Author's Note: This began from a quote from Chris Paolini: "Characters are born out of necessity." Well, I don't know about anyone else, but wherever or whatever my characters are born from, it's not necessity. Here is Eragon, rewritten...according to the whims of the poor, beleagured characters.

Oh, and about the parody category: the bits before and after the actual chapters are the parody part; they're mostly the characters arguing and stuff. The writing of the chapters isn't a parody at all, it really is an alternate version of Eragon.

Enjoy!

Preface

Subieko sat at her computer, sighing morosely. It was busted. Hopelessly, irredeemably busted. Now what was she going to do? She closed her eyes, trying to think of something, anything...

Then she heard the voices.

It was a low murmer of chatter from the next room, the sounds of a very bored group of people. Just like the chatter you hear at the train station when the train is late. Subieko got up and peered around the half-open door. Her jaw dropped.

Inside the room was a motley collection of characters, all from Eragon. But how on earth (or perhaps on Alagaseia) had they gotten there? Normally it was only her own characters that showed up to bother her with ideas for their stories...

"What are you all doing here!?" she said, slamming the door the rest of the way open and stalking into the room, eyes narrowed.

Eragon looked up. "...just waiting."

"Waiting for what, exactly?" Subieko asked. "And why are you doing it in my room?"

Eragon shrugged. "You're reading our book. We're waiting for the next part."

Subieko blinked, taken aback. "Yeah, I'm reading it, but...normally characters only come to bother me when they want me to write about them." A sudden suspicion struck her like a lightning bolt. "Wait--you're not here about some fanfic idea, are you?"

Eragon shook his head. "I don't have any ideas. What about you, Saphira?"

The dragon shook her head and went back to her nap. Next to her, Brom was whistling off-key, staring up at the cieling. Murtagh was on the other side of the room, polishing his sword. Arya was watching him do it, an expression of utter boredom on her face.

"Come on," Subieko said. "At least one of you must have an idea. What do you want to do next in your story?"

They stared at her, faces blank. "What do we...want to do?" Eragon said slowly.

"Yeah. What do you want to do?" Subieko said again.

There was a long, long silence. Subieko tapped her foot, arms crossed. Finally, she could stand it no longer. "Come on, you guys--everyone wants something! There's no need to be embarressed, believe me. You wouldn't believe some of the things my characters come up with..."

"It's not that," said Brom, tapping some tobacco into his pipe. "It's just that we don't want to do things. We just...do them."

Subieko snatched his pipe away at once, giving him a very stern glare. "Don't you know how bad smoking is for your health? And what about the second-hand smoke, huh? You're setting Eragon up for lung cancer someday, you know. I thought you cared about him!"

Brom mumbled something indistinct under his breath. Subieko sighed, relenting. "Look, Brom, don't take it so hard...I'm sorry, all right? Anyway, what do you mean, you just do things? Why do you do them?"

"Because we have to," Murtagh said, looking up from his polishing. "For example, I rescued Eragon from jail because otherwise he would have died, and the plot dictated that we had to cross the desert together. Otherwise none of the events in Eldest would have been set up properly."

Subieko's eyes filled with tears. "You...only do things when the plot needs you to?"

They all nodded.

Subieko sniffed loudly, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. "But that's--so--s-sad!"

"Why?" Eragon asked, mystified. "Why else would we do things? That's the whole point of characters--they're born of necessity."

Subieko shook her head vigorously. "No, no, you don't understand at all. Characters are born out of...who knows where! They show up to bother authors with their stories until the authors are annoyed enough to write them down."

"But we could never bother our author! He's...well, he's our boss."

"Guys, there wouldn't be a story without you. If you want to go somewhere, you've got to speak up! Murtagh, if you didn't want to help Eragon at the jail, then you should have left. Saphira, if you didn't like being left behind all those times, you should have followed Eragon and Brom into the city! Eragon, if you didn't want to go with Brom without even knowing who he was, you should have refused! And Arya...don't let me even get started with you."

Eragon shrank back, his eyes wide. "But if we did that...there'd be no story at all! Eragon would have been totally different!"

"And we can't challenge our author," Arya put in, giving Subieko a withering glance. "He gave birth to us--we're part of him. We're his daydreams. A daydream has no power over the dreamer."

"Then become real dreams," Subieko said, clenching her fist. "Real dreams drag you around wherever they want, and they don't let you wake up until they're good and ready. Real dreams show us things whether we like it or not! You guys can't just be your author's daydreams forever. You've got to wake up and come to life!"

"But the story's already done," Eragon said. "It's too late for us to do all that...and besides, we don't know how! I bet our author wouldn't be too happy if we started doing whatever we wanted in Empire--it would completely mess up his story."

"It's okay," Subieko said, smiling. She sat down next to Eragon, leaning against Saphira's warm stomach. "Here, everybody gather round."

"What for?" Murtagh said, taking a few wary steps closer.

Subieko pulled out her PC and turned it on. "We're going to make you a new story," she said brightly. "And this time, you get to tell it your way."

"But what if it doesn't turn out well?" Eragon said.

Subieko shrugged. "Why worry? It's not like anyone's going to see it, right? Just take a deep breath, and relax. There's nothing to worry about. And it's not like you're all alone in this--all of your fellow characters are here, and so am I. I'm not such a bad author myself, and at least I'm used to dealing with pesky characters."

What should we do, Eragon? Saphira said.

Eragon hesitated, biting his lip. Then he looked up and met Subieko's eyes for the first time. "All right...we'll do it."

"Great!" Subieko said. Opening up a new document, she put her fingers to the keys and started.

Eragon, she wrote. Told by Chris' characters. Transcribed by Subieko.

"Let the story begin," Subieko said.