Hello readers! I apologise for a lack of progress in any of my stories, but my computer had recently crashed and has wiped out all of my drafts. Until I can start again with them, here's a one-shot with little to no plot for your entertainment.
Warning: This fanfic contains some swearing, OCs and pop-culture references. The references are far more hazardous to one's mental state than the other articles listed.
No Fourth Walls were injured in the making of this fanfic.
The Poor Aching Fourth Wall
Summer didn't find Owari's Betwixt and Between very interesting. For the first dimension that linked all the other dimensions together, it was bland and uninteresting. Just endless rolls of low fog hiding a glass floor, and apparently many glass floors below that. Apparently right at the bottom, near Giratina's Realm, the floors turned to stone, the area black and a rather annoying council of dead Rangers held meetings around a table every Tuesday, but Summer hadn't seen that part on the several occasions Owari had kidnapped her and brought her here.
At this present point in time, she, Solana, Ben, Lunick and Owari were somewhat occupied with this big wall.
As it happens then, our scene opens up facing a very large wall. The wall was very tall, stretching high up into the white dog that hid the sky (or ceiling or roof or whatever Owari decided to call the endless expense of nothingness) of the Betwixt and Between. There also happened to be a very large hole in the wall, where many slightly grey bricks had come out. Strangely, the hole resembled something from Looney Tunes - it being the size and pretty accurate shape of Summer herself jumping through it. It even had that little hair flick she'd recently added in.
"How could I have done that?" Summer protested, stomping her foot on the ground as she gestured towards the wall. "I've never even been here before!"
"That and it's six feet off the ground" Lunick pointed out, raising an eyebrow in Owari's direction. "I appreciate you busting Sol and I out of a council meeting and all, but for this?"
"It doesn't require your physical presence in order for you to break it" Owari insisted, anger slowly building as he shot Summer a pointed glare "You broke The Fourth Wall!"
Summer looked between Arceus' throughly annoyed messanger and the large grey wall. "This is The Fourth Wall?
Solana's murmurring of "Please don't fight" was duly ignored.
A vein in Owari's forehead nearly exploded. "OF COURSE IT'S THE FOURTH WALL YOU BLITHERING IDIOT! WHAT IN GIRATINA'S REALM DID YOU THINK IT WAS?"
"Well how was I supposed to know it was The Fourth Wall!" Summer defended herself "I mean it's hardly got 'FOURTH WALL - DO NOT TOUCH' written on it, has it!" She placed both hands on her hips and sent Owari's glare right back at him. "I guessing you built this thing?"
Owari scoffed. "Of course."
"Well then why couldn't you make it a bit more conspicuous!" Summer complained "Couldn't you have painted it something a bit more, well, special? I mean, look at this place!" Her arms waved around in the air madly as she gestured to the oh-so-grey Betwixt and Between in general. "You could've at least done some redecorating so everyone knew about your precious Fourth Wall!"
"No" Owari kept his arms folded and grunted "Arceus wanted it grey. So it's grey. And besides, the whole point of The Fourth Wall being here is to protect it from those who seek to damage it. It was hardly be so easily protected if it was neon pink, now would it?"
"I'm more interested in the fact this thing is made of brick" Solana stated, folding her arms also as her red eyes assessed the damage to the broken Fourth Wall. "I thought it was supposed to be a concept, not a physical thing."
Owari side-eyed her. "Just because it's a human concept doesn't necessarily mean it isn't real."
As Solana pondered this idea, Lunick just shrugged. "Whatever. I've seen way too much to be surprised anymore these days. In my head though it was always just a white shimmering curtain of stuff."
"Well that would defeat the purpose of calling it 'The Fourth Wall', dear" Solana replied "In that case we'd have to call it 'The Fourth White Shimmering Curtain Of Stuff', and I'm so no one, certainly not the author, would appreciate having to write that down all the time."
The Fourth Wall spat out another brick which Summer couldn't help but think made the silhouette in the bricks look rather like her but with an outline for Solana's ponytail.
Owari looked livid. "YOU IMBECILES!"
"I mean, I get that 'wall' is short and to the point" Lunick either didn't hear Owari's shriek or didn't care as he started up a debate with Solana. "Like a wall - small but strong. But a curtain's got that mystical—"
"This wall is by no means small" Solana coolly pointed out, looking up to where the wall vanished into the clouds above.
Lunick groaned and face-palmed, the image of an emo teenager. "Fine - thin. Is that good enough for you?"
"Very much, dear" was Solana's response.
Summer unsuccessfully tried not to laugh at the pointless retorts. "Guys, guys! Calm down! You're acting like Mr and Mrs Incredible, in which case I better Mr Freeze."
The Fourth Wall coughed up another brick, Summer's silhouette now loosing an ear.
"YOU MANIACS!" Owari wailed "YOU'RE BREAKING IT!"
"What's so wrong with that?" Lunick asked, genuinely curious, even if it didn't come off that way. "Are we expecting a Titan to come through or something?"
Another brick. Now Summer's silhouette's head looked highly disproportionate.
"THE FABRIC OF TIME AND SPACE WILL UNRAVEL!" Owari shrieked.
"Really?" Summer asked.
Owari then sagged forwards, his shoulders slumped as he corrected himself in a much lower voice. "Well not a much as I'd like. But if a crowd of people walked through they'd get the floor dirty. Do you have any idea how hard it is to clean glass floors?"
"So this is about your OCD?" Summer asked so flatly it was barely a question. "Really? That's why we're here?"
Owari grimaced. "That and the author is trying to come up with half-assed plot for this ridiculous one-shot in the hope the little voice in the back of their head will shut up about updating a new chapter for the multitude of stories that remain unfinished."
The Fourth Wall didn't just spit out a brick - this time it full on launched a brick that came within an inch of Owari's head.
"Did it throw a brick at you?" Solana raised an eyebrow. "I'm serious. I'm not the only one who saw that, am I?"
"It throws temper tantrums from time to time" Owari explained "Particularly when someone mentions the author."
This time, the next brick to be flung in their general direction landed on Owari's bare foot. Automatically the dead twelve-year-old winced and gripped his injured foot. It was an impressive reaction to something landing on your foot. Most people would be screaming and wailing and insisting on being carted off the emergency room.
"I have a question" Ben spoke up, raising his hand "Why are we capitalising The Fourth Wall? I mean is it a living entity of something?"
Both Ben and Summer jumped at that point. Ben to dodge the brick The Fourth Wall tossed towards his face; Summer in utter surprise.
"Oh Arceus, you're here too!" she heaved, pressing a hand to her chest as her heart beat at thousands of miles an hour.
Ben wrinkled his nose in disgruntlement. "Yeah? I've been here since the beginning of the story."
Summer shot him a disbelieving stare. "You have?"
"Yes" Ben nodded, still rather disgruntled at the fact everyone had forgotten about him. Honestly, he was starting to feel like a minor character. "Don't you remember?"
Summer thought back to the beginning of the story.
...At this present point in time, she, Solana, Ben, Lunick and Owari were somewhat occupied—
Wait a minute.
...she, Solana, Ben, Lunick and Owari...
Oh.
Summer didn't even have a chance to apologise before another section of The Fourth Wall collapsed, causing the pair of them to cower behind Lunick.
A silhouette of Ben now joined the disfigured Summer shape in the wall.
"It screwed up my hair" Ben muttered, which he figured was less likely to get him a brick to the head than: "I didn't even say anything that bad. It was all Summer's head talking."
"Are we supposed to be fixing this thing?" Lunick asked, now sounding a bit irritated, as if Owari had dragged him out of bed too early on Saturday morning for nothing. "Because in the time we've been here, I think we've wrecked Thy Wall-y-ness more than Summer even broke it in the first place. So can I just leave or something?"
Owari breathed through his teeth and slowly put his foot down on the floor, though trying to avoid putting any weight on it. "I think you misunderstand the reason you're all here."
Lunick rolled his eyes. "Oh goodie."
Solana elbowed him in the side lightly.
"I don't trust any of you fix it properly, I'm no doubt going to be saddled with that job again" Owari cleared his throat and explained. "My purpose of bringing you all here is for you to learn a vital lesson."
Summer leant over to Ben and whispered: "I thought we already graduated school?"
"Shut up, I don't wanna die via a wall" Ben murmured back. Then, after a pause, added: "And for the record, I graduated school. You never attended in the first place."
"My point," Owari said loudly to silence them "Is that breaking The Fourth Wall does not equate to character development. It's just cheap humour. It. Has. Consequences."
Summer at least had the decency to look abashed. Lunick just glared back at Owari unapologetically.
Solana looked at Lunick curiously, and then at Owari. "And what does this have to do with us?"
Owari breathed deeply through his nose in what could onto be a display of extreme self control. "Well maybe because Summer here and your dear 'Lunie' are serial offenders in this branch of immorality."
"No, no, I knew that" Everyone stared at Solana and the fact the normally shy girl and the nerve to cut off Owari before he had finished his paragraph. Usually only Kellyn just get away with stuff like that. "I mean, what are Ben and I doing here?"
Owari blinked once, as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing, before answering: "Because no doubt neither of them are going to give two hoots about what I have to say, so I'm relying of the pair of you to be reasonable and implement my warnings to leave The Wall alone or The Wall will seek revenge on you."
The Fourth Wall rumbled mysteriously, as if supporting Owari's threat.
Ben raised his hand again, before realising he didn't need to and just spoke up. "Er...Apparently I'm pretty mentally unstable in this series. I really don't think 'reasonable' is a correct assumption about me— Arceus dammit! Leave me alone!"
The last part was directed at The Fourth Wall when a brick hit his shoulder at full speed.
"It was you or Nema" Owari explained shortly.
Nursing his aching shoulder, Ben nodded in understanding. "Oh, yeah. Yeah, you picked right."
Owari pinched the bridge of his nose and gestured to a shiny portal that opened to his right. "You all got that? Good. Now leave."
"Wait, you're letting us go?" Summer asked, confused.
"Yes" Owari groaned, rubbing his forehead as if in pain. "And now you're giving me a migraine. So please, can everyone who's alive, please return to wherever the hell I found you. And if I catch you breaking The Wall again I'll break your legs. Now leave, for Arceus' sake, leave!"
Summer and Ben glanced at each other before running through the portal, hoping Owari wasn't going to change his mind. In an instant they were out of the tense atmosphere of the Betwixt and Between and straight into the ocean of Oblivia where they'd just escaped from that abandoned submarine.
Now why Owari couldn't just drop them off on the approaching Union instead of in the ocean they put down to Owari's selfishness and generally not being a nice person.
(After all, anyone who goes up and tell an eleven-year-old to their face that they were never meant to exist - best-friends-in-a-past-life or otherwise - can only be summed up as 'generally not a nice person')
As the portal closed behind the two alive rangers, Lunick coughed awkwardly and asked Owari. "So, you gonna make one of those for us or...?"
"No" Owari groaned, turning away from him and Solana and putting his head in his hands. "I have a sentient wall to fix and I'm sick of seeing your faces. Both of you disappear before I do something drastic."
What Lunick said next cannot be reiterated in a rated T fiction.
Solana stared at him, outraged, and rightly punched him hard on the shoulder. "Lunick! You can't say that to a child!"
"He's not a child - he just dresses up like one!" Lunick protested "And besides, he deserved it!"
"He's Arceus' messenger!" Solana gasped.
"So what!" Lunick threw both hands in the air "He's an Original Character!"
The Fourth Wall spat out another brick, hitting Lunick in his other shoulder.
"Apologise!" Solana insisted as Lunick scowled at The Wall.
Lunick rolled his eyes. "Fine, you big baby!"
The dead ranger walked over to Owari patted him on the back. "Sorry about that, short stack."
Owari's answer was a long groan that encouraged Solana and Lunick to leave the area hastily, Solana mouthing an apology to The Fourth Wall for all the damage (because for all she knew, it could see her or sense people's remorse or something. It was a sentient wall, how was she supposed to know?)
Owari reached around to his back and peeled a post-it note off of his jumper. It simply read: "Kick Me".
"I hate him" he grumbled "I hate him so much."
(Lunick spent the next six days hiding out in a corner of Giratina's Realm designated for hard-core Bronies. He figured that would be the one place Owari wouldn't enter as part of a murder attempt to kill a person who was already dead)
As Owari leant his head against an intact piece of The Forth Wall, the wall shuddered sympathetically and would've put an arm around his hunched shoulders if a wall was capable of having arms.
"I don't deserve this" he sighed "I really don't, do I?"
The Fourth Wall shuddered again in sympathy.
Arceus knows it was more experienced in the art of being not deserving of everything it got than any other sentient being in the history of every universe.
Those damn fanfiction writers.