I did not edit it like I planned but I did run a spell check!
The beast with the strength of ten men was in a box. Even with all his strength he could not break free of this box. The beast also had the intelligence of two and a third men, so he understood that despite his immense strength fighting against the box was futile. So he did not fight the box. The box had the strangely comforting familiarity of an old nightmare. The beast knew what would happen in this nightmare. It terrified him - but it could not surprise him.
Something rasped outside the box. Something scratched at the box. Something terribly loud in the darkness of the box wheezed a little, on the other side of the thick metal door. The beast put his great paw against the door and felt the deep scratches left by his own frantic rage. This was not part of the nightmare. In this nightmare, he was alone! Alone forever in the box!
"Jed Master," a low voice said outside the box. It was a voice of pure haughtiness. A voice so full of itself it made the beast think that the air trembled in awe, rather than merely from the vibration of the speaker's vocal cords.
I am not Jed Master, the beast thought. And then, because he could not stand the idea that the voice could be coming from within his own head - as it must in a nightmare - he said it out loud. "I am not Jed Master!"
"But you are. You are the Jed Master of your story, just as the Jed Master you know is the Jed Master of his."
The beast wrapped his arms around himself and huddled in the corner of the box. Go away, voice.
"It is not a name," the voice said. "Jed Master is not a name."
The beast woke suddenly. He was in a small room in the more intelligent wing of the Haunted House of Heroes.
"Mmmm?" JM said.
The beast sat up in bed. Across the room, his frenemy stirred on a cot against the wall. "Just a dream," the beast said.
"The box dream?" JM asked sleepily.
"Yes. Yes. The box dream again." The beast was JMX01, a gargantuan genetically modified baboon. His only change of clothing, the low-gravity combat suit he had been wearing when Super Ego rescued him, hung over the bed post. The beast dressed, then he lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. The bed sagged under his weight.
Eventually JM woke up properly and wandered off to the bathroom. When the beast looked at JM, he saw the egoful. That horrible monster that had come to destroy him and Lord Lozier. But he also saw ID - though perhaps that was merely because JM did not shave. ID had been the most stupid creature the beast had ever met, but he had been endearing, in a very smashing and innocent way. And Super Ego. Super Ego had been as evil as the egoful. On a cognitive level, the beast recognized that. But he could not think of Super Ego that way. He did not want to believe he had been fooled so easily.
JM was all those things put together. By all accounts, he should be evil. Each individual part was itself evil, though in ID's case it was more about gleeful destruction than actually wishing harm onto others. JM's problem was a lack of motivation. He might be evil, but he was so lazy that it didn't really matter.
JM wandered into the room, too lazy to shower. "So," JM said. "Plans?"
"I thought I would stare at the ceiling for a while longer. And then perhaps I will go down to the kitchen and stare at a wall for a few hours."
"Sounds like fun. I was planning on doing something similar."
"You have a plan."
JM shrugged.
"I am not a fool, JM. I know you well enough to know you have a plan."
"Yes, of course I have a plan. Want to tag along?"
The beast might as well. He had nothing better to do. Nothing in this place engaged his intelligence. The beast followed JM through the dusty halls of the haunted house of heroes. The beast did not understand why the heroes called it that. He had seen no ghosts. Nothing to suggest the house was haunted, just cobwebs and general untidiness. Heroes, by and large, were not very neat people.
"Hey," JM said. "You know how Geb hates spin offs?"
"No," The beast said. He did not know that.
"Oh. Well screw him."
JM stopped in the center of an empty hall. Empty, of course, except for them, the torches hanging on the walls, the elaborate embroidered tapestries, the rugs on the floor, the pedestals with vases or statues; it was a very barren hallway in all other respects. JM tapped a finger against his chin.
"Is this the wall you planned to stare at?" the beast asked.
JM reached out his hand toward the wall. Then he frowned. "Do you have your cleave-o-matic? Open up this wall."
Of course the beast had his weapon. He would never be without it, not in this universe. The beast turned the cleave-o-matic to it's lowest setting and fired three times into the wall. A triangular chunk of wall fall out into the hall. JM stepped through the smoky hole. The beast followed more hesitantly. He did not know what JM was planning, but this amount of effort was quite out of character for his frenemy.
The room beyond the wall had no doors, though it now sported a strangely elegant triangular window. The walls were pale grey, and criss crossed by glaring yellow lines.
"I knew there would be one," JM said.
"One what? What is this?"
"A default sector," JM said. "In all buildings there is some amount of wasted space. Little nooks and crannies the architect couldn't fill. Under stairs, in between closets. Architects put some effort into using every space. But level designers are not so careful. They leave big spaces. They do things that just don't make sense."
The beast looked around the little strangely painted room. "And what are these.. 'default sectors' good for?"
"Nothing," JM said. "Nothing at all."
"It is not a spin off until other characters are in it," The Last True Evil said. "Even so, so far, it seems to be set in the very recent past. So you can always just tell Geb it's filler."
"I do not think he will like that explanation," the beast said. They sat in the kitchen of the Haunted House of Heroes. The beast clutched a tiny mug of coffee in his massive paws.
"Ah well. Nobody really cares what Geb thinks anyway. We mostly just keep him around to make fun of him."
"You're right, though, about not involving other characters. It's not a spin off if it's just myself and JM." The beast considered. He decided that he would very much like some pie. "Tell me, you are The Last True Evil."
"Uh. Yes," The Last True Evil said.
"Destined to be the ultimate, final villain of this story."
"Yes. That would be the premise of my very existence, yes."
"Yet you are not evil."
The Last True Evil frowned. The beast knew he was on the right track.
"I think we have something in common, The Last. We are both fated to be something we are not. You must be evil, if you are not now, to fulfill your destiny. And that frightens and angers you. I know that, ultimately, I am like JM."
The Last True Evil set his coffee down. "You are very perceptive, my hairy friend. You realize, of course, that with me in this story, your argument against this being a spin off is somewhat weaker."
"I know," the beast said. "I know."
That afternoon, the beast found JM lounging in the haunted living room of the haunted house of heroes. JM poked keys on his netbook. The beast had first seen that netbook in the hands of Super Ego. The beast looked over JM's shoulder. Super Ego had used that netbook for keeping track of the Never Ending Story. JM apparently used it exclusively for visiting random websites via stumble upon.
"I have been back to examine that null space," the beast said. "I can not see why that is so important to you. Nor why, if it is so important, you have in no way acted upon it's existence."
JM shrugged. "I told you, a default sector is completely useless. It's a starting point. But without the proper powers to apply to it, it will remain a default sector forever. I am a Jed Master. The Jed Master, I suppose, now. Lot of good it does me."
It's not a name.
"I'm an artifact of a time so ancient it only exists in flash backs," JM said. "I was an Atlantean Wizard. One of many. I belonged to an order of architects. Crafters, builders. We did not have blood ink. It certainly does not flow in my veins. The blood inks, they dealt with the characters, the plot. What most people think of when they look at a story. But the setting of a story is no less important. We built the settings. Since we are gone.. all except me, there is no one in this story to control the setting. That is why it has such random locations, like this house. If you want to call it that."
"Powers," the beast said. "So you are A Jed Master. Yet you are also named Jed Master."
"Yes," JM said. He looked up from the netbook and steepled his fingers.
"You realize how ridiculous that is?"
"Forget about it. We have a spin off to write."
"Geboqh will not be happy."
"Screw Geboqh. I can't get anything done in this story until I reclaim my powers."
"You did not defeat me," the egoful said.
The beast tossed in his sleep. He was in the box again, the darkness tight around him. He had defeated the egoful. Perhaps the egoful still existed, but it was trapped again inside JM. Trapped in much the same way the beast was trapped in this box. Just as powerful, but impotent.
"You trusted Super Ego."
The beast had trusted Super Ego. The beast had even considered the goth punk his friend. It was Super Ego that had come to him and rescued the beast from the Masserver. The egoful had been there just moments before, destroying them, and consuming them. Now the beast understood why the egoful had spared him.
"You do nothing to stop JM now."
Super Ego had used him. Even Super Ego thought the egoful was insane. So Super Ego used the beast, and his weapon, to cut the egoful back down to size. When the egoful swept through the beast's universe, absorbing everything, it had spared the beast, because.
"You and JM are the same."
"Greetings insignificant fellow characters," the beast said. It was morning again and he stood in the kitchen and addressed a haphazard group of characters just on the edge of the limelight, among them Benjamin Mahir and Krig the very large and very stupid viking warrior.
"If Krig here then dragon destroy house!" Krig said.
"Do not worry, we are going with an alternate reality," the beast said. "Also plot holes might prove beneficial. We are going on a quest to the mythical sunken city of Atlanta. If anyone would care to join us, we could use the help. We need to be back before Krig's dragon destroys the house and makes this storyline even more implausible. Also, rat boy, refrain from your usual story-skepticism. As someone who has come to this place from another story, I really cannot stand your continued denial of my existence."
Ban and Krig exchanged glances. Being the only two characters in the room, beside the beast, who had been named, the beast was fairly certain that the writer intended these two to go on the quest to Atlanta. In fact, all the other characters left. Clearly they would prefer to sit around being bored.
"The quest is simple. We will enter the sunken city and rescue an ancient book from whatever manner of fish now holds it captive. If you are both going, then we must figure out how we are going to get there."
"Krig think we take airplane."
"I do not think Atlanta has an airport," the beast said.
"Why not?" Ben asked. "It's a major American city, isn't it?"
"Yes, that's what I thought," the beast said. "But JM insists that it is sunken. He has requested ideas on how to acquire a submarine."
Two days later a middle-visible spectrum submersible ship of war descended into the depths of the Atlantic. Benjamin sat on the map. Literally on. It was very crowded in the submarine, considering that both the beast and Krig were very large. Yet Benjamin refused to transform.
"Krig know rat boy is rat!"
"Let it be," JM said. "If you're writer was that mean to you, you'd want to hide it too."
The beast pushed Benjamin off the map. The beast had drawn a big red circle around the city of Atlanta, Georgia. JM navigated without the map - the beast's frenemy simply pointed the sub at the center of the ocean. Using a variety of instruments and his cell phone's GPS, the beast indicated their current location on the map with his finger, which was, as would be expected by their course, much closer to the center of the ocean than to Atlanta Georgia.
"Uh," the beast said. "Did someone move Atlanta?"
"Whu?" JM asked.
"Atlanta! The ancient city we are going to!"
"We're going to Atlantis. I thought you were supposed to be smart."
Ludicrous. The beast was not from this world, why would he know these things?
"Hey," Benjamin said. "Remember how I knocked out that guard? Wasn't that awesome?"
"Krig not care about yesterday! Where Atlanta?"
"There," JM said. He pointed through the forward view ports of the little submarine. Pearly white spires appeared out of the deep blue sea. The murk settled around the submarine. The sun vanished from overhead. JM turned on the submarine's headlights and cast light down upon a giant city of crumbled stone towers and wide paved boulevards.
"Couldn't we have just taken the stargate?" Benjamin wondered.
The beast raised his eyebrows. If there was a simpler means than procuring this submarine, which took considerable time and effort, why hadn't anyone mentioned it before now? The beast pressed himself against the view ports and examined the city as they passed over it.
"Krig wonder what happened to pretty city."
"Someone flagged all the sectors as water," JM said.
The beast exchanged glances with Krig and Benjamin. He had learned to ignore these sorts of comments from JM. His frenemy spoke a great deal of nonsense about sectors and adjoins and other things that didn't make any sense.
The submarine touched down in what looked to have once been the great central square of the city. A huge palace overlooked the place from one side. The facade was so wide that either end vanished from sight, beyond the range of the submarine's lights. "Welcome to Atlantis," JM said.
The beast fastened the helmet on his space suit. The others changed into bulky pressure suits. But the technology of his own universe was much more advanced, and when they got out into the water only the beast could move comfortably. JM led the way forward to the palace. The doors hung open.
"Look at this place," JM said. "The banners and crowds have been replaced by fish and... fish."
"Krig like fish."
"Do you remember where this book of yours is?" the beast asked.
"You are assuming I knew where it was to start," JM said.
They went into the palace. Beyond the lights of the submarine now, they turned on their high powered submersible flashlights and threw light around every which way. Slimy eels darted away from their lights. Large stupid fish gave no reaction at all except to wander over to see if they might be food.
The four of them followed a long hall down the center of the palace until they came to a large domed chamber with columns all around it. A very inconsiderate whale had broken the dome by swimming through it, and now it's skeleton decorated the floor of the place and general got in the way.
"This was the grand hall," JM said, via use of intra-suit inter-com.
The four adventurers probed deep into the submerged palace. JM pointed out places he recognized, and led them to a few likely places for the book of his to be kept.
"Krig think this take forever."
"I agree," Benjamin said. "Perhaps if we split up, we could search faster."
"That's why I brought two muscle bound giants and two smart guys," JM said. "So you come with me Krig, and Benjamin, you go with his hairiness."
"Does this mean I'm the smart guy?" Benjamin asked.
"No," the beast said. "I am both the muscle bound giant and the smart guy."
JM went left at the next intersection, Benjamin and the beast went right. They came to an iron gate that blocked their way.
"Did Atlanteans keep books behind gates?" Benjamin wondered.
"They might." The beast raised his cleave-o-matic.
"Hey," Benjamin said. "All that destruction probably isn't good for this sort of ancient structure, you think? Besides, I can see a lever right there on the other side, that probably opens it."
"Hrrm," the beast said.
"So I'll just go over there and pull it." Benjamin went up to the grate and stuck his head through the grate, but despite the grates large opening and his diminutive size, Benjamin couldn't fit his shoulders through. Worse, when he tried to pull his head back, his transparent round helmet wouldn't come back the other way. Benjamin clanked against the crate a few times, back and forth, his shoulders then his helmet then his shoulders again.
"Oh no," the beast said, dryly. "You appear to be stuck. Oh, and look, now your suit is leaking."
"No it isn't."
"No I'm pretty sure it is." The beast ripped open the back of Benjamin's suit.
"Hey! Hey!"
The beast reached through the grate and undid the seal on Benjamin's helmet. Immediately the helmet tried to seal itself again, by closing around Benjamin's neck. Didn't do Benjamin a bit of good. Until Benjamin popped into the helmet in rat form. The helmet fell to the ground with a clank, and the helmet sealed itself completely. Benjamin rolled around inside his helmet on the other side of the grate.
"Can I cleave now?" the beast asked.
"Yeah whatever."
A while later the beast and Benjamin still hadn't found a damn thing. They had found a great many things, some of them quite interesting, but none of them were damn, nor were they the book.
"I am not even the only JM," the beast said. "I am just a version of him from another universe. A much cooler universe, I might add."
"Alternate universes I can deal with. But this nonsense everyone blathers about all this being a story I can't stand."
"Maybe if you stopped denying it, you'd be more than a secondary character. Me, I'm the viewpoint character. You deny reality, and look at you. You are rolling around the lost city of Atlanta in a hamster ball."
A door blocked their way. It seemed pretty solid, save for a hole in the ancient metal near the floor. The last time the beast cleaved something, the building shook for several minutes.
"We can skip it," Benjamin said.
"And miss it? The quicker we find it the sooner we can get out of here."
"Still. Cleave it carefully."
The best bent over to peer through the hole near the floor. "I have a better idea." He picked up the hamster balled Benjamin and peered at him through the clear acrylic. "When you get on the other side, I need you to feed me information so I can cleave through the hinges without hitting anything important on the other side. You think you can do that, ratty?"
Benjamin nodded. The beast curled up the hamster ball and bowled it through the opening into the next room.
"Hey fur faces," JM said. Via comm, of course.
"Yes," Benjamin said.
"What?" the beast asked.
"Well there's a lot of books."
"Oh good," JM said. "You found the library."
"There's also a lot of eels."
"Yes," JM said. "That sounds like the library."
"There might also be some sort of giant angry metal man."
"That would be a golem," JM said. "They prefer to be called 'flesh impaired'."
Crashes echoed from inside the chamber. Dulled by the water, but no less jarring. The beast fired into the door, not caring what he struck on the other side, and cut a large octagonal hole. The piece of door did fall free, so the beast threw his bulk against it and crashed into the library. Benjamin rolled around the floor while a giant metal man tried to smash him with a giant metal hammer.
The beast could not get a clear shot. There was too much chance that he would strike Benjamin. He considered firing anyway, but ultimately came to the conclusion that cleaving Benjamin in half would anger the heroes. They seemed to like useless characters like Benjamin and Geboqh. Instead, the beast charged in and wrestled with the metal monstrosity.
The beast grabbed the metal man by the arms and struggled against it's immense strength. Metal and flesh groaned. "Desist! Desist! Desist!" the metal man shouted again and again. Little fish swam in and out of it's metal mouth. The beast forced it's arms back inch by inch, and kept pushing, far beyond the limit of a real being, until metal tore and springs and hoses burst from the metal man's shoulders.
The beast gave the metal man a shove and he crashed backward into a shelf of books, sending wet and decayed pages drifting through the water.
"Deal with that golem yet?" JM asked.
"Look for a sealed chamber in the back of the library," JM said. "But don't open it, you'll just flood it. Krig and I are coming."
The beast shoved shelves aside to reach the back of the library. Benjamin mostly just rolled around on the floor. JM and Krig arrived suddenly and violently. Krig smashed through the wall.
"Book!" Krig shouted.
"Yes, viking," JM said. "Books. Did you find the back yet?"
The beast indicated the many shelves piled haphazardly around the room instead of standing in neat rows. "I destroyed the guard."
"Shame about that. Ancient Antlantean artifacts are probably worth a big piece of change now a days. Now. We are looking for a book, so the last place we should look is the library."
"What?" the beast asked. "In what world does that make sense? A library is for the storing of books. Of course we should look here first."
"But what you're looking for is always in the last place you look, so if we look here first it won't be here."
"Found a sealed door!" Benjamin said.
"See?" JM said. "We'll come back here and look here last, and it'll be guaranteed to be in that room."
"That's stupid," Benjamin said.
"He has a point," the beast said. "Story conventions often follow these sort of obscure rules."
"Whatever. Does it matter where we look then? Oh, I just looked over here. Now I can look in the sealed room."
"I really doubt that will work," JM said. "Come on then, Krig and I found something promising."
The beast picked up Benjamin's ball and ignored the rat's protests. He followed JM through a Krig-shaped hole.
The Krig holes went in a perfectly straight line all the way through the east wing of the palace and into the north. They led to a big round stone slab marked with intricate writing and glyphs of ugly faces.
Benjamin asked, "Is that Mayan?"
"The Mayans stole it from us. We had a colony on the American continent. Of course we didn't call it America, Vespucci just stuck his own name on that awful map he drew. We called it 'New Atlantis'. We were going to all move there, what with our island so geologically unstable, but there was such an uproar that we decided to stay, and call the island 'Atlantis Classic'.
"We had a colony there. A bunch of natives over ran it. They couldn't read Atlantean of course, and they couldn't replicate the intricate characters in any sort of meaningful way. But they apparently liked our glyphs. They gave them meanings to them and everything."
"So what's this say?" the beast asked.
"In Mayan, it's gibberish," JM said. "In Atlantean the ugly face glyphs mean 'this door is so tacky it's stylish'. Well lets open it, shall we?"
Krig grabbed on side of the massive stone door, and the beast grabbed the other. Together they heaved at the door until it shifted a few inches. A giant air bubble gurgled out of the chamber beyond. They push, wedging their fingers into the narrow gap, until the door rolled slowly aside. The room beyond was perfectly dark. The kind of dark that fooled people into thinking they had gone blind.
JM darted in without hesitation. Krig charged in, probably hoping for something to smash.
"That's pretty dark," Benjamin said. "Why don't you leave me out here?"
The beast grunted and carried Benjamin into the darkness. The beast was large and fearsome. He had the strength of ten men and the intelligent of two and a third. He was not afraid of the dark.
"Light switch light switch light switch," JM said from various places in the darkened chamber. Something clicked. The lights did not turn on. "Hmm," JM said. "I wonder what that did."
JM should not have spoken. The beast knew that immediately - the switch did nothing, until JM wondered what it did; and then what it did was cause the door to roll shut. The beast had just enough time to chuck Benjamin into the gap. It's a good thing Benjamin rolled through it, because his little acrylic hamster ball probably wouldn't have stopped the door as well as the beast hoped.
Darkness closed around them. Yes, it had already been dark, but now there wasn't a big circle of light. There was nothing. Nothing at all. The beast clutched his helmet between his paws and turned in circles. Darkness everywhere.
"Everyone look for the light switch," JM said.
"Krig can't look!"
"Feel then. You know what I meant."
JM's voice was the same as the egoful. It was more bored than arrogant, but though it did not have the same emotion it certainly had the same source. Darkness all around. Like in the box. He was in the box. The beast was in the box again. The beast clenched his eyes shut against the darkness.
The beast screamed. He roared. He would not be in the box again. The beast lashed out. He found shelves which he destroyed. He found boxes which he smashed. He found bags of coins which he broke into small pieces, which actually didn't accomplish much. The walls were solid steel. The beast smashed against them. He tore around the chamber, the roar from his throat as constant as his smashing fists.
JM shouted. The beast didn't hear the words, just the sound. Strong viking arms grabbed at the beast, but the beast threw him off.
"Hairy! Hairy!" a tiny squeaky voice shouted in the beast's helmet. "I found the light switch! It's okay! Open your eyes!"
The beast opened one eye. He glanced around the very bright and very smashed room. Krig and JM stood in the far corner behind a pile of wrecked treasures. The room was a vault. All the gold of ancient Atlantis lay strewn about the floor mixed together with some ordinary soggy cardboard boxes and the odd tacky table lamp.
"What was that you were screaming?" JM asked. "Box?" JM looked at the boxes lying about. "You're enraged by boxes? Interesting. Does anyone see any books? What about out there, Benjamin?"
"No," Benjamin said. "But the smashing did attract some rather large fish. Hey, hey! Don't bite that! You'll crack my bubble!"
"Okay, so it's not in the first place we looked. Not a problem. We'll go look somewhere else. How does the library sound? Everybody game for the library?"
The adventurers followed the Krig shaped holes back to the library. They adorned themselves with all manner of Atlantean treasure. The beast wore a fine crown with dangling sapphires and emeralds. Krig fastened a plethora of golden bracelets around the horns in his helmet, and added a giant golden axe to his arsenal. Benjamin strung a series of bejeweled rings on his tail.
The sealed door stood at the back of the library right where they had left it. It was no longer the first place they had looked.
"I will search nowhere else," JM announced. "Why if it's not in there we will just go home."
"What's that about?" Benjamin whispered to the beast.
"He's just making sure the writers know that this is the last place we'll look. Consider it ensuring the proximity of our goal."
"Hey, your hairiness, come open this door."
The beast stepped up to the sealed door. It was round like the other, and covered in the same ancient runic script. No ugly glyphs, though. "What's this say?" the beast asked, pointing at the runic script.
"No time for that!" JM shouted. "Open open!"
"Nothing about ancient guardians? Maybe a giant mechanical kraken? That would seem to fit in with this place."
"Open!"
The beast grunted. He lay his shoulder against the door, and Krig pulled on the other side, and together they rolled the door aside. A great air bubble erupted from the chamber on the other side. Water flooded in and jumbled the contents of the chamber which had probably been neatly arranged, but now drifted more or less randomly about the floor.
JM took a zip lock bag from his pocket and sifted through the soggy books. "Damn fine thing we had them laminated," he remarked. "Always a good idea when you live on and island. Solid advice. Laminate your books."
The beast picked a book off the floor. "A complete history of Atlantis and it's colonies," he read out loud. He frowned at the book. "Wouldn't this have to have been written after the island sank? To be complete?"
JM shrugged.
The beast tossed the book aside and picked up another. "Star Wars : A New Hope : The Novel. Right."
"It's a temporal library," JM said. "Not necessarily in chronological order. This one time, the blood inks invented a device that would catch every book that someone lost and bring it here. You know, like library books they never intended to return anyway, and books they had to buy for school but never actually opened, and things on elementary school reading lists that only sell because teachers say the books are full of 'lessons' when really they just like torturing children because it builds character. Caught a lot of books right up until it someone told the computer socks were books."
"Amazing," the beast said.
"Yes. Would have solved the sock shortage too, except that it only caught left socks."
"Krig think this conversation is just foolish cover to the writer can skip searching for the book and just have JM find it suddenly."
"Found it!" JM announced. He held up a thick book with a fancy symbol engraved in gold on the cover. It probably meant something in Atlante an but nobody actually cared. JM placed the book in his zip lock bag.
They return the way they had come. Just as they reached the main chamber, a metal portcullis fell behind them.
"This is going to be messy," JM said. Portculi fell over ever portal leading from the room.
"What is it?" the beast growled.
JM strode out to the center of the floor. "A defense system. Designed to trap thieves."
"Hello!" a hologram that had just them materialized next to JM said. "What you are experiencing is a defense system, designed to trap thieves. If you are an Atlantean Wizard, please state your security deactivation code now, or step up to the scanner to confirm your identity."
Everyone waited silently for JM to do something.
"Ah.." JM said.
"Did you not say you were an Atlantean Wizard?" the beast asked.
"Yes. I 'were'. Past tense, see?" JM stepped up to the hologram and a beam of laser light shot from the hologram and ran up and down him.
"Hello Jed Master," the hologram said. "Jed Master designation confirmed. Wait, you are a Jed Master, and your name is Jed Master? That is ridiculous. Wait a moment while I pull up your account."
"It would probably be a good idea to get your weapons out."
The beast unlimbered his cleave-o-matic. Krig flourished his great battle axe, which looked stupid when he wasn't underwater in a bulging pressure suit, and even more stupid when he was.
"We-weapon?" Benjamin asked.
"Ah," the hologram said. "Oh my. Why, it seems that you have been disgraced and forced to live as a hobo! Why! I can't authorize your removal of that book at all! Please try not to scratch the kraken's throat on the way down, he has not been feeling well lately."
The building rumbled. Dust drifted through the water. The floor shook a little. The beast looked around uneasy. He did not know what a kraken was, but anything with such hard consonants in it's name must be a fearsome creature. The shaking stopped. Perhaps it had decided not to eat them. That recording must be thousands of years old, surely by now any sort of kraken would have died. Oh, no, it was just drawing back to strike.
Tentacles burst from the floor. Shiny tentacles covered in metal plates, with great mechanical suckers that were also paper shredders. They whipped about through the air shattering walls and columns, and then crashed down into the floor and tore great gaping holes through the stone work. The intrepid adventures dove out of the way of the crashing tentacles and found themselves stranded on a little island of floor, surrounded on all sides by thrashing tentacles and gaping drops into the abyss. The non intrepid adventurers were also trapped.
The beast fired his cleave-o-matic wildly at the tentacles again and again. Great slices of metal appendage rained down around them, but for every tentacle the beast turned into beautiful mechanical calamari, two more sprang from the abyss. Finally, as the monster from the deep must be getting rather annoyed by needing to regrow so many tentacles, the metal monster heaved the bulk of his body out of the pit and clung to the wall.
It had a great metal beak with orange and black caution stripes around the sharp rim. It gnashed it's beam and screamed at them, it's tentacles floating around it like some horrible medusa. The beast aimed his weapon and fired. A beam of brilliant energy shot at the kraken, and struck it's highly polished side, and reflected off. The heroes ducked the reflected beam, or in Krig's case, stepped two inches to the side.
"Great," JM said. "Monkey boy got nerfed. Any ideas?"
"Krig smash with axe?"
"It's way over there!" Benjamin shouted, even though everyone could here him perfectly fine despite the excitement, as they were using intra-suit inter-comm.
The beast grabbed Krig and spun him around, and then flung him across the gap at the kraken. Krig howled and held his axe before him. The kraken opened it's beak, and Krig sailed through the opening and vanished inside.
"Well," Benjamin said. "He was a very nice viking once you got to know him."
"A true adventurer," the beast agreed.
"How about we just Geb it then?"
The beast pointed his weapon at the wall opposite the kraken and fired at a column. It fell and landed across the gap, creating a bridge which the three remaining adventurers scrambled across. The beast fired wildly at the wall to make a hole through which they could escape, and they found themselves outside the palace, several dozen stories above the city's main square.
They panicked for a moment.
"We seem to be falling quite slowly," the beast observed.
"Something to do with being underwater, I bet," JM said.
"Poor Krig," Benjamin said.
"Krig not care about yesterday! No, just kidding, Krig is dead," JM said.
After a brief conversation about how awesome stealing that submarine the day before was, and what a great job Benjamin did during the adventure, they settled gently onto the paved square.
The three remaining heroes ran across the main square of the ancient city of Atlantis. Behind them, the palace shook. Cleaved a hundred times by the beast's gun. Holes smashed through walls by the very large Krig, God save his soul. Who knows what sort of things JM had done. Actually he probably hadn't broken anything. But then that kraken bursting through things. The palace had seen better days.
Great chunks fell off the towers, releasing little puffs of trapped air. The walls vanished piece by piece. They couldn't really hear it collapsing. Under water, the pieces fell slow enough that they landed rather softly. A great many fish, rather annoyed that their home had just collapsed onto itself, swam about the wreckage and complained about how hard it was to find apartments in the city. One crab scuttled past the beast's feet and called him an inconsiderate snob.
The mechanical kraken burst from the building behind them. They did not look back, but ran faster - or, in Benjamin's case, rolled furiously. If they had been wearing hats, they would hold them on their heads as they ran. But they didn't so they couldn't do anything nearly as cool.
The kraken flailed around them with it's tentacles. It was amazingly adapt at flinging itself through the water, despite the fact that a giant metal kraken should actually be the opposite of buoyant. The kraken flung itself ahead of them, and smashed down on the submarine. It wrapped it's tentacles around the little yellow crash and squeezed. Air burst between seams in the submarine's metal places as great plumes. The kraken crushed the submarine into a ball, and smashed it down through the flag stoned floor into the abyss below. The kraken fell after it, vanishing forever.
"For a minute there I thought we were in trouble," JM said.
"You only know that quote because of Stargate Universe," Benjamin said.
"Battlegate : Voyager," the beast said.
"This again?" JM said. "Just because a show has some elements in common with another does not mean it's ripping it off. Well. We're stuck here then, get comfortable while I think."
"You know Geboqh hates spin offs," the beast said.
"What?" Benjamin replied.
"He hates them. But I was thinking, perhaps if we post this entire thing in the thread itself, it will be like it's not a spin off at all, but just a really long post."
"What?" Benjamin repeated.
"Of course, people might be upset by the size of the post. It would be several thousand words. But I suppose it would be okay since we've just lampshaded it."
"Got it," JM said. The water around them vanished. It did not drain away. It did not evaporate, or form some sort of giant air bubble. It was simply there and then it was not.
"How did you do that?" Benjamin demanded.
"Can't you mix it up?" JM asked. "Maybe something besides dialog he said, dialog he said dialog? Anyway. Sector flags."
Benjamin cracked open his hamster ball. "Magic," he said. "Got it."
"It's very simple. The world is made of convex volumes. These volumes have flags. One of them is 'underwater'." JM held up his book triumphantly. "With this I will regain all of my powers. And if I can find the right page I can get us home, too."
"What about Krig?"
"Who?"
The water vanished from around the sunken city of Atlantis. The fish, angered by the collapse of their great palace, were suddenly much more angry. This time, however, they could not swim around sullenly, and instead flopped about in a most annoyed manner. Unfortunately for the three heroes who stood near where their submarine had been, the water had been a major source of support for many of structures, and it's sudden absence started a chain reaction.
Buildings crumbled all around them. They spit of debris that crashed into other buildings, and made them collapse as well. The destruction radiated away from them in an undulating wave.
"Guess raising the city is out," JM said.
"Krig think that is wise."
"Krig!" the beast shouted. "How did you escape from the kraken?"
Krig charged at them across the Atlantean square while buildings collapsed around him. A giant dragon ran behind him, pounding the pavement with it's massive clawed feet and beating it's wings at the air.
"Krig thank unmotivated enemy for removing water and allowing Krig to come out without drowning. Krig angry that unmotivated enemy also remove water and allow dragon to come out after Krig!"
"By the end of this I'm going to be an expert Gebber," JM said. "Everyone follow me."
JM flipped through the book skipping whole chapters at a time. He balanced it in one hand while they ran out of the square. The took to the narrow streets of the city, but with the collapsing and the dragon smashing along behind them, it didn't do them much good.
"Doesn't this work out nice," the beast remarked.
Benjamin, tucked under the beast's arm, squeaked furiously.
"No, it does," the beast said. "You see, after the egoful gathered all characters to watch his display, Krig should logically have been there. But then he arrived at the Haunted House of Heroes pursued by an immense dragon. The very dragon which now chases us, I expect. This means that Krig's presence isn't a plot hole at all, but actually closes a plot hole that already existed."
"Okay stop!" JM shouted.
They stood in the middle of an alleyway. JM looked around and then ducked through a doorway. The building shook as the beast entered it.
"Wait for Krig!" Krig shouted from far behind them.
"Uh," JM said into the intercom, "We went left."
"No we.." Benjamin's protest was cut off by the beast's big hairy paw.
JM studied the book. "Okay," he said. "Back out the door."
The view through the door way had changed. It didn't show the alley and the collapsing city, or a huge menacing dragon, but instead showed a circular room with plain white walls, and evenly spaced doors of various colors and styles. JM led the way through the door, and when the beast had passed, carrying Benjamin, JM slammed shut a wood Atlantean style door into the stone frame. A moment later the door vanished.
"Where the hell are we?" Benjamin asked.
The beast growled. "We are back in the plane of forgotten stories."
"No," JM said. "That one has blue tiles. This is the nexus of active plot fractals. I think. It might also be the intersection of all alternate timeliness."
"You know you're making it very hard for my writer to continue to have me deny that the universe is actually a story," Benjamin said.
"Meh, so puke out some plot holes. Maybe we can use one to get home."
"It is a title," the voice of the egoful said.
The beast was in the box again. In his old nightmare. This was where he had been born. This box was like his womb. A terrifying womb, not the comforting warm darkness of a mother but something else again. He had been born of horrible pain. His first memories were of this box, this terrible dark box. In his nightmare, he never escaped the box, and for that he was grateful. But the nightmare had changed.
"It is an honor," the egoful said.
The door to the box hung slightly ajar. The beast stared at the narrow column of light. Freedom lay outside the box, but also pain. He had left the box many times before he escaped, and each time had been filled with the most horrible of pain.
"It is a power."
The door swung open. Outside the box stood the beast's tormentors. Men in white coats with masks over their faces. They carried poles with loops of wire on the end, and they thrust these poles into the box. They wrapped those wires around the beast's limbs and dragged him from the box. He struggled, but it was no use. He was just a monkey. An ordinary baboon, barely old enough to leave his mother's breast. He screamed and struggled, but he was a pitiful thing. They lay him on a table.
"A power to shape worlds."
The voice seemed to come from one of the masked men standing over. They secured the beast on the table, and paraded their instruments of torture before his eyes, taunting him. Scalpels and needles, metal prongs and clamps. The young beast did not recognize them, but the beast that dreamed knew them and knew the pain that would come.
"A power to build them."
Another man approached. The beast caught glimpses of the man's perfect suit through the screen of his tormentors. The masked men parted, so that this other man could stand at the table and look down at the beast. His stabbing eyes were ever judging. ******. His creator. And his destroyer. The beast had plotted long with Lord Lozier to ensure ******'s downfall. And at the moment of their triumph, the egoful came.
"A power to RE-build them," ****** said.
In the Haunted House of Heroes, JM sat at the table in the kitchen. The beast sat across from him, enjoying a bowl of cocoa pebbles.
"Interesting," JM said. "Most interesting."
"There is still something I don't understand. If you were a Jed Master already, would you not already know these things? Why do you need a tutorial to teach you again?"
"Great mystery of the universe, isn't it? Well, when I was stripped of all my powers, they reset my file. That's just how the system works. I have to do all the tutorials again to unlock the power. It's a bit more complicated than that, even." JM turned the book around on the table. "Some douche went and wrote half of them in ancient Atlantean."
"So?"
"So I can't read that crap."
The beast slurped a spoonful of cocoa pebbles out of his. Uh. Spoon.
"Nobody can read it," JM continued. "We couldn't even read it then. It was like Latin. Everybody knows what it is, but do you know anybody who can actually read it? We all spoke and wrote English. We figured it would save you guys in the future some trouble when you had to write flashbacks."
"So, what then? No incredible powers of world creation?"
"'Fraid not. But don't worry, when the dragon destroys this house, I'll be able to build the heroes a proper base full of awesome things and secrets and deathtraps some of them might fall into and die horribly. I'll get on it right away."
The it he meant was the couch, not the building of a grand new base. The beast slurped his pebbles. He would stick with his frenemy for now. Long enough to learn some of the powers that came with being a Jed Master.
Benjamin : Hey, wait a minute guys.
JM : What now?
Benjamin : I never got to tell them that awesome thing I did when we stole the submarine.
JM sighs.
JM : Fine, ratty tatty, go ahead and tell them how you snuck out and hit the only guard over the head with his own rifle.
Benjamin : I snuck out and hit the only guard over the head with his own rifle!
JM : Yay. Will you stop bugging us about it?
The Beast : I think it was quite impressive.
Krig : Krig would like to remark how Krig's speech never had dialog tags in that entire thing. Also, Krig wonder if anyone actually stupid enough to read whole thing.
JM : That's probably because you always speak in third person. "Krig," said Krig. How annoying would that be? At any rate, we need to let the other writers know that this long strange thing was only written because it's National Novel Writing Month, and there's a certain word goal that must be achieved.
The Beast : It is basically a random collection of random things.
JM : Whatever happened to that part where you cleave yourself in half?
The beast shrugs.
The Beast : Story didn't go where the writer thought it would. I could do it now if you'd think it would be entertaining.
A mirror appears in the center of the room nobody has bothered to describe. The beast points his cleave-o-matic at the mirror and pulls the trigger.
The Beast : Auuuugh!
Blood and guts splatter everywhere! The beast falls, dead instantly, in two disgusting pieces! The other heroes present gasp in shock!
JM>0.5 : No, just kidding. I've been turned into JM>0.5
JM<0.5 : And JM<0.5!
Together : We have the strength of five men each! And the intelligence of one and one third!
JM : One sixth.
Together : One sixth!
JM>0.5 : Honestly I forgot what this was meant to accomplish.
JM<0.5 : There was supposed to be some puzzle that would require two people to complete.
JM>0.5 : Yes but then there were four of us there, so.
JM<0.5 : And there was going to be a final climatic battle between us and JM.
JM : Hey we can still do that. Lets have it. But, uh. Friendly and sporting, okay? No cleave-o-matics.
JM and the split beasts stand in a giant cage. Random people gather around to cheer on the bulky tag team or the egotistical maniac. Who will you root for? You decide!
Announcer : In this corner we have JM! The man with an ego about the size of his ego! And in the other corner, we have the dynamic duo! Lesser and Greater! The beasts!
The Beasts : Smashing!
JM rushes into the ring pumping his arms. He makes a few fake punches at the air. The first of the beasts (Please note that the writer will make no further attempts to distinguish them) rushed up to JM and grabbed him in his massive paws. The beast raised JM over his head and smashed him down onto the mat.
JM : Ow!
The other beast comes out of nowhere to slam into JM from above, squashing him against the mat! The beast rolls off JM and grabs JM by the legs. He spins him around and around then releases him. JM flies through the air, until his arc is brutally cut short by the other beast's closed fist!
JM : Uuugh!
The beast pummels JM, then grabs him by the head and throws him into the air! The other beast launches himself, and kicks JM while he is in midair! Now his partner, the beast, springs up and drives his knee into JM's face! The beasts pummel JM as they fall, and then they grab JM and use him to cushion their landing.
JM : Augh! I did not expect this to be so one sided!
Do not worry arrogant and lazy super villain! The writer needs only eighteen more words to meet his goal for national novel writing month, two thousand nine, and then this can all be
