A/N: Welcome to the first and most likely only Inheritance fanfic that I will ever write. There are several reasons for this. One, the ending of the last book severely pissed me off (I mean, really, who just goes and puts the main character in exile at the end?) and I felt like fully exploiting the open-endedness of Paolini's conclusion. Two, I try to keep my writing as canon as possible, so you can expect that there will be no flat-out disregard for any information thus stated as fact from the books. Three, Mary Sues annoy me and I find that the Inheritance page is so full of them it's not even funny.

However (and this is the part where you get to call me a hypocrite), this fic does have an OC protagonist who is female and has nothing to do with the canon plot whatsoever.

In my defense, she's completely useless, she has no idea what's going on, she's not particularly attractive, and I refuse to write a romance in this fic. It will be purely humor, adventure, and plot-twists and cliffies galore. No pairings. Ever.

Four, I hate all words that end with -ance and -ence and even -once, because I cannot keep them straight in my head.

With that, I hope you enjoy the story, laugh some, get frustrated with Elise's teenage insanity, and have at least one jaw-drop moment by the end.

Review please!


CHAPTER 1

Have you ever just been sitting around one day, completely minding your own business, when you were suddenly forced to wish you'd been prepared? I mean, take stock of the situation: are you wearing something practical? Do you possess the necessary implements for the occasion? Do you have a bag in which to carry it all? Is it too heavy? How about a weapon? Do you have one? Are you capable of using it?

I never asked myself these questions—I didn't ever feel the obligation to. My crazy cousin Genesis did, of course, always saying, "You never know when you'll get whisked off to another dimension and have to fight off gangsters and fire-breathing goats and break into a fantastic medieval ball in order to steal a magic scroll that will transport you back home, and if you don't have a gold necklace to exchange for a fancy dress, a big stick you can use as a weapon, and an inconspicuous bag to hold some rations and stuff so you don't starve to death, how the heck are you supposed to get back home then?"

In my defense, who else would believe a person like that?

Regardless, she can have as many gold necklaces and Swiss army knives as she wants, but it won't do anyone a favor worth beans if you don't actually have it with you in the moment when you do end up getting whisked off. Like in the shower, for example.

And of course, with my luck, that's exactly where I was when it happened.

But I'm getting a little ahead of myself—people say that when telling a story, you're supposed to start at the beginning, but that's not true. You have to set the stage first. I mean, who's ever heard of a play starting if the audience couldn't tell the difference between Juliet and that bloke that carries the props on and off? My point precisely.

So how's this for a stage: it's the twenty-first century, and our heroine is the rather nondescript 16-year-old Elise Thomason; blonde-haired, blue-eyed resident of 28 Elephant Avenue (it's a stupid name, I know) in sunny Miami, Florida.

Although in the summer, it's more like "so sunny that you'll probably spontaneously combust if you go outside without first bracing yourself" Miami, Florida. And most people do this by taking a really cold shower in the morning before they go out for the day.

So there I was, sitting on my couch downstairs in my pajamas, chowing on watermelon. I glanced at the clock—9:30—and yanked out my phone again. Genesis (that crazy cousin of mine? Yeah, she was visiting us at the time) was supposed to text me when she got to my neighborhood so that we could head out to the beach together. She was only going to be here for another week, and we figured we ought to spend a little more time with one another before she headed back to Canada. (How she stands the cold up there, I have no idea.)

With a groan, I threw my phone onto the table and got up. I might as well shower before she got here versus after.

Six minutes later, I was chilling under my showerhead, rinsing out my shampoo and wishing I'd at least brought my phone with me to the bathroom. It's always really awkward whenever an expected guest shows up and you can't get the door because you're presently…well…otherwise occupied.

I spent the next few moments contemplating the origins of the universe and studying my shower curtain. It was pink and flowery, which I thought was unfortunate, but my parents had put it in when I was eight years old and refused to go buy another one until this one was pretty much in shreds. I'd considered taking a pair of scissors to it at one point or another, but I figured that they'd know it was me and then just make me shower without one.

That's about when the spinning started.

At first, it was pretty hard to tell anything was happening, but of course the dizziness hit before realization did. Blue tiles, white bathtub—the colors started mixing and swirling and I honestly thought I was having a seizure or something. The odd thing was, I was still completely aware of myself, and when the floor actually seemed to be moving, my feet were getting pulled around as well. Like it actually was.

I'd like to say I didn't scream, but even though I seemed to have gone deaf, I could still feel myself tearing my throat to shreds. My expression probably could've resembled something of a terrified-little-girl-horse-monster too.

I reached out for the nearest solid object to try and keep my balance—which turned out to be my stupid shower curtain, as the walls were anything but solid at the time—and then I was falling. Not falling like I'd slipped or something, and not falling like a hole had opened up in the ground beneath me either. It was more like I was moving at a really high speed through space, in which case I couldn't actually tell what constituted as up or down and therefore couldn't actually call the sensation "falling".

Well, couldn't call it "falling" until I "landed". Because if you hit the ground after moving really fast, you must have been travelling in a downwards direction, correct?

I twisted my ankle on impact and then fell onto my side, bruising my elbow and my hip. I might have nearly dislocated my shoulder even, but besides the shock of pain, the first thing I noticed was that I was still clutching that stupid shower curtain. The second was probably that I wasn't really that wet anymore, which was lucky, as I seemed to have landed in a bunch of dirt on the edge of some forest. At least I assumed it was the edge. I knew nothing about forests, or mountains for that matter, and there were several of them that rose up just barely thirty feet from where I was. Huge mountains.

Third thing I noticed was this sparkly silver thing somewhere above my head that made me think of Genesis' tinfoil hat. She liked to wear it around in case someone tried to read her mind. (She's got issues, honestly. Once she tried to convince me that the power of grammar—at least that's what it sounded like—was going to overwhelm the planet at some point, giving rise to new sentient species. Maybe the Modern Language Association was planning world domination or something. But I digress.) Turns out the silver thing was in fact the shower rod, which I'd somehow managed to actually rip off the wall when I was teleported away.

Fourth thing I noticed was that I was still…how do I say it…in my shower gown. Which made me extremely glad that I had that curtain with me, and that was probably the first and last time I'd ever think that.

"What the hell?" I said out loud, and the sound of my voice helped calm me down a fraction. "Genesis?" I called out hesitantly, trying to keep my mind on normal things, like going to the beach with my cousin, in order to keep myself from completely losing it. Thinking about Genesis and her tinfoil hat and how much I wished I had some clothes reminded me of her dire warnings about inter-dimensional travel and fire-breathing goats, though, which only managed to freak me out yet again.

I'm not actually entirely sure how long I lay there on the ground with my shower curtain like a blanket, but it must've been at least an hour because I remember getting uncomfortably warm underneath the morning sun. "Maybe I'm in Yellowstone," I giggled. I wasn't. I'd never gone to Yellowstone and probably never would.

I eventually aroused myself enough to consider attempting to convert my shower curtain into a dress of some sort, so that I could actually get up and try to find my way back home. There was no sign of any other human beings in the vicinity, and I didn't want to wait until someone showed up before rendering myself "decent".

I tried wrapping it around and tucking in the corner like a towel, but that totally failed and fell off the second I stood up. Then I tried tying two of the corners together and wearing it like a toga, and that was a slight improvement. The problem was mainly that the curtain was much too wide and left me feeling extremely exposed. "I need a belt," I scolded myself. I didn't want to use anything from the forest or anything, because I'm just stupid enough to pick up poison ivy or deadly nightshade or an equally dangerous botanical specimen, and then I noticed the shower rings. If I took them off and stuck them together, I could make a chain that would work as a belt, couldn't I?

It took me a little less than a minute to detach them from the curtain and then stick them together, and in the end the belt, it turned out, didn't work—that shower curtain was just way too big. I sighed in irritation. "Okay…back to the towel."

See, the shower rings had given me an idea. I wrapped the curtain around myself just like I had before, and lined up the holes in the hem as best I could. With a snap, I clipped one of the rings to a collection of holes, which essentially held each layer together. I clipped on another on my other side, then twisted the thing around and clipped on two more nearly opposite the first and second…and then I connected all four rings with the remaining ones I had, slung them over my shoulders and did a few twirls to admire my handiwork.

A shower curtain dress with shower ring straps. I know how jealous you are.

Clothing issue solved, and feeling extremely accomplished, I glanced around to decide on the best direction to set out in and my eyes landed on the shower rod. I considered. Besides the fact that anything long and stick-like and really strong is a lot of fun to play with, a staff like that could be used as a walking stick, a weapon, or any number of other things. Poles are useful. Pipes are useful. And on top of all that, this one was made of metal. Which means it was shiny.

It was the shininess that convinced me to take it along, I'll have you know. Since it had been sitting out in the sun for about an hour, though, it was really hot. I nearly burned my fingers on it, then decided to break my "touch nothing" rule and use a leaf from a nearby tree to pick it up.

I felt like such an awesome survival person. And then I started trying to actually walk around and my ankle gave one massive throb of protest, followed by my hip. "I will not be deterred!" I assured the rocks on the ground loudly. "I intend to get out of here, and I will do it right now." Or two minutes from now, I thought lazily, and then, No! Go NOW! Alright…NOW. Okay, on the count of three…one…two…three…NOW. Okay so maybe a count of like…ten…

I am a despicable human being. Or maybe I'm just a teenager. Either way, I'd estimate it took me about six minutes to attempt using the pole as a cane, and after that another three to figure out how to use it properly. Then, and only then, did I set out—having had the brilliant idea of climbing up the mountain partway in order to get a better view of the surrounding lands.

It was a weary climb, to be sure, but my ankle and my hip were holding up okay and I had yet to trip on some poor tree root as the land appeared too rocky on the place I'd chosen to climb. It occurred to me once that it might've been a trail I was walking on, and that was a good sign. Hopefully I'd run into somebody sooner or later that could tell me where I was.

"Hello?" I called out experimentally, not really expecting anyone to answer. No one did.

I stopped at a slight hollow in the mountain where I could rest my ankle on some level ground. There weren't any fallen trees or boulders where I could sit, though. It was just a big patch of dirt and grass, a lot like the one I'd first landed in, although this one had a less-than-suspicious lack of trees. I turned around.

The sun wasn't too high in the sky, but the air was cool and the sky a bright blue, so I sort of assumed it was morning, around the same time as it was back in Miami. I wasn't sure if that was good or bad. If I'd been teleported instantaneously, that meant I was in the same time zone, though I could be anywhere from North Carolina to New York. Or even Canada.

Canada, huh? I thought to myself. So what would Genesis do, then?

"Orient herself," I answered my question out loud. I glanced back at the sun. If I faced away from the mountains, it was directly in my eyes. So assuming it was morning, that direction had to be east. Hey, I may be a city girl, but I know a thing or two about survival. If knowing the cardinal directions somehow amounts to me surviving.

Yeah, I know. I'm kidding myself.

I couldn't see much to the north or south except desert, and way off to the west, which I could just barely glimpse from my vantage point, were more mountains. Did that mean I was on a lone mountain that had sort of strayed too far from the range? Or was I just on the very tip of said range, facing out into nothing?

I'd like to say I had some great epiphany about the fragileness or futility of life, or even perhaps the value of solitude whilst standing by myself in the middle of nowhere wearing a shower curtain and holding a long metal rod. But I didn't, so I can't. I did however get to apply more of my survival skills to the situation. See, as the sun rose, it made random features of the landscape more obvious.

Like a river, for example. I haven't the faintest idea how far away it was, but definitely too far for me to walk. It was running east, or maybe west, because I didn't have a clue what way rivers are supposed to flow. Or even if they're supposed to flow one direction or the other at all. Regardless, that river was off to the north, and parallel to it was a long stand of trees, really narrow, that started from where I'd first landed and marched out towards the sun, like a continuation of the mountains. In...you know...green foliage form. Past the river—to the north, I mean, and back west—was a larger stand of trees that I'm pretty sure I can apply the term "forest" to, though that had to be miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles...you get the idea...away. Like so far away I probably couldn't see it from the ground, and it was only visible because of my high vantage point.

Everything else was either desert, obscured by the glare of the sun, or too far over the horizon to be visible.

"So," I said loudly to myself in as disciplinary a voice I could muster, "where do we go from here, hm?"

I have a habit of talking to myself when I'm alone. Don't judge me. It's easier than thinking the words in your head.

"So you could go to the river, since there's always civilizations that started up because of some river, and if you followed it long enough you'd get to one eventually," I mused, "but maybe that was only in ancient times, and in Egypt, you know, long stretches of the Nile are just desert and I'd probably die of starvation because I'm just that stupid sometimes." I frowned. "Ouch, self, that hurt." I nodded and patted myself on the back. "Sorry, self."

Again: perfectly normal, yes?

But moving on: "And then there's these mountains, and there's plenty of vegetation in the mountains and stuff, so maybe I can find a small village or something," I thought, adding, "although they probably might not most likely won't speak English—" and who's going to judge my grammar out here? Me? Ha. "—so there goes that. I don't even speak Spanish. What the heck is up with that?"

I frowned. "Hola," I said into the silence. No random Mexicans popped up through the rocks and replied, "Sì?" A bird did alight on a nearby boulder and regard me for a second before flying away, though.

"So that just leaves the forest-y thingermabob," I went on to myself, pointing at it with my rod. "Plenty of shade, I guess, so I won't get sunburned." I laughed a little at that. I'm so tan I couldn't burn if you dropped me on the sun.

So maybe that was an exaggeration.

"And there's got to be food, right? As long as I don't eat anything poisonous. Maybe I could hunt, and like...cook a bunny or something." That image did wonders for my stomach, as I'm sure you can imagine. "So...forest it is?"

It came out like a question, but once again, no one answered. So no confirmations there, but no objections either.

One random, rather odd thought pushed its way to the forefront of my mind, and I thought on it for a second. It made me smile.

The hysteria will come later.

I shrugged, decided it wouldn't matter until that "later" came, and set off.


A/N: Next chapter up later today. Things will get more interesting, I promise.