All According to Plan

Note: As you may have learnt from reading the second chapter of SpyroDragonTime's story ('Alvin and the Chipmunks: A Twist of Fate', which I recommend, by the way), I am his Beta, although I'm not a registered Beta for the site. I'm solely his editor.

I am the elder of two. The younger of us writes the stories. The older is the editor.

I'm careful, deliberate. If you want to know who/what my original profile is, I won't make it easy for you just by reading this. I've allowed the younger to write, but I'll take the reins and rework this fiction. However, it's only a one-shot. Abandoning the original profile's stories would disappoint a few people, even I'm AWOL for a short time.

Yes. This side of me is strange. I fear I may become bipolar, or manifest different personalities. Embrace the madness. Question not the insanity, else you too become infected.

-Vos Mos Amplio.

All According to Plan

Brittany's hand shook as she held her test paper, staring at her grade.

She had been staring at it for the better half of a minute, nearly becoming totally unresponsive to her surroundings and everyone in it, although one person rested heavily on her mind.

'Alvin...'

Sitting in a neat red circle forged in red ink was a plain 'B' Grade. Normally, she would have been mildly pleased with herself. She wasn't a geek; she had to put a lot of effort into her academics in order to get grades 'B' and above. Math, however, took effort. This exam was a final, and she had damned near spent her entire weekend studying mathematical formulas, sample equations and the like. Getting a grade like the one she had now was well-received. Far better than a predicted score of 'C'. Wasn't it?

The only problem was Alvin.

His academic standpoint was lower than his, given his poor study habits, disruptive behavior in class and his unwillingness overall to try his best, although his conduct was becoming more and more… boring and jaded for lack of a better way to put it.

She glanced backwards to where he sat just behind her; she couldn't see his paper, but she could hear the hushed whispering. He had gotten an 'A-'.

Really? The guy who hated learning like bitter medicine was the only person who got that grade, the only one who scored an A. Not even Simon and her own sister Jeanette had gotten a grade of this caliber; rather, they each received a 'B+'.

Something was wrong.

Very wrong.

"He doesn't hang out with us anymore, he's hardly going out to parties, he just sits alone, writing in that stupid black book of his. Ever since he found that book last month, he's been-

"What, Brittany? He's been… how?" Simon blinked slowly. "What are you complaining about? You yourself said that you hated his company. You complained that he partied too much and it's affected his grades. And now, apparently, he's found some sort of interest in writing. Perhaps it's a journal or diary. A work of fiction, maybe, like a novel-"

"Do you even hear yourself?" Eleanor shook her head. "Alvin… writing?" She thought of the lively youth who often griped about his general dislike for books. "Maybe you're the one who should get their head checked."

"That's not fair, Ellie," Theodore put in his two cents. "I think Alvin's acting weird too." In his demure tone, it hardly sounded like an affront to his own brother. One of his strange talents, Eleanor presumed. "Besides, I hardly saw him do any sort of book-work over the weekend. How could he be the only one in class to get an A?"

"Hardest test I ever took," Simon muttered. "But it was as if it was the easiest that Alvin had ever done. Perhaps he cheated?"

"I sat right beside him!" Jeanette exclaimed. "He wrote all of the answers in as if he didn't care, or as if he knew the material already. Either his IQ boosted overnight, or the teacher gave him a bye. Something's not right with any of this!"

While Brittany could agree with her sister, she strongly believed it was something else.

All in all, it was a pleasant day, or as pleasant as a Monday could be. It was now late evening, the higher temperatures wrought by a summer midday were ebbing away as the sun began its descent into the horizon. Someone had goofed up; the last exam should have been on the previous Friday, but that had given the class a whole weekend to prepare for the Math final.

Now she had the summer to look forward to.

The majority of her burdens in her past had lifted, and now she had a good future of rest and relaxation close at hand.

So why the hell was she feeling so… put-off?

She hated him. He was obnoxious. Rude. Egotistical. Even downright insufferable at times whenever he fell back into his old habits of pranking. Yet…

She loved him. He was caring. He was gentle. He had a way with words; not quite like a smooth talker, but his words might as well have been glazed over with honey. He always knew how to clear the tension of a room, joking, joshing other people. He gave gifts. Whenever money came into his pockets, it was gone again, used on foolish trinkets and knickknacks. They all had her name on them, engraved, emblazoned and embellished whenever each of the three was applicable. They filled the large surface area of the top of her dresser.

He was her significant other. He had never told her, neither verbally or non-verbally, that he loved her. Neither had she told him. Yet everyone could probably see. They themselves knew.

They knew that they were meant for each other. A God, a deity, a cosmic roll of the dice had created them at the same time, and nudged them closer to one another. Nothing short of a supernatural reason why they could mesh together so well.

They were only in the ending of their sophomore year of high school, but she had dug into her savings to buy them both a promise ring, to hopefully start kick-start their relationship in an 'official' sense. Even as a way to promise themselves to one another; nothing sexual, per se, but as a childish way of saying that they were saving themselves for one another for life, like marriage later on. Call her a starry-eyed romantic, but she wanted to make it work. She couldn't see herself with anyone else. With no one else.

That was one month ago.

She hadn't given him his ring yet.

She had her hand in her hip pocket, feeling the jewelry in her palm as she walked. Her legs were on autopilot, but her mind roamed freely. She had an idea why she hadn't told (and given) him his ring yet. There was something about the small book he read. It was rather small, about the same size as a New Testament Bible, but seemingly to Alvin, it was far more important. Brittany was sure that Alvin had even forgotten what modern gadgets, even a cell-phone perhaps, looked like. He hadn't answered her texts, her social media posts, not even her calls to him in public. He just shut himself off from society.

Well, if he wasn't going to join her in the real world, she'll just have to let herself into his.

She walked up to his house, bounding up the steps to his door. Before she could knock, however, there was a small note stapled to the door. She peeled it off and read it:

Let yourself in, Brittany.
I'm in my room.

The chipette frowned deeply. She hadn't been over in a while. How did he know that she was coming over today? Already developing a streak of paranoia, she crushed the note and jabbed it into her back-pocket, uneasiness taking over. She then tried the knob, and sure enough, it was unlocked. That being done, she pushed the door in and stepped inside and shut the door behind her, the tumblers clicking shut. All of a sudden, she felt her nerves going haywire, but she fought through it.

"Calm down, Brittany. It's Alvin! He's not some sort of stalker or killer or something!" The morbid joke was distasteful, but the reality of which was able to shake her loose from her bad vibes. "Yeah! He's just messing with me!" She laughed now to herself cheerily, now feeling calmer. "He could have stapled that up weeks ago! When was the last time I came over, anyway?" She said this rather shamefacedly to herself, but she called out to him regardless, "I'm coming up, Alvin!"

Although there was no response to this, she went to his room regardless, going inside.

It was a tidy room. That alone was enough for her to stare in shock. The second thing about the room's occupant, however, was enough to make her blood curdle. He was… crying?

Alvin quickly dried his tears as best as he could before he patted. "C'mon, Brittany, we don't have much time. Take a seat." She frowned deeply at this before she acquiesced.

"Fine. So… what happened?" She removed her hand from her pocket, deciding to rather feel him instead of the rings. "You can tell me."

"…" Alvin looked up towards his forehead as if trying to will the turning of the gears in his mind. "Brittany, do you believe in God?" Before she could answer, or relatively try to, he hesitated. "Never mind answering that. I already know the answer. I know all the answers!" He laughed stupidly. "What I'm going to tell you is going to sound insane!"

"You already sound halfway-there," Brittany mumbled worriedly. "Are you... feeling okay?"

"I'm fine. You were going to ask me how the hell I passed the math final when I didn't even prepare. I'm sorry, I was being selfish. I should have given you an 'A' grade as well, but we wouldn't have had something to start the plot with. It's this crazy book!" He waved the black book at her, gesturing it in a small fit. "If I write in it and change anything, it affects the plot!"

"Plot? Like a movie?" Brittany was confused.

"Oh yeah!" He got up from the bed, relinquishing her hold on his shoulder. It was unfortunate, but he felt like he couldn't divulge in the madness anymore by himself. "A plot. But not like a movie. Don't get me started on that. I meant like a book. A fanfiction, if you want to be specific. We're just figments of some insane author's imagination. He's just sitting at his computer, typing out what he wants us to do, what to say. He's even doing it right now! Hell, people are actually reading his garbage and some of them don't even know what to make of it! Some of them even like it!"

"Fanfiction!" Brittany was horrified. "That's crazy! You mean like how I write fanfiction for Twilight Saga-"

"You don't write fanfiction, Brittany." Alvin shook his head. "That's what the author wrote to make you think so you could have an example. I'm really sorry for pulling you into this. I found his 'Book of Plots' last month and everything that was written in it either happened already, is happening to us in other alternate universes, or is going to happen to us in real life. We're fictional, Brittany. We are. We live in a fictional world, doing fictional things! It's crazy!"

"No." Brittany stood up, her eyes flashing. "You're crazy!"

"You want proof? Do you want big proof? Or a small example? Right now. Pick one."

"Even a little-"

"-Proof can be enough," he finished saying as he interrupted her. "Alright. That note you tore off the door and put into your pocket… it was from a newspaper dating two weeks ago, but I wrote today's date on it, as well as the exact current time you'd look at it. Any time you look at it, it'll be telling you the same time. I know when you're going to look at it, because the writer of this crap fiction planned it."

Brittany hesitated. "That's crazy! Besides, you could've written that note today because you felt that I was going to come over!" Nevertheless, Brittany counted nearly four minutes in her head before removing her phone to look at the time, then removing the crushed paper from her back-pocket.

Besides the note on the front, there was a little scribbling on the back; the date was right. The time was right. There was no mistake; a simple readout of '5:22 PM'. "Okay, even I admit that this is a little weird. Maybe you know a fortune teller. Give me something else to work with-"

"You're going to do something impulsive that'll either be the death of us, or help us." Alvin sounded strangely poetic. "It's a little cliché, I know. Like rain falling at funerals in movies."

"That's bull." Brittany was stalwart in her argument. "Being impulsive is your job, nutjob." The sarcasm was heavy, unforgiving.

"Brittany, despite the fact that you think I'm crazy, I kinda wish that this story is continued, y'know. But it's only a one-shot. A short story. The author had some great ideas for this, but he's saving most them for his other stories. He's a member of some sort of fanfiction website, but this is his second profile. He's saving his better ideas for his original one. This story we're in isn't even good enough to be continued. It's kind of annoying." Alvin sighed deeply.

Deciding to humor him, despite the fact remained that she was going to tell Dave about this situation, she continued. "Like what kind of ideas?"

"He was going to make you give me promise rings, and that we'd pledge ourselves to one another. He wrote that our daughters would be beautiful, but they'd have my 'mischievous streak'. I didn't even know that I had one. And he was going to make us duet singers for our careers…"

Brittany's heart fell as she felt her pockets through her jeans. 'How'd Alvin know about the rings..?' She was silent as he continued.

"The author wrote that he had to read other people's stories so he'd know what ideas hadn't been tackled yet so he could keep working on original ideas. There are only a few stories where we come close to realizing that we're fictional, like this one. The closest to this was 'The Day we Discovered Fanfictions' by some guy whose profile said his name was 'Stevenspielbergwriter3'. But nothing like this story we're in. I actually find out everything. We're the idea of some guy named Ross Bagdasarian from the 1950's. His family still owns the idea of 'us'. We're in cartoons, movies, music videos. We look like chipmunk hybrids sometimes, other times, we look like real chipmunks. But in these weird fanfiction stories, the writers imagine us in any way they want us to. I don't know if I'm offended or if I should take it as a compliment. They mostly write about you and me in a relationship, Simon and Jeanette, and Theodore and Eleanor. Even now. We're the product of a bunch of overactive imaginations. So… I guess we inspire creativity? In one story, I lose my voice in a chemical accident. In another story, I run away from home to start a new one in Britain. In this adventure one, we basically live in a horrible world and we have supernatural powers, kinda inspired by this flash animated web series… what's it called…? 'RWBY', I think. And then there's this super weird story, I got caught in an car accident to save you, and in the aftermath, I'm stuck in your head. Literally. And don't get me started on the mixed pairings…! Frankly, I think that it's mostly female fanfiction-writers gushing over us."

Brittany was horrified. On one hand, it sounded downright stupid, crazy. But on the other hand…

She felt that Alvin was telling the truth.

"Either I believe you, or your insanity is catching."

Alvin smiled. "I think it's both."

"For what it's worth, I don't care too much whether or not this is some freaky plan or plot. I wanted… us, Alvin." She grasped his hand. "I want… us."

He understood. "I want us too." He watched as she removed one of the promise rings and slipped it onto his finger. "My ring is pink?"

"Hush up. Mine's red."

"Hmph." He took up the black book. "Oh yeah, there it is. Apparently, he planned that to happen. He thought that it'd be more interesting."

"Gimme that book!" Brittany snatched the book away, startling Alvin. "I'm sick and tired of this thing!" She was already gone through the door, heading to the kitchen.

"What are you going to do?!" Alvin cried.

"I'm burning it!" The call sounded as if it came from the kitchen. "We're writing our own story!"

Guess she did something impulsive after all. Huge blank; whether or not their little universe blew up or if they're living happily ever after is your guess.

I guess that's the end of that. Embrace the insanity. Don't take offense to it if you're one of the writers mentioned. Think of it as a nod in your direction. Just… embrace it.

What do you think?

-Vos Mos Amplio.