~*Q*~
"Hey, Jaeris. Have you ever thought about the fourth wall?"
Jaeris didn't answer. He was sitting on Linkara's reviewing sofa, plucking strings on his guitar. Linkara stood nearby as he set up the cameras for a future review.
"Jaeris," Linkara pressed.
"Hunh?"
"I said, have you ever thought about the fourth wall?" he repeated.
"Don't make me get all meta when I'm half-drunk, Linkara," Jaeris groused. "It makes the hangover worse."
"Bear with me, okay?" Linkara insisted. "Have we ever had The Talk? No, not that one," he said at Jaeris's shocked look, "the other one, about our reality, the definition of reality, what's fact and what's fiction, etc. I made sure to go over it with the others. It freaked 90s Kid out a little."
"Like, if we understand the rules of breaking reality?" Jaeris clarified. Linkara nodded. "'Course I do. Breaking the fourth wall is pretty much a requirement for any reviewer."
"Oh. Right. And you're just okay with it?"
"Mm," Jaeris agreed. He picked up a wine bottle and tipped it upside down hopefully, but it was bone dry. He sighed. "Well, I can't say I'm comfortable with being just a guy in a costume, but - "
"No, no, STOP!" Linkara yelled in a panic.
The gunslinger had a hand on his holster before he knew it. "Don't do that!"
"You're not supposed to break that fourth wall," Linkara said anxiously. "That one is sacred!"
"Huh? I don't - "
"POLLO!"
The old robot body on the bookshelf flashed, and Pollo's consciousness took over. "What, Linkara?"
"Check the Outer Wall's vitals. There might be a crack in it."
Pollo blinked on and off, doing a scan. Jaeris sat in confusion, wishing he wasn't out of alcohol.
"All clear," Pollo said eventually. "That was close. Be on your guard. I have to get back to Linksano; we are discussing the King of Worms." The robot saluted and went still.
"What was that?!" Jaeris demanded.
Linkara let out a big breath. "Okay, obviously you don't know everything about the Fourth Wall...or, walls. Let me explain.
"So we break the fourth wall and reference the theme and stuff all the time, right?" Linkara didn't wait for an answer. "That's called the Inner Wall, the thing we break during reviews. Like, mentioned the plot that happens only before and after I'm done? But beyond that is an even bigger wall. One that encompasses not only the review, but the entire episode…"
"Oh!" Jaeris' eyes lit up. "You mean like mentioning our act - "
"Don't say it," Linkara threatened. "You could break reality as we know it!"
Jaeris frowned. "What if it's already too late? Have you been noticing how strange the air feels today?"
Linkara looked around suspiciously. He tapped the wall, then wet his finger to test the air. "Aha! We're not in reality, Jaeris."
"Oh sweet lord," Jaeris mumbled, holding his head in his hands. "Don't tell me we're in - "
"Yes!" Linkara declared. "We're in someone's fanfic. That means we can break reality all we want until the author lets us out."
"I have been feeling a little out of character," Jaeris noted, picking up his empty wine bottle. "I just chalked it up to this...dammit, are we really stuck in here?!"
"'Fraid so," Linkara said. "I've been in these all the time. It's a little weird, but you get used to it." He yelled out the room again: "POLLO! Initiate anti-fanfic continuity lockdown."
"Lockdown has already been engaged," Nimue spoke up from the bookshelf.
"Good," Linkara sighed. He shoved a pillow aside and sat down on the sofa. "Well! Nothing to do but wait it out."
"And do what?" Jaeris grumbled.
"I could review something…" Linkara picked up a random comic book. Immediately, it became glued shut in his fingers. "Huh. I guess the author doesn't want me reviewing anything."
"It probably doesn't know how to write you reviewing anything!" Jaeris cried. "Not only are we in a fanfic, we're with a rookie! The author could do anything to us! One of us could die any second!"
"Calm down, man!" Linkara ordered. "Listen, the title of this fic is "Reviewer of Lampshades," right? That means the author cares about the show and pays attention to all the little running gags. He or she probably won't hurt us. If it had horrible grammar, then there'd be a problem."
"What do we do?" Jaeris asked, cradling his guitar.
"We wait," Linkara shrugged. "Until the author decides what we should do, at least."
And so the two Champions sat on the couch and waited. They were both extremely uncomfortable.
"I can feel it narrating," Jaeris hissed.
"Shush."
"That's it." Jaeris stood up and left, returning a few minutes later with two glasses and a bottle of unidentifiable alcohol. Linkara grimaced.
"You really shouldn't get drunk in a fanfiction. Bad things will happen."
"Not like I can control it, can I?" Jaeris mumbled, fiddling with the bottle. He set the glasses on the table, and Linkara took one. (Just in case.)
And so more time passed. Jaeris strummed the Atop the Fourth Wall theme song on his guitar. Linkara tried reviewing four more comic books before giving up and twirling Margaret the Magic Gun aimlessly in his right hand.
Suddenly -
"Ha! 'Suddenly!'" Linkara cried.
"Don't interrupt, we're finally getting on with the story," Jaeris whispered. He called to the ceiling, "Um...continue!"
Nothing happened. Birds chirped outside.
"Wow, great job insulting it," Jaeris said sarcastically. He drained the rest of his glass.
"We have to figure out the purpose of the fanfiction," Linkara said urgently. "Then maybe we can get out of here. Quick, what have we been doing?"
"Mournin' the loss of our - I mean, my - old home," Jaeris said forlornly; his voice was definitely slurred by now. "Playin' guitar, drinking, talkin' 'bout the fourth wall…"
"That's it!" Linkara said. "Fourth wall. This entire thing is some sort of weird meta story where the characters talk about the author for no reason. It's completely nonsensical. The worst kind. It's…"
"Crap," Jaeris said in horror.
"A crackfic."
Suddenly, the door to the reviewing room swung open. Pollo and Linksano entered, the latter looking quite frazzled.
"We've heard," Linksano said. "You're really in a - ?"
"Fanfiction," Linkara confirmed. "A crackfic, by the looks of it."
Linksano's eyes widened in horror.
"We're okay so far," Linkara said reassuringly. "Just go back to...I dunno, whatever you were doing offscreen. It's safe there. We're the only ones who will have to suffer."
"Bye," Pollo said, and left.
"Hey!" Jaeris said indignantly.
"He was in a crackfic once," Linkara told him in a low voice. "He doesn't like to talk about it."
Linksano shifted. "Well...um...yes. I should, ah, go see where 90s Kid is?"
"Oh, he's off doing his betrayal thing," said Linkara cheerfully.
"Linkara!" Jaeris said, aghast. "You juss' spoiled the plot for yerself!"
"Doesn't matter now," he replied. "We've activated the continuity lockdown, right? There's no way any of this stuff is getting into the regular show. That's the great thing about being in a fanfiction - you can do whatever you want!"
"If you aren't hideously murdered first," Linksano muttered, leaving the room.
The two sat in silence yet again.
"I thinks the author's runnin' out of ideas," Jaeris said hopefully, looking up at the ceiling.
"Maybe," Linkara said. "But we'd better figure something out fast, before the author itself comes to liven things up."
Both of them shuddered.
"I have it," Jaeris realized. "On my old planet there's a thing called the...uh...Writer/Char'cter Fanfiction Clause, I think that's the name. It says that if a fanfiction writer includes a character in her - or his - work, the least they hafta do is make a plot. Once the plot is resolved, the characters are considered free of 'sponsibility."
"We don't have a plot." Linkara argued. "All we've been doing is breaking the fourth wall, sitting here, getting drunk…"
"That is the plot," Jaeris said proudly. "Low standards, huh? We juss' have to wrap stuff up on our own, maybe by figurin' out why we're here or whatever we were talking 'bout earlier. Purpose or the meaning of life or whatever."
"We were talking about our purpose," Linkara recalled. "I guess it was...to break the fourth wall. Just to break the fourth wall. There's not much sense in it, but there's never any sense in crackfic. If this even counts."
"It seems like a vague expl'nation for how the whole atop-the-fourth-wall thing works." Jaeris offered. "Your reviews are pretty unclear on whether we know we're actually Lewis n' Will in costumes or not. And on the fact that you, Harvey, 90s Kid, and Lin'sano look exactly alike."
"We're aware of it in a meta reviewer kind of way," Linkara reflected. "But breaking the Outer Wall messes up reality so much, it's better to pretend that universe doesn't exist."
"My head hurts," Jaeris groaned.
"Alcohol," responded Linkara. "Just forget it, we'll have no memory of this fic ever happening pretty soon."
"Tha's it!" Jaeris exclaimed, jumping to his feet. "We solved whatever messed-up plot the author was makin' us go through! We can leave! Screw you!" he shouted at the ceiling.
"Don't antagonize the author any more," Linkara warned him. "C'mon, we did the fic, now let's leave. It's the reviewers' problems now."
"Reviewers?" Jaeris snorted. "Who'd even read this?"
~*Q*~
-Dang it, they escaped! Sorry for the abrupt ending; those darn critics are always finding loopholes. Jaeris was right about the whole Writer/Character Fanfiction Clause...technically, they fulfilled their end of it, and there's nothing I can do now. See you all later, I suppose…
~*Akirys*~