Chapter One: A Call To Arms
"Hey. You. Wake up."
Aragorn groaned. "Just five more minutes, mother..."
"No, seriously. Get up. It's me, your creator."
Aragorn sprang out of bed instantly, blinking away all traces of tiredness. All characters were subject to the will of their authors, and especially those of their creator. Aragorn especially liked his creator, J.R.R. Tolkien, a kindly old man who was always chewing on a pipe, dressed in slacks and a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows. Aragorn dearly loved Tolkien and would have done anything for him, except for the fact that...
"Hang on a second. Didn't you die in the 1980s?"
"Yes," Tolkien continued, "but now I'm back as a god. The author wanted it."
"Who is it? Is it your son?"
"No, it's some young upstart. Goes by the name of Explodingbomb."
Aragorn groaned inwardly. He knew what was coming now. He was trapped in yet another fanfic.
No less than 42,059 people had written stories about him that weren't Tolkien. Well, usually they weren't so much about him or Frodo or any of the rest of the Fellowship as some hot young elf babe the author made up. Most of them seemed to see the world through a curtain of purple prose so thick that Eragon would be ashamed, so they all got described with howlers like "big sweet azure eyes you could drown in" and "hair like a dream of cornsilk blowing in the wind". Aragorn wouldn't have minded this if he got to shack up with them once in a while, but no, they always ended up with Legolas or Boromir. Oh, how it had gone to those two's heads.
Tolkien led Aragorn into a small room, built of white marble. A stage came out from the back of the room, with a white marble table placed on it, with room for five. Five stone chairs were also arrayed in a circle. He left the room and told Aragorn, "Sit down while I bring in the others."
After a short while, Tolkien returned with two younger men. One was a boy of sixteen, dressed all in black, with a long, solemn face and lusterless brown hair. Though he was tall, the hand-and-a-half bastard sword he carried was too long for his hip, and had to be worn over his shoulder. The other was a little older, around eighteen. He wore long black robes, and unlike the other boy he was small and skinny, with rumpled black hair and owlish round glasses. He held a small piece of wood in his hand. Behind the three of them were (presumably) two more authors, one a tall woman with blond hair, dressed in a suit, the other an oldish man with a scruffy beard and stained clothes. "May I present to you Jon Snow, Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, and Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived. These are their authors, George R.R. Martin and J.K. Rowling. Please, have a seat, you two. Authors, take your place on the dais."
Tolkien sat down in the central seat of the long white table, with Rowling on his left and Martin to the far right. Harry started to make conversation with Aragorn. "Ah, so it's another fanfic we're in, is it? Meh, it's not so bad once you get used to it. I have the most fanfic stories ever written, do you know."
"Yes," replied Aragorn. "I pity you. I know what it's like, I've got the seventh most, and they're always bringing in some hot elf or another for their favourite character to bang."
"Yeah, we get a few elves at Hogwarts, but they're lost among the general mix, it's all sorts. Vampires, shape-changers, princesses, you name it. I remember in one fanfic, I got made bisexual, they turned me into an emo they thought was a goth, and then I had to fuck Draco and an uber-pretty goff vampire. That lucky bastard over there doesn't know what it's like, he's only ever had 19 stories."
"BASTARD??" Jon had raised himself from his chair, wrapping his hands round his sword. "Don't call me bastard!"
Another man had just walked into the room. He was a man of twenty, dressed in a sweater and jeans, and he was unnaturally pale with dishevelled bronze hair. He was followed by a middle-aged woman with brown hair, presumably his author, who sat down next to Tolkien (he looked displeased at that). "Yes, you definitely don't want to call him that," he said to Harry. "Jon and I got talking back outside, and he's kind of sensitive about being insulted from his bastard status. His father was some high lord that the king murdered. Thought he was a traitor or something like that." He sat down opposite Aragorn. "So who are you?"
"What, never read Lord of the Rings, pretty boy?" Aragorn smirked. "I am Aragorn, son of Arathorn, King of Gondor. I'm number seven, you got any rank here?"
The man grinned. "Fourth. My name's Edward, by the way. I'm a vampire." He turned back to Harry. "So, you mentioned that you banged a vampire once. What was it like?"
Harry turned his eyes to the floor. "Hated it. And don't think you'll get a free shag out of me, I'm not bisexual no matter what fanfics you've been reading."
The final pair of men who entered were a man in a long leather coat, two pistols in holsters at his side, a cowboy hat on his head and stubble covering his chin. For his author, he had brought a middle-aged man in glasses. When they had taken their places, Tolkien stood up.
"My friends - fellow authors, noble characters - we call you together from disparate genres, from different worlds, from the minds of different authors. Yet we hold you as one alliance, the Fellowship of the Fanfic. Together, you shall be the ones to stamp out the Grand Brotherhood of Darkness."
Jon looked confused. "Grand Brotherhood of Darkness?"
Martin picked up where Tolkien left off. "Your villains wish for revenge. They wish to stamp you - and us - out for good. Together, the five have joined themselves into one united alliance. Sauron. Voldemort. Randall Flagg. James. And for their servants, an army of Others and their wights."
The tall man in the leather coat stood. "Forgive me for interrupting, but what threat could these other villains be? I have seen Randall Flagg, a ruthless assassin with many faces, and I know of his evil, but what threat could the rest be?"
Edward looked lost for a moment. Finally he spoke. "Okay, cowboy, you win. James isn't exactly a threat, never was. My whole series is just angsty romance with my human girlfriend who coincidentally happens to look a lot like my esteemed author, Ms. Stephenie Meyer. I've got no personality either, just a shallow placeholder for teenaged females to project their ideals onto. And to be honest," he grumbled, "I'm not happy about that one bit."
That was when Meyer piped up. "Um, Edward, you're not supposed to like have a personality. You're like meant to be a perfect boyfriend for m - I mean, Bella."
"Hey, leave him alone!" Jon shouted. Meyer quailed. "I come from a complex fantasy series with deep plots and characterization, so I can't really pretend to empathize with him. But nonetheless, Martin left me thinking that everyone should have a unique personality. Stay with me, Ed, we'll get you some personality soon enough."
J.K. Rowling interrupted by saying, "This has gone on long enough. We shall just give them their mission now. The villains are setting their sights on each others' worlds. We've got Sauron pouring orcs into my Earth, while we have Others stirring up trouble in Meyer's alternate world. Randall Flagg is raising armies in Westeros, and we also have James taking evil vampires to Mr. King's quasi-Wild West, and finally there's Voldemort converting Death Eaters in Middle-Earth."
King, the middle-aged man who'd brought the cowboy into the room, was the last to talk. "We shall send you to fight villains in each other's worlds. Roland, I will open this door now. Go to Westeros. Find the man in black."
Roland stepped through the door and vanished. Aragorn and Jon followed, Aragorn presumably heading for Rowling's Earth and Jon for Meyer's. Harry followed after them, headed for Middle-Earth. Edward was the last to go. As he was about to step in the door, a brilliant shaft of sunlight caught him and made his skin glitter like diamonds.
Tolkien was agape. "Is he - "
"Yeah," Meyer replied. "He's like meant to sparkle, he's like a vampire. Duh."
The other authors could not contain their laughter.