Eragon: The Remix
By Exostaff and Elliekin
(Heavily edited by Elliekin, mainly for the preservation of a certain naval officer's dignity.)
Disclaimer: Nothing you recognise belongs to us. Black, Red and Purple the ninjas are ours, but heck, we're not the suing kind. ;) Also, beware, for there is the infamous Learning of Names by Osmosis. We tried to avoid it, but things got complicated. So bewaaaare!
Once upon a time, a young lad named Eragon was walking through some mountains when he found a shiny rock. Somehow, it managed to be at one and the same time both 'flawless' and run through with creamy white flaws. These would later turn out to be formed of the same substance as the main part of the stone, but right now he wasn't to know that, and so the apparent contradiction was making his eyes water.
So it was that he did not notice the ninja until it was too late.
The lithe, black-clad and nameless figure leapt out from behind a tree, flinging a Ninja Knife© with deadly aim at Eragon's throat. The boy slumped into the snow, and never darkened a publisher's door again.
The ninja stood there for a few minutes, shivering. It was quite cold and airless so high up in the mountains, and now he was here he found that he actually had no idea what he had come for. It was as if mere author's whim had dropped him at this fateful turn.
He wasn't left to muse for long, though, as a second ninja leapt out of nowhere, in a furious flurry of vaguely Japanese-sounding words. This one had, for some reason, a red outfit, though in every other respect he was identical in appearance to the first ninja.
However, the red ninja had shiroukens.
The black ninja pulled a dictionary out of his pocket, as he was doubtful as to whether his opponent had spelled the name of the weapon correctly. Sadly, this moment of distraction provided the perfect opportunity for the red ninja to own the black ninja. With extreme prejudice.
A second later, a purple-clad ninja popped out of the ground, and the ultimate showdown of Red vs. Purple commenced. What with the crimson, the mauve, the sable, and the blood in the snow, it was all very goffik.
The egg--- uh, sorry, rock lay forgotten in a snowdrift.
Cold white powder sprayed in all directions, as the two ninjas leapt and soared and threw things at each other.
"Throwing star! Throwing star! Throwing star!" screeched Purple over-excitedly, as he (or she; the exact gender of the ninjas was never determined) hurled these objects at Red.
"They're called 'shiroukens', you moron," shouted Red, ducking the offending weapons and launching his own supply.
"Is that even how you spell it?" demanded Purple.
"Why don't you get a dictionary out and check?" Red suggested craftily.
Purple reached towards his pocket, then shook his head, still zigzagging to present a hard target. "Oh no you don't! I'm not going to be caught out by that same old trick!" He somersaulted over a tree branch, flipped a couple more times just to show off, and aimed a flying kick at Red. "You shouldn't be using words you don't even know how to spell!"
"It's been phonetically transcripted from the original Japanese," retorted Red, pausing only to stop, drop and roll. "I can spell it how I want."
It should be mentioned at this point that a third figure was making his tired, solitary way up the freezing mountainside, blue fingers clutching his equally blue frock coat tightly about his body against the cold. He'd had to rescue his hat and wig a fair few times during the trek up the slope, but at least his thick sea-boots were keeping his feet reasonably dry.
What Commodore Norrington was doing up a mountain, in full naval gear, in an Eragon fanfic, was anyone's guess.
He certainly had no idea.
It was Purple who saw him first, as Red was currently occupied in rolling uncontrollably over a precipice, trailing exclamation marks. However, to put the reader's mind at ease I will reveal that he did in fact survive the fall, though he sustained selective amnesia, retrained as a doctor and lived to a ripe old age with only a vague distrust of the colour purple as souvenir of this auspicious day.
Purple ran up to Norrington, and raised an eyebrow. "Who are you, and what are you doing up this random sinister mountain in the middle of a badly-designed fantasy world?"
"To the first question, Commodore James Norrington of His Majesty's Royal Navy, at your service," said Norrington, offering his hand. Purple examined it in confusion for a long moment, until it was withdrawn. "As to the second," admitted Norrington, "I was rather hoping you'd be able to tell me the same thing."
"Sorry, mate," said Purple, shrugging regretfully. "I don't even know what I'm doing here."
The Commodore suddenly dropped his eyelids in a long-suffering expression, before lifting them again and saying dryly: "And lo and behold, my day gets infinitely worse."
"What?" said Purple, momentarily offended. "What did I do?" Then he realised that Norrington was looking over his shoulder, and turned to see—
—A broad grin, khol-rimmed eyes and black dreadlocks that clinked with beads and trinkets. Purple blinked. The newcomer threw a snowball at him.
"Commodore Ice-Cream!" exclaimed the pirate, with every outward apparition of delight. "Long time, no see!"
"Not by my choosing, Sparrow," said the Commodore bluntly, "though I had hoped our next meeting would be at the end of a rope."
Jack Sparrow spread his arms wide in a jovial gesture. "Getting tired of your little Navy ships sailing in the Pearl's bilge water?" he asked mockingly.
Purple, who had an overdeveloped sense of self-preservation, began to edge out of the way.
Fortunately, outright carnage was averted by an odd, squeaky little voice calling: "Yoo-hoo!"
Three heads turned towards the sound, each with equally quizzical expressions. The voice continued to speak; now they could see that it came from a tall, slender elven woman with dark hair and a slightly dazed expression. She was clutching what the modern audience, if not the characters, would recognise as a video remote control. "Yoo-hoo! Boys! I seem to have gotten a little lost."
"What is this, a convention?" asked Purple rhetorically. He was beginning to get confused by all the cameos.
"I'm Arwen," she said, "and I'm extremely OOC. But heck, who cares! I have a… thing…" (here she waved the remote) "…that will solve all your problems! Or maybe just one of them. Or even cause more problems than it solves. Or whatever."
"You're going to wave a box at us?" said Norrington doubtfully.
"Nein, nein, mein herr," said Arwen. "You hate him, right?" She pointed to Norrington and Jack.
"I'd be lying to say that we're on the best of terms," agreed Norrington, in the tone of one vying for the Understatement Of The Year trophy.
"He's jealous of me," supplied Jack, out of the blue. The Commodore glared at him.
Arwen clapped her hands. "Then I'll just fast-forward you to when you get over it!" She brandished the remote control, no hint of a joke in her voice.
Norrington looked slightly alarmed. "I don't think—"
Arwen ignored him and pressed the button; for some reason, a beam of green light shot out and engulfed the startled Commodore. Purple watched in shock, and Jack looked on in slightly worried amusement. Still, nothing happened for a moment, except that Norrington froze and his face flickered with emotions that passed too swiftly to read. Then, briefly, his eyes widened and his hair and clothes dripped with water. Now he was standing in a puddle, which was quickly freezing in the cold, and his face tended more and more often towards the negative end of the spectrum of emotions. His uniform and general appearance became more faded, more dirty, more frayed and more dishevelled. His hair grew; at one point he sported quite a handsome beard, but that vanished almost as soon as it sprouted.
It was quite tragic and interesting to watch.
"I don't think you're doing him any good," ventured Purple hesitantly, as some tarnished gold brocade fell off the frock-coat.
"Do you think he's over it yet?" asked Jack casually, looking sideways at Arwen.
The elf shrugged, and pressed play. Norrington ceased his over-rapid ageing, wobbled, caught sight of Jack, balled his fists and punched him.
That done, he scowled and said: "Damn." It wasn't a word he would have indulged in as Commodore, but right now it felt like a concise and fairly accurate way of putting across his feelings. He glared at Arwen. "What did you want to do that for?"
"Damn!" exclaimed Jack, clutching his jaw and looking insulted. Honestly, usually people just slapped him and left it at that! "What did you want to do that for?"
Further battle and doom was, once again, averted by a random newcomer. This one, however, was in the form of a huge white blob in the sky, which grew rapidly larger until an enormous structure was landing on a relatively flat patch of snow. It wobbled alarmingly on the unstable surface, and then managed to settle. As our heroes watched incredulously, a door in its surface slid open in a cloud of white steam, out of which emerged a motley crowd. One of those there present was a man wearing a dressing-gown and a sulky expression.
"Well, it's not my fault," he was protesting. "All I did was to ask what the odds were that we'd land in a place that doesn't actually exist."
"Arthur, you seem to have forgotten what ship we're flying," said a brown-haired woman, in a talking-to-children voice.
"All I'm saying is that I didn't think an offhand remark would…" Arthur persisted, apparently intent on restoring his good name.
"Zip it, monkey-man." A third figure had pushed his way to the front and was surveying the landscape; this job was made easier by the fact that he had, bizarrely, seen fit to grow two heads. "I don't think much of the real estate," he added disapprovingly, hands on his hips and a third stroking his chin in what he probably thought was an impressively thoughtful gesture. "In fact, this is a dump. What is this dump?"
"That fact… is what all of us have been fiddlin' around trying to ascertain," said Jack, sidling companionably over to the two-headed man. "So, you say this is a ship? I'll believe anything, me. Any word as to where she might next be making port?"
"No idea," said the man, glaring at Arthur. "Although…" He raised his voice. "Wouldn't it be amazing and improbable if we beat the odds once again and landed someplace where I can quickly become disgustingly rich?"
"Gee, Zaphod," said the last man sarcastically. He, as Purple was relieved to note, had only the usual number of heads and limbs. "You know, I've always admired your subtlety, but that was a new high."
Jack Sparrow was looking nonchalant, but Purple could've sworn that his ears had pricked up at the word "rich". "And would this venture o' yours be suffering from a captain-shaped hole?" he inquired. "And, as a matter of vital importance, do you have any rum?"
"Oh, dear," came a dry voice from beside Purple. Norrington had been staring at Zaphod's two heads and wondering if his mind had finally broken, but now his eyes were back on Jack and he was looking distinctly unimpressed. He addressed the newcomers without preamble. "Don't believe a word he says. He's a liar, a cheat and a pirate."
"Ah, a carbon-based being after my own heart," said Zaphod, looking pleased. "Rum, you say? Absolutely not. We have far better than that. Have you ever tried a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster?"
"Can't say I have, mate," said Jack, whose original crestfallenness at the mention of no rum had evolved into a curious hope. Meanwhile, Norrington rolled his eyes and crossed his arms in irritated frustration.
Zaphod looked genuinely shocked. "Well, then, we have to remedy that! You've never been drunk until you've been Gargle Blaster drunk." He led Jack through the doorway, closely followed by Ford, who was not about to miss a booze-up, and Arthur, who after all was standing in the snow in a dressing-gown and didn't want to continue doing so than for longer than was absolutely necessary.
That just left the woman, Trillian, who matched Norrington's exasperated look rolling eye for rolling eye. "You might as well come on board," she told Purple and the ex-commodore, waving her hand vaguely to beckon them in. "They're going to be at this for a while, now your friend's started them off."
Purple gave Norrington a helpless look, before trailing inside. The man muttered to himself for a few more seconds, scowling at the ship and at various inoffensive trees, before deciding that he'd do better to swallow his pride and go inside than stay out here until his fingers froze off.
All now aboard, the ship steamed shut its doors and lifted away in search of a place where Zaphod Beeblebrox could quickly become disgustingly rich, but not before the entire Spine mountain range had played host to an invasion of very small, brightly-coloured candy canes, which thanks to their voracious and carnivorous appetites played havoc with the already precarious ecosystem, sending the entire fantasy world into rapid, crashing decline. What were the odds?
A few hours after the hungry sweets had swept through that area like a plague of rainbow-striped locusts, there was a strange sound.
It sounded like: Hruu-UUUH! Hruu-UUUH! Hruu-UUUH!
The first thing to appear was a bright light, which resolved itself into something like a lantern, perched high in the air. No, not in the air: on top of a square blue box, a police public call box, which had appeared in a loud and remarkable noise which wailed away as the police box solidified.
The door opened, and a face peered out. It was curious and wearing specs.
"Am I late?" asked the Doctor.
fin
Epilogue
After drinking three Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters, Jack Sparrow challenged Purple (rather incoherently) to a duel to settle once and for all the age-old dispute: which is cooler, pirates or ninjas. Purple reluctantly complied, but the battle was declared a draw when the Heart of Gold turned them both – if only for a couple of days – into Puffskeins.
Norrington also sampled a Gargle Blaster, and spent the rest of the night soliloquizing to Marvin on the theme of the woes of life. He wandered off in annoyance, however, when he realised that Marvin was a world champion complainer – and because there are only so many times one can take the phrase "this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left side" before wanting to go away and shoot something. The undead monkey, sadly, declined the offer.
Zaphod and Ford, predictably, got absolutely sloshed and whiled away the night by singing the Hedgehog Song.
Arthur and Trillian got an early night, though they were each kept awake for quite a while by aforementioned rendition of the Hedgehog Song.
Arwen was rescued by the PPC, and spent a week in the Department of Fictional Psychology until she was deemed fit and IC enough to be released back into Middle-earth.
And the Doctor went away and faced incredible danger, but pulled through with extreme heroism and snappy dress-sense and saved the world again just in time for tea.