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Chapter Two

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"I knowyou're impatient and all, but was it really necessary to blow it up?"

"Of course it was. How else was I going to set an example?"

Nikki looked a bit uncomfortable. She'd read that's what people were supposed to look like when their friends blew up their host's kitchen appliances. "But still, it's not nice. It looked like an expensive model, too."

It could have been worse. Nikki sat at the kitchen table drumming her fingers on its surface, clearly distracted, but not enough to pass up on the chance to irritate D about her habits. D herself leaned against the counter, munching on raw coffee beans as the remains of an innocent coffee machine smoldered sadly behind her. In dim light, at a distance, seen by someone bad at reading expressions, she might have looked happy.

"Alright, what's going on?" Aline crossed her arms moodily, glared, and was soundly ignored.

"Well, all the better," D said, shrugging. "It'll teach all the other coffee makers out there that not even the strongest are safe, so they better not malfunction. Or else."

"Seriously, guys, why are you here?"

Nikki suppressed a snort of laughter. "Has anybody ever told you you're utterly insane?"

"…guys?"

D's eyebrows scrunched in thought. "Well…actually, no, they haven't. In all my endless years, I've been called many things, but never insane. Odd, that. Why do you ask?"

"Just what in the world is going on here?"

Nikki turned her head, appearing to notice her for the first time. "Mind your punctuation," she reprimanded, setting down her teacup. "And to answer your question, nothing in the world is going on. In the Hub, though, there's a bit of a problem."

"A bit of a problem," Aline deadpanned. "A bit of a problem has caused three harbingers of doom to appear in and destroy my room."

"Ah, yes," Nikki said. "You see, we have a little civil war situation on our hands. Leaders being beheaded and such. Haha. Whole world in political upheaval. Wacky business. Hah. I'm second-in-command, my sister's after me, and D is, well, one of the most hated people in the universe and unlikely to survive any beheading going on. So we came here."

"In thirty-seven universes," D corrected.

"Right, thirty-seven universes, plus honorable mention in quite a few more."

Aline stared. "What, you mean that place was anything besides complete pandemonium?"

"Oh, it was, of course. But it was pandemonium we controlled."

"And the difference is?"

"Obviously," Nikki said patiently, "our kind is much better. But the point being, we had to flee or die. The most convenient place to flee happened to be your bedroom."

Aline pulled up a chair and ran her hands through her hair. "Okay. I can deal with that. Are you going to be leaving soon? Because, I'm sorry, but being around you two generally ends with me being in severe pain. I'd rather avoid that, if you don't mind."

"Understandable," Nikki said in her most convincing tone of understanding. "But, maybe you'd want to know about it anyway. The Hub isn't totally self-contained, and now with all this chaos going on…" She trailed off, letting the implication linger. Something extremely violent and interesting was hovering in the air, tantalizingly available. Aline didn't stand a chance.

Sayings about lethal curiosity only applied to felines, she reasoned.

"Okay. Tell me about this revolution."

Nikki was silent for several moments. The dramatic effect of this was spoiled by the unceasing crunching in the background. She twisted to glare at D. "Do you mind?"

"Yes."

She pinched the bridge of her nose, but pushed onward. "Anyway," she said in the careful words of a rehearsed speech, shooting for the best Haunted Storyteller voice she could, given the background noise and unhelpful cheery lighting of Aline's kitchen. "I don't know all of it. In the confusion, I could only pick up the general shape of it. It looks like the badfic authors have rebelled."

"Badfic authors?"

"Slang term for the unsavory part of the unprofessional crowd. Fanatical shippers, wish-fulfillment junkies, rabid fangirls, weeaboos and the like. Tolerated because Marie doesn't care enough to do anything about them—she runs the place, technically, but doesn't really do anything besides welcome new denizens and look cynical. The lady with the clipboard, remember? But we got along in the past, carrying on the normal insanity. Shippers raided each other's settlements, keeping their own populations in check. Fangirls were routinely sedated when the wilder ones got out of control. Nobody, not even crazy people, ever wanted to get close to weeaboo—and trust me, they aren't hard to spot—so that was okay. And sure, there's bitterness from both sides, but what would life be without some good old fashioned resentment and general hatred?"

"Pleasant and tolerable?" Aline said.

Nikki laughed at that, almost genuinely. "Good one! Moving on. I don't know what brought it on. Maybe it was a gradual increase of tension that finally snapped. I didn't notice any tension, but maybe it was Ninja Tension. It still caught us by surprise."

Aline suddenly remembered beheadings being mentioned and asked, "So what happened to Marie?"

The other girl's eyes were downcast. "She's gone."

"Oh, I'm sorry," Aline said hurriedly.

"Not dead," Nikki said, her chin jerking upwards. "I'm sure she's not dead. There would have been a public execution. They're probably using her as a hostage. Or maybe she escaped to some other world. I don't know. But she can't be dead. It isn't like her to do things like dying." Aline was taken aback by the tone of her voice, which was the closest to genuineness she'd ever hear her come.

"But how on earth did you lose an entire dimension to a group of children?" Aline said. "I was there once. Most of them weren't out of their teens, if even that! And they seemed perfectly happy to go around terrorizing innocent new authors without any of the need for rebellion," she added.

"I don't think you realize the magnitude of the force they can harness," Nikki said. "We see them as one collective of unpleasantness - because, frankly, they're extremely irritating and as far as I'm concerned, irritating people shouldn't exist – but that's not true. The particularly mindless type of fangirl, the kind that's held together by spit and hormones, will stampede in herds, but that's kind of like a moving, amorphous blob of lust. Shippers, forget it. The individual tribes, or ships, hate each other, and anything less than total loyalty to the ship gets them cast out. Weeaboos…well, you know that girl at school who's prone to squealing, always brings pocky to lunch, and can't utter a sentence without saying 'kawaii'?"

Aline did, though she didn't know how Nikki knew about her. "I didn't," Nikki replied on inquiry. "There's one in every school. It's like a law of the universe. Scatterbrained dipwads, the lot of them," she pronounced with finality. "It'd be like getting a kid with severe ADHD to sit still for a whole day without moving or speaking. And of course there's the plain old badfic authors. Specifically, people who can't write and can't be civil about it. They're all out for themselves and themselves alone. You put them in a room together and all you'd get is a bunch of passive-aggressive comments and brewing resentment. Collectively, that's an awful lot of sheer passion and devotion, a lot of fanaticism and loyalty and just good old fashioned illness in the head. You get them all organized and not killing each other, you have a lot of power there. And there's a fuckton of them. I have no idea how they got that way, but I suspect it involved bribery, witchcraft, or both. So now you see? We're exiled, hunted, and divided. We have no real assets and no plan beyond the very vague. There's only a few of us in one place while the enemy is an unheard-of organized force of reckoning. In other words, we're—"

"Fucked in the ass with a jackhammer," D offered.

"Yeah, pretty much."

Aline digested all of this. After a while, she said, "Yep, the situation sound pretty hopeless. Good luck with that."

"Well, we're not totally doomed," Nikki said indignantly. "There's still the canons."

Aline shuddered involuntarily. If anything, her experience with them had been worse than with Nikki's undesirables.

"The canons would even the odds in this," Nikki continued, darkly eager. "There's a veritable fuckton of them, too, seeing as humanity has been telling stories since forever, and they've got a good reason to hate the opposition. They've been tormented by them for several millennia, after all. They could unite against the enemy just fine. Not to mention that most canons are remarkable. Geniuses. Superheroes. Wizards. The only problem is, well, getting through enemy territory to actually find them. That's the current plan. Under a proper leader, it'd be no problem." Nikki's face broke into a wide, confident smile, which Aline suspected was as real as most of her smiles, but it didn't exist long before fading. "There's one thing that worries me though, seeing as canons are extremely susceptible to it…"

"And what's that?" No hesitation this time. Aline's fate was sealed.

Nikki gnawed her lip. "The rebels have started using their most lethal weapons. It's despicable, but effective. I would have approved if they weren't being used against us."

Aline's eyes were wide and spellbound. "What are they?" she asked.

The older girl glanced around apprehensively, as if just speaking the word would bring pain, misery, death, disease, mass killings, and Disney musicals. Cupping a hand around her mouth, she whispered, "Clichés."

Aline blinked once.

Twice.

"And?" she said.

"That's it," Nikki said. "Clichés are kind of like bombs. You toss one, and anyone in its range is immediately affected by the cliché in question. Carefully chosen clichés are devastating. It takes a special kind of person to stoop to the use of the nastier ones, and most of them are on their side. Here, read this." Fishing in her endless pockets, she drew out a small, thick volume and slid it across the table.

"'Seventy-Four Creative Ways to Skin a Cat?"

"Oh, sorry. This is the right one."

"'The Cliché Compendium?"

"That's the one. It's your go-to guide for everything, including its namesake."

Aline opened the book and flipped through it. It was bound in black leather, the title embossed in gold on the cover. The pages were thin, the print was small, and the whole book was maybe four inches thick. The title page read, 'The Cliché Compendium (dealphabetized): Your go-to guide for recognizing, avoiding, and neutralizing clichés, from the harmless annoyances to the great behemoths of bad writing.' Apparently this was the extended edition.Aline flipped through it and landed on a page titled 'Heartwarming Christmas Oneshots'. It read, 'A sickeningly sweet dollop of fluff that often causes vomiting, nausea, and feelings of joy and goodness toward all mankind. Their power source comes from marshmallows and eggnog. Counteract with hearty doses of cynicism.'

There were also several examples, more cures and their level of effectiveness, and outside references. The page after that had an entry on the Yaoi Confession: 'An unbelievable, unrealistic, voyeuristic explosion of failure and boylove, instigated by fangirls needing something to fap to. When two male characters, regardless of either of their established sexual orientations, species, metaphysical composition, etc., suddenly announce their undying love for each other after several disgusting chapters of shy blushing and ineffective sexual tension. Be ready to be accused of homophobia before proceeding.'

A rather odd entry described the Reality Hammer. 'A fabled artifact, said to be wielded by the god Dilucidus, which shatters all illusions. This hammer is what signals the end of the golden age when one's editor tactfully informs one that, actually, having one's characters be suddenly saved from their inescapable predicament by a freak tornado was quite unlikely. This hammer is what every history teacher in a long line of history teachers has had to solemnly wield when correcting students that no, the pyramids weren't built by aliens and the Egyptians didn't use telekinesis. This hammer is what slams down upon the head of a contented daydreamer when she suddenly realizes that no daydream can last forever. Naturally, there is great debate over whether it actually exists, where it is now, how it was lost, and so forth. There is far less debate over whether or not the sort of people who debate the existence of such a silly thing like a Reality Hammer need to go outside and make some friends.'

"Read up," Nikki said brightly. "You'll need it later if you want to survive."

The book suddenly dropped to the table with a dull thump. "Oh, no," Aline said with as much finality as she could muster. "I thought I already made it clear I'm not getting mixed up in this again. Just leave me to my boredom and go back to your time-space thingy, okay?" In desperation, she tried the puppy dog eyes and succeeded in absolutely nothing besides making D snicker.

"Ah," said Nikki. "There's the thing. You don't have a choice."

Aline stood up abruptly and backed into a corner—admittedly not exactly the best escape route. "Why?" she said, a note of blind panic creeping into her voice.

"Because the plot says so," Nikki informed her, producing a script from somewhere and jabbing it with her neon-painted pointer finger. "See?" Inside, she was frowning. Apparently Aline's fear of interesting things was greater than her love of them. She would have to remember this later on.

"I thought you said it was understandable!" Aline shrieked.

"I lied," Nikki said.

"I'm not going!"

"Yes you are. We need an underdog and you're the prime candidate."

"I don't want to be an underdog!"

"Well, too bad!"

"SHUT UP!" Both girls looked around to face D. D rarely yelled. It wasn't her style. D yelling was usually enough to stun people into silence. "Shut up, both of you! You're acting like children."

"But we are—" Aline began to mutter.

"I said shut up!" D repeated. "I don't need another goddamn headache. First this war business going on, whatever that's all about. People stampeding all over the place, calling for revolution, shouting about beheadings, causing all this ruckus. Then this fine specimen of humanity, who looks like a unicorn threw up on her I might add, drags me out of my nice, comfy corner for some stupid reason—"

Nikki snorted. "You know full well that if they found you, you would have been executed, probably accompanied by feasting and celebration. I expect the only reasons you lived five minutes into it is your remarkable resemblance to an unattractive wall."

"Exactly! I would have been fine! Now I'm stuck here with this random groupie I seem to have picked up with a colorblind megalomaniac and a clueless idiot who has absolutely no buyer's discretion when it comes to coffee makers!"

Hearing them talk, you never would have guessed that they had been best friends for nearly a decade.

After a moment, "Yeah, what's up with that girl anyway?" Aline asked, then frowned. "Hey, was I the clueless idiot in that last sentence?"

D scowled, glaring at no one in particular. "Her name is Whatsherface. Whatsyourface, you may leave your corner. Get over here and introduce yourself."

Nikki pouted slightly. She should be the one bossing her little sister around. Why were life's little pleasure's always denied her?

The apparent owner of the marshmallow-voice entered the kitchen bouncily. "Hi!" she said brightly in the slightly anxious tones of the eager-to-please. "Nice to meet you all!"

The girl could not have possibly fit her voice any better. She was waifish and small, maybe twelve years old, dressed in a bright yellow sundress and sandals. Her whole manner suggested that at any moment, songbirds would fly through the window and drop a daisy chain on her head as heavenly light shined straight through the roof and illuminated her sweet dimpled smile and doe eyes.

"I'm Jenna!" she chirped. "One day, I'm going to destroy you and all you hold dear. Then I'll take over the world and reign as the supreme ruler of the universe for a thousand years of darkness and despair. For a millennia, there will be no light or hope for humanity, as they will all be enslaved and worked to death. I'm sure we'll all be great friends!"

She clapped her hands together and beamed, twirling happily.

"Hrk," said Aline.

D remained unimpressed. "Amateur," she said. "No style at all. And she wants me to train her? Do I look like a miracle worker? Look here, Julia or Janice or whatever your name was, evil overlord is a fine profession, but you aren't getting anywhere with announcing your malevolent intentions. Incongruity will only get you so far."

"Oh, please!" Jenna clasped her hands together humbly. "I've heard so much about you! Is it true that you're the most hated person in thirty-seven universes? And you must know so many famous Lords of Evil! I'd give anything to learn from you!"

"Plus honorable mention in many others," D insisted, but she was looking thoughtful. "And yes, I suppose I do know my fair share of evil overlords. In fact, go ask one of them. I believe Zurg has an opening. For the last time, I'm not who you want, kid, now bugger off."

Nikki decided that being patient never got anybody anywhere. She donned her Serious Eyebrows, one of which was blue and pierced. "Could everybody kindly shut their traps and listen to me?" she snarled, standing up and rattling the table loudly. "I don't have time for this silliness. The dimension I'm responsible for is being taken over by a bunch of creatures with barely two brain cells to rub together. D, this is our temporary base until we find the canons. You're on guard duty. Stay here in case anybody else shows up."

"Aye-aye, captain." Somewhere in the world, a sarcasm meter exploded.

"But this is my house!" Aline began to protest, and was disregarded entirely once again.

"Jenna, start working on those weapons of mass destruction you were chattering so excitedly about on the way here."

"Okay!"

"Right then. Aline's coming with me as designated underdog to find the canons. This is recon, after which we can start planning a counterattack."

"Leave me out of this! I don't want any counterattacks! Who said anything about counterattacks?"

"I just did," Nikki said reasonably and grabbed her arm at the precise moment another plot hole opened in the kitchen. This one was a nasty shade of orange. "And that would be our ride," she quipped, stepping into it and dragging Aline with her.

"LET ME GO, OR I'LL—"

But the profanity that would have followed was lost as both girls disappeared into another dimension, leaving only a sense of pervading fury behind.

D leaned against the kitchen counter and crossed her arms, hmphing. She was not at all content with her situation and was anxious to let the world know this with as much posturing as possible. Jenna continued to smile blithely and rock back and forth on her heels.

"So…" D began.

"Yes!" Jenna said, suddenly rapt with attention.

D considered the benefits of having a homicidal maniac indebted to her. She also considered the frequency of old masters dying at the hands of their murderous students. Finally, she considered her chances of getting any good caffeine in the near future without a lackey to get it for her.

"Do you know how to make good Turkish coffee?" she inquired.

"…yes?"

"Good. Go make some, and then you'll have your first lesson."