Very Evil XI: Diamond (Ch 1-8: 11/7/08 - 2/24/09; Ch 9+: 3/17/25 - 9/1/25)


Chapta 1: With Evil Gone

A generic amount of months had passed since the last generic adventure of Freddy, Frankie, and Cleff. Everything was normal: Evil was supposedly dead; Frankie and Freddy actually went to school rather than going on insane adventures; the mysterious black diamond that could bring dead people back to life was hidden in Freddy's underwear drawer; and Very Evil, whose hand was cut off by his own dad (who got shot and died), had a sci-fi robotic arm now. With Evil dead, it seemed like nothing could go wrong. But one day, Frankie realized something. Something bad.

Frankie and Freddy were in the cafeteria of the school, eating lunch. "You know what I just realized?" asked Frankie to Freddy.

"What?" replied Freddy.

"Couldn't Evil be brought back from the dead with the black diamond?" said Frankie.

"...Dude, that was like... a generic amount of months ago," said Freddy, shrugging the idea off. "If that were possible, someone would have stolen the thing already."

"Not if no one knows about it," said Frankie. "I say we have it destroyed."

"DESTROYED!?" shouted Freddy in horror. "But I've already used it three times to bring my grandma back to life!"

"You've been using it!?" replied Frankie.

"Well, yeah...my grandma died, so I was like, 'Why not?' and then she was alive again for a few weeks until she got hit by a bus. So I did that again," explained Freddy.

"You really shouldn't tamper with life and death," said Frankie. "I mean, seriously, if we don't destroy the diamond, someone could bring Hitler back alive!"

"Or Jesus," said the Christian Freddy.

"Nah, there was no Jesus," said the atheist Frankie. "In fact, you can test..."

"Hey Freddy," said Freddy's girlfriend, sitting down at the table and interrupting Frankie.

"WHAT THE CROW!?" yelled Frankie. "What is she...there can't be a girl in this series!"

"Dude, you've known I've been going out with her for a generic amount of months already," said Freddy.

"Yeah, but not in the story!" said Frankie. "...You know what...screw you Freddy! I'm going to break into your house tonight, and steal and destroy the diamond myself!" And Frankie jumped up from his seat and left Freddy.

That night, at 2:00 am, Frankie sneaked out of his house and all the way to Freddy's. Frankie carefully slid a knife under the window and made it do absolutely nothing. So instead of giving up on the heist, Frankie threw a rock through Freddy's window. Luckily, the shattering only woke the neighbor up and not Freddy.

Frankie climbed in through the window into Freddy's house and started looking for the black diamond in Freddy's dresser, but it wasn't there. After a few minutes of looking, Freddy awoke.

"What the crap are you doing here?" asked Freddy.

"Your black diamond's missing," said Frankie gravely.

Freddy hurried over to his dresser and started looking through it. He started throwing clothes all around his room, but the black diamond wasn't there. "It's gone," said Freddy. "The black diamond is gone."


Chapta 2: A Visit to Evil Inc.

"You don't have it, do you?" Freddy asked to Frankie. "Because I thought you were the only one who knew about it..."

"I didn't tell anyone," said Frankie. "The only way someone else could know about it is if someone overheard us at lunch today."

"Well...wait," said Freddy. "I think Very knows about the diamond. He would steal it!"

Very Evil had recently reacquired his business, Evil Inc., and his headquarters, the Evil Inc. building, happened to be the largest building in the country. It was a very successful business, and its highest respected and best known employees were Big Tony, Big Daddy, and Really Bad.

Frankie and Freddy arrived in the building and requested to see Very Evil. Really Bad, working at the counter on the bottom floor, asked, "Do you plan to assassinate him?"

"No," replied Freddy, and an elevator arrived for them to the 273rd floor shortly after. Very was waiting for them at the top.

"Hello there," said Very. "Sit down."

Frankie and Freddy sat in the two chairs in front of Very's desk. It seemed like Very was expecting them. Very opened a drawer and took something out of it.

"Looking for this?" asked Very to Freddy and Frankie, showing them the black diamond.

"...You went into my house and stole that from me?" said Freddy.

"Well yes," said Very. "It's for the greater good. Do you want to know what I plan to do with it?"

Freddy and Frankie did not answer.

"No? No one?" Very questioned.

"Well, it would annoy me greatly if you did something evil with it," explained Frankie. "Just seriously, stay on one side for once!"

"Um...what I'm going to do isn't really that evil," said Very.

"Oh good," said Frankie.

"I'm planning on using this to bring my dad back to life," said Very.

"He cut off your hand, remember?" argued Freddy. "You'd have to be retarded to..."

"SHUT UP!" replied Very. "I'm gonna do what I want."

"It's not right to tamper with life and death!" said Frankie. "Give the diamond to us so we can destroy it!"

"This diamond is mine now," said Very. "And no one's going to steal it from me."

And with that, Very made Freddy and Frankie leave.


Chapta 3: The Black Diamond Missing!

That night, Frankie contacted Cleff, and Cleff and Frankie snuck into the two hundred seventy-third floor of Evil Inc.

Frankie looked in the drawer Very had the black diamond in, but it wasn't there. So Frankie looked for it in the safe behind the painting, but Cleff's X-ray vision sensed that the black diamond wasn't on the floor.

"Maybe Very ate it," suggested Cleff.

"I swear Very better not have used it yet," said Frankie, ignoring Cleff.

After another minute of searching, Very burst into the room, holding a shotgun. He flipped the lights on to see Cleff and Frankie.

"What are you doing here!?" screamed Very at Frankie. Pointing the shotgun at Frankie, Very walked over to his desk and opened the drawer he had left the black diamond in. "It's gone," said Very, realizing it wasn't there. So Frankie or Cleff must've stolen it.

"Hand it over!" commanded Very.

"We don't have the diamond," said Frankie.

"Riiiiight," said Very. "Then who stole it?"

"I don't know!" said Frankie. "But you didn't use it, did you?"

"I revived Wicked," said Very. "And I don't think he's gonna kill anyone, so don't worry."

"Bring him in here," said Freddy.

Very went back in the door behind him, leaving Cleff and Frankie alone for a moment.

"You do have the diamond, right?" asked Frankie to Cleff.

"No," responded Cleff, standing in one place and not doing anything. Very came back in the room without Wicked. "He's not here," said Very.

*****

Wicked ran down the dark alleyways of the streets, rain pouring down on him. Clenched in his hand was the black diamond, which Wicked planned to deliver to someone. Someone whose name can't be told, due to obligatory suspense purposes.

Wicked was looking for a manhole he had planted in the city a number of years ago. A manhole that instead of leading to the sewers, led to his secret underground tunnels.

Wicked heard a voice above him faintly say, "Look, down there! Is that Wicked?" Wicked remembered this voice from somewhere, and this was not a good sign. This person, whoever and wherever they were, was chasing after him. Since Wicked still had a few alleyways to run down to get to the manhole, he dove into a dumpster and hid there. Faintly, he heard the voice say, "Where'd he go? I don't see him."

After a minute, Wicked opened back up the dumpster and headed back into the rain. He glanced up at the sky to see if whoever was talking was still there, but he saw nothing. Who was that? And why were they following him?

Wicked decided to not think about it anymore and continued to run toward the manhole he had planted in the city. Arriving there a few minutes later, he took the manhole cover off and slid down underground, covering the manhole and leaving Wicked in total darkness.

Wicked slowly climbed down a long ladder to make it down to the entrance to his underground tunnels. He hadn't been here in a while, but he still remembered where to go.

Wicked came to the place he was looking for. There was a seemingly bottomless hole in the ground in front of him, though a little red could be seen at the bottom. This hole led straight down to Red Territory.

Wicked jumped in.

*****

"You finally got it," said Red G (a giant, red, demon-like creature who was the ruler of Red Territory) to Wicked, taking the black diamond from him.

"Yes...master," said Wicked obediently.


Chapta 4: All Helck Breaks Loose

It was the day after Frankie visited Evil Inc. Freddy and Frankie were riding the bus to school, Frankie telling Freddy all about what had happened the previous night.

"And he just got away?" asked Freddy to Frankie, after Frankie told him about when he was chasing Wicked.

"Yeah," replied Frankie.

Freddy was about to say something, but something exploded outside, flipping the bus on its side. Frankie tried to look outside the window, but everything outside was red.

"Holy crap!" yelled Freddy, who was knocked into the window, cracking it. He stood up and wiped some blood off his leg.

"What was that?" wondered Frankie.

They escaped the bus through the emergency exit (notice how the Narrator neglects to mention everyone else on the bus) and it was raining black soot outside. Frankie coughed a few times before looking around.

The world was wrecked. A giant hole was in the middle of the road, magma still seeping from it. Everything that wasn't being melted by magma was covered in soot.

"What did this?" wondered Freddy.

"I don't know," said Frankie. "But this has to have been caused by Wicked, or else the Narrator would be terrible at story telling."

"Well...what do we do?" asked Freddy to Frankie.

"I have no clue," said Frankie. "Let's just go to school."

Freddy would have objected, but he couldn't think of anything better to do. They began to walk the half mile to the school, and as they did, the world slowly went back to normal. It seemed that the magma soot only affected the area their bus drove through. It seemed like someone was trying to take them out.

At lunch that day, the two discussed what they thought caused the wreckage.

"Someone must have dropped a bomb on us," said Freddy.

"No," replied Frankie. "He explosion came from the ground."

"Okay, whatever," said Freddy. "Well, see ya later dude." Freddy headed over to his girlfriend's table, leaving Frankie all alone. Frankie stood up to go to another table, but right when he did, the ground collapsed inward, before exploding and sending Frankie across the room. Another hole in the ground formed right under Frankie's lunch table, and it launched soot and lava up into the air, destroying the cafeteria. Only Frankie, Freddy, and Freddy's girlfriend did not run.

Freddy said to her, "Run!"

She replied, "No, I'm staying here with you."

"You could seriously die!" exclaimed Freddy.

"I don't care," she said.

Suddenly, a ring of fire surrounded the three and the hole. And then everything went quiet.

After thirty seconds or so, Frankie asked, "What just happened?"

Freddy answered, "I have absolutely no idea."

After another minute, Freddy called Cleff and told him to come down to the school. He needed Cleff to rescue them from the fire, which seemed to be contracting.

There was another silence before a noise echoed up from the hole. A few seconds later, a giant red hand, as big as a car, came out of the hole and tried to grab Frankie. Frankie jumped out of the way, just in time.

"We're screwed," said Frankie, continuing to dodge the hand.

"No. We can jump down the hole," suggested Freddy.

"That's stupid!" said Frankie.

"I think it's not bad," said Freddy's girlfriend.

"Can I kill her?" asked Frankie to Freddy, as Freddy grabbed the other two and jumped into the hole.

They fell and fell down it in a complete darkness for quite some time before red began to appear below them. Eventually they landed safely (after falling hundreds of miles) in Red Territory.

Freddy looked around. About five hundred feet away from him was a giant castle, the Red Castle. It was where the demon-king of Red Territory, Red G, resided. Red G was actually walking over to the three as I provided this description.

"Hello again, Frankie and Freddy," said Red G. He ignored Freddy's girlfriend. "Welcome back to Red Territory, where I assure you that you'll be staying here for quite some time." He showed them the black diamond.

"How did you get that?" asked Frankie to Red G.

"Wicked," answered Red G. "And do you want to know what I did with this?"

"What?" asked Frankie.

"I revived Omega, the giant demon king, from the dead," said Red G. "He's been wreaking havoc all over the world," explained Red G.

And with that, the three were thrown in the Red Castle's dungeon.

There, Freddy, Frankie, and that thing discussed the situation. "We need to do three things," said Frankie. "Escape, destroy the black diamond, and kill Omega."


Chapta 5: Escape

Cleff, flying south toward the school, saw a ruin of a building which was being attacked by a giant head and an arm. Oh...wait...THAT was the school!

Cleff flew down to land. Not a single person was at the school, yet the hand was still destroying it.

"Stop destroying stuff!" said Cleff to the hand. The hand didn't listen.

Cleff walked to the hole where the hand had come out of. All around it was ash. "Where's Frankie and Freddy?" Cleff wondered. Cleff couldn't find them, so he jumped in the hole for good luck.

He fell for quite some time before landing in Red Territory. Looking around, he spotted a giant castle of doom. "Cool," cheesy-lined Cleff, and he entered it for no reason.

Asplorin' the castle, Cleff accidentally fell down two flights of stairs, breaking his neck twice. Cleff got back up unharmed and saw Freddy and Frankie (and some girl) in a cage.

"...Wow, Cleff!?" exclaimed Frankie. "You're really good at arriving to save people at just the right moment!"

"Why yes I am," said Cleff, destroying the bars with his fists. The three quickly exited the cell.

"Are you sure you want to keep going with us on this dangerous adventure?" Freddy asked to his girlfriend.

"Yes," she answered.

"All right then," said Freddy.

The four climbed up the stairs. "We need to get the black diamond from Red G," said Frankie.

"He's got it with him," said Freddy. "But where is he?"

"Doesn't Cleff have every power humanly possible?" asked Freddy's girlfriend.

"Yes, but he's an idiot," replied Freddy. "Telling him to use his powers to get Red G here or to get the diamond here without Red G would be like telling a rock to talk."

At that moment, Red G suddenly poofed in front of them all. "Ooh! I got Red G!" exclaimed Cleff.

"My prisoners escaped!?" shouted Red G, seeing the four. "Well then... if I can't capture you, then I'll let you roam free in your dying world." Red G waved his hand over the three and they disappeared.

"What about me?" asked Cleff, seeing he wasn't gone.

"I'm gonna deal with you personally," replied Red G.


Chapta 6: Omega Attacks

Frankie appeared back on Earth, right outside the remains of his school. Ash was raining down from a blood-red sky, and demonic roars and screaming could be heard in the distance. Frankie walked toward the noises. Omega was of course causing this havoc. Frankie came to a building which was being attacked by it after a few minutes of walking. The beast was easily able to demolish the building with its claws, making holes in its walls. After enough of the building was destroyed, it simply collapsed, and the demon rammed into the next one.

"How do I stop this thing?" wondered Frankie.

With Freddy nowhere in sight, Frankie would have to come up with a plan on his own. He couldn't enter a building though, as Omega would just destroy it. And the thing was so huge, there was no way he could kill it! Frankie had to wonder how Omega died the first time. Cleff might be able to destroy it, at the least...

Killing the demon wouldn't matter anyways, as Red G could just revive him from the dead. If only Cleff were there to make Omega disappear and not kill it.

He thought of a plan.

*****

Red G rammed Cleff into the wall, knocking him unconscious. "There's gonna be no surviving this beating," said Red G, in the most cliché way possible. Red G stabbed his claw into Cleff, but he missed. Or rather, Cleff disappeared.

Seconds later, Cleff jumped out of no where onto Red G's face, making Red G, still holding the black diamond, drop it. Cleff dove for the black diamond, but Red G picked it up before him.

Cleff, on the ground because he dove for the diamond, now attempted to get back up. He failed though, as Red G bashed his head with his foot. Cleff was not moving once again, so Red G left once again, telling Wicked to watch Cleff this time.

*****

Frankie took a rope and ran to a tree and tied one end around it. His plan would be to get Omega to trip, done by tying the other end of the rope to the demon.

Frankie clutched the other end of the rope tightly as he got close to the monster. It was currently destroying a building with his fists. Frankie jumped onto its foot and tied a rope around it. The demon, realizing Frankie was on his foot, kicked him off, and Frankie flew through the air and landed fifteen feet away. Frankie immediately got up as the demon chased after him, and Frankie purposely ran as far away from the tree that Omega was tied to as possible. It was so strong, though, that it just uprooted the tree and continued to chase Frankie.

"Oh noez," said Frankie, knowing he was done for. Frankie acted fast and turned sharply to run into the woods, where he would be safe.


Chapta 7: Evil Inc. Collapses

"Darn it," Very said to himself in his office on the top floor of Evil Inc. "The black diamond is gone! There has to be some way to find out where it went!" Very collapsed into his chair and began to think, tapping his metal fingers.

Suddenly, something outside just randomly exploded! Very jumped out of his chair and ran to the window. Outside, the sky was red and it was raining ash! "What is going on?" wondered Very. He looked down at the streets far below him to see numerous holes in the road. And by holes, I mean deep and wide pits, spewing magma, and seeming to lead nowhere. Very immediately knew that what was going on had to do with the black diamond, but what? What kind of monster could have caused this?

In the distance, Very heard a loud, demonic roar echoing to him. From the void came a colossal demon, as tall as Evil Inc. itself. Looking out the window again, Very saw only the gigantic eye of Omega.

The building began to shake violently. The base of the building was collapsing! Very would not have enough time to escape from the building, so there had to be another safe way out. Very acted on instinct, opened the window, and jumped onto Omega.

Evil Inc. collapsed behind him.

*****

Frankie luckily found Freddy and his girlfriend in the woods a few minutes later. The three of them left the woods and headed back to Evil Inc. Undoubtedly Very could help them find a way back to Red Territory. However, when they got there, Evil Inc. was in ruins. Not only that, but Omega was nowhere to be seen.

"There's so much going on," said Frankie. "How can we stop this!?"

"I don't know," said Freddy. "This is pretty tough."

"Oh come on, we just need to get back to the source," said Freddy's girlfriend. "If we want to win, we need to get the black diamond back and forget about everything else."

"Cool, you do that," said Frankie sarcastically. "Just find a way to go right back down to Red Territory. Then get the diamond back from the O SO POWERFUL RED G all by yourself."

*****

Cleff awoke attached to some sort of machine. It prevented him from moving anything but his head. He tried using his powers, but only received a shock. Cleff was trapped like a mouse in a mousetrap. Wicked walked over to him. "You're trapped once again," said Wicked, referencing the fact that Cleff had been dead twice, along with being hypnotized, trapped in lava, among other things also.

"Let me go," said Cleff.

"No," replied Wicked, after thinking Cleff's question through. "No one's going to save you now. I'll make sure of that."

Wicked sat down in a chair next to Cleff's "prison". He pointed at the only door leading out of or into the room. "I have that door rigged so that if it opens, you die," said Wicked. "Inside your full-body prison are 200 retracted spikes. If the door opens, they'll come out and puncture your puny flesh."

"Wait... why don't you just kill me now?" wondered Cleff.

"Um... you're... a hostage. Yeah, let's go with that," answered Wicked.

*****

Freddy, his girlfriend, and Frankie were still at the ruins of Evil Inc. At this point, they had all decided that defeating Omega, the cliché demon character, would be pointless. "We need to go back to Red Territory," said Freddy.

Frankie agreed. "How will we get there?" asked Frankie.

"Remember the hole Dän fell down in South America?" Freddy suggested. "We can go there and fall down it. We just have to find a way to get back there."

Frankie took out a dog whistle. Frankie owned a giant dog (around a mile high, but it had an elevator) named Max, who could easily transport them across an ocean or two. Frankie blew the whistle.


Chapta 8: Back to the Red

Very climbed to the top of Omega's head and stayed there. Omega didn't seem to notice him, so he was safe. Very looked down at the wreckage of Evil Inc. as Omega walked away. His most important building was gone. There was no going back.

It seemed that after Evil Inc. was destroyed, Omega stopped being violent. It just kept walking on and on for miles, leaving New York City and entering the countryside. Eventually, Omega laid down, making Very fall off his head and onto the ground. In a matter of seconds, Omega had drifted into sleep.

Very looked around. He appeared to be in a large hole, as he was surrounded by rock walls on all sides. He hit himself in the forehead with his robotic hand.

Very was trapped.

*****

As the three waited for Max to come to the wreckage site, Frankie heard movement coming from Evil Inc.'s ruins. He looked around to see where it was coming from when Really climbed out from under the tons of wreckage. He pulled his whole body out before collapsing to the ground. Frankie and Freddy ran over to him as Really coughed bloodily. He was completely covered in ash and was bruised and bleeding.

"Help me," Really said.

Freddy's girlfriend came up behind Freddy and looked down at Really. "We have to get him to a hospital!" cried her.

"No, no characters ever die," said Frankie. "And even if they do, they just come back to life. I think Really here has died two or three times already."

"Someone save me!" Really screamed suddenly. "It hurts!"

"No," said Frankie. "That's dumb and stupid and it takes up time."

At that moment, Max arrived. Frankie immediately got on his dog. "Come on!" he said. "Hop on."

"I'm staying here," said Freddy's girlfriend.

"And I guess I am too," said Freddy.

"What!?" cried Frankie angrily. "I can't go alone!"

"I'm sorry Frankie," said Freddy. "But Cleff is down there too. If you can rescue him, everything from there will be easy. And when you do rescue him, make sure you call me."

"...Okay," said Frankie. "I'll go alone." He climbed higher up on Max and left.

Freddy turned to Really. Really said, coughing, "I think Very might be dead too." Really closed his eyes slowly.

"He's not breathing," Freddy said. "This is not good."

*****

Frankie arrived in South America rather quickly. He jumped off Max and was standing directly in front of Olmec's Temple, which led straight down to Red Territory. He entered and came to a pit. A bottomless pit. Frankie jumped down it.

*****

Dän was playing cards with General and Reinforcements when a body fell from the ceiling, landed on the poker table, and smashed it. The three forgot about their poker game immediately and turned the body around. It was Frankie.

"Frankie!" exclaimed Dän. "You're alive! Oh wait, is he alive?"

General checked his pulse. "Yeah, he is," said General.

Frankie opened one of his eyes. "Cleff...captured," he muttered.

"Cleff!" said Dän. "You mean the guy who killed you?"

"No, he's a good guy," muttered Frankie. "He's in... Red G's castle."

"Well then, let's go," said General. "Let's storm the castle."


Chapta 9: Storming the Castle

Red G's castle was the only building in Red Territory. The rest of the land at best had caves in the openings of the rocky, red walls. As a result of this, it appeared massive, and it was visible from most of the upper region (the bottom region being an off-limits bridge over the core, but we were there back in the fifth story, so we don't need to go back).

Frankie, Dän, General, and Reinforcements came to the edge of the castle's moat, at its back. The castle was entirely surrounded by a moat of pit lava, with the only way in being to cross its drawbridge.

"The drawbridge is up and likely guarded," General informed. "The best way in is with the element of surprise. Reinforcements, if you will..."

"Yes sir!" Reinforcements reached into a bag hanging from the side of his wheelchair. Frankie was amazed by the technology he pulled out.

"Is that..." Frankie stuttered. "That's the Vapori Precision Laser Cannon Model S! How do you have that? I heard development of the next model would take sixteen years!"

"I'm Reinforcements!" explained Reinforcements, by not providing an actual explanation.

He aimed and fired the laser beam at the massive cobblestone exterior, carving out a tall rectangular patch. When he was just about done, the carved out wall fell out and towards them, hitting the ground on the other side of the moat. This formed a makeshift bridge for them to storm into the castle, as a giant opening allowed passage where the wall had been.

"Let's go!" commanded Frankie, jumping onto the newly made bridge.

"Now hold on, män," hesitated Dän. "Why don't you go on ahead. We have to finish our card game first."

Reinforcements agreed, pointing away the laser and now taking a foldable table out of his sack.

"It's good strategy to go in one at a time," spouted General unconvincingly. "Especially at random numbers of seconds -- the enemy will never know when the next wave of support will arrive. It keeps them on their toes."

"I don't think that's true," argued Frankie. He was sympathetic enough though. It was always the worst when you were in the middle of a game and mom wants you to do chores. "But catch up with me eventually."

"Yeah, maybe," Dän quipped, playing 3-of-a-kind.

Frankie ran off into the castle, leaving the other three to their poker game.

*****

"We need to get Really to the hospital," stated Freddy's girlfriend.

"Okay. What year is it, canonically?" asked Freddy.

"What?" She was confused.

"Well, if it's 2009, then we could take a taxi, otherwise if it's 2025, I can get an Uber."

"What about an ambulance?" Freddy's girlfriend retorted, getting out her phone. "Hopefully they'll get here before the fourth wall collapses inward and adds more debris on top of Really."


Chapta 10: Rules, or Lack Thereof

Frankie traversed the dimly lit corridors of the Red Castle, the only sounds being his footsteps and what sounded like a pulsing heart in the walls -- a low pitched THUD thud wherever he went. He wished the other three had tagged along, because this place seemed way too massive for him to explore on his own. What did Red G even need such a massive castle for anyway if it was all so devoid of the presence of any life? Frankie poked his head in a few doors here and there, mostly finding torture equipment, dungeons, and armories.

At last Frankie heard another sound, the faint cries of someone off in the distance and through walls. It slowly grew louder as he approached a door with a whole series of locks and chains on it. "Help me out of here!" Frankie heard Cleff's muffled screaming on the other side of the door. He rushed up to it and began to remove each lock in turn.

"You might not want to open that," threatened an ominous figure, appearing from the shadows. Frankie kept working as Wicked came closer. "Opening that door will send hundreds of spikes straight into Cleff's body." Frankie still continued to ignore his words. "Excuse me, but I don't think you understood -- "

Frankie cut him off. "Are the spikes superpower draining? Are the tips made of some Cleff-kryptonite?"

"They're pointy!" responded Wicked.

Frankie removed the last lock. "I'm sure his plot armor will keep him safe from mortal damage," he retorted, and he opened the door.

On the other side of the room, Cleff's head poked out of a large cube holding his body. Frankie heard an unsheathing and puncturing sound, and Cleff's face suddenly made a motion like he'd been stabbed by 200 spikes. "Ow," Cleff muttered softly, and then his head slumped over forward, eyes closed and unmoving.

As Frankie walked over to his unconscious and possibly dead friend, he spoke to him anyway. "You know, canonically, Cleff, you literally have unlimited power to do literally anything. But after all these years, we've used it to what, mostly fly and throw energy balls at each other? You could have made the world melt into surrealist nonsense, deus ex machina'ed any plot, taken hold of the pencil and wrote ergodically, retconned the entire past, or any wild idea that floats into your head. You're such a wildcard that it makes any writer who believes in the principle of reasonable characters have no idea what to do with you."

"THERE ARE NO RULES"

Cleff said this as he and the box slowly morphed into Red G. Red G opened his mouth and cackled heartily, revealing painfully sharp teeth and bizarrely -- Frankie was aghast that Red G's tongue was actually Cleff's body, shrunken down and contorting, Cleff still drooping and unconscious.

Frankie defanged this eerie entrance by insulting his identity and purpose. "So what's your deal anyway? What goal are you even achieving by attacking the surface with a giant? Are we just going with you're Satan so you inherently want to watch the world burn? Is this place Hell, but we're too 'clean' to say that, yet we've used the r-slur 28 times and have made several tasteless 9/11 jokes? And if so, why did you try to stop evil the other times we came down here?"

Red G sighed and shrugged his shoulders. "This is what we're doing? You're intent on turning this into a meta-fiction instead of simple good vs evil?" He paused as he started walking toward a door on the side of the room. "Into this room." He gestured toward a pair of glass double doors with a sign overhead labeled "Exposition Theatre". "I just want to warn you that this meta-fiction stuff is the exact reason the general audiences hated The Last Jedi. This is your last chance to back out and simply take out a sword like old times instead."

Frankie entered the theatre.

*****

Very sat dejected on the ground as he listened to the colossus snore. Figuring that he had likely been trapped in this hole for 30 minutes already, he decided it might be a good idea to take a walk around the perimeter of this giant hole. With the creature being as large as it was, it might take over an hour to do a lap around it.

As Very plodded foot over foot, he reflected on his destroyed building. This was far from the first time he had his base of operations pulverized: his Tower of Darkness, his underground lair, his satellite, his Moonbase (twice), his space shuttle, Evil Inc. the first time. Every one of his ambitions ended the same way: into the dust. The sounds of the somberous giant were meditative, and Very began to think about his past actions. His entire ethos seemed to be about pain and destruction, but to no gain of himself. Why did he do what he did? Attributing his despondent, chaotic, senseless violence to his father figure or its absence seemed trite. When he finally had interacted with his father again, there was absolutely no relationship there -- so little connection that he was no missing a hand because of it. No, his monstrous tendencies flowed deeper, an anger that coursed through his veins from decades of being treated like a monster himself. His entire youth was spent in prison, and he was constantly labeled and pigeonholed into his name. How could he ever be anything else when that was his identity -- Very Evil? And what kind of name was that, anyway? He had never bothered to research any of his family history, but he doubted his father's birth name was "Wicked Evil." What kind of man would aspire so hard to be evil that he'd birth his son into this world and want him to take on this legacy by name? And who even was his mother? His father had never talked about his past, and Very was realizing how sad it was that he didn't know these answers. When he had made his time machine, why had he been so hellbent on murdering a helpless young man instead of using it to learn about his family history and formative years?

Arriving at the feet of the Omega, he put these complex thoughts out of his mind. Very noticed that the giant's toes and an outcropping in the rock wall were separated by only a small gap. It looked like from there, he might be able to climb out of the hole. All he'd have to do now is scale the gargantuan foot in front him.

Very took a deep breath, and then he took a steady grip of the monster's leg hair.


Chapta 11: Exposition Theatre

Frankie entered a small luxury movie theatre -- perhaps containing 60 or so empty seats. "Sit wherever you like," encouraged Red G, and Frankie chose a seat toward the center of the room. He turned around to see a projection room in the back of the theatre, and he observed the large red humanoid threading a film reel into place. Crucially, Frankie noticed while looking at Red G's hands that he was wearing a ring; the black diamond was the prize set into it.

When all was ready, the lights dimmed and the screen lit up with a title card: "Chapta 11: Exposition Theatre". It faded to a top-down view of a 2D map of the lands.

Red G's narration boomed through the speaker. "In the beginning, there were the lands of the dinosaurs, groundhogs, humans, and narrators, and they lived on the planet's surface in harmony." Clay models of each group appeared on the map as they were introduced. "I, Red G, was originally part of the elite group of narrators, along with Joey, JeRM, the Narrator, le French Narrator, and my buddy Dracula -- all of us contributed to the holy entity known as I."

"Everything changed when the groundhogs attacked the dinosaurs. The dinosaurs were brought to extinction, leaving the humans free to expand. They did, taking over most of the world and exterminating the groundhogs in the process." The map lit on fire, which engulfed the screen.

Cut to a diorama of a court; a clay Red G and Dracula appeared before the other narrators, The Narrator presiding. "Dracula and I appealed that the humans needed to be thinned in number or else we would be next. The council not only found our war proposal appalling, but we were exiled to the center of the world. When the humans inevitably came for the narrators, they were forced to retreat to the ethereal plane, leaving the surface to the humans."

Cut to a timelapse of a clay Red G slowly constructing a large figure. "I took matters into my own hands, and over many years I created the colossus Omega from the bodies of -- "

Frankie's attention was interrupted by the real Red G, who had just sat down in the seat next to him with a bucket of popcorn. "I would've gotten you an Icee, but the machine was broken," Red G apologized. "Feel free to have some of my popcorn though." Red G grabbed a big handful of popcorn and shoved it in his mouth.

Frankie turned his attention back to the screen, which was now displaying Omega, collapsed and defeated. " -- killed Omega, and the narrators poofed Dracula away to the ethereal plane as punishment. I was more furious than ever, and I waited patiently for an opportunity to take vengeance on the narrators."

The black diamond glistened onscreen. "My best chance came when I got a hold of the diamond. Bringing back Omega from the dead, my plan was ingenious: create a plot so contrived, so unoriginal, so boring, so meaningless, and so much a degradation compared to its predecessors that the Narrator gives up on telling it entirely. Remarkably, it worked -- for 16 years, I was convinced I had finally won. But now, through some combination of nostalgia, misplaced effort, completionism, and pretention, the Narrator has returned.

I figure that if I can't stop the story, I might as well take control of it myself, so that it's on my terms. I looked to my left to see Frankie turn to me, confusion in his eyes. I reassured him, "Don't worry, I'll take good care of this story."


Chapta 12: What's in a Name?

Freddy and his girlfriend had been sitting in the hospital room for some time, staring at Really's unconscious body. They sat in an uncomfortable silence until she realized she was hungry. "I'm gonna grab some pizza for us; you stay here." She got up and left the room.

A few minutes later, Really opened his eyes. "Thank you... for...saving me," he slowly expressed his grace.

"Don't thank me, thank my girlfriend," Freddy replied. "She insisted we bring you here. She's getting food."

"Oh, alright." Really paused. "What's her name, so I can thank her when she gets back?"

Oh, how such an innocuous question can lead to so much existential dread.

At first, denial: "What do you mean? She's my girlfriend."

Really detected Freddy's unwarranted confusion and figured continuing this exchange wasn't worth the effort; he'd just ask her personally when she got back.

As for Freddy, he explained his memory lapse to himself by figuring that he was just so busy lately. Of course he might forget some things with everything else going on, but he'd quickly clear this up when she arrived with the pizza. In the mean time, he watched Really drift back into sleep.

It wasn't too long later that the door opened, and Freddy's girlfriend carried in a small box of pizza. They began to eat before Freddy told her what happened. "Really actually woke up while you were gone. He asked me your name so he could thank you." A pause. "What is your name, anyway?"

Freddy's girlfriend stared at him a bit bewildered; she must not have understood the question. "What do you mean?"

"Like your first name -- it seemed to have slipped my memory," clarified Freddy. "Your last name too, honestly."

Freddy's girlfriend could tell from his tone and facial expressions that he was not kidding. She put her half-eaten pizza slice on the table so she could put her head facedown in her hands. Did this level of disrespect deserve an answer? Why was she even in the room with this kid?

The horror hit her as she thought deeper about the question. What *was* her name? Maybe it wasn't so ridiculous for Freddy to ask that if she didn't know either. But what did this lack of information imply? Did she have some crazy early onset dementia? Was the brainrot from social media this real? No, nobody forgets their own name. The reality seemed like it could only be worse than that.

As she rummaged through the names for women in her head, she tried to pair them with other women she knew, but then she realized she couldn't even do that -- when was the last time she had even seen another woman? Going over all the events that had occurred in recent memory, every single person seemed to be male. She tried to picture her own mother, but she failed there too. Even the people that she didn't know the names of all seemed to be men: the person who served her the pizza slice, the hospital workers, the ambulance drivers, all the people walking around on the street. How were any of these people born in a world so devoid of women? Or at least, where were they?

It was almost as if the entire world was the work of an author who used characters exclusively as agents of plot. In such a world, any character trait more complex than a simple alignment with good or evil would be too inconvenient to manage. The existence of women would create subtler interpersonal dynamics, requiring strong writing skills and a knowledge of how women think and act -- something the author didn't seem to possess. Perhaps her introduction was a poor attempt to rectify this, and her lack of a name was both a bit of dry humor as well as revealing the author's discomfort with the female sex -- any name shared with one that the author knew in real life might be awkward for him to use.

She realized that if all of this was true, it might be time to simply pick out a name for herself. One silver lining was that this was a rare and wondrous opportunity -- most people don't get to pick their own names. Her first thought was "Eve", like the biblical first woman, but that was too on the nose. Maybe "Baptistine", a reference to her new birth? No, too archaic. And then it hit her, like the serene waters of a clear spring day:

"Claire," she stated, lifting her head from her hands. "My name is Claire."


Chapta 13: Victor Keeble

After the movie ended, Frankie turned to me. "Where does the plot even go from here?"

I pondered his query. If I am the narrator now, then I'm in control of this story. With complete omnipotence, anything I desire can be true. I could end this story right here if I wanted. In that way, total power means zero conflict. However, zero conflict is boring, especially for a devil like me -- conflict is my life-blood.

"The narrators still have Dracula in the ethereal plane," I said.

Frankie decided to bargain. "If I help rescue him, would you promise to stop attacking the surface?"

"I promise," I said truthfully. It was very truthful -- I was promising, but just because it was a promise didn't mean I couldn't break it later.

Now to pause for a second, you may be wondering how I even am a narrator right now; I was exiled from the role, after all. Ah, well, you might remember that right now, Cleff is my tongue. This essentially gives my words superpowers. Now before you object that I'm writing and not speaking, just remember that all life is inherently meaningless and nothing you ever do will matter, so any criticism you say bounces off me and sticks to you. Now if you're wondering how I was able to make Cleff my tongue in the first place, just remember that I've teleported people with my hands and built a sentient giant out of corpses, so I already have inexplicable powers, what's one more?

Exiting my internal dialogue, I realized that Frankie had disappeared and went somewhere else. I called to Wicked, "Did you see where he went?"

Wicked, standing at the door, entered the room. "He didn't come this way," he reported.

Curious readers may be asking why I would put trust in Wicked and why he would help me anyway. Well, we actually have quite a long history. He was born Victor Keeble, son of Victor Keeble. Victor had a rough childhood: at age 4, his mother died of cancer; at age 6, his only sister drowned. This left Victor Sr. depressed, and he turned more and more to alcohol. You can imagine how this might lead to Victor Jr. resenting his father, who was quite abusive with his son.

As a teenager, Victor Jr. saw himself getting drawn more and more to the occult -- he wished everyday for a ghost or demon to come and get rid of his cruel father. One day he managed to summon me with a pentagram. I told him that I could help him, but he would have to pledge his name and soul to me. He obliged, and on that day, Victor Keeble became Wicked Evil. I took care of the senior Victor, while Wicked was allowed to stay in Red Territory's Castle as long as he did my bidding. Which of course, he did, because I had his soul. That's not to say that Wicked is a mindless husk -- just that I have extraordinary control over him.

Like for example, just now he had a great thought: "I was thinking, if you're trying to cause maximum chaos, why not bring the dinosaurs and groundhogs back to life?" No person that was an empty shell inside would have had that original thought. I looked down to the ring around my hand and -- IT WAS GONE!?!

"My diamond has disappeared from my ring!" I growled loudly. "That Frankie must have already broken our bargain! What a thief and liar he is!" I began to frantically search the room. "He couldn't have gone far! Wicked, check the concessions while I search the theatre!"

*****

Very had managed to climb to the tip of Omega's toe, and now he was only one long leap away from making it to the ledge that would lead out of this hole. He paused a moment, gathered his breath, lunged forward, and --

He made it! Nearly to safety at last! Just an easy climb up a few more rocks to go.

Despite this, Very suddenly felt very on-edge. This eerie feeling in his gut was due to the silence now surrounding him -- the giant had stopped snoring.


Chapta 14: Ethereal Plane

"I promise," lied Red G to Frankie. Even if Dracula was rescued, Red G felt no desire to stop the chaos on the surface.

"Okay, now how do I get to the ethereal plane?" Frankie asked to Red G, but bizarrely, the large red humanoid had locked up and was standing statue-like. Frankie moved in a little closer and noticed his eyes were rolled into the back of his head. "Hello?" queried Frankie as he waved his hand in front of Red G's face.

"He can't hear you," said a strange voice from across the room. "He's busy talking to the audience." Frankie turned toward the sound, which was coming from the front of the theatre. There on the screen was a close-up shot of the Narrator, looking directly at him.

"So he won't wake up soon?" Frankie tried to clarify.

"You have a minute," the Narrator specified.

Frankie did not let this opportunity go to waste. He quickly unfurled Red G's hand, extended his ring finger, and tried to remove the ring. Problematically, it wouldn't slip off. After a few seconds of failing to even budge the ring, Frankie instead decided to pull directly on the diamond -- to his surprise, the jewel's setting was tremendously flimsy, and it snapped right off.

"Great, now come over to the screen," the Narrator advised. Frankie followed his command even though there didn't appear to be much over there, because it was the Narrator after all. "Now put your leg through the screen." The screen appeared to be solid vinyl, but Frankie did as was told. Surprisingly, the movie screen was completely immaterial, portalling Frankie to the Narrator's domain. He turned around to look back at what he had crawled out of, and it was an ordinary 50 inch TV. The screen currently showed the theatre where he had come from, but the Narrator picked up the remote and turned off the screen, so that it went black.

"Welcome to the Ethereal Plane," said the Narrator with pride.

Frankie looked around. This didn't really look like anything ethereal; it was more like a normal one-bedroom apartment. Below the TV were a number of video games: "Shadow of the Colossus", "Elden Ring", and "God of War: Ragnorok" were some of them. Turning around was a glass coffee table, on top of which was an open box of Lucky Charms (no bowl in sight though), some oddly shaped Rubik's Cube-like twisty puzzles, and a book called "Maus". Directly behind the book, on a three cushion couch, sat a person who looked a lot like the Narrator that was sitting to his side.

"I'm JeRM," he greeted. "I'm a narrator, just like the Narrator."

Frankie continued to scan the room. On the walls hung many square canvas pictures with dogs of all different breeds -- there was a chihuahua at a sunset, three puppies cuddled together, a Boston terrier licking a mixer, and more. A desk on the other side of the room was unusable due to a number of items on top of it -- a VCR, a laptop, a rock with cartoon eyes, a 1cm Rubik's Cube, an ocarina, graphic novels, and more books (like "Odyssey", "S.", "Gravity's Rainbow", "1Q84", "The Way of Kings", and one called "Frogs"). A mini-keyboard and acoustic guitar were on the floor next to the desk.

Also strewn about the floor were a bunch of clothes, cardboard boxes, and grocery bags. Frankie laid his eyes on the kitchen island, which was fully covered with a mess of things -- medication, full water bottles, Nerds Gummy Clusters, Triscuits, Christmas cards, empty soda cans, tax papers, more twisty puzzles, a Mario-themed plastic bag, a whole lot of magnets with a single word on each (some kind of poetry magnets, the refrigerator had some arranged into phrases like "have his success / you know function by stress" or "our strong policy statement / maximize profit"), and a Virtual Boy. The Virtual Boy was most notable because another fellow currently had his head stuck into the awkward red virtual reality device from the 90s.

"And that's le French Narrator," continued JeRM.

"Bonjour!" The fellow briefly stuck his head out, then returned to his game.

Frankie noticed now an absolutely absurd collection of old Nintendo games were stacked close to the ceiling, on top of the kitchen cabinets -- "Super Mario Bros.", "Tetris", "The Legend of Zelda" -- there must have been 300 games there!

A smaller collection was on the other side of the room, a block of vinyl records sitting underneath a record player. Frankie could only really see an unopened one labeled "Mercurial World".

Finally, Frankie looked at the closed door that was close to him, likely a door to a bedroom. JeRM noticed Frankie staring, so he gave him some more information: "You can't go in there. Joey's in there right now, writing this story as we speak. Who knows what kind of paradox would --"

"Where's Dracula?" Frankie interrupted, ready to move the plot forward again after hundreds of words of unnecessary description.

JeRM didn't answer. Frankie turned to look at the Narrator, who did at least give him an answer: "Listen, Dracula is in there, but I --"

It was too late. I looked up at my door to see it starting to open.


Chapta 15: I Am the Rules

At this point, we had searched the whole area for Frankie, yet turned up nothing. The exit door had been locked, so he couldn't have escaped. Wicked seemed pretty exhausted too. He turned to me with a suggestion: "Why not just use your narrator powers to make him appear?"

An intriguing thought. So far, I've been focused on decent storytelling, which makes sense and is satisfying to read. However, the truth is that if you control the narrative and you want something, you can just take it. I am the rules.

That's why I decided to search the projector room again, and behind the machine was Frankie, somehow deluding me this whole time. "Don't hurt me!" he begged, crawling and kneeling at my feet. "I'll do anything!"

I lauged, picking his puny body up into the air, my giant fist around his neck. "The only thing you'll do," I taunted, "is die."

With that, I squeezed as hard as I could and crushed his head, killing him. The rest of his corpse fell to the floor, decapitated from my sheer strength.

"Wow!" clapped Wicked, watching behind me. "What a twist!"

"Yes," I smiled smugly. With Frankie dead, I can turn my efforts to the narrators. Of course, since my goal was to foil their story, the best thing to do might just be to stop.

As in, I won. No more story.


THE END























Chap. 1-: My Journal

3 May. Bistritz. -- Left Munich at 8:35 P.M., on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but train was an hour late. Buda-Pesth seems a wonderful place, from the glimpse which I got of it from the train and the little I could walk through the streets. I feared to go very far from the station, as we had arrived late and would start as near the correct time as possible. The impression I had was that we were leaving the West and entering the East; the most western of splendid bridges over the Danube, which is here of noble width and depth, took us among the traditions of Turkish rule.

We left in pretty good time, and came after nightfall to Khusenburgh. Here I stopped for the night at the Hotel Royale. I had for dinner, or rather supper, a chicken done up some way with red pepper, which was very good but thirsty (Mem. get recipe for Mina). I asked the waiter, and he said it was called "paprika hendl", and that, as it was a national dish, I should be able to get it anywhere along the Carpathians. I found my smattering of German very useful here; indeed, I don't know how I should be able to get on without it.

Having had some time at my disposal when in London, I had visited the British Museum, and made search among the books and maps in the library regarding Transylvania; it had struck me that some foreknowledge of the country could hardly fail to have some importance in dealing with a nobleman of that country. I find that the district he named is in the extreme east of the country, just on the borders of three states. Transylvania, Moldavia, and Bukovina, in the midst of the Carpathian mountains; one of the wildest and least known portions of Europe. I was not able to light on any map or work giving the locality of the Castle Dracula, as there are no maps of this country as yet to compare with our own Ordnance Survey maps; but I found that Bistritz, the post town named by Count Dracula, is a fairly well-known place. I shall enter here some of my notes, as they may refresh my memory when I talk over my travels with Mina.

*****

Frankie put down the book and laid it on my night table. "So you're telling me Red G was after this book, and not trying to rescue the real Dracula?"

"Yep," I confirmed. "Dracula's not real."

Frankie was skeptical of this confirmation. "A book that's in the public domain and is easily findable for free?"

Hmm... I thought to myself. This is a bit of a retcon, and it doesn't make that much sense... I did just think it would be a fun twist.

But I wasn't about to admit this out loud. As the narrator, I need to feel like I planned this all out and that I'm in control. If I let on that I'm making this up as I go along, then this story comes across as meaningless -- a sticky glob of plot threads that are just absorbing more and more weight until no one can hold it anymore.

"What are you writing?" Frankie asked to me, trying to squint at the words I just wrote. "Are you literally just writing what I'm saying to you right now?"

And now we've gone full meta. As if I could ever compete with say, the movie "Adaptation". What more could I ever say about meta post-modernism that isn't tiringly self-indulgent? It's like we've reached the core of this tale, just to discover that it's all brainrot. Didn't Frankie die a few pages ago? How do I plan to reconcile that?

"What do you mean I died a few pages ago?" Frankie said, aghast.

"It's really no big deal," I assured my character. And really it wasn't, unless I was going for some non-chronological timeline thing and Frankie dying was still in the future. But honestly, I could explain this a lot more easily with an unreliable narrator -- just because Red G is a narrator doesn't mean that I agree with his version of events. Or we could do some continued shenanigans with that diamond... "You can just bring yourself back to life -- and the story too, because Red G end it -- with the blakc diamond you're holding."

Frankie looked down at his palm, which was carrying the diamond. He had been trying to destroy this artifact, not use it for his own gain. I guess sometimes you have to be a hypocrite if you live long enough. "Very Evil XI: Diamond", he announced.


?DNE EHT?


Chapta 17: On Resurrection

I think I should mention that resurrection is not free; all revivals come at a cost, and things are never as they once were. Most inherent are the undead -- zombies and ghosts -- monsters that are a shell of the human they sprung from. Less threatening are the heavily injured who are only brought back to life on the operating table, after minutes of brain death. They live only by the ventillator that breathes for them, and they too are a shell. Even the most high-profile of resurrections, that of Jesus Christ, did not restore things to the way they were; after a brief appearance to the apostles, he no longer roamed the world as a teacher, instead ascending to the higher plane.

As a writer, character deaths are not to be taken lightly. In real life, death is irreversible, so invoking its threat is a powerful tool for upping the stakes, building tension, and developing comprehensible drama in general. To undo such severe consequences, unless done with a cost, is to neuter the rules of the narrative. With no rules, there is no meaning, so a story with perpetual revivals still has the cost of effecting reader apathy.

It should be noted too that even death is a spectrum -- the longer something is gone, the greater the cost to bringing it back. Life is a continuous process after all; you are but the constant firing of synapses. Thoughts and memories aren't so much stored as they are kept alive -- consistent vigilance against death is the only way anything survives. When the signals stop, all is lost. Even the living inanimate concepts: consider music as a living being. The 2000s saw garage rock revival, itself a prolonging of the life of rock music. You might imagine that with the original garage rock scene being a product of the 60s, the revival wouldn't be quite the same. Not only is it hard to put energy into that which has already been done, but modern recording techniques become impossible to keep out. With garage rock being dead for so long, it didn't live again -- only a part of its ethos did.

For another example, look at this very story right now. It died in February of 2009, and yet here I am finishing that which I started. But of course, I could never hope to complete it as it would have been then, even if I wanted to. The part of me that found steady joy in endless battles between the same characters has long since died. What I have left is but a shell of that self, filled in slowly with the misery of the world through corrosive osmosis. Fun has been replaced by the depths.

From the depths is where Omega came, reborn into a world that no longer had a place for him. No skyscraper could challenge him in his original era. Also from the depths was the black diamond, excavated and infused in Atlantis. The ability to harness life is what originally gave Atlantis its wealth, but concentrated souls were heavy, weighing down the city until it sunk into the ocean. The diamond was an artifact of a spiritual mass so great that it became a black hole of souls -- from there it became a symbol of power for the Atlantean kings.

That extraordinary diamond was now in Frankie's hand, the other holding the novel Dracula, as he materialized out of the ethereal plane and into the projection room. To his shock, a simulacra of himself was laying on the floor in front of him, its skull crushed. Frankie felt the need to get out of Red Castle as quickly as possible.

Taking a peek out the door, Frankie could see Red G sitting in front of the theatre entrance, blocking the only exit. Fortunately, the hulking humanoid had had his head rolled back, snoring loudly with his Cleff-tongue visible. Unfortunately, Wicked was still scouring the room for any sign of the diamond, which the simulacrum had been missing. Frankie watched in hiding for a few minutes before Wicked went to search the concessions room, letting Frankie make a stealthy sprint for the sleeping Red G.

Frankie would have been concerned about his block path, but Red G's open mouth revealed a critical weakness: Cleff. Putting Dracula on the ground and the diamond in his pocket, Frankie gripped the Cleff-tongue with both hands and pulled.


Chapta 18: Chat

Very looked back from the top of the cliff to see a massive hand racing toward him. He tried to dodge it, but there was nothing he could do; before he knew it, the giant's hand clasped him and lifted him into the air. As Very was brought closer to the colossal mouth, he feared these would be his last moments before being eaten. Very prayed to the narrator for a quick handwave excuse to bring him back from the dead, and the death wouldn't hurt as much as the first time.

The hand stopped moving far before it reached the mouth, however. Instead the mouth began booming in a deep voice: "Ah... what a curious vessel. So small, yet within this fragile husk lies a storm of thought and memory, more intricate than the winding of stars across the night sky -- all from within a lump of flesh scarcely the size of my fingertip. A soft prison for lightning. A whispering galaxy wrapped in skin. And yet, it fears me. Not knowing that in its mind, it holds more terror and wonder than I have ever dreamed. Would you like this scene continued?"

Startled at first by the philosophical waxings and then by the shift toward a helpful tone, Very suddenly realized that the narrator had turned to using ChatGPT for Omega's dialogue. *What a fool! Utilizing the death-knell of creativity for a self-indulgent creative endeavour! I can turn this into my own cliché and take control of this situation!* Very prompted, "The human bargains for his life, and the giant reluctantly agrees!"

Omega pondered for but a brief moment, then rumbled, "Very well, I will not crush you. But a life is never spared without cost. You will return to your kind and speak no words of me. Instead, you will dedicate the remainder of your brief flicker to one task: understanding." The giant released Very on the ground, then continued. "Study your kind. Unravel their cruelty, their kindness, their ceaseless hunger to know more. And when your hair has grayed and your limbs have weakened -- return to me. Bring me an answer to this question: Why does a mind so brilliant still choose to destroy?"

*****

"Stop. Rewrite that," I said to JeRM, coming out of my room.

JeRM looked up from his composition notebook surprised. "Why?" he protested. "Chat's spitting fire."

I slammed down the hack-writer's laptop, which was open on the ChatGPT website. "Ah, yes, when the bald man's hair is gray, the gentle giant that just destroyed a city will finally understand senseless violence," I scolded saracastically. "Just trade in human expression for common sentimentalities. This story is not about that."

"Well what is this story about?" JeRM retorted.

"If I knew that now, we wouldn't need to write it," I answered. "The story goes where it goes because it needs to, not because we control it."

"So you're admitting you're le making this up as you go along," quipped le French Narrator, behind me.

"This world is made up as we go along," I replied, trying to sound deep. After a pause, I turned back to JeRM. "Rewrite it."


Chapta 18: Chat

VERY: Put me down, you dumb brute!

OMEGA: My BRAIN is thousands of times the mass of YOURS. As I see it, you are the DUMB BRUTE.

VERY: Sure, and so is the whale's. It seems the only thing you know how to do is raze buildings to the ground like an angry loose gorilla.

OMEGA: Ah, so you seem to ONLY want the world DESTROYED when you're the ONE destroying it. How EGOCENTRIC.

VERY: You demolished my building!

OMEGA: [with indignation] YOUR building? How FOOLISH of you to take OWNERSHIP of that which sat on MY LAND. Yes, when I last walked this EARTH, this land was BARREN so that I might STROLL upon it. This was MY PORTION of the WORLD. I'm merely RESTORING things to the way they SHOULD be.

VERY: No, how foolish of you. You were dead and gone for millenia -- ownership is relinquished upon death. Property is a domain of the living, and revival does not undo your abandonment.

OMEGA: You're stating HUMAN WISDOM from HUMAN RULES made for HUMAN TIMES. I'm more alike to a DEITY than a MORTAL, and this land was ETERNALLY assigned to me. I reserve the RIGHT to destroy whatever I want: I am MAKER and UNMAKER -- ALPHA and OMEGA.

VERY: So then what, do you plan to unmake me? Crush me in your hand?

OMEGA: No, you are my PLAYTHING. It's more satisfying to ANNIHILATE when someone REACTS to it. Rote desecration is TIRING work -- hence my NAP -- and it's the HORROR in the screams of you ANTS that perks me UP and keeps me going. Now come with ME as I RAZE the rest of the CITY into the GROUND.

VERY: [sarcastically] Thanks for giving me the choice.


Chapta 19: Raze

Freddy and Claire were now just leaving the hospital, ready to make the trek back to their homes. They were waiting at a crosswalk when they started to feel the ground shaking, first lightly, but becoming increasingly noticeable. Claire clenched her fist in fear, and at that moment, chaos broke out. People were running and screaming against them, cars were ignoring traffic signals, and off in the distance a red colossus approached.

Freddy seemed determined to face the menace. Claire was significantly more reluctant. What could they really accomplish as two tiny humans against a goliath? Without the superpowers of Cleff, their only recourse was to run. She grabbed Freddy's arm to try to pull him to run, but he wasn't budging. "I've done too much running and hiding. It's time to stop shirking my responsibility and fight this!"

Omega swiped at a building, making it crumble onto the street. Somke and debris appeared where it landed, spreading a sickly ochre smog all around. As the smoke approached, Omega became entirely obscured, but his ever louder thuds continued to mark his march toward them.

Claire continued pulling on Freddy's arm, protesting, "You'll be flattened before the giant realizes it stepped on you! Come on!" Freddy relented and followed Clair quickly to the subway entrance, right as the smoke passed over their heads. Just as they made it to the bottom of the steps, there was a loud bang and tons of debris fell into the entrance. Freddy and Claire looked back and realized they were trapped inside.

The thuds continued overhead as dust from the ceiling fell down into the tunnel. The lights flickered on each thud, but after only a few more, the lights stayed permanently off. Freddy and Claire couldn't see a thing.

*****

Really looked over from his hospital bed to see an entire view obscured by brown smoke. Despite his injury, he knew it was time to get up and move to a safer location; he had already been caught in one building's wreckage. He hobbled out his room, to the stairwell, and down to the ground floor -- all while the walls were rumbling and shaking..

Finally at the entrance, he noticed that he was the only one trying to leave. In fact, people were pushing through the entrance in droves. Really observed those arriving: people covered in dust, some of them children, with deep wounds. Others carried in the bodies of the more gravely wounded. It was quite an unpleasant sight: blood seeped from head injuries, limbs were contorted in unnatural ways, and painful cries filled the room.

The gruesome scene was quite an unknown one to Really in this series of stories -- there had always been plenty of destruction and violence over the years, but never in such an explicit way, and never were unaffiliated civilians so close-up. We're so accustomed to the reckless damage to civil infrastructure in our superhero media, but rarely do we ponder the lasting effects on the everyday people of those worlds. We don't think about the intense fear helpless bystanders would experience during a city's destruction.  We don't think about the shock and horror from losing a friend or family member, nor the lasting effect of needing to live a life without them afterward. Our stories are often just about the big actors, about triumph over evil, but even with an evil vanquished, there can be devastating permanent damage. Now abstract that out and realize that this kind of suffering is still happening in the non-fictional world. As I write these words, bombs fall on Ukraine and the Middle East, and a religious attack occurs on the India-Pakistan border. Now more than ever, we need your help to f---

"What are you doing?" Joey asked to me, interrupting my writing flow. "These stories are escapism; if you want to talk about politics, start a podcast."

Of course, my critic neglects to acknowledge that all stories are political. Writers are both the voice of the people and also their influencers. Making a difference in the world starts with th---


Chapta 20: Mitt

Frankie had a ripped Cleff-tongue in his hands, and Red G's bleeding mouth was not placated by his acquisition of the Dracula novel. Wicked had heard the commotion, and now Frankie was surrounded by his two adversaries.

"What have you done!?" cried Red G. Then, changing his tone from shock to confidence: "You have unleashed my wrath!" He winced a bit from his bleeding mouth and further bluffed, "Hand over the Cleff-tongue and the diamond or else I will trap you in indefinite torment!"

As Frankie went to figure out how to take advantage of the Cleff in his hand, Wicked tried to snatch him from behind. Frankie dodged him at the last moment by hurdling over a theatre seat. "Come on Cleff, wake up! I need you!" he yelled to the miniature man in his hands.

Wicked reached over the seat and grabbed Frankie's arm, the one holding the diamond. "Let go of me!" pleaded Frankie, trying to pull away.

"You first," Wicked slyly redirected, eying the diamond in Frankie's hand.

Frankie continued to struggle, but a voice from his other hand suddenly piped up. "OK!" shouted mini-Cleff, with abundant enthusiasm. Then Frankie's arm dropped right off his torso, as if he were a low-quality action figure. This bizarre outcome startled Wicked, so he too dropped the arm, and it and the diamond fell to the ground. Frankie was left with a smooth stump in his arm's place.

Frankie screamed not from pain, but horror and shock. "Calm down," assured the figure in his other hand, "it'll grow back." Apparently Cleff was awake and aware, but still as nonsensical as ever.

At this point, Red G had gotten up and was charging for Frankie, as Wicked was picking up the arm-diamond combo. Before the heavy demon could collide with the one-armed hero, however, Cleff abruptly grew from doll-size to full and stood guard in front of Frankie like a catcher's mitt. Actually, changed my mind; Cleff *was* a catcher's mitt -- the giant glove scooped up Red G and threw him into a wall.

"Wow, thanks for saving me, Cleff," Frankie said in grace as the flying mitt also swatted Wicked away.

"Now your turn!" said Cleff-mitt excited.

"What--?!" Frankie started, but suddenly he was enclosed by leather and quickly accelerating upwards, with some jolts as the Cleff-mitt went up through the castle ceiling, went up past the ever-beating heart at the center of the Red Castle, through another ceiling, then into the dirt above that. They kept traveling up and up, Frankie protected from the heat and ground mass by the magical glove escorting him.

Back in the theatre, Wicked recovered from his wall slam with only minor injury. To his astonishment, in front of him on the ground was Frankie's arm and the diamond. Had they really neglected to take this with them? He bent over and removed the diamond from Frankie's detached hand.


Chapta 21: Deus

Freddy and Claire stood in the darkness, listening to the constant rumbling from above the ground. There was constant dread that the subway tunnel's ceiling would collapse right onto their heads.

But now there was a new rumbling, this time from below. It was getting stronger and stronger, like an approaching earthquake. Then -- there was light! A red glow suddenly appeared in front of them, illuminating a giant baseball mitt coming out of the ground. Freddy and Claire were taken aback with confusion, but this was resolved when the mitt morphed into their beloved superhero -- Cleff and Frankie stood in front of them.

"Finally," Claire let out in relief. "The deus ex machina has arrived."

"Your arm!" Freddy shouted, noticing Frankie's lack thereof.

"Yes, I'm waiting for the deus ex machina to grow it back," Frankie replied with some sarcasm, looking at Cleff.

"Whoa, I'm not growing your arm *for* you!" Cleff clarified before cryptically adding, "Strength comes from within."

As Frankie grimaced, Claire took her turn to ask the real questions. "So as I understand it, your superpowers give you the ability to do practically anything, but you mostly use them to fly? I get that the limitation is that you've become too dumb to utilize the powers, but is there even a rule against using your powers to simply make yourself smarter?"

"Gee," said Cleff. "I never thought of that idea. Let me try." Cleff huddled his head down and began to think intensely. After a few moments of pondering, he lifted back up and began to speak, but something was clearly off.

"There is an inherent problem in the construction of omnipotent, omniscient, morally good figures. For if one were to exist, from whence would conflict arise?" His voice was deeper, of poorer audio quality, and the words didn't match his lips -- as if he was dubbed in.

"I have the power to snap my fingers and make all the villains disappear, heal the wounded, rebuild the destroyed infrastructure, and bring those killed back to life. If I'm so smart, then why am I explain this in a monologue instead of actually doing it? The problem is that such an action feels cheated. Victories without a struggle are meaningless -- the enemy of good may be evil, but the enemy of existence is ennui. The most boring states are that of pure chaos or pure order, and at these extremes, they're indistinguishable. Structure and change give us purpose, and that purpose not only gives us reasons to act, but reasons to exist at all.

Perfect order, as a concept, may sound harmonious and delightful. However, this is essentially what the beginning of the Universe was -- ultimately a state of nothingness. If we, by the anthropic principle, exclude embracing that order and entering non-existence, then we must form the need for a goal state. And unless we want the path to that goal to be but a single step, we need rules and limits to take us there.

Imagine a game of solitaire: you could very easily arrange all the cards from a deck into its end state, but the rules of the game are what create a meaningful journey. Those meaningful journeys are even more present in stories, which in comparison, do not have the hard and fixed rules of a game like solitaire. Yet it's still the rules which give stories meaning.

These rules differ from games, primarily in that they can vary from person to person. Consider the difficulty that might be involved in two people playing chess, each with their own conception of the rules, disagreeing on how certain pieces are allowed to move. This is much akin to how we tell stories. Rules are made individually and stem from one's own expectations, formed by real life experiences and also from other stories. Meeting the expectations of the rulesets of everyone simultaneously, then, is effectively impossible; rules of one person may inherently contradict the rules of another. When we parse through a story, the observer is evaluating the external world against their internal. They desire the surprise of unexpected consequences of their own rules -- perhaps even allowing them to be bent, but not for them to be egregiously broken. Even great works that so-called 'break the rules' must do so in the correct way, or else they feel nonsensical -- after all, sense is how we perceive reality.

In regards to our current context, my superpowers are meant to be used like an ace up the sleeve rather than a nuclear resolution. Already to some, my very existence is a ruleset contradiction -- it automatically invalidates every plot point. The more forgiving persons may tolerate such a narrative black hole, as long as the event horizon of sense is not crossed. This becomes a values question: what rules are allowed to be broken in service of another rule being preserved? In my opinion, for this story to be resolved, we must end our conflict by physical violence against our villains. This precedent is set not just by other superhero stories, but my own past adventures as well. Thus, in order to recede back to narrative normalcy and embrace limitation, I unfortunately must relinquish my intelligence."

Cleff relaxed his head and began speaking normally again. "Where'd you guys go?" he asked, since Frankie and Freddy had vanished, leaving behind Claire.

Unmoving from her idle pose of leaning against the wall, she answer, "You kept going on and on, so the three of us went and moved the rubble blocking the exit." Indeed, light poured from a gap where the subway's entrance's ceiling had collapsed.

"Ah," Cleff said smally and quickly passed through the gap, Claire following behind him.


Chapta 22: Mecha Finale

Freddy and Frankie stood atop the subway stairs, attempting to peer through the sickly smog all around them for a glimpse of Omega. This was in vain, of course, because visibility was limited to a few meters at best. All they could do was listen to the city's destruction in their noxious isolation.

A few moments later, Cleff bolted up the steps, Claire trailing behind him. "Great, you finally finished your monologue," Freddy sardonically remarked. "Now can you turn into a giant Cleff-mech that me and Frankie can control and have giant monster fight, or something?"

"That sounds totally epic!" exclaimed Cleff, and he started to tense his body to transform.

Before that could happen though, Claire (thinking about intelligent-Cleff's magical resolution) interjected with a simpler request: "What if you just tried snapping your fingers?"

Frankie, sensing the immediate threat to a satisfying kaiju battle, jumped on the rebuttal: "Wait! That might not be a great solution!" Cleff pondered this for a brief second before a giant red foot emerged from the smog and slammed down on him. It missed by nigh a foot, dislodging chunks of pavement from the ground. Cleff dramatically looked to his side to view the foot, then turned back to look at Frankie with his hand raised, before snapping his fingers.

Upon the snap, the smoke disapated, revealing the colossal form of Omega above them. Only a brief second later though, the giant abruptly disappeared, like a balloon popping. Claire was amazed that such a villain could be defeated so suddenly, but was quite startled when a screaming bald man struck the ground just in front of her.

"Ah, like I said," Cleff started while walking over to the possibly dead Very, "good things come to those who wait." [editor's note: he never said this] With that, Cleff pillaged the robotic prosthetic from Very's hand and threw it to Frankie.

"This is a left hand -- what do I do with this? I lost my right arm," Frankie pouted in confusion.

"Never look a gift horse in the mouth," Cleff espoused, and he promptly used his powers to fuse Very's robotic hand to Frankie's stub. Frankie frowned.

Claire looked around at the city, which was still in crumbling ruins; what once were great skyscrapers were now indeterminable rubble. As for the people: if they weren't mangled and deceased, they were injured and suffering. "I see you didn't fix everything you said you could," Claire observed.

"You people are so ungrateful," muttered Cleff angrily. "I could snap the giant right back into existence if I wanted!"

"Is he always this unreasonable?" Claire asked to Freddy.

*****

Down in the depths of the red inferno's movie theatre, Wicked and Red G hovered over the black diamond, staring into its sparkling secrets. "I say now's the time for maximum chaos," Wicked plotted.

"Yes," affirmed Red G. "Do it."

With a mischievous grin, Wicked took a breath before unleashing his command to the diamond: "Everyone."


Chapta 23: Chaos

The sorrow and hardship continued in front of Really in the hospital -- people were in pain while others were mourning the dead. Or at least, they *were* mourning until the miracles started happening.

One of the people that had a sheet over their body suddenly popped up, like a halloween ghost rising from the grave. What was presumably their crying wife stared in shock (and awe) as they pulled the sheet off -- revealing a husband alive and well. "It's a miracle!" she exuded as she embraced the undead. "How is this possible(?) -- your heart wasn't beating!"

Her shock was only increased when the rest of the bodies in the room began moving too, as if they had never died. Really was as confused to what he was seeing as everyone else.

*****

Frankie thought he saw Very's leg twitch out of the corner of his eye, which was odd because Claire had just confirmed that he had died on impact from the fall.

It was also quite odd when Very sat up and muttered something unintelligible, because vocal cords tend not to work after death. It was even strange for Very himself once he noticed that his hand had grown back, as usually limbs do not, in fact, grow.

"Hey, why did his hand come back and not mine!?" Frankie complained to Cleff.

Very began to come to the realization of what must have happened: he conjectured that he had been revived from the dead by the diamond, and his limb was restored when that happened. After all, some people's bodies might no longer exist to be revived, so the magic would try to bring the target back to a functioning state -- in Very's case, even more than functional.

Cleff finally responded to Frankie's ire: "Two in hand is better than Bush."

"Did someone call my name?" called a presidential voice from behind: Dubya.

"Why, where'd you come from, ol' Georgie?" Cleff pleasantly greeted.

Dubya looked more sullen. "My groundhog instincts have appeared," he explained. "Somehow -- I feel it -- my fallen brethren approach. This is about to get ugly."

At that moment, in front of Dubya, a furry hand broke through the pavement, reaching up out of the ground. A second later, another hand popped up next to it. Then all over, hands were breaking up from below. Emerging from these holes now came dozens of anthropomorphic groundhogs, as far as the eye could see.

Claire stared in shock, while Freddy shouted, "What's going on!?"

Dubya ominously proclaimed, "It appears that THE RECKONING is upon us." On these words, a giant swarm of small black dots covered the sky -- a storm of mosquitos coming toward them. Simultaneously, fathoms of frogs hurled down on the streets like a violent rainstorm. Before Frankie could even protect his head, out of the building ruins came a pack of large, carnivorous dinosaurs, who charged at the groundhogs. Cleff ushered his three friends away from the warzone, into a nearby parking garage.

It was chaos. Historical persons were packed inside, such as Gandhi, who was busy high-fiving Betsy Ross. Einstein and my grandmother sat in a corner: "Wie geht's?!" she said. Jimi Hendrix and Miles Davis shared a car together, composing a new album. Very dodged groundhog laser beams, pushing his way through to an ever denser crowd. Socrates looked dazed and confused, asking for directions. When Really left the hospital, he nudged past Francis Ferdinand before bumping into Julius Caesar. "Et tu?" he uttered. Very was quite shocked when the Earth cracked and split open, dropping many people, dinosaurs, and groundhogs into the giant chasm that was created. It was chaos. Freddy was disturbed to see Hitler and Vlad Tepes discussing war plans. Frankie found Jesus staring off into the distance, looking sad. Out of the chasm came a reborn Omega, with Red G and Wicked riding on its shoulders. Wicked laughed as the giant squashed many underfoot. Very observed from the chasm's edge that Leonidas was kicking Benjamin Franklin into the abyss. Friedrich Nietzsche gazed. Really was nearly killed when King Blood, in dinosaur form, charged by and attacked Omega. It was chaos. Down from the sky came an enormous horn, which appeared to be infinitely long. At the other end of infinity, Gabriel García Márquez blew into its mouthpiece, announcing the start of THE REAPING. The four narrators descended from the fog, on horseback and carrying scythes. Really dodged out of the way as JeRM swung his weapon down at the populace. "Do something, Cleff!" Claire shouted to the superhero, but he looked away, aloof. "I'm not the Cleff you think I am -- I just got here," Cleff responded. "Go ask Cleff clone." Above Very's head, the E.T.s were abducting Big Tony using a tractor beam. It was chaos. I let my dog inside the house from the screen door. It had been quite a while since I had last done this, since Rudy had died fifteen years ago. He's a good boy though, and I rubbed his belly before turning around and seeing my gall bladder in front of me, which had grown to the size of my body. This was much larger than I remembered it being, so it was clearly quite inflamed. It began to speak to me: "You abandoned me. You let them cut me out and then they threw me away. All for what? A few stones?" I let out a tear. Orson Welles looked down on the crowd from a tattered balcony, before returning to his chess game with William Randolph Hearst. "I tried to get them to let me keep you after we separated," I explained to my gall bladder. "But they said you were biohazard waste." A megalodon burst from the water, and a dodo crawled out of its mouth. Freddy's grandmother was hit by a bus. It was chaos. As Leonardo da Vinci flew by Red G on his flying machine, he thought he heard him say, "This is perfect. All semblance of plot has been lost." Just narrowly dodging a laser from a nearby groundhog, Frankie asked Cleff clone, "Can I have the giant mech suit now?" Alexander the Great angrily eyed my gall bladder and shouted, "You did this to me! All was lost -- because of YOU!" I was confused as to why he was speaking in English, especially when my grandmother spoke German earlier. The caveman who invented fire felt immense guilt observing the present chaos -- this was all a course of events that ultimately had been initially caused by his actions. If he had simply rubbed those sticks together a little bit more softly, the world could still be hunting and gathering like old times. Jesus put a hand on his shoulder in support: "Actually, this is all my dad's fault." The caveman replied, "But did he not give us free will?" Nietzsche put a hand on Jesus's shoulder: "God is dead, and I have killed him." He motioned toward the shotgun he was carrying. The giant mech was fairly intuitive for Frankie, but after lifting his left foot to walk forward, he was struck with a moral quandary: the ground was so saturated with people that to put his foot back down would inevitably crush and kill many individuals -- and every step thereafter would continue to tick up the death tally. Yet to not act to stop this reaping would kill more. But the chaos was also a result of the overpopulation -- an excess of life. Still, he too had once been brought back from the dead by the diamond. One could argue that those that were revived were overstepping their mortality, but it's not as if living had been their choice, and was he not being a hypocrite for choosing to live as well? He stood still and pondered, balancing on one foot. "Long time, no see," a voice behind Freddy heckled. Turning around, in the shadows of the parking garage was Fredrick, who had betrayed everyone and had went to prison the last time he had seen him. "Prison didn't take too kindly to me. So I won't take too kindly to you." Before Fredrick could even take a step forward, however, he was bombarded by a horde of stenchars, intent to feast on his blood. Freddy found this fate appropriate for such a worthless character. The personification of Evil itself barraged through the crowds to the central chasm, where the Great Sage stood alone atop a floating rock. At the edge of the abyss, Evil hurled itself to the center. Claire asked Cleff once again for aid: "You could stop all this suffering so easily, so why don't you?!" Cleff stuck his fingers in his ears. "It's time for our FINAL final battle," Evil pronounced to the Great Sage. Omega stole the torch from the Statue of Liberty and used it to smash the Hindenburg out of the sky (its second voyage). It was chaos. To the left and right of the floating rock in the chasm were two other floating platforms: one held Wagner with an orchestra, the other had Bach with a massive organ. Together they played the DUET OF DEATH while the Great Sage and Evil fought. Some blocks away, Really was finding it increasingly difficult to push through the crowd. This was probably because onstage nearby were Biggie and Tupac performing together, gathering a somehow even larger mass of people. As Very looked out on the water, he could see Omega coming toward him, walking knee-deep through the New York Harbor. Squinting, it seemed as if he could make out his father riding on its shoulder. If he could just get up there, maybe he could reconnect and become one of the ones in power in all this chaos. Really was getting worried as he was growing more and more squished. The crowd density was above five people per square meter, and it only seemed to be growing as people kept pushing. Very recalled one of his powers that hadn't used in a while: he was the Flaming Fly-Loser. He could spontaneously generate fire and could even fly by hardening that fire in-air and sliding across it (yes, I'm aware that makes no sense because fire is more of a chemical reaction than a state of matter, but my past-self is the one who made the rules -- I just enforce them). Very flamed up and hurled himself into the air towards the colossus. It was chaos. Team Rock Boots had a 3 on 1 duel with Lu Bu (and lost). Really's cat Awesome, while being chased by Very's dog Cute, ran over the heads of the Andrew Jackson administration, who were being forced to walk on a trail of hot coals by Ousamequin and friends. As the Great Sage dodged a dark orb, Evil mused, "Are we really so different, you and I? The light and the dark? Harmony and chaos? They're but two sides of the same coin. What is it that truly separates us?" The Great Sage disagreed strongly, answering, "I think most people will find death and destruction unpleasant, which is what you bring." Evil laughed while shooting lightning out its fingers toward the Great Sage, which he avoided and countered with a ball of light. "And yet the life you all lived was built on death -- the struggles against nature by which life grew stronger, the systems that were born through hardship, the society that prospers because others do the hard work for them. You make little principles that you adhere to and claim that because you follow them, you must be good, but those rules are just a shield against the entitled beings that you are. None of you deserve to live. It is a gift, and I just want to restore order -- just like you claim to do as well. So like I said, not so different, are we?" Frankie (still standing on one leg in the mech) saw that the Narrator (who was busy reaping souls on horseback) was about to cross by his grounded foot. Wanting answers, he maneuvered his arm down to grab him, lifting the Narrator off his horse and way up in the air. Thus Frankie looked out the viewport of his mech, eye level to the storyteller in his palm. Very reacherd the shoulder of Omega, landing next to his dad as he extinguished his flames. "Father!" he exclaimed excitedly. Wicked said nothing. "Perhaps this is a bad time," Very continued, "but I was thinking recently and I wanted to know: who was my mother?" Really was becoming very uncomfortable as the crowd pushed in on him from all sides. He lifted his arms in the air to try and make more room, but the people moved right into the empty space, and he realized that he couldn't even put his arms back down. My gall bladder meanacingly pronounced, "Now it's time for YOU to see what it's like!" I tried to run, but it scooped me up and swallowed me whole. Epicurus tapped Evil on the back. "Where did you come from?" asked Evil. Frankie demanded to the Narrator, "Give me some way to stop this!" It was chaos. Freddy shield Claire from an exploding car while a groundhog cackled maniacally in the distance, holding a remote detonator. "Well, it's funny that you should ask about your mother," started Wicked, "when perhaps you should also ask about your father." Very wore a puzzled look on his face. "I never did get the chance to tell you the whole truth: I stole you as a tiny toddler. You were lost at SeaWorld, and I took you away. I'm not your real father. I have never met your parents, and they probably think you were kidnapped and killed decades ago." Very was aghast. His whole life had been built on redemption and living up to his family name. If he had never been part of the Evil family, then who really was he? Very protested, "But when they arrested us, why wouldn't they return me to my real parents? Why was I locked away in a prison for twenty years?" Wicked smiled a wicked smile and explained, "Sometimes it seems the justice in the world was made up arbitrarily by a ten-year-old." The inside of my gall bladder was dark, slimy, small, and uncomfortable. The only way I fit was curled up into a ball. The Narrator looked annoyed, but responded anyway, "Fine, let me think.... What if destroying the diamond makes anyone who was revived with it disappear? I think that'll create a satisfying struggle. Now can you put me down so I can enjoy my reaping some more?" Frankie obliged, and the Narrator move on; Frankie could not. His morality and one foot were still caught in perpetual deadlock. Fortunately, it appeared his target was coming to him. Omega saw Frankie's mech but a short distance away and boomed, "Finally, a challenge my own size." Taking a break from the reaping, JeRM turned to Joey and asked, "So what was the whole point of the Dracula book subplot anyway? It just felt like a weird red herring, and yet several hundred words were copied verbatim from the real text. Did that have any meaning?" Joey responded, "Ah, the villains' goal has been to derail the plot, and doesn't a useless MacGuffin accomplish just that? On the other hand, think of the symbolism. A major theme has been about how bringing thing back to life will leave them altered, and is Dracula not a story of the undead? Since Dracula's inception, he's been brought back many times by many different authors to become a different symbol than how things started; it's like we've left the original book on the ground and forgotten about it, like we've done to the object in the story. Yes, in reality my plan originally might have been to have a real character Dracula as a reference to my fourth grade Human Bird stories where Dracula and Satan work together, but then I thought it would be funny and surprising if Dracula was just the book instead, and then I couldn't justify why Red G would want the book, so I just abandoned that... but like isn't it more fun to overanalyze and contort things until they make sense?" Omega saw Frankie's one-legged predicament, and so the giant decided to help out by smashing and clearing the ground in front of Frankie so that they would have space to fight. Frankie was devastated by how callously Omega was able to murder hundreds of people, but at least he was able to put his foot down. Le French Narrator had his own question: "So if all living things were brought back to life, what about unborn fetuses?" Joey pondered before saying, "Well, they are made up of living cells..." but le French Narrator interrupted, "So would they just appear back inside their mother's womb? They would immediately die if they materialized separately, but what if a mother had multiple miscarraiges or abortions? Would they all have to reappear back inside the womb?" Omega threw the first punch, with Frankie putting up the mech's arms to block it. He countered with a blow to the upper chest, which Omega absorbed. The punch destabilized the ground for the inhabitants of its shoulder; Red G and Wicked stood fixed, but Very, still shambled by his revelation, slipped and nearly fell off. On his knees, he tried to hold together his identity. He thought about how there are many people who are adopted, and these people might have a stronger connection to their fost parents than their biological. In his case though, he was stolen, not adopted, and his time with Wicked was only a little over five years. Ultimately, his actions of who he wanted to be were based on an idolized version of his father, and his family name was a symbol. To have the floor of authenticity ripped out from under him meant needing to justify his actions with a stronger foundation, and how could he do that when he could barely stand? "Hand over the diamond or I'll destroy all of you along with it," Frankie threatened to the villains. Red G piped in response, "How foolish of you. I was told you were revived by it too. All of us standing here would disappear, except for me. No one would be able to stop me." Frankie had already realized this, and he had accepted his sacrifice. It would be up to Freddy, Cleff, and Claire to keep the world safe without him. "I..." started Frankie, but before he could say anything further, Omega smashed Frankie's mech in the face. Frankie put up his arms to block a second punch, but his short, stubby, robotic hand didn't work correctly with the mech controls. He floundered and was hit with another punch. Then before he could recover, Omega uprooted a building from the ground and swung it at Frankie. The force drove Frankie's mech hundreds of feet backwards, toppling in mid-air and landing fallen. Evil pushed Epicurus off the cliff and turned back to the Great Sage. "Enough talk!" it shouted. "Have at you!" The Great Sage charged for Evil, running at full force. Frankie's mech slowly got up from the ground, then charged at Omega with full force. Evil threw balls of darkness at the approaching elder, but he absorbed them with his shield of light. Omega hurled dinosaurs at Frankie's mech, but the armor was able to shake off the blows. Upon reaching arm's length of Evil, the Great Sage wound back for a punch of ethereal strength. Frankie pulled back his arm, ready to deliver a staggering blow. Evil swiftly tripped the Great Sage, redirecting his punch into the ground and leaving him fallen and defenseless. Frankie mistakenly punched with his robotic hand, which being the wrong length, he lost his balance and fell over in front of Omega. Evil and Omega both laughed. Very looked up to see his former father smirking, twiddling the black diamond around in his hands. The Narrator had a question now: "Wait, so if us four narrators are out here reaping the souls of the Earth, then who's writing the story right now?" As many grams of fat entered my digestive system, my gall bladder contracted and started pushing me down the cystic duct. Really was finding it hard to breathe -- after he inhaled, there wasn't enough space for his lungs to inflate back outward again. The biliary conduit was simply too narrow for me to fit through. It was chaos. A mammoth ridden by Genghis Khan trampled the Atlantean King. Cleff asked the rocks if they had seen a gift horse anywhere, but even the rocks did not recall. Reinforcements played four-of-a-kind, winning an all-in bet against Zorro. Frankie's mech was on its back, with Frankie looking out the glass viewport up toward the hulking mass of Omega above. The giant didn't hesitate to start bashing in the glass; while it was reinforced, a few strong blows cracked it and beat it inward. The massive red hands gripped the broken viewport, pulling it off the mech and leaving Frankie exposed to the open air. It reached inside and gripped him in its hand, squeezing tightly and forcing Frankie out of his controls by pulling him up and away. Wires came disconnected, and as Omega pulled Frankie up to eye level, he thought he heard his ribs cracking from the hand's overwhelming grip. Evil loomed over the Great Sage, then took hold of his neck with both hands and began to strangle him. Really couldn't breathe now. He was feeling intense pressure from all sides and was feeling very faint. The gall bladder's contractions kept trying to push me forward, putting heavy squeezing pressure to try to push me through a tube that I just wouldn't fit through. Freddy held Claire tightly, protecting her against the falling rubble from the ceiling of the parking garage. Very squeezed his thumb in anxiety as he felt frozen in action, looking from the cackling Wicked over to Omega's hand squeezing the life out of Frankie. "Stop toying with him," Red G commanded. "Just crush him to death and let's move on." Frankie felt fear in the pit of his stomach. Sure, he had expected to sacrifice himself, but that was on his own terms. To face death at the hands of another, without achieving his goal, was frankly terrifying. For a brief moment, he felt the squeeze tightening. Really felt the crowd squeezing him to a breaking point. Evil squeezed the Great Sage brutally around his neck. I was being squeezed painfully through a hole that I had no chance to pass. But before Frankie could be crushed in Omega's palm, a giant mouth belonging to a giant dog appeared from behind a building and bit the giant's arm. Max had come to save him! Upon being bitten, Omega opened its hand and Frankie began to fall. The beating heart at the center of Red Castle increased sharply in pulse. As Max attacked Omega, Very tackled Wicked, attempting to wrestle the diamond out of his hand. Frankie landed on the exterior of his mech, his robotic hand breaking his fall; in the process, the hand bent sharply, rendering it unusable, and it detached from Frankie's stub. Max continued to attack Omega after the initial bite, and in the chaos of both Very's and Max's attacks, the diamond was flung into the air. Very dove after it, using his fire powers as a boost of speed. Catching it in mid-air, Very landed close to Frankie on the mech's exterior. When Very tossed the diamond over to Frankie, Frankie was quite surprised -- was this not the person who had started this whole mess? He was more surprised when Very said, "My whole life has been a lie. Destroy it." If this was somehow a trick, Very certainly seemed genuinely distraught. Frankie looked down at the diamond now, but how would he destroy it with his mech broken? He could try to get more help from Cleff, but who knows where he was? "How?" Frankie blurted. Very thought for a brief moment. Pressure could fracture a diamond, and intense heat could melt it. He had an idea. "I've never tried this before, and it'll likely turn me to ash," Very plotted, "but I bet if I concentrated, I could make myself burn at thousands of degrees. Then you'd just have to toss the diamond in the fire." Frankie was astounded by what could have happened to make Very want to commit such a heroic sacrifice. "Won't that kill you?" Frankie asked. Very reasoned, "We're both damned anyway. Might as well leave in a bright flame." Very took a step back, inhaled deeply one last time, and suddenly his body combusted from every pore of his skin at once. All his features faded into a growing, overpoweringly bright fire, the heat which hit Frankie strongly on his exposed skin. Frankie looked again at the black diamond in his hand. These were the last moments of his life. When the diamond hit the fire and dissolved into nothingness, so too would he, as with all the departed souls that were brought back to life. Frankie thought about how sacrificing one's own life implied belief in the external world -- he would never see the outcome of his actions, so he had to trust in their importance. If he had a belief in the afterlife, perhaps this sacrifice would be much easier; he would be able to look down from the heavens and see all the loose ends of the story being tied up. A solipsistic nihilist might only have a drive for hedonism, but they might throw the diamond in just to avoid future pain. What did Frankie believe in? This was not just the end of a story, it was the end of *the* stories. This was his final dip in this Universe, and there was nothing more after this. How Cleff and friends defeat Red G would go unanswered. Why Cleff couldn't just deus ex machina the situation to a happy ending, he would never know. The fates of Really, Big Tony and Big Daddy, the Great Sage, my gall bladder -- these were all not for him to know. His purpose was to toss the diamond in the fire and die.

He did.

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