"FIRE BALL!"

"Indignation!"

"Ray!"

"Demon Fang!"

"Beast!"

"Rising Eagle!"

"Serpent Seal!"

"Light Spear Cannon!"

"Cyclone!"

"Holy Lance!"

"Gravity Well!"

"Grave!"

"Absolute!"

"Ground Dasher!"

"Master Field!"

"Lightning Blade!"

"Spread!"

"Lightning!"

"Acid Rain!"

"Hell Axe!"

"Holy Song!"

"Azure Edge!"

"YURI LOWELL! WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE? GET BACK TO TALES OF VESPERIA!!!!!!!!"

(Yuri is tossed out. In another video game universe, Karol cries out in pain as Yuri lands on him after his sudden disappearance in the middle of a battle.)

Back at the suspiciously Gothic-looking gate barring the entrance to the official Tales of Namco TM Studio, a man with a balding head and glasses pokes his head out to survey the smoldering wreckage. "Hello? We don't take visitors, tours, or solicitations – "

And then he stops. Because, well, what's in front of him is either the biggest fan crowd ever or a cast stepped straight out of his studio and sent to wreak havoc. Cue Raine, Lloyd, Zelos, Sheena, and Genis at the forefront of Tales of Symphonian mob. Lloyd's Eternal Sword blade is pointed at Baldbeak's nose.

"Um … can I help you … ?"

"Yes." Raine waved a copy of ToS 2: Knight of Ratatosk (they had the Japanese version) at him, which included the abysmal rehashed cover art and two losers on the cover. Something about an electronic mule and a girl born to the Wal-Mart enterprise. "We'd like to know what, exactly, this is?"

"Well, you see … um …"

"YOU BLOODY BASTARD!!!!!!! YOU MESSED UP MY BEAUTIFUL VOICE!!!!!!!!!!!!! AND YOU MADE ME ATTRACTIVE TO MONSTERS!!!!!!!!!! PREPARE TO GET YOUR FUGLY ASS WHOOPED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Kratos stepped out of the crowd, back in new and improved spandex, glowered darkly and said, "I resent my voice being used in affiliation with this … this … thing. And I most certainly would not stay on Derris-Kharlan forever. I need to be a father to my son."

"…" Lloyd looked at him. "You do, Kratos … dad?"

"Just Kratos is fine, Lloyd. If you call two people dad it casts aspersions on my sexuality, and I am of course eternally faithful to Raine … er, your mother. Of course I want to spend more time with you."

"The first time we ever had a chance to get to no each other you kind of hopped on a comet that would never return to this world with a bunch of angels, including Yuan …"

"…"

"I AM NOT GAY!!!!!!!!!!"

Everyone turned to look at Yuan, who had shouted this from the center of the crowd. He blushed straight to his brown, blue-dyed roots and mumbled something that sounded like "only bisexual because of Kratos's goddamn hotness – is a guy supposed to pine after Martel for 4,000+ years?"

"YES!!!!!!!!" Mithos, Martel, Kratos, Botta, Kvar, Pronyma, Magnius, Forcystus, Raine, Genis, Lloyd, Colette, Anna, and pretty much the entire cast yelled in unison. Chocolat didn't ad neither did her mother, Cacao, but who cared about them? Practically indistinguishable from the other hordes of fangirls.

"Ahem. Anyway," Raine said, waving the game case, "we're here to kill you all and obliterate this travesty of our future. I do NOT and will never have GRAY HAIR!!!!!!!!!! NEVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! DO YOU HEAR ME, NEVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

As everyone inched away and Baldbeak cowered, Genis took up the thread. "So, are you the one responsible for this?"

"Mo – mo – mommy, I think I peed in my pants …"

"Um …"

"Let's just kill him. It is clear he knows nothing. FIRE BALL!!"

"… You just like saying that, don't you?"

"…"

"Let's go on."

The entire cast, living and/or dead but none as they were included from the sequel, walked through the smoking gate and door into the inner sanctum of Namco, where the wild geeks roam and frolic in seas of computer screens and formulaic but still awesome plots. Well, mostly.

And so they went on. When they were startled by several long, feminine screams and the sound of Coke cans falling to the floor (their mommies said that coffee was bad for them). And then the intense fangirl – oh, sorry, guy, the girls were slightly less pitchy and more sensible - -izing started, a terrible and bloody melee that pushed the ToS characters to the floor on a sea of pale bodies and pinned them down, struggling. Luckily the voice actors weren't recording just then, or things might have gotten even crazier.

"GENIS?!?!?!?! GENIS SAGE?!?!?!?! I TOTALLY SPEAK YOU IN THE SECOND GAME!!!!!!!!!!!!"

And it looks like one was still hanging out. Everyone freezes as Genis, with great dignity and his kendama bouncing threateningly, pulls himself out from under a worker that looks suspiciously like Mithos – wait, that IS Mithos! He stole someone's pair of nerdy glasses in the melee and used the flimsy disguise to glomp Genis! OKAY HE'S SO TOTALLY GAY –

Ahem. Back to Genis's awesomeness. Which MITHOS DESERVES NONE OF, DAMMIT!!!!!!!

Okay, random fan forcibly suctioned off computer. Had to resort to pretending the new Tales of Versus was waiting for her to beta in the mail slot at her house.

Evil.

So Genis, still threateningly-kendama-bouncing, asked in a low voice (read shrilly), "You … did my voice … in the second game?"

The girl misses the danger signs. Perhaps that explains why exactly Genis sounded like someone had inhaled helium and was trying to perform happy-face-sad-face exercises. "Yeah, isn't it awesome?!?!?! I felt that I so, like, bonded with your character!!!!!!!! And now you're real!!!!!!!!! SQUEE!!!!!!!"

"YOU … WERE THE ONE … WHO MADE ME SOUND LIKE A GIRL!!!!!!!! INDIGNATION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Sadly, the spell does not kill her, as Mithos tried to grab Genis' ass, which caused him to miss and the lightning bolt of judgment to fry a couple of other worthless geeks instead. Well, we know how great the next few games will be now …

Genis whacks Mithos with a random frying pan he pulls out of his pants and turns back to try to cast on the still-not-cowering voice actor. (For the record, she's clapping her hands and squealing, "Yay! I recorded Genis saying that! It looks so much PRETTIER in person!!!!!!!" on a somebody-please-murder-this-singer-before-the-noise-pollution-kills-us-all record-like track that nobody except one geek with pink-framed glasses that is obviously dying to get something of ANYTHING is listening to. And he's listening more to her less than Sheena-quality chest.)

Lloyd diverts this one, killing Cocoa and Chocolat as well as Botta, who jumped in front of them to save them (unsuccessfully). But who cares? Botta would have died anyway, and Chocolat and Cocoa … um … well, let's just say that we don't need any nasty little Vanguard shops. Does anyone notice how much like Communists those people act,, as in 'steal from and kill all the Tethe'allans, as well as the Church of Martel'?

"No!" Lloyd shouts melodramatically in his original and amazing voice tones, drawing his sword (the one Dirk made him, the Eternal Sword looks kinda tacky and he really should have brought along the blades from the Sword Dancer instead but couldn't because they weren't recognizable enough and he'd dared Zelos to a wearing blue contest for a month). "Genis, you can't kill an innocent person, even if they have committed terrible crimes! Wait – then they wouldn't be innocent, would they? Huh …"

He falls back, and Genis stands once more, ready to incinerate.

Only to be stopped, this time, by Kratos. "… weigh the cost of each and every life."

"How many people have you killed in 4,000 years, Mr.-I-Supported-Mithos? Didn't you kill your wife and attempt to kill your son and all his friends in an attempt to steal his crush for your homosexual master?"

"…"

Kratos drops back, going into a corner with some nice comfy padded dead bodies to cry. Yuan crawls over to comfort him with a good back-rub (as well as rub his sexy, sexy hair).

Genis prepares to do it AGAIN. Only to be stopped by, dun dun dun …

…. Presea.

"… I do not feel comfortable with this, Genis. You may never get rid of your guilt at killing one who has never killed another."

"… Kinda like Regal …"

"Ah … yes …" A faint pink blush appears on Presea's cheeks. "Like Regal …" she goes into a minor swoon and Regal sweatdrops, looking angsty and/or disconcerted and/or constipated (just picture him how he normally looks). He catches her. She lands conveniently against the bare patch of skin that his tattered shirt leaves uncovered. He blinks a large, salty sweatdrop right onto her nose, where she reaches up (what tongue control!) and sloooooooooooooooooowly licks it off.

Genis growls. Nothing will stop him this time.

"Genis, think of humanity! Surely you don't want to be like – "

Colette, sidearmed with either the kendama or the frying pan, falls to the floor, whimpering. Lloyd is too busy pondering whether someone can be innocent after voice acting Genis like a girl to catch her, and she gets a giant concussion and starts spouting blood. Which is a sort of freakish greeny-blue color. (You didn't think angels bled RED, did you?)

No one bothers to look, though Kratos accidently first-aids her with one of the spells he's throwing off at being touched by Yuan in that "special place."

Between his tense shoulderblades.

Where did you think? DON'T TELL ME YOU THOUGHT OF THAT OTHER –

(The rest of the above line has been censored in the interest of maintaining a T rating.)

Back to Genis and his final, final, FINAL time to indignation this girl's ass to hell.

Niflheim.

Which is just a BOOK. Not a freaking DEMON DIMENSION. Which CERTAINLY can't be contained by RATATOSK THE SQUIRREL IN THE BODY OF AN ELECTRONIC MULE – er, a kid with a cowlick and severe abuse problems.

But Genis is, JUST as he is about to cry (in his totally authentic voice) something rhyming with "shminshmigshmation," he is forcibly jerked around and smacked by Raine.

Raine Sage, people. Why?

You can't ask. You aren't in the story. But if you wait a second Genis will do it for you.

"OW!!!!!!!!!!!!!! MOMMY WASN'T THIS ABUSIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

One more second.

"WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME??!?!?!?!??!! WHY!??!?!?!"

"Well," Raine said, releasing a now rumpled and freshly spanked Genis who was glaring at her hatefully and clutching his now broken kendama (the girl's hard on her props), "we need to find out who's responsible for this. ALL of it. So you can't kill her until we interrogate her."

Everyone let out a unanimous gulp except those already certified as sadists, which included Sheena, Mithos, Yuan (though he might have been gulping because Kratos was nipping at his ear), Colette (groggily regaining consciousness), Kratos (occupied with … ahem … other things), and Anna, because she was dead long ago. Anyone who had recently died in this story came temporarily back to life to join in the chorus, including several of the nerds and Botta, who promptly died again and caused the rest of Yuan's Renegades to commit suicide in some sort of freakish half-elven funeral custom.

It was put in place by Mithos and they all adapted it.

Even the freak-girl in question finally stopped clapping her hands in delight and believing in fairies (in another world, both Tinkerbell and Navi dropped dead, along with the Little Mermaid – hey, close enough) as she noticed that RAINE SAGE was talking about her.

And not in an I-love-you-ruins' kind of way. More like a 'here-are-the-tools, here-is-my-table, what-a-lovely-day-to-DISSECT-MY-TEST-SUBJECT-and-drink-that-nice-new-herbal-tea' kind of way.

She tried to run. She tripped over one of the now de-animated dead bodies.

They tied her up and tortured her for several hours. She started telling them what they wanted to know within the first seventeen seconds, which didn't even get halfway through the tying up process. After that they were tortured her to make the girl JUST SHUT UP.

Nerd-kisses didn't work. Gummy, sticky, sweet, or sugary candy didn't work (of course, most of the characters stole the candy and ate it on the sly). Really really gross things didn't work. Electrocution (go Volt!) didn't work. Neither did freezing. Or any other summon spirit power. Or the random pair of plyers Raine found. Or Genis's kendama ball puncturing her eye. Or Cyclone. Or Psi Tempest. Or listening to Magnius talk.

In the end, she died from dehydration after all the saliva she spewed out. The group continued on, with the location of all of the other members: the only USEFUL information she had given them. After they went through seven months of extreme psychotherapy to repress the disturbing images she had given all of them.

"And then, sometimes, when they have candy corns in the store around Halloween season, I use my braces to cut open a bag and pour them down the front of my – "

(Censored)

"And then, with the Genis doll I handmade out of eyebrow clipping and wax I got from that nice Asian lady, I go to bed and snuggle up tight with it pressed right up next to my heart and I tell it all sorts of things, like – "

(Censored)

"And then, she told me I looked fat in purple, so I said, 'Well, you look fat in every color of the rainbow' and then next week she totally went Goth, so then I took all my purple clothing and put it in the bathtub and jumped in with a pair of scissors and some – "

(Censored)

"And then, sometimes, when I see limes I totally think of – "

(Censored)

"And then, when I saw it, I totally laughed and said 'That looks like a – "

(CENSORED, CENSORED, CENSORED! CLEANSE THY BRAIN OF SUCH VILE IMAGES!)

They decided to stop at each voice-actor/loser who ripped off the graphics/person responsible for turning the nice pretty purple ground into a sea of festering plotholes' house/place of work and murder them along the way.

Because, you see, the girl had told them one thing of interest: (which had nothing to do with how much of your own foot you can fit in your mouth if you bite pieces of it off) that someone else had been RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS THING.

She called it 'ceezkle.' And said that they were, omigod, SO CUTE.

They?

Well, she'd told the group that only the magical plot people could contact them at will, though the voice actors had all been hand-chosen for their 'greatness!' by them. Through one-sided glass. And a black curtain. Cloak-and-dagger, a bit.

So they went and painfully tortured a LOT of people, causing the media and government to shake their heads at this latest tragedy: what new wave of serial crime was this, and how the HELL did they get the bloodstains so far up the walls? And why did it look like simultaneous fire, water, light, electricity, other things, and just pure sweat, metal, and pwnage had all just randomly combusted?

Because it did. But it didn't combust and it definitely wasn't random.

At long last, at the last house, in the last bedroom, of the last script writer, they found a clue.

It was a paper. That said, 'Call if you need help screwing anything up … er, fixing the plot. We can be reached only through this number. – CSSKL'.

"Curiouser and curiouser!"

Everyone murders Alice, too, just for her general idiocy, blonde hair, and atrocious grammar, and they go to a pay phone to call the number.

Lloyd puts on a fake voice and pretends to be the guy they murdered. (Of course, he might not have the most accurate model for memory, seeing as screams are generally shriller than a person's inside voice – but it wasn't his fault the guy couldn't take a couple of dozen hits … and fireballs … and other things …)

"Um … hello? We … had a question?"

"What?" The voice sounds like it's unsure how, exactly, to use a telephone. The phone is dropped, there's some fumbling and raised voices, and a recorded metallicky voice comes on. Cloak-and=dagger, anyone? Or maybe voice synthesizer?

"WHAT?!?!? PIZZA MAN, I TOLD YOU THAT I DIDN'T WANT TO TAKE A PICTURE OF MYSELF SMEARED IN CHEESE AND LYING NAKED ON A BED – oh, um, Why are you calling? We have already completed the game."

Lloyd looked at the group desperately. Raine prompted him, whispering, "… we're making another sequel. We need your advice."

"We're, um, making another sequel. We need your help. Can we meet?"

"I told you the old faggot was gay!" someone shouts in the background. Another person shushes him, and a minor hitting match ensues. The cast members frown. Why do they sound so suspiciously familiar? In particular for Lloyd … he's sure he's met them somewhere …

But he's too busy with his phone conversation.

After another few minutes, the large cheese pizza arrives and everyone digs in. Then Naruto swipes it all away in favor of ramen, which he eats all of, leaving everyone to scramble on the floor for the really gross pizza. When they are then confronted by the tutu'd MONKEYS who are already eating it and the anchovy-disguised brain-control hats, which they shove on their heads and start making Mithos do the funky chicken dance – oh, WAIT, he's doing it to impress Genis, my Martel what is he wearing –

Oops. Wrong story. Little paperclip who still thinks this is a letter, please delete that for me. And also stop trying to tell me I've spelled all their names wrong.

"... ahem. Well. That's fine. Come to the Hilton on Mariscold Street – in Chesapeake, not Colorado – and we'll talk. We're delighted to hear about the prospect of a second sequel."

The phone goes dead. Everyone spends a few minutes (coughcoughHOURScoughcough) threatening adroid death to any who so much as SUGGEST the prospect of another sequel. Raine is conveniently exempted from the punishments. (She offered to make it up to them by cooking all of the group's meals for a month …)

And so they used the Rheiards (who knew they still worked in the real world? This is GREAT!!!!!!!!!!!) to get to the Hilton. Except it had been bought by the Mariot and renovated to be cheaper (and uglier). But they added a lot of extra cheap gold leaf and some Christmasy accents, so no one really cared …

Except when one of the letters fell off and killed someone because it had been attached with shimmer body glitter glue.

And so they sent Genis in (they disguised him as the dead dude, using a Centurion core they had conveniently stolen, because there are a FEW good things about the new game even though accusing Lloyd of being a villain is not one of them), while they others went around through various points of entry (all but one-and-a-half illegal. Undine's involved sneaking in through a tap, which caused several nasty shocks in the kitchen when Volt came through. And all of the meat was somehow soggy, burnt to a crisp, half-frozen, still dirty, AND overdone all at once. Worse than Raine's cooking, I tell you).

While Genis approached the desk, got a business room number, nervously adjusted his nonexistent tie (basically like a hologram), and went it.

There was, predictably, a lot of hissing and a black curtain settled over half the table.

"Um … I'm here for … ?"

"We know. Sit."

Genis sat. "I'm so sorry to trouble you … I just … wanted to know if you had any ideas?" He was, of course, pulling all of this out of his ass. He had no idea what he was supposed to be like. Really, he was just killing time until the others burst in here to help with the slaughter and because Raine had told him to "act like the dead dude or you'll be punished." Wait, maybe that had been Mithos …

"You were right to contact us." Snickering – a smack. "What have you prepared?"

Sweaaaaaaaaaaaaatdrop. "Um … uh … prepared?"

Sigh. "You don't have anything done, do you? Fine. We'll get back to you and consider. Why don't you use Emil and Marta's rebellious children and their loving aunts and uncles?"

"WHAT?!?!?!?! E-MULE AND WAL-MART'S CHILDREN??!?!?!??!"

Genis shot out of his chair, mind spontaneously combusting. God stop the pain …. Emil's blond hair in rat-tails AND nasty cowlicks …

"Mind … mental … scarring … no …"

He collapsed and the Centurion Core stopped working, causing shocked and surprisingly girlish gasps, which didn't matter by then because everyone had just stormed in and a "FIRE BALL!" had ripped down the tacky black curtain.

Everyone gasped.

Because it revealed …

Well, you don't want to know.

.