tie him up, just you watch. He’ll wish he could die when I’m done with him.
FLUTTERFREE: Let’s not do that. Unless we should?
PINKIE: No, we need to be here. That display up there has almost nothing to do with him, I’m pretty sure. This Marcius Fiddlebiscuit is probably our best lead.
-==> Pinkie: realize that you’re a pony and people are staring.
PINKIE: Oh for the – Nova, invisibility.
NOVA: Done.
Now that you’re invisible you find yourselves tripping over each other. Except for Vriska. Because she’s just that lucky.
VRISKA: I’m just going to get us to this guy. Quick 8oatload of luck, and…
-==> Pinkie: find Marcius Fiddlebiscuit.
Some time later – who cares how much, it’s pointless anyway – you’re knocking on Marcius Fiddlebiscuit’s door. Only Vriska and Jotaro are visible, the rest of you have opted to remain anonymous shadows of equine mystery. Which would make you annoyingly difficult to draw, but that little observation is also pointless.
Marcius opens the door.
MARCIUS: Oh good god, not more cosplayers. Leave! You aren’t welcome he-
JOTARO: STAR PLATINUM: THE WORLD!
Jotaro files all of you in during the time stop. Nova drops the invisibility as soon as time resumes.
PINKIE: You can freak out now.
MARCIUS: *incoherent screaming*
FLUTTERFREE: There there, just let it all out. We’ll wait.
-==> Pinkie: stop waiting.
You sigh, annoyed at the machinations to which your resistance is, at best, a nuisance.
PINKIE: Looks like we don’t get to wait. Hey, Marcius, we need to talk to you about what you’ve written about us. Or created, not really sure, it was on a billboard. I have cookies! …Hey, come on, stop screaming.
He has made no indication that he’s going to stop screaming. You are struck with the sudden realization that he’s likely been broken by your presence, and that your one lead on this world has led to a dead end. Oh woe is you, for nothing turns out your way! It is-
~~~
I placed my pen on the pages of my notebook.
I think it’s about time I took over from here.
One would have thought the story was ending there, arriving at a dead end conclusion, but that is simply not the case. Marcius Fiddlebiscuit, patron of unfortunate last names turned into symbols of ironic pride, eventually calmed down simply because the human body is not designed to run on high emotional stress endlessly. The presence of Flutterfree’s warm gaze should not be understated, seeing as despite their crimson coloration her eyes were still pleasant to the minds of many. Especially Marcius.
“H-how are you here?” he asked.
I took a moment to ponder this. How would they respond? Who would respond? The answer came to me, as it always did, after only a little bit of thought.
“I see three different explanations,” Pinkie said. “Well, four, but saying you’re crazy leaves a lot to be desired. The first is that you’re a Prophet, Marcius, and what you write is destined to come true in one way or another. The second is that the multiverse is playing a game of random chance and we just happen to be what you write about – which seems unlikely to me. The third is that you’re the alternate version of a Prophet and writing things that happen to be true, but really it’s not you changing them.”
Marcius stared at Pinkie. He didn’t understand a thing she had said, but the fact that she spoke with such an air of authority calmed him down. “So… There’s a rational explanation?”
“If you can call what we do rational,” Nova commented.
“You know we’re multiversal explorers, right?” Flutterfree asked. “You have written about us.”
Marcius nodded. “Yes… I have. I know you explore. I write mostly about your adventures on Nevrim, but I always find the… shorter stories I write more interesting. More enthralling. About you jumping to random worlds. The… The most recent one was about… uh…” he scratched his head. “I can’t remember. That’s so unlike me… But it was much more interesting to write than Nevrim...”
“That’s okay,” Flutterfree said. “What sort of things do you write?”
“Everything about you that isn’t Nevrim comes to me in dreams… Random flashes of inspiration while I sleep.”
Vriska blinked. “That doesn’t seem… normal.”
“No, it isn’t,” Pinkie said. “It suggests that maybe there’s something else going on…”
“Is something invading my dreams!?” Marcius blurted. “W-why?”
“To influence what you write about, perhaps?” Nova suggested. “Seems like something that would be useful, especially if your Prophet powers worked on me.”
“Hold on, wait-” Marcius held up a hand. “I’m not the only one! The rest of the writing group says it’s like a dream as well!”
Pinkie stared at him, blinking. “…What?”
“It’s almost magical how all the things we write about you fi-”
“You’re not the only one writing?”
“Uh… No. I’m just one of many… We write little snips that come to us in moments of inspiration. About you… But it’s not just you! I write mostly about you and publish the stuff, but there’s also the Freedom Sciences, the Protectors of the Plot Continuum, the ROB Games…”
Jotaro’s frown deepened. “We’ve walked into the middle of something big.”
“That’s why we’re here,” Pinkie said with a sigh. “Right. Marcius, would you mind if we watched you sleep tonight?”
“Uh… Yes?”
“Too bad, we’re doing it anyway,” Vriska said. “Sweet dreams.”
I inserted a scene break there, allowing them to gloss over the details of the rest of the day. Speed was of the essence here to give them the clue they needed. The game had been afoot a while already, and they definitely weren’t supposed to be here. Luckily for me their defiance of what was supposed to be was helpful, at least for now. Created quite the distraction.
They watched Marcius sleep, Nova running all the scans she could muster. For the first few minutes, nothing happened. But eventually their patience was rewarded: a white, mystic presence appeared above Marcius’ head, touching his mind and feeding him ideas.
“Get it!” Vriska shouted.
And then I felt the power in my pen slip away. I crushed the instrument in my magic, spilling ink all over the pages. “Craaaaap…” I summoned another pen and tried to scribble more words – but I knew instantly control of the story had passed on. At least partially.
I wished Them good luck. They didn’t have the ability to instantly know if their ‘work’ was coming to fruition or not. I wondered how many tries it would take this time.
~~~
“Right, first, have him forget all of what they just said to him, writing it down as a snip in the fit of night.”
“Done.”
Marcius woke up, ignoring the shattered state of his bedroom window. He went right to his computer. The Primary team showed up to the door of Marcius Fiddlebiscuit. After his initial frustration confusing them with cosplayers, Jotaro used Star Platinum to get everyone inside and begin a most fruitful conversation…
“There, that’ll get it out of his system.”
“We can’t use him on them now. Have to resort to the others.”
“Janna is the next best option. She knows the characters just as well, if not better. Let’s give her the dream. Today, they’re on a rampage.”
Janna woke up in a fit, her hair spilling off her shoulders. She ran to her computer and started typing furiously.
Pinkie and company chased, with vigor, a glowing white light through the city. The mental power wanted nothing more than to escape, to vanish in an instant, but it was unable to do so.
It screamed out for help, but no one heard it besides its aggressive pursuers, for only they could see the essence. How come they attacked it with such reckless abandon? How come they didn’t stop to ask what it was doing?
It was so confused… So lost…
It had just been trying to help.
And now it was on the run for its life.
Pinkie pulled out her immense flaming chainsaw, ready to cut the poor creature in half.
“That didn’t happen.”
“We’ve gone off script. Put too much ‘antagonism’ in her mind. Try Ichi this time. Have him give Pinkie some sympathy, but in an anti-villain light.”
Ichi woke up and ran to his computer. And now it was on the run for its life.
Pinkie pulled out a net, throwing it over the mental image. It struggled against the physical boundaries despite being intangible, but it managed to slip through the holes. Its fear was only heightened when Jotaro was suddenly right in front of it, delivering a spiritual punch to the being’s essence. The resulting power blew through three skyscraper stories…
“Off script again. No collateral damage actually occurred.”
“Why not?”
“Jotaro’s more careful than that and no amount of overwriting will change that?”
“Right, right, Ursula, then. Have them do it by accident.”
Jotaro delivered a spiritual punch to the being’s essence, sending it flying into a wall. Being intangible, it just passed through the building. Nova shot at it a few times in an attempt to get it to come out, but it dove further into the office building, perceiving it as safety.
The team teleported right in, chasing after the mental image.
“Why aren’t we catching it?” Nova asked. “This should be easy!”
“Things have changed,” Pinkie said. “Th-”
“Ursula is no longer of use to us.”
“Don’t let them speak, just act. Enrique.”
“-ey… I don’t know. Scrambling. …Whatever, just get the thing and talk later.” Pinkie rubbed her head. She felt a little out of sorts at the moment. She bounced around reality, popping up in front of the sparkly being with a bug net, where the fabric had no holes. She trapped the being and grinned.
Then she tried to touch it – but it fought back, pushing against her mind. She fell back, grunting.
Flutterfree appeared, summoning Lolo. The white being panicked, pressing itself to Pinkie’s head and making her enter a spasm.
Flutterfree gasped. “Let her GO!”
The resulting Rage built up and shuddered through the building, threatening its structural integrity…
“Right, fine, it doesn’t look like it’s that easy to trigger her anger.”
“Or maybe she knows something’s up.”
“Also possible. That Stand is a nuisance. Harrison then.”
“Let her GO!” Flutterfree wrapped the white creature in Lolo’s vines. She saw the truth of the matter.
“Dammit.”
“Just let him keep going, what’s done is done.”
Vriska fell from the ceiling, rolling her dice. The Fluorite Octet flashed, tapping into her luck to produce a spiritual dragon attack that would subdue the white being.
It also blew out every window within thirty meters.
“Finally, significant collateral damage!”
“And checkmate.”
Meteora woke up. She felt the voices again – the voices that had returned her magic to her, the voices that had told her so much.
The voices told her that they had made a mistake. Magane had fooled them and managed to escape. She herself would not return to the world, but she had sent back others to ruin the world and Meteora’s life here. Why? Because she thought it would be funny, why else did Magane do anything?
It was the way she was. And Meteora was here to defend the world, even at the expense of her normal life.
The creations never got rest.
She knew where to find them. Look for the blown-out building. She would have to stop them. They would be strong, but fate would be on her side, as would the element of surprise.
She cast a spell a-
~~~
I pulled control back. “Yeah, no, no more of your stupid ‘throwing things at the wall until it sticks’ approach. Let me show you how it’s truly done.” I set my pen to the page and bit my lip. If I intertwined the stories, I might derail both of them and ruin what I had set out to do.
It was a risk I was willing to take.
I set my pen to the paper, applying myself to another story of mine taking place on the same world. That of a man called Cecil and his quest to uncover a cosmic conspiracy…
Cecil sensed a disturbance in the winds of space and time. He held his sword close to his chest and clenched his jaw. He hated to leave his position at the factory; he would likely lose some much-needed information.
But he already had the device he had come to get. Perhaps he did not need to understand everything to stop the Freedom Sciences from accomplishing their goal. It was dangerous to act on incomplete information, but sometimes it was necessary.
The winds called to him, demanding his attention. He saw no reason not to answer their call, even at his position. The winds had never led him astray. That would not start today.
He left the factory, moving through the night like an owl in flight – silently, but with power. He felt the wind lead him left, then right, then left again. Onward, ever onward…
I moved to write his arrival – but then something went wrong. “Wait, what, really!?”
~~~
Monika blinked. “Uh, yeah, really!” She had the Prophet Janna’s character file open, poring through every little detail about her. “I’m going to get in on this fun as well! …Whoever you are. Maybe I’ll follow the flow of ka and find you later. But for now! Janna!”
“Hm?” Janna said, looking up. “What?”
Monika adjusted a few parameters in Janna’s mind. “Don’t you feel like writing about a guy named Cecil?”
“You know what, I do. Strange. I feel like jumping right in the middle of the story too…”
“Great!” Monika slid Janna up to the computer. “Type away, we don’t have all night! Or, well, we do, but you know.”
“…You’re such a great friend.”
May have overdone that character adjustment. Eh, whatever, I probably won’t be needing her after tonight. “I’ll be even better if you can just write something amazing.”
Janna wrote.
And yet, the winds dissipated from Cecil’s mind, no longer as clear in the direction they wanted him to go. Had he arrived? There did not appear to be anything here…
But there was always something when the winds called. Unless he was being tricked. Considering who his enemies were, this was a possibility he cursed himself for not considering before. They had wanted him not to know, perhaps?
Wait. There was a white thing passing by. Mysterious, ethereal – dangerous. Something he must pursue.
Monika frowned – this was a whole lot more dramatic than she was expecting. She tweaked Janna’s emotions a little bit, shifting the mood to a brighter one.
Cecil drew his blades and charged the creature – only to hear it whimper. “Help me!” It called. “My brothers – I can’t find them! They’re lost!”
Cecil looked upon the creature with compassion, his features softening. “The winds have led me here – it is my duty to aid you. Do you know where your brethren are, dear wisp?”
“Okay, why does he talk like that?” Monika asked.
“He just… does?”
“Could you make him not?”
“I mean, yes, but that wouldn’t be true to the character.”
Monika furrowed her brow. Given how much trouble the mind controllers were having getting what they wanted to happen to happen, it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to change the way Cecil talked out of petty annoyance. “Fine, I’ll bear with it.”
“I have no idea,” the wisp said, trembling. “All I know is that there have been disturbances lately. Lots of disturbances. Something big is coming.”
“How may I find your brethren before this disaster strikes?”
“I… I don’t know. I’m sorry, I’m not of any help…”
“Then I will just search with you. Perhaps we shall get lucky.”
Monika chuckled. “Yeah, right. This story’s going to end up with them getting in all sorts of messes.”
Janna smirked. “No story would be complete without conflict.”
~~~
Your name is Meteora Osterreich. You, simply put, are a wizard, but before that you are a librarian. You love books, though like most things that involve the esoteric parts of humanity known as ‘emotions’, you struggle to express just how much you appreciate their wordy pages. You tend to be rather boring to people who don’t know you.
You were once an NPC from a video game brought to this world by the power of what you know as Creators but the rest of the multiverse calls Prophets. After solving a crisis where the worlds of fiction and reality clashed, threatening to destroy the ‘real world’, you stayed behind because you wanted to. It wasn’t just because of the food, but the food was a major part of your decision. Life as an NPC isn’t exactly stellar either. You had lost your magic powers early on, but eventually the voices helped you regain them.
You are currently in your bedroom, having been interrupted in the middle of a spell by… something. You don’t know what, and this bothers you enough to give you further pause. It doesn’t seem like you’re being attacked, but those wise voices that tell you things seem to have stopped for the most part.
You feel like you have somewhere to be. It was the place the voices showed you, with the exploding windows. Magane has sent beings from another realm to destroy what you’ve worked so hard to protect. You are certain of this.
What will you do?
=> Meteora: retrieve arms from magic chest.
You do not have a magic chest. You do have a magic pocket dimension where you can store lots of things. Including missiles. You have an agreement with the government about only using those missiles when absolutely necessary. Which it probably will be.
You open up your magic pocket dimension and pull out your fake arms.
You do not remember putting these in there, nor do you know why you felt the need to pull them out.
The voices have been strangely quiet on the matter.
=> Meteora: go for a walk. Teleporting is overrated.
Against your better judgement you decide to walk through the city, at night, instead of teleporting right where you need to go. Because fresh air is amazing and cheating is for losers.
You notice that you’re feeling especially ‘spunky’ today. How unlike you. But it also feels strangely liberating. If your Creator were not dead you would consider that, possibly, you were being altered.
But he is dead, and there is no one who could alter you now. So that’s that.
After walking down the street for a while, something becomes blatantly obvious to you.
You’re lost.
=> Meteora: realize that you have a phone thus, a city map.
You pull out your phone to find, annoyingly, that it’s dead. You forgot to charge it when you went to bed and the voices woke you up rather rudely. Great.
=> Meteora: be a distraction.
There’s nothing here to distract, but you do a weird dance anyway. Because it feels like the right thing to do, and after all there’s no one watching.
Well, actually, there is, but you don’t see them. They see you first.
CECIL: What?
WISP: Oh, that is Meteora! She can help us!
CECIL: You sure?
METEORA: Perhaps. Please understand, I do not usually behave like that.
WISP: We know, we know! Can you help us find my brothers.
CECIL: This being’s brethren have become lost. I have given my blade to him so we may find the lost family.
METEORA: That sounds noble. I am currently lost – I have reason to believe there are beings in this world who seek to alter it an- hold on. Why are you here?
WISP: Meteora, do not worry, he has nothing to do with them.
CECIL: Who is them?
METEORA: I still want to know why he’s here.
CECIL: I follow the winds of time and space wherever they may lead me. They led me to this wisp. That is as far as I’ve gotten, and now they have led me to you.
METEORA: …And what about you?
WISP: I am a wisp of energy lost just like yourself. I come from Them.
METEORA: Them?
WISP: The voices that have assisted you. I am one of their floating messengers, brought down here due to interference. …Horrible interference.
METEORA: Do you know where the building is? The one with the windows?
WISP: Well…
-==> Be Pinkie.
You are now Pinkie. You have caught your wisp, and are feeling very proud about it, even though you know there’s something going on elsewhere in the world that’s going to be a problem later. Maybe. Everything’s been a little absurd as of late.
Speaking of absurd, a dozen robot ninjas from another dimension pop into existence and start attacking you! Ahahaah!
PINKIE: Really? Wh… Why?
They jump at you, yodeling and flailing batons and yelling in Britishtralian von Scottish accents.
PINKIE: That’s not even a real thing!
FLUTTERFREE: I feel as if I have now heard everything that could be heard…
They throw their batons! What do you do?
-==> STRIFE!
~~~
“We can use this. Get Victor – he can get them Darker and Edgier easily.”
“Given him the inspiration. Let’s see how this goes.”
The cyborg men of deception moved in, their impossible accents telling of years of torment due to their technological components. Where they hailed from, there were no anesthetics or proper medical procedures, only immeasurable pain to go with enhancement. It never even occurred to their government to lessen the pain. Pain made better soldiers.
Their batons opened, covered in thousands of microscopic screws that would tear through flesh in the most brutal way possible.
“…Did they just get seventeen times scarier?” Nova asked. “What happened?”
“We’re in the middle of a Prophet war,” Pinkie muttered, bringing the hammer down on the first cyborg, not intending to kill him but doing so anyway, having impacted the structural center of his processing unit. “They’re fighting over… something. Or they might just be trying to get on each other’s nerves. It’s a little hard to tell!”
Jotaro punched the robot ninjas to the side with Star Platinum, finding them harder than he expected. He suffered some cuts across his chest, clutching his abdomen in a pitiful attempt to keep his fluids within him. “Things are… brutalized.”
“It’s like Pinkamina,” Vriska observed. “Something started out as a joke and has been twisted to be fucking horrifying. I didn’t notice that they were constantly screaming when they first showed up, I thought it was hilarious!” She cut two in half, but found her sword torn out of her hands.
“It’s working against us,” Pinkie said as the net was cut out of her hooves. She noticed the wispy creature wasn’t even in it anymore. “We have to go. Now.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now,” Pinkie said, opening a dimensional portal.
“Yeah! They’re leaving! Ha! Can’t believe that worked so easily! Didn’t even have to reword and try again!”
“Wait for it…”
“We need to get Rohan,” Pinkie said, jumping through the portal.
“…Frick.”
“That’s bad.”
“We already have three of them to deal with we don’t need another!”
“Stop them!”
~~~
“For once I agree,” I said, placing my pen to the paper. “They don’t need the ability to influence this story on that kind of level. That would be… problematic for both of us, I predict.”
I placed my pen to the paper.
Rohan
I sat back. Writing about a Prophet aware of themselves if you were also aware was a difficult proposition under the best of circumstances. If you were fully aware of your power as a Prophet and tried to use that power, it was a constant game of second-guessing oneself to ensure that what you wrote was true to yourself and not just trying to push a specific event. Because the Tower tended not to accept that. But if you did push through your will onto another Prophet who also knew, they might figure out what you were doing…
I had to be subtle, basically.
I continued writing.
Rohan came home after a long trip to Earth C to get manga inspiration. He may have been Merodi Universalis’ ‘secret’ weapon, but he still kept up with his deadlines. In the past people had gawked at how he made every deadline he ever got with little difficulty, but when it was revealed that Heaven’s Door had the ability to draw really quickly, well, it became less impressive.
It was still liberating not to be burdened with absurd deadlines - allowing him to be purely devoted to the art form. That said, he hadn’t written anything yet this week, and with all the inspiration he had it was time to bring everything to bear. Not a single page would be left blank.
He took his phone off the hook and shut off his cell phone – the artist needed to not be interrupted. He sat at his drawing desk and summoned Heaven’s Door. He sketched the frames, ready to start something a little new. Time to bring in some really stupid reptiles…
I left the story blank – he should stay occupied for a long time. I wrote him as I knew him, an artist. Everything was completely believable, in character, and simple. He might actually leave the phone off the hook sometimes; given his stature in society he could afford to do that.
There wouldn’t be another prophet involving themselves in this mess.
I turned back to Cecil. He needed to go back to the factory now that the primary team was no longer on-world. Meteora could prove to be a problem in that regard…
~~~
“Right, so, this Rohan guy?” Janna told Monika. “I just got a big flash about him. I need him to come into the story because he can change the story.”
“That’s a pretty nice twist!” Monika said, congratulating herself. “Now how will we incorporate him? He doesn’t want to be disturbed.”
“How? Come on, Monika, if someone really wants to contact someone else and they don’t call, they kick his door in!”
“ROHAN!” Pinkie shouted, tearing his front door off its hinges. “We need you stat!”
“I am not your sl-”
Vriska grabbed him by the collar. “There’s four Prophets fighting over control of a world. We need you to write us a victory.”
“How? I can’t just say ‘they win’ and it happens! There has to be setup, I have to understand the situation, and I have t-”
“You’re coming with us then,” Jotaro said. “End of discussion.”
“Bu-”
“End of discussion.”
Flutterfree put a hoof on Jotaro. “You could be a little relaxed about it.”
Jotaro nodded slowly. “Rohan… Just come.”
Rohan sighed. “Fine. But you owe me.”
“I’ve got a party with your name on it,” Pinkie said, opening a portal. “But we gotta take care of this first. There’s no other way out of this mess.”
“This is weird…” Janna said. “Four Prophets? And Rohan’s a Prophet as well? It’s almost as if I-”
“Yeah, no,” Monika said, removing that conclusion from Janna’s mind.
“…No what?”
“You were mumbling something. Doesn’t matter much anymore. …Maybe we should introduce someone completely new?”
“Nah, I don’t thi-”
Monika twisted her mind. It was so easy to cheat if you were her.
“That’s a great idea, Monika!”
“I thought so.”
~~~
“Try to mess with Cecil. He’s always been the main threat.”
“Now that he’s with Meteora we may get something to stick… Try Cassandra. She’s good with people like him.”
Cecil found himself untrusting of Meteora – especially considering how untrusting she had been of him at the start. She thought he was her enemy. Maybe he was one of the beings who sought to alter what she wanted?
“How do these invaders threaten your world?” he asked, eyes narrow.
“I am not certain. All I know is that I was told by Them.”
“Them?”
“The beings who gave me my power back and have helped me accomplish so much. The same people Wisp comes from.”
“Hi!” Wisp said. “Yeah, Them are great. So great. So great great great grea-”
“That went off.”
“What was she even thinking?”
“Just grab someone else.”
“Hi!” Wisp said. “Yeah, Them are great. They guide the world to a brighter future!”
Recognizing the catchphrase of the Freedom Sciences, Cecil attacked them both, disturbed by the cruelty of the winds today…
“Apparently he won’t attack that fast.”
“We’re getting close though. All we have to do is get him to realize that they work for us, and Freedom Sciences is part of us. He’ll go crazy.”
“Anderson, go.”
Recognizing the catchphrase of the Freedom Sciences, Cecil narrowed his eyes. “Are you part of Freedom Sciences?”
“Yes,” Meteora said.
“Crud, looks like she won’t say that.”
“Well now we can’t have him reword the question, he already said it!”
“We can still salvage this.”
“No,” Meteora said, face betraying recognition.
“But you know of them,” Cecil said, leaning in. “What do you know?”
“What do you know?”
“They are my sworn enemy.”
Meteora attacked, launching a missile at Cecil.
“Got it.”
“Finally. Get Yan influenced, let this be one of those decisively quick battles.”
~~~
“Sorry, not happening,” I said. I grabbed two pens in my magic and wrote two things simultaneously. I had to let Them think I was doing one thing while I was really doing another.
It was nice that none of Them were actually Aware, like Pinkie. Pinkie and Monika both knew instantly what I was doing.
As far as Them were concerned, I was just writing this story:
Cecil drew his swords and leaped over the missile Meteora had fired at him. He brought the blades down not on Meteora, but on the Wisp, extinguishing the poor creature in an instant. He knew Meteora was just a woman, but whoever this ‘Them’ were, the Wisp was a more fundamental part of them. He couldn’t allow it to run rampant now that he knew this.
All the enemies he had slain had family somewhere; this Wisp was no different.
His actions only solidified Meteora’s resolve. She created a magic circle under him, attempting to imprison him. She discovered he had protective spells on him, rendering her attempts pointless.
Cecil drove a sword at her, piercing her own magic shield. She turned out of the way, panting – remembering that she wasn’t a fighter.
It was at this point the brothers of the Wisp appeared, rushing Cecil in full force and giving Meteora much needed aid. However, the wisps were purely mental creatures who were never actually meant to have personalities, and thus were largely disorganized and messy.
I could sense Them trying to throw everything they could at this narrative to twist it so Meteora won. I had to admit, they could probably do it. But they weren’t aware of a second narrative I was spinning.
Creating an Out Of Context Problem takes some doing, namely because the aforementioned problem better have some amazing story of its own. And it just so happened that I knew the right thing for the job. All part of the other story I was writing.
The Scion of Eversleep screamed at the pitiful hero attempting to slay it. “You are nothing, wench!”
Corona raised an eyebrow. “Nothing? Ethereal sleep being, I just took out your entire army. Alone. The entire thing. How can you call me nothing? How lost are you within your delusions?”
“I am this world. Everything within it is part of me, a twist of my own essence. I brought this up as if out of my dreams. You are just a little fly amidst my creations.”
“…Still don’t believe I’m from another world?”
“There can be none aside from the Scion of Eversleep! Return to the dark from whence you came!”
Corona didn’t go anywhere. She smirked. “See, you just tried to send me into nonexistence there. A pretty effective attempt at that, I have to say. Would have worked too, ‘cept, you know, I’m not actually part of this creation of yours.” She adjusted her red shades and smirked. “How’s that delusion of yours going now?”
“I must have developed a minor insanity…”
Corona sighed. “Right, definitely not getting through to you with words.” She lifted a dimensional device. “How about I show you?”
“Show me?”
“The other worlds.” Corona fired the portal right into the being’s center, letting it cycle through world after world, touching random people. A lost unicorn… An ancient evil… A librarian in magical combat…
“And that would be Meteora,” I said, looking back to my other story.
A portal appeared in the middle of the street, a murky essence coming from it. The wisps retreated in fear, while Cecil stared in curiosity. Meteora wasn’t given time to resist – for it chose to touch her mind. The energy of a transdimensional power forced her into unconsciousness, one the wisps would not be able to easily wake.
Just as quickly as it had appeared, it vanished.
I grinned. “Wonder how you’ll chew on that.” But my work wasn’t done. I needed to get Cecil back on track – I should never have tried to take him off his original plot, that had proved to be pointless. Now the primary team would no longer be allies - with Rohan I couldn’t predict anything. So I had to be quick.
Cecil needed to move and get to the primary factory of Freedom Sciences.
~~~
You are now the primary factory of Freedom Sciences. You do not have a standard name, you do not have birthdays, you do not understand the idea of days, and the people who walk around your halls each day mean nothing to you. You currently just exist, like most buildings do, without much care for anything at all.
You have no interests. Because of the aforementioned fact that you are a building.
The people inside of you certainly have interests. The idea of FREEDOM! and SCIENCE! Are pretty big ideals within your walls. The scientists believe that there are beings above everyone who control the way the world works, defining it by their laws. Ever since the founder learned of the Re:Creators incident, where fiction became reality, it has been thought to be the Freedom Sciences’ duty to face off against them.
To that end, you exist. You are the primary factory. Within you, something nefarious is being built. Something deep intended to bring about a new age where the Creators and their Creations will be free.
You are not able to question this. You are a building.
What will you do?
> FoFS: Continue being a building.
That’s a good idea. You continue being a building. You continue being a building for quite some time. It’s relaxing.
> FoFS: Contemplate that you feel relaxed.
You can’t do that. You’re a building. Didn’t you get the memo?
> FoFS: Get the memo.
You can’t do that. You’re a building. Didn’t you get the memo?
> FoFS: …
…
> FoFS: Tell everyone more about yourself.
You can’t do that. You can’t tell anyone you’re a four-story tall building with ovoid windows. You can’t tell anyone you have a bright blue mailbox affixed to your primary entrance. You can’t tell anyone that only the basement currently has power, so all the other lights are off. You can’t tell anyone that your address is 13-
~~~
“Hussie’s screwing with us.”
“Hussie’s screwing with everyone.”
“Right. He’s easy enough to punish. Tap into Dana. She’ll hit him with shitty memes.”
“He makes so many of them it’s not hard to get them after him.”
Andrew Hussie looked up from the computer he was working on to the sound of bees.
“Oh fuck no,” he screamed, grabbing a broom and waving it around. “No! NO! NOT THE BEES! NOT THE BEEEEEEEES!”
Thousands of bees seemingly made of poor quality JPEG graphics burst into his room and made him run away screaming.
“That was easy.”
“He still gave away a lot. This could be a problem.”
~~~
The first panel showed Pinkie talking. “Just start it from here, let the story be led into realistically.”
The second panel had Rohan drawing the first panel with Heaven’s Door. “Done. I’ll add myself in the next one. What’s the goal?”
The third panel showed Pinkie speaking in a narration box. We need to wander around this city until we find that factory. I can describe it to you since Hussie decided to be helpful rather than a troll for once in his life… Below the narration box was an illustration of the Primary team exploring the city, determined expressions on all five of their faces.
“We’ve been wandering for a while,” Nova said in the fourth panel, a confused expression on her face. “You think Rohan or Vriska would have come through by now.”
“My luck is going to get us there, I’m sure of it,” Vriska said in the fifth panel, an exaggerated expression of defiance on her features.
“Hey, it looks like Rohan’s manga is working!” Flutterfree said on the last panel of the page. “A little weird to realize that it gives us more extreme expressions…”
“So long as we accept it, we’re fine,” Pinkie said on the start of the next page, looking up to Jotaro. “Right?”
Jotaro grabbed his hat in the next. “Yare yare daze…”
“Hey, guess what I found!” Page two, third panel – the building was in sight, directly where Vriska was pointing. “That looks exactly like how you described it!”
Pinkie nodded. “Hussie came through. Describing something he didn’t know the appearance of, and viola, that’s how it appeared. No contradictions!”
In the fifth panel, Nova facehooved. “I’m not going to be able to parse this for a long time, good gravy…”
Pinkie turned to them with a serious expression on the third page. “Do you all know what we need to do?”
Everyone nodded in the second, the motion indicated by a sound effect and motion blur lines.
Pinkie turned away in the third panel, her speech bubble trailing down the page a ways. “Best we can tell, Them have something in this building’s basement designed to free this world’s Creators and Creations from limitations, as far as the scientists are aware. But Them have never been known to spend this much effort on anything unless they had a really good incentive.”
Pinkie looked right out of the page in the next panel. “They’re probably trying to attack the Flowers with a true narrative the Flowers won’t be able to refute. What else would require this level of ka manipulation that couldn’t be done just by smashing several universes together?”
Jotaro cracked his knuckles in the last panel. “I can’t think of anything.” Right next to him, Vriska grinned. “Let's save some Flowery asses.”
~~~
“They’re going in.”
“Keep calm, there’s still a salvage option here.”
“Pinkie has a point, why do we care so much about this? The Flowers don’t interfere in our games that often.”
“That’s just because you don’t enjoy perusing the self-insert stories. They love ending those prematurely, perhaps more than anything.”
“Can’t raise up a good multiversal conqueror with metaknowledge these days…”
“Ahem. Salvage. The answer is not to demand events take a particular course, but to let reality know that the assault on the Flowers is performed by heroes. That it is time for them to fall because heroes are ready.”
“Sketchy. Really sketchy. We’ve been painting them as heroes the entire time…”
“Not in this story. This narrative has not even seen who Freedom Sciences’ scientists are. What their lives were, what their stories came from, why they faced everything. Let’s show that. A reiteration. No chance of being unaccepted because all the stuff has already happened.”
“Genius!”
Miranda Johansen was but a lowly secretary, but she had her place at Freedom Sciences just like everyone else. Her father had been an author – a Creator, a Prophet. One of many countless thousands on this unique world in the multiverse. He would shape a world with his words, swearing that his characters were more real than everyone else gave them credit for.
Then he had been one of the authors hired to work on the Re:Creators incident. To create a scenario to end the threat to reality… posed by fiction.
He went mad after it was over. He truly understood that the world he created was real – and instead of taking solace in the fact that his feelings were right, he couldn’t believe the things he had done to his creations. He wanted to make up for all the horrors, to be a benevolent god to them. To force his world into the way it was supposed to be.
The quality of his work degraded, fell, and he struggled to end the story he had set out. And then, one day, he knew that what he was writing no longer had any sway over the world of fiction. The feeling he had always had was gone. Something had stopped him.
He committed suicide a year before Them contacted Miranda and told her what had happened. In his madness, her father had forced his will in a way it shouldn’t have, creating unsanctioned narrative glitches. He had tried to create a perfect world.
The Flowers wouldn’t stand for that. They had severed his connection to that world. Since he couldn’t move on to a new creation, he was no longer a Prophet.
Bringing these Flowers to justice was exactly what Miranda wanted to do with her life.
“There we go, best sob story out of all of them.”
“Meteora next?”
“She’s already left a bad taste in the narrative.”
“Ooh, what about the head?”
“Yes…”
Jira Higashikara.
She was a Prophet, and she knew it the moment the reports of the Re:Creators incident started. They were quickly hushed up, but she knew. She always knew. It was in her blood, her destiny, to understand what she was. She wanted nothing more than to find these creations and ask them how their worlds were.
They had already left by the time she got any good leads. All that remained were Meteora, who was sweet, but not much help – and Magane. Magane, the psycho, the reality bender. Long after the elements of fiction began to dissipate from the world, long before Them appeared, Magane remained.
“You sicken me,” Jira told her when they first met.
Magana had laughed. “That’s my whole purpose! I’m the crazed psycho. Antagonist. Mur-der-er~! A menace to society that just won’t go away!”
“I know. I want to know what it’s like. What my worlds are like. Meteora couldn’t help me. I think you might be able to.”
“Help? Why would I help you?”
“Because. It’d be interesting.” Jira narrowed her eyes. “Have I read you right?”
Magane grinned. “Yes. But you’re also wrong about a bunch of other assumptions you haven’t even thought about yet.”
“I’ll cross those bridges when I come to them. Now tell me. What are my worlds like?”
“Why would I know? You’re their Creator. You can just look into their worlds.”
“No I can’t. I just write – I do not know what actually becomes true, and what doesn’t. I can’t see them as anything but thoughts in my mind. What happens when I don’t write them is a mystery to me.”
Magane grinned. “A lie about a lie…” she snapped her fingers. “…it turns inside-out on itself.”
Jira smirked. “Thank you.”
“You’ll be cursing me in about a week!” Magane called. “The Awareness you’ve just received is going to drive you mad.”
“No i-” Jira caught herself. “Nice try.”
“But what if it wasn’t a lie, brave Creator?”
Jira stared at her. She decided to ask a question of her own. “Did you always know we were in a story ourselves?”
Magane laughed. “You didn’t answer my question!”
Jira turned to leave. “The police will be here soon.”
“I’ll just find a way to trick them out of existing or something,” Magane said with a yawn. “So pedestrian… And boring.” Magane fixed her gaze on the back of Jira’s head. Jira could feel the eyes boring into her skull. “Don’t disappoint me, Jira.”
She didn’t. Jira did exactly as Magane predicted. She looked into her worlds… and saw the Flowers. Saw all the characters they had killed, all the fanfics they had ‘fixed’, all her beautiful writing… down the drain. Written off as ‘bad’ ‘glitched’ or ‘unrealistic’. As if her gift of Creation was wrong. All the things she wanted to see, she wanted to create, all the beauty…
They decided it was wrong.
She raged, scrawling writings – anything she could to get back at the Flowers. The quality of her work degraded, becoming even worse than it had been to start with. But she couldn’t accept this. She never would. She would express herself, and the Flowers wouldn’t be able to stop her.
And then Them noticed her works. Noticed Mary Sues that knew about the Flowers and tried to fight them – usually ineffectually. But the fact that so many knew… it was curious. Them had their own grudges against the Flowers.
And so Them came to Jira’s world and gave her a start. A push – they told her that Them had the power to help her, but Them had no control over narrative. Them could not free her without her help.
So she gathered everyone she could. Listening to Them’s words, building up the society that would become Freedom Sciences. They would free the Prophets of the multiverse from the Flowers – from their gruff, unchanging view of what the Plot should be. Why shouldn’t the ‘bad’ works be accepted with the good?
They were Prophets just as much as the great authors were. They could create. It was a power given to them by the Dark Tower. No Flowers had a right to take that away from them.
“Good. That explains everything.”
“The Flowers do need to be stopped…”
~~~
“You don’t realize how much like a villain backstory that sounds,” I said, shaking my head. “You yourselves aren’t good writers. …You may have a point about the power of the Flowers. But that world is oversaturated with too many Prophets. The Flowers keep it from taking control of all the others…” I laid my pen to the paper. “Let me show you what Jira really was. …Besides someone who let Magane escape into the multiverse through her actions. Which is bad enough on its own.”
What exactly makes a glitch in ka?
The way the Flowers detect the glitch is a trade secret they are exceptionally tight-lipped about. They have never described the exact ka signature they use to detect it. But based on what they deem sanctioned and not, there appear to be some general criteria on which a glitch can be judged.
It appears to mostly be a matter of quality and theme. As a question: is it good fiction? No... is it decent fiction? Do people enjoy reading it and thinking about it? If the answer is mostly yes, it’s probably not a glitch. However, bad writing – fraught with typos, unrealistic actions, and just bad form – those produce glitches.
The criterion of theme is a little harder to understand, but it’s a major reason. What is a Mary Sue, in reality? It’s a perfect or near-perfect character that exists almost exclusively for that end. The theme of a Mary Sue story is ‘Mary Sue is the best and great things happen to them’. It can have good quality writing, but if the focus is a perfect character, the glitch will arise more often.
Now, there are nuances. Popularity’s effect on narrative glitches aren’t fully understood, and a being that would be a Mary Sue in any other context can be overruled by being widespread. Worlds based in fanfics tend to produce more glitches than original works – usually because of Out Of Character moments, the dominance of shipping as a genre, and a lack of original imagination from the Prophet in question. Which isn’t to say fanfics are glitches, it’s just that they’re significantly more prone to them. Which is why the Flowers work almost exclusively against such threats.
Jira Higashikara was a fanfic writer on a world where almost everyone was a Prophet. She was a bad fanfic writer. She spat words from her mind onto a screen, never revised, and had great flights of fancy where many of her ‘characters’ were just shadows of what she viewed herself to be. Little more than bodies with words coming out of them. She’s guilty of glitching theme, quality, and numerous other things.
And yet she loved these worlds more than she loved reality.
Because in them, she got to make all of her dreams come true.
She believed she cared about her characters – but they weren’t separate from her. She would claim they were, and believe they had lives of their own, but it wasn’t true. She was lying to herself. The multiverse had a virus, and its name was Jira Higashikara.
The Flowers fulfill a role in the multiverse. A role that keeps it sane. Sturgeon’s Law states that ninety percent of everything is crap. The Flowers keep the worst of the worst from infecting the rest of the multiverse. For if a world like that is allowed to flourish, Prophets might be created out of its beings… And those newer, possibly worse worlds would make more…
Instead of admitting the Dark Tower was a flawed creation, the Flowers took it as their Tower-given destiny to take care of these glitches that were not ‘sanctioned’. There is much disagreement over whether the Plot they believe in is really correct, but it cannot be denied that they are important to the health of existence.
Writing bad things isn’t wrong. If someone enjoys it, let them do it. But that’s only if their writings cannot change reality. For a Prophet, it is wrong. An idiot god is little different from an evil one.
Jira and Them are cut from the same cloth. They aren’t engaging in simple wish-fulfillment anymore. They are shaping the very worlds around them, consciously, without regard for what they create. If Jira didn’t know what she was doing, it would be understandable. But Magane showed her what she created… and she saw nothing but pure beauty.
It could be considered sad, how she always dreamed to rise from her position as ‘flavor textitian’ to a popular author who spun worlds into the minds of everyone, but simply didn’t have the skill. It’s a sad fact of life that you have some skills, and you have some weaknesses. Not all dreams are attainable.
I sat back, proud of my work. A logically-structured argument for the villainy of Them and Jira. Though in Them’s case the argument wasn’t required.
It was at that point I realized I made a mistake.
I hadn’t written a story. I had written an argument. It had power – yes – had the power to alter the perception of individuals. But it hadn’t created a new story. I hadn’t done anything with Cecil after I sent him to the factory. Given the intertwining stories, he would have been acting on his own for a while and I wouldn’t have been able to help them in those moments.
The other Prophets could have used their stories to overrule mine…
Songs of the Spheres was not the only flow of ka to be concerned with. And it was the only one I had done anything to.
~~~
“Wow, this Mona is… so unlike anything I’ve ever written before!” Janna said, staring at the words in front of her in disbelief. “And yet… she seems to be the best thing ever!”
“She’s perfect!” Monika said, grinning. “Now that we – er, you – have described her so everyone knows exactly what she looks like without a shadow of a doubt, let’s have her show up on the scene.”
Mona dashed to the scene, her psychic powers brimming with understanding. The device was in the basement. She had to be the one to use it for the best of everyone. Everything needed to change. Change was the answer.
She bashed in the front doors where Pinkie’s team had already taken care of the receptionist, Miranda. “Have no fear, I am here!”
Vriska gave a thumbs up. “Sweet! Go check the basement.”
“We can handle things up here,” Nova said.
“Waiwaiwaiwait!” Pinkie shouted. “Girls, shoosh. Mona, no.”
“Psh, you don’t have to be worried about me!” Mona grinned. “I can do anything!”
“That’s one of the reasons you have to leave.”
“Why are you writing that?” Monika demanded.
“It seems like what she’d say!”
“Then make her agree.”
“That wouldn’t be-”
Monika adjusted a few more things in Janna’s file.
“Pinkie… Are you sure?”
“Actually, nope, go ahead and go to the basement! Just give me a moment…” She pulled a button out of her mane.
A confetti cannon went off from Janna’s computer, knocking her out. Monika was not spared the insult of getting completely covered in confetti.
“Pinkie Pie…” she muttered.
She noticed there was a note amidst the confetti.
You just created a Mary Sue.
“No I di-” Monika’s pupils shrunk to pinpricks as she thought about this for a minute. “AAAAAA FU¨¨¨¨√¨ø´ß®´∑¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥
~~~
Ka field negated, the Snowdrop said, appearing in between Pinkie’s team and Mona in an instant. Neutralizing Mary Sue.
Pinkie blinked. They’d sent a Flower? They always sent agents for simple Mary Sue work! …Right?
Mona glared at the Snowdrop. “I am not Mary Sue! I am Mona Resalanarabana. And I-“ She dodged an icy projectile from the Snowdrop. “What the hell!? Are you trying to kill me?!”
Yes, the Snowdrop said.
Mona decided now was a good time to run away. The Snowdrop vanished, presumably in pursuit.
“OKAY TEAM!” Pinkie shouted. “For the first time since we arrived, we’re free to do what we want according to the normal flow of ka. Basement. Now. We don’t have much time.”
Jotaro was the first to respond. “STAR PLATINUM: THE WORLD!”
The next thing Pinkie knew they were in the basement.
She saw two people lying dead on the floor. While everyone else had been busy fighting over ideals, the story had resolved itself.
Both Jira and Cecil lay on the ground, blood pooling around their corpses.
“W-what?” Flutterfree said. “Did we miss something?”
“Everyone missed something,” Pinkie said, sighing. “And now people are dead because of it.”
“What do we do, then?” Nova asked.
Pinkie looked up. Behind Cecil and Jira was a machine covered in the symbol of ka. “There it is,” she said. “The thing that’s supposed to take out the Flowers. …Somehow.”
It was at this point Monika ran into the room. “Has anyone seen Mona?”
“Your Mary Sue is being hunted down,” Pinkie said, pursing her lips. “Probably dead at any mo-
~~~
-ment.”
Monika twitched. “But but… Gah. I just wanted to have fun!”
“Careful. You might turn into Them,” Nova said.
Vriska, to her credit, ignored Monika and walked up to the machine. “Hey, I think we can use this.”
“Really?” Pinkie asked.
“Really. Just a little bit of luck and I think we can use it against Them.” Vriska grinned. “Worth a shot, don’t you say?”
Nova shrugged. “I don’t see why not.”
Flutterfree perked up. “I th-
~~~
“-ink we should be cautious about this.” She leaned down to check Cecil, pulling a mechanical rod out of his jacket. “This guy wasn’t one of the scientists.”
“He was a hero of sorts,” Pinkie answered. “Twilence’s.”
“I bet this device does the good thing,” Flutterfree said. “Put it into the machine in… oh hey, that round slot right there! An-”
~~~
“-d we win.”
Vriska raised an eyebrow. “This could be a trick. I think we should just activate it.”
~~~
“Vriska, I’m really sure we should just put this in there.”
~~~
Vriska moved her hand to activate the device on her own.
~~~
Flutterfree twitched, the action of her friend triggering her Rage. She flew at the troll, tackling her to the ground.
~~~
Vriska kicked her with enough force to crack bone. “You’re being controlled!”
~~~
“You’re being controlled!” Flutterfree Raged.
~~~
> ANDREW HUSSIE: Ruin everything.
All right then! I run right into the midst of everything with the shitty bees behind me screaming at the top of my lungs.
HUSSIE: AAAAAAAAA!
VRISKA: Wh8t the f8ck!?!?!?!?
FLUTTERFREE: What in Celestia’s name!?
I run right into the machine that nobody’s given a physical description to yet, inserting my body and the millions of horrendous, cruddy bees into it! I destroy the offending mechanism! TAKE THAT, CRUEL GODS WHO CURSED ME! AHAHAHA!
There is, of course, a large boom. Everyone’s fine. Except me, but I’m a ghost, and I don’t care how much explosion I absorb. WOOOOO!
> ANDREW HUSSIE: Gloat.
HUSSIE: You’re all fucking welcome.
PINKIE: …*sigh*. Thanks, I guess.
NOVA: …Can anyone explain what just happened?
MONIKA: His file’s hidden. Sorry.
NOVA: You have to stop just looking at people’s files at the drop of a hat!
MONIKA: Yeah, no.
HUSSIE: This is the thanks I get? A bunch of bickering? I stopped two people from killing each other! I saved the Flowers and kept a major genocide of Them from happening! I should be a national hero!
VRISKA: Yeah, no. Prepare for a knuckle sandwich.
HUSSIE: Oh, yeah, actually, instead…
Vriska and I share a deep, passionate kiss and she is so entranced by my presence she cannot punch me away.
~~~
“That’s it, I’m going down there,” a Them said.
“Hold on a se-”
The Them appeared just in time to see Vriska deliver a sword into Hussie’s mouth, pull it out, and shove it in again. Being a Skaian, that did nothing besides make him scream. Which was why she was doing it. Repeatedly.
“Worth it…” he managed, impossibly.
The Them had had enough. All of these people were going to die, right here, for messing up everything.
“What a nice file you have there,” Monika said. “I bet you assholes are responsible for this whole mess, huh?”
The Them’s white essence shook for a moment. “Wha-”
Monika set one of the options in the file to ‘dead’. The Them exploded.
~~~
I panicked.
And they all survived because the latent energies from the destroyed machine had a life-giving power that, for a moment, rescinded mortality just enough so they would be beaten within an inch of death from the cosmic being’s own destruction, but not join it in its end.
I gulped. That was complete BS.
I hoped it worked.
After a few seconds, I let out a sigh of relief as I saw Jotaro grunt through the Eye of Rhyme.
I hadn’t gotten what I wanted. I hadn’t managed to deliver a major blow to Them. But one of Them had been killed as a result of this whole mess, and that usually deterred Them from messing with something. For a while, at least.
And the Flowers were still around. That was the important bit. Another evil plan foiled.
I decided it was about time I went to bed. Tonight had been way too stressful. I trusted Pinkie to deal with the situation.
~~~
Pinkie looked to Monika. “Right, now that this is over, we need you to do something.”
“Why would I-”
“Seal this universe off from all outside contact,” Pinkie said. “Nobody can access the world of Prophets. It’s just way way too dangerous.”
Monika blinked. She tapped into the universe’s physics file and made a few adjustments. “Done. This is an out-only universe now. I think a Class 1 could probably get to it anyway.”
“Good. Let’s get out of here,” Pinkie said.
“Uh, wait, hold on,” Nova said. “…Where’s Rohan?”
“Back home already. Guess we glossed over that.” Pinkie smiled awkwardly. “There was a lot of people panicking for almost no reason over him.”
Nova blinked. “Did we actually do anything?”
“We made people panic,” Jotaro said.
There was silence.
“…Vriska, I’m sorry,” Flutterfree said suddenly.
“I’m pretty sure we were puppets of Prophets,” Vriska commented, throwing her sword back into Hussie. “…But I’m sorry too.”
“Let’s just go,” Pinkie said, shaking her head. “I’m… I think I’m done with the meta today. If you want to know what actually happened read my report to Renee when I get around to writing it. I need to de-stress a bit.” She opened a portal. Vriska threw Hussie through it.
Monika shrugged, walking through. “…Actually, I should go get Mona.”
“The Flowers got her and left,” Pinkie muttered. “That’s the point when Vriska started acting weird.”
“…Oh.” Monika frowned. “…I liked her.”
“Hey, you’re not a Prophet,” Pinkie said. “Go to wherever you call home and write a ton of stories about Mona.”
Monika blinked. “Maybe… …Maybe.”
The primary team left the universe, leaving Monika alone.
She destroyed the entire Freedom Sciences building with barely a thought. Screw them all.
She left the universe with no intention of ever returning.
Hours later, Meteora would wake up in a hospital bed without her powers. She would have to go back to leading a normal life. What the voices had said to her passed into the recesses of her memory over time, and she soon rarely thought about them at all.
~~~
Magane chuckled. “That was fun, wasn’t it?”
There was no response. There was no scenery around her – she existed alone in the scene.
“Yes, I’m talking to you,” Magane said, pointing. “Lovely little readers. Perplexed by what my plan was.” She shrugged. “The moment I got Them to create a dimensional connection, I was free to explore. There was no more ‘plan’ after that. There was no reason. It was just fun.”
Nothing but the slasher smile. “But I’m not just going to vanish after this. It may seem like that way. But I’ll be sure to stick around. I can see just as everyone else that we’re building up to something. The scope keeps increasing and increasing and increasing…!”
“It’s got to hit the top eventually.”
There was nothing but Magane's evil, childish laugh.
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well that was ...something. at first i was REALLY confused but then i was just : fuck it , lets just read without trying to understand shit! and i guess it turned out fine....meh not the best chapter but i guess fine??
It's also not the only flow of sins to be concerned with. Roll credits. *ding!*
Oh wow, I'm not sure if I get it all or didn't, may have to read again, meanwhile, OK Finnished, it was a war of wits and intellect, and a Them was not so, so he died XD, anyway, for chapter 100, I really can't decide what it could be, I could choose for merodi to enter a short war out of a misunderstanding with DBS and their 12 Universes, or have Sombra meet again with her universe and join MU, or just make Pinky's Party go to Hanazuki's universe and eventually save it from the USM capitalism, and all of those would be interesting, but I will go with just a visit to Wonder Park (2019 FILM) , a good competition to the Pinky Emporeum, and considering June is aware of her creation, she and/or her mother are prophets, having two parks in competition or just two options would be interesting XD, or not ¬¬.
9593294
You have to leave the submissions on this group thread (clicky). I'm not accepting them otherwise.
-GM, master of 100.
9592825
I think it gets a bit more understandable if you're an active prophet / Creator / researched / etc...
Magane out running around the universes!
That is not someone you want doing that.
Well that was a mental workout to read. As the saying goes, "Too many cooks spoil the broth" or in this case too many Prophets spoil the story. It was a lot of fun though. A quick Google for background on Magane and her source material was helpful, although it was a bit of a puzzle to identify everyone's motivations. I'm still not sure what Twilence was doing, except maybe attempting to hurt Them, although it seems that she has a lot going on behind the scenes. It's still funny to me that Hussie was the Prophet that ended up saving to the day, despite seemingly wanting to throw a wrench i the works most of the time. Also, the retrieve arms from magic chest was finally a Homestuck reference I got, as well as loving the Homestuck style, albeit without illustrations. Great job on actually writing in a variety of styles for this chapter. I doubt that it is easy.
9593494
It most certainly was NOT easy, thank you for noticing the effort. It was... well it was fun, but also draining.
-GM, master of cookies.
What the bloody fuck just happened.
My mind!
"Infinite Deception of Words" sounds almost like an Exalted Charm. And that seems like the level of power necessary to alter the laws of the narrative.
(One Googling later) Or not.
Oh! This got interestingly complicated.
This is some Grant Morrison-level metafiction right here. I love it.
Excellent point on Flowers preventing a crap spiral from consuming the multiverse.
It's official; I have ruined that word for myself.
Nice touch with Hussie's text being nigh-unreadable in Dark mode. Trolling even the reader. To say nothing of the actual plot getting resolved while all the Prophets were otherwise occupied.
In all, that was one heck of a ride. And now I find myself wondering about the worlds I've created, and how many are acceptable...
In any case, yet another sword of Damocles dangles over the plot. We're developing quite the ceiling armory. It goes well with all those guns on the mantle. This is going to be very interesting indeed...
In the meantime, I need to think about suggestions for chapter 100. Or maybe I'll just see what everyone else comes up with...
Nah, what fun would that be?
9587215
I can make out "corruption is the tower's greatest messenger." I'm honestly surprised that I was able to read that. Now that I know how to read corrupt text, I'll try to decode other things.
Btw, if you are reading this on the front page, I’m gonna tell you: We’re talking about things somewhere around chapter sixty here. I know I forgot these would appear there in my previous comment, but please don’t read anything on this page. Read the comments for a specific chapter after reading that chapter, at the moment they appear on screen when you scroll past the “next chapter” button. Yes, that one button you won’t be able not to click after finishing a chapter. Sorry this short message got so long. This goes for all my comments.
9600290
Hm. Something must have gone weirdly then; When I wrote the comment, I could clearly see the double space even in the quoted area, and my spellchecker also picked it up. It definitely isn’t there anymore.
Also, thank you for responding, especially so quickly. What I meant by ‘not a full theist’ was that she doesn’t believe God decides everything, as in that free will exists, or that, as meant with the henotheist part, that she believes that other powers, within the multiverse or not, have major influence said multiverse. That power, in this case, being other Ka. I had no intent to state Flutterfree doesn’t view God as almighty. I actually
thinkthought, at the time of writing that comment, that even in the case of a henotheist, she could still see God as almighty, just not willing to let Himself decide everything, for which I could think of a lot of reasons.Now, on the other hand, what I would have meant to say in that comment is that Flutters definitely sees God as the Creator, definitely views Him as being able to control, might think He created Ka, might not. I would have said that she might see Ka being an equal and a counter to God, a creation made by or a rule set by God, or a device initially developed by an overpowered civilization capable of going against God, or maybe as an indicator that there is something higher than God, who stepped down because deciding everything alone would be too tiresome while writing a story.
This h’as gone on too long, especially for just one subject, so I’ll move on. [That “h’as” was supposed to be a “has” with accent, but I’m too lazy to switch keyboard languages to allow accenting with an apostrophe.]
I think you misinterpreted what I meant to say with the second... no, third part of my original post.
I wasn’t leaning towards the idea of infinite universes in your multiverse, I was merely suggesting your multiverse exists within a higher-order multiverse or omniverse.
I’ll elaborate:
The way I imagine it, there is a “collective data-consciousness” knowing of every story ever, up until any point in time, which I will dub time1. Every one of these stories takes place in either a universe, a multiverse, a multiverse containing multiverses, etc.
Now through contrived Ka-convenience, this machine has created the highest-level omniverse, the ‘Verse, which contains all these x-verses those stories take place in. That is what I’m saying. And that, when a crossover takes place, participating uni- and multiverses duplicate and merge into the new one. These new x-verses get created when they are written in time1, and the beings within them measure the flow of time2, in-’verse time.
This would allow both the normal mlp-universe, untampered with by the Ka of your hands, and your multiverse containing that same, adjusted, universe to exist. It’s a weird system that would take ages to write rules, laws or systems for, but it’s non-self-altering, making it a perfect highest, or actually only penultimate, level.
I’m sorry if my message wasn’t clear the first time, or if I went on way too far this time. I like to explain things, be it my actions, my thoughts, concepts, things in books, physics, or the reason I use so many commas. (because they’re cool and make forming annoying constructions easier. Shame English doesn’t have too many rules on them, like the Dutch do. (two verbs in different levels of subsentences? Comma. “And?” No comma. Colon? Comma. Etc. There, after “rules on them,” I’ve placed a comma, but my spellchecker tells me I shouldn’t.)) So there’s a good chance I’m writing an entire alinea with nothing useful in it. Take this one right here as an example.
I should stop writing. Typing, not writing... And I should ask you whether to use spoilers next time or not.
I wonder how much space this comment will take up to exist here...
[Edit: a lot, but less than expected.]
9600746
Oh yeah, she believes in free will. The vast majority of Rev's church (including Rev) does as well.
Yeah, none of these are true. We do find out the origin of Ka later, but Flutterfree's opinion keeps it at below Him at all times.
Yeah, I did understand that was what you meant. What I'm saying is that I outright reject the "true multiverse" theory on the standpoint that it becomes self-contradictory. If there's an infinite number of stuff, an infinite number of things happen, including the Bomb That Can Destroy All Things and the Thing That Stops The Bomb THat Can Destroy All THings and the Bom That Can Stop the Bomb Stopping Thing... I don't think the true infinite multiverse works out. (THe one where 'every possible outcome of an event happens' works out, but that's not true infinity, that has al imit, you'd just never get to the end of it because trying splits the multiverse in two.)
The idea of your 'collective data subconscious' exists within the SotS multiverse through the void between universes known as the 'Sea of Infinite Possibility' which contains the potential for every universe that doesn't exist. But it's important to keep in mind that it's just the POTENTIAL, not the actuality.
Sure, this multiverse COULD be part of a larger omniverse. But by the Sots Multiverse's chosen rules, they can never contact this higher omniverse under any circumstances or be influenced by it in any way, so it might as well not exist. I designed this multiverse very specifically so it could A) contain almost every story ever made and B) have the potential to have a story about ALL of it. This required removing infinity as a thing that can exist and limiting the size of the multiverse, defining its boundaries, etc. I can't leave any open windows for other omniverse stuff for, well, thematic reasons among others.
I'm not bashing your idea, it's a perfectly valid omniverse theory (of which there are several.) i just dont' find omniverse theories narratively satisfying for a multitude of reasons.
-GM, master of ice ice.
9596984
I'm really impressed that you two managed to get anything out of it at all.
This chapter is fucking hilarious
... What.
You know, starting to realize more and more that the D'ni civilization was probably one of the older Class 2s, just no one ever encountered them so they never got a definitive answer on whether their writings created or linked to new worlds. At first I thought they couldn't exist in this multiverse, but no they are quite literally- as far as I recall- an entire civilization of just Prophets.
OK, I'm honestly not sure, is that a second person talking or a typo? At first I thought it was a second person, but then we glossed over them and the scene implied Magane was alone.
Also, I underestimated the threat Them pose. If Them actually apply Themselves they are capable of wrecking the multiverse up, and lack any restraint... I wonder if the other seats will notice/care about this.
...And in today's episode, our heroes all become playthings of the Prophets!
Que aterrador.
Not gonna lie, this chapter made my head hurt a bit.