Today's chapter of "The Wonderful World of Fanfiction" is brought to you by the music of ABBA. The Swedish pop group that everyone loves, even if they never admit it.
Backstage, walking past those forgotten characters who still have tender hope that their tales may continue (a feeble, futile hope, that is far too often in vain), Lily and Wizard Lenin of "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus" navigate the usual chaos that comes with being backstage in "The Wonderful World of Fanfiction"
Not limited, today, to Dead Last of "Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds" bleeding form his eyes and being reassured by Eru Lee that despite over powered eyeballs being an odd requirement of the "Naruto" universe, this in no way will make him in any way shape or form a competent shinobi.
And although the twelve-year-old Namikaze Minato doesn't want to admit it, she's probably right about that. And that the chunin exams will be… interesting.
"I'm just saying, Lenin, that of all the stories to get a spin off, ours, 'October', 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep', 'God of the Machine', why is it, that when something gets expanded, it's the weird 'My Immortal' thing?" Lily asks her constant companion, a look of sheer and utter confusion on her face as she tries to contemplate the ineffable workings of the great writer's mind, "I mean, weren't we promised a Frank spin-off at one point, or a Death spin-off? Why did we end up with the goffick one?"
"You forgot the space ninja one," Wizard Lenin responds drily, referring to the recent spin-off of "Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds", "Finishing the Hat" in which The Carnivorous Muffin finally makes a title reference that not one member of the audience understands.
"Hey, I actually like space ninjas… I wish I was a space ninja," Lily confesses, only to earn a pair of raised pale eyebrows from Wizard Lenin wearing the guise of Lenin Rabbitson.
Lily then explains further with dramatic hand motions, completely ignoring the sight of Light Yagami and Anna Jones of "God of the Machine" who watch their progress with raised eyebrows (perhaps wondering how the times have changed, and why they have been constantly set aside for Lily's bizarre absurdist tale), "It's true, I'm just stuck in Hogwarts, and here she is off in the Star Wars universe! Star Wars, that means Death Stars and lightsabers and jedi and Darth Vader…"
Wizard Lenin looks dearly tempted to point out that neither Death Stars nor Darth Vader show up in the prequels, but hesitates if only to save his tattered reputation and the illusion that he is not a giant nerd.
He finally settles on a dry, scathing, and rather British, "Are you saying our adventures are meaningless?"
"Well, yes, life is ultimately meaningless, that's the entire point of our story," Lily says, as if this is of no consequence, before adding, "But their meaninglessness is way more awesome than ours! Space ninja Lily has a lightsaber… and space! What do I have?! A giant snake in the basement, a crazy teen version of you who we haven't even gotten to call Trotsky yet (because his name is totally Trotsky and or Snowball for short), and you and Hermione bitching at each other."
Wizard Lenin's calm demeanor does not even last a second, "I do not bitch with Granger!"
"You spent the last chapter bickering about whether Christmas was antirevolutionary or not. It's gotten to the point where I think some people are legitimately shipping you to together (although that's a whole different can of worms)," Lily points out before her eyes widen once again and she returns to her original point, "But that's all beside the point! The point is, that of all the things our maker could be writing, she chooses to spend her time rehashing 'My Immortal'. You know, I'm starting to wonder if she enjoys toying with us."
"You're just upset to meet an enemy you can't overpower," Wizard Lenin points out, while also refusing to point out that this unstoppable enemy is either the heat death of the universe of goffism.
"No, besides, I'm not the one who should be worried. After all, I don't make any appearances in the original 'My Immortal', unlike some," Lily then gives Wizard Lenin a rather pointed look, taking in his youthful Albanian appearance, as if to remind him that there is far more to come in "My Immortal" and much of it does not bode well for Tom Marvolo Riddle, otherwise known as Satan, the Hot Topic store clerk.
"Stop that," Wizard Lenin admonishes before stating, "Besides, as you said, it's a spin-off, it would never happen in the true story."
"How do you know?" Lily asks, "Reality is falling apart, maybe in the original story line it will become gothic too. We haven't exactly been told that it won't."
They let that statement linger between them, both reading the dawning fear and horror in each other's eyes, and then at once both feel the abrupt need to brush it off entirely.
"No, there's no way, she's not that bad of a writer or that terrible of a human being." Lily says, "I mean, that's just such a rip off ending…"
"For someone who tries to fashion herself into a fanfiction representation of Philip K. Dick she couldn't possibly…"
Both fall into silence.
"Lenin, didn't Philip K. Dick have that book where god turned out to be a bunch of spray cans?"
Wizard Lenin does not respond, in tandem, both turn to look from whence they came at the mass of characters derived from themselves, their eyes landing on the borrowed Ebony Way, and then they look back towards each other.
"So, bigger boat?" Lily asks.
Wizard Lenin agrees without hesitation, "Yes, Lily, bigger boat."
"Welcome back everybody!"
As usual, with the opening of "The Wonderful World of Fanfiction", the sight of The Carnivorous Muffin sitting in their armchair waving to the audience, there is much rejoicing.
Once the enthusiastic clapping calms itself The Carnivorous Muffin starts, "Can you believe I'm still updating this thing? Regarding putting it off, well, I assumed people would want to read actual stories instead of whatever the hell this is. And we did, a lot of things updated, and they were exciting… I have ventured further into spin-off recursion than I thought possible, that 'My Immortal' thing became an actual thing along with the Twilight thing from last chapter, and I think I may have started a shipping skirmish in 'Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds."
This is evidenced, not only by the LeexMinato fans in the audience, the vast majority of the audience who care about "Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds", but also by the slightly smaller cropping of the LeexMinatoxKushina fans as well as the newest grouping of LeexTobirama fans.
The Carnivorous Muffin isn't sure how she feels about any of them and thus her written representation tries their best not to stare any of them directly in the eye.
"We've got a bunch of exciting stuff for you today. There's 'God of the Machine' questions, 'Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus' questions, even some questions for those stories I assumed nobody cared about anymore. Right, well, anyways, as usual we're going to start with all those wonderful questions directed to me," The Carnivorous Muffin says before motioning to the pile of white envelopes that have the written questions, and without further ado, opens the first.
"Right, let's see, this is from Arashi – IV of VI," The Carnivorous Muffin says before clearing their throat and reading, "Okay Muffin, but are we sure that carrots do exist in 'Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus'? Might there be a chance that Rabbit ate them after all?"
The Carnivorous Muffin considers this, mostly because someone felt the need to ask, and finally says, "Well, sure, why not? Since carrots haven't shown up yet and no one's mentioned them there's a chance that Rabbit has devoured them from the 'Lily' universe. If this makes you feel better then I'm not the person who's going to crush your hopes and dreams. That's really all I have to say about that one. With that, next question."
The Carnivorous Muffin picks up the next envelope, pulls out the review, and reads, "This is from our friend Crimson Domi who asks, 'What's the Great Pumpkin'?"
The Carnivorous Muffin looks stunned for a moment, then says slowly almost disbelievingly, "I forget not everyone has seen 'Peanuts' holiday specials. The Great Pumpkin is from 'It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown', The Great Pumpkin being a mythical Santa like figure who makes an appearance on Halloween night who only the character Linus believes in. I believe what I was referencing, at the time, was Linus' line early in the show, that there are three things one should never discuss in order to avoid confrontation: politics, religion, and The Great Pumpkin."
(For the record, The Carnivorous Muffin does greatly enjoy the various "Peanuts" holiday specials. Particularly the Halloween one and the Christmas one. As can probably be deduced from the spattering of references to either that creep into various stories.)
"Right, these are easy today and surprisingly Rabbit-less compared to last time, next question," The Carnivorous Muffin picks up the next envelope and reads, "Oh, well, never mind, more Rabbit. This is also supposed to be asked when Rabbit appears on stage but I guess we'll just repeat the question later. This is from DeadLuck666 'Could I name a character 'Rabbit' without grievances from you?'"
The Carnivorous Muffin considers this slowly, "Well, I hardly own the name Rabbit, so certainly. That said, if it's Rabbit the character you're borrowing, or even the concept of his character, I would greatly appreciate that you note the fact that he is borrowed from The Carnivorous Muffin's 'Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus'. Otherwise, go nuts."
(For future reference, The Carnivorous Muffin gives this standard endorsement to anything people ask to do. All you need to do is reference the original work and The Carnivorous Muffin as the original author and you are free to make use of characters, settings, anything you want to your heart's content.
Even soulless, reality devouring, abominations such as Rabbit.)
"And, oh, look, there's a few more from DeadLuck666," The Carnivorous Muffin says in surprise as she reads through the message, "Let's see, also note that I've edited this somewhat to correct factual details, 'Why don't you write a book? You do know 'Fifty Shades of Grey' was originally a Twilight fanfic, right? You could totally make a book with your stuff, if you fill in the parts that were created by other authors or paid royalties to use them. If you did, I would buy a copy and read it. I actually like your stories."
"Well, first, this is very flattering," The Carnivorous Muffin, "That said, I am slowly but surely working on transferring 'Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus' into something suitably non-Harry Potter as to warrant real people publishing, but we'll see if that goes anywhere, and if I can then convince someone to publish it once I finish with that. Otherwise, no real book ideas for me right now, but if I have any grand updates on that front I will be sure to let people know. Still, thanks for the thought, that's very kind of you. And yes, that thought does occur to me quite often, because my god, if 'Fifty Shades of Gray' can get published then surely I can make some money off of 'Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus'."
The Carnivorous Muffin smiles, "Alright, last from DeadLuck666 for now, 'What gave you the idea to write 'Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus'?"
The Carnivorous Muffin's smile drops as she considers the monumental nature of this question, or, rather, all the winding history that goes into it, "Oh good lord, we're saving the hard ones for last. Well… The short story is that it was a bunch of meandering ideas that sort of wormed their way together and… yes. I guess it started with an original idea of wanting to write a story about a god like Harry as the master of death. In the story he'd end up creating this artificial being who looked like a childish version of his mother, this would essentially end up being a prototype of the Lily we know and love today. As I was planning the story and writing the first few chapters it struck me that Lily was the far more interesting character. Gradually, from there I had this idea of the multiverse Harry Potter universe, of Harry as Death from a universe long since snuffed out, and Lily in the center of it all trying to find some semblance of meaning in her own existence as reality crumbles around her. It's always been about the meaning of life, and an exploration of absurdity in fanfiction, something I'd rarely if ever seen done (and none quite in the way that I would do it), and that's really the essence of where it all got started."
There's perhaps more to it, but none that has any true relevance, and probably not of much interest to the reader, certainly not worthy of a giant rant from The Carnivorous Muffin at this time.
"Ok, let's see what we have next, this is from Butterfly Wings Chaos Theory, 'How old are you?" The Carnivorus Muffin blinks, "Well, I'm not sure what bearing this has on anything, or if my answer is in any ways embarrassing (as I'm perhaps too old for this site), but I'm twenty-three."
The Carnivorous Muffin, needless to say, has been on this site a ridiculously long time.
"Next, from Banana Pie, who you can stone to death for starting that 'My Immortal' rubbish thing that we have going on," The Carnivorous Muffin says, "You say that Lily, Anna Jones, etc., are self inserts. However, they're nothing like any other self-insert I've seen (their uniqueness (in a good way) is proven by the popularity of their respective fics – especially Lily's). What are your thoughts on this and what do you think it says about you (they are 'self' inserts after all)?"
"Well, this is an interesting question," The Carnivorous Muffin muses before launching into their answer, "First, I can't remember when I said that Lily is a self-insert but I didn't really mean it if I did say it. She's very much not. Granted, we do share quite a few traits in common, but that can be said for everyone I write, and at the end of things she's ultimately not derived from myself. Anna Jones though, very much is a self-insert."
The Carnivorous Muffin pauses once again, considering how to continue, before saying, "I think to me self-insert has a different meaning than it does to most people. Most people, assume, that self-insert is synonymous for awful or mediocre at best. Now, let's not kid ourselves, it's true, self-inserts in general are awful things. That said, I've always viewed it as more of a genre than anything else. Someone from our world, or a world very much like ours, is transported into a new one. That's it, that is what an SI is in general. It has no bearing on the character's personality, perhaps only on their abilities, that they reflect what one might expect to see from someone belonging to our universe. With that said, the story does not have to bend to the SI's whims or needs, they don't have to befriend the hero or the villain, they don't have to succeed or even alter the plot, they are simply a stranger in a strange land and anything beyond that is for the author to decide.
So, for example, I consider 'Now and Then, Here and There' (the anime), to be one of the best done versions of the SI plot I've ever seen. 'Princess Tutu' is another excellent rendition of the SI plotline. Also, for that matter, is the first book of 'The Gunslinger' series where we're introduced to the boy Jake, who in his own right is an SI (we're not counting later when Stephen King actually did insert himself and it got really weird).
That said, I find most SI stories lacking because of the author's tendency to warp the story around their inserted character. People, when inserting themselves into a story or someone close enough to themselves, tend to make it more about the world than the characters. It becomes an exploration in love of a fandom or else love of a particular character and so things happen here and there but nothing of impact seems to happen to the character, and when it does it falls… flat.
When I set out to write 'God of the Machine' it was because I was tired of that and wanted to do SI in Death Note justice. I had seen many renditions of L and some SI teaming up to stop Kira which ultimately derails into a fix-it fic where L doesn't die and Light may or may not die depending on that author's liking of Light Yagami as well as a few stories where Light teams up with the SI (which is always very weird). I wanted something true to the nature of 'Death Note', one where no one is on the other person's side, and our inserted character is not untouchable and faces grave consequences for action or else inaction.
That said, writing 'God of the Machine' can be bizarre sometimes, as, while Anna Jones isn't quite myself, we share a lot in common. To the point where recent chapters have been me writing my own descent into bitterness, hatred, and insanity.
I can see why other authors avoid this path, as it is somewhat alarming to be deeply introspective and ask yourself how good of a person you truly are and what paths you would be likely to take in any given situation, but it's one I think is ultimately worth taking if you want to have a story worth reading.
So, SI as a genre, doesn't deserve to be blown off, but there are many examples where it just… doesn't really hold much interest.
As for what all of this says about me, well, what do my stories in general say about me? Sometimes I delude myself into thinking I have a normal imagination, then I look at my profile and all of its ridiculousness, and realize that I really don't."
The Carnivorous Muffin offers the audience a polite smile, perhaps trying to avoid considering their written descent into madness and rage in the form of Anna Jones, and then when there is no reaction from the audience moves on to the final question.
"Right, well, last question to me from Banana Pie once again, then we're off to interview all of those wonderful 'God of the Machine' characters that people strangely love. Seriously, I had no idea people even cared about my 'Death Note' stuff," The Carnivores Muffin clears their throat to read, "In regards to 'Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus': What is a question, which doesn't seem like one with a spoiler-y answer and doesn't spoil anything by itself, that if answered by you right now, would reveal some huge and important plot twist or secret?"
"Surprisingly enough, this is rather easy, one which I have always blown off answering but has been asked quite a few times," The Carnivorous Muffin says, "What exactly is Rabbit?"
And with that ominous question lingering in the air and all that hangs with it the screen fades and the commercials begin to roll. Abruptly the show comes back on, "My apologies, but it seems we actually have a last minute review from Elliot Green, who is blatantly trying to up the review count to get a side fic for this monstrosity… I can't believe we've reached this point."
The audience, needless to say, is prompted by the giant neon sign that cues the laugh track.
"Right, well, they have a few questions," The Carnivorous Muffin says as they read the review, "First, 'Doesn't the fact that 'canon' Harry Potter appears in this fic at all mean that he by definition can't be the canon Harry Potter?"
The Carnivorous Muffin blinks, blinks again, looks down at the review, and promptly curses, "Goddammit!"
The Carnivorous Muffin then blinks again, and decides to ignore this question entirely, "Right, well, they also asked, 'When does she actually do all that time traveling? Because if she can get mistaken for Lily Riddle as a child, then the time traveling must happen when she's fairly young, right? Although I guess all that might be too spoiler-y, so maybe my question is: are we going to see more about Lily Riddle soon in the fic, or is that farther off once Lily's older? Also I have some theories about Lenin's mysterious childhood friend, but we haven't heard about her for a while except in side fics. Will we ever learn more about her?"
The Carnivorous Muffin grimaces slightly, "Well, that's a monster of a question. I suppose I'll address the first part first, and state that 'Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus' is one of the most ambitious things I've ever done, not only because of its weird content and at times intricate and subtle (yes, there are very subtle things going on in there that I haven't seen audience members pick up on), but also because it's hideously long in nature.
I don't know the exact arc length off the top of my head, and some of it has changed as we've gone along, but there's about three or four major arcs to the story, each focusing on a different one of our main characters, and subdivided into their own individual arcs.
The first part, the part we're in now, is all about Lily, building her up, getting into her head, and setting up everything that happens in the rest of the story, mostly in terms of characterization of Lily but also dropping some very important plot elements, which, right now, have to be introduced only to be expanded upon later.
As a result, everything's mostly a lot of seeds of mysteries and wacky adventures, which start out fairly light-hearted if with a darker element beneath, but have lately taken a turn for the more ominous as we progress along. And most of the mysteries are mentioned off hand or not even fully introduced but instead hinted at by one-time comments, or else brought up but then not expanded upon repeatedly, and like our narrator Lily we're expected to be distracted enough by what's going on in the present moment at Hogwarts that we really don't care.
A lot of the Lily Riddle stuff and hints to Wizard Lenin's past were intended as this, and if I hadn't gotten into the whole side fic business, probably would have been a lot less blatantly obvious that 'something' is going on. But I did and so at this point the whole 'Lily Riddle' intrigue feels more like getting hit over the head repeatedly with a wooden plank. Needless to say, I wasn't nearly as subtle as I thought I was while also setting up very necessary plot elements.
At any rate, what's probably clear to everyone is that we're finally moving out of this main introductory arc and transitioning into the second part of the story, which is all about that Wizard Lenin and everything he never wants to talk about, ever.
As a result, getting to the other questions, the answer to that is 'yes', we learn about Lily Riddle, Wizard Lenin's childhood, and even about a lot of things that readers haven't continually asked about in this second main arc of the fic. Most of the mysteries that readers have thus far been concerned about, and Lily herself for that matter, will soon be resolved and their answers revealed.
A lot of the deeper mysteries of the story, others that have been brought up now and then although far less frequently than the 'Lily Riddle' or 'Tom's friend' theories, will have to wait their turn to be revealed far later in the story."
The Carnivorous Muffin sighs, then states, "And isn't it depressing that we're still technically in the beginning of 'Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus'?"
The Carnivorous Muffin certainly thinks it is.
"Alright, with that, now we are free to cut to commercials. And when we come back we do a rundown of 'God of the Machine' questions which… People still read my 'Death Note' stuff?"
The audience cheers, claps enthusiastically, and the show fades from view as the trailers begin to roll.
Now Presenting
That Goddamn "Black Butler" and "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus" crossover people keep asking for
By The Carnivorous Muffin
Starring:
Lily, the antichrist/God/Christ/The Summit of Imagination and Pit of Human Fear
Sebastian Michaelis, a demon
Ciel Phantomhive, Hamlet the Faust
"When people began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that they were fair; and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose… The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them."
Genesis 6:1-4
England, towards the end of both the 19th century and the Victorian age, the son of the earl of Phantomhive, Ciel Phantomhive, witnessed the murder of his parents and the desecration of their bodies, was sold into slavery and prepared as a sacrifice to summon a great power, a power beyond mere human comprehension, the kind that turned entire cities into salt and parted the red sea in two.
It was at this moment that the unnamed demon made an appearance and makes his bargain. A game he had played before, where he sold his service for a soul of a boy, a young prince of Denmark in all but name.
But the game had something he had not planned for, or not suspected, because surprisingly the humans had succeeded in summoning something other than him. Because there, with a surge of power massacring them left from right, a young girl appeared out of nothing, hair a vibrant and brilliant golden red, face pale, and eyes a haunting green. For a moment she stood there, swaying on bare feet, her eyes sightlessly staring forward, her fingers twitching and shaking, and then without a word or a look at either him or the boy or even the bodies she collapsed over herself and fell into unconsciousness.
And it was all too clear, from that strange spice of her blood, from the internal glow of her soul, that she was nothing human.
(So, for the first time but undoubtedly not the last, the newly named Sebastian turned to his young master, Ciel Phantomhive, and he lied.
"The girl, as you can see, is a servant of mine."
And although the boy grimaced, narrowed his eyes (one eye inscribed with the covenenant between man and demon), he said nothing as Sebastian not only cradled him in his arms, but also flung the unconscious girl over his shoulder.)
He saw to the boy first (he would always see to the boy first), but after the miraculous reconstruction of the Phantomhive estate, placing the boy inside of his room, it was one of the servant quarters where he had stored the girl, where he found himself lingering.
She did not smell like the desert, like old memories of a world long since passed by, but all the same something in the curve of her young face reminded him of Israel and the ancient years before even that.
He found over the millennia that the truth of a demon was twofold, it was ennui, and it was to covet.
Boredom had shaped him, had twisted and remade him into the being he was now, perhaps unrecognizable from that angel he had been before rebellion. But then, perhaps not, even to the demons and the angels it was unclear how far the omniscience of their creator truly stretched, and if he had not been all he was destined to be even before the fall.
Perhaps, even then, he had been desperately bored.
And boredom was a desperate thing, a crushing thing, the human English word boredom was only a shallow reflection of what it truly was. Ennui, that was closer, but still did not quite touch, was not the great vast desert of eternity deprived of purpose.
At any rate, the boredom had not faded, rather, it had become refined over the millennia, until now trying ways to appease it was almost a fine art.
But there was another great truth of his existence, of any demon's, and perhaps any angel's, existence.
Wanting.
Demons coveted man, his soul, the divine spark of his tenuous existence, many forgot this and interpreted it as a desperate hunger, some as a means of entertainment, but the truth was that it was nothing more than desire.
They had always desired man, envied him, despised him, and coveted him… Him and his daughters.
Sebastian remembered those early days after the rebellion, back before they tasted souls for themselves, then it had been about temptation and simply dragging humankind into hell with the rest of them. They had been a unified force then, still an army, still bitter over their loss and retreat into the pits of existence.
Of course, it hadn't lasted, they had rebelled because they defied that unity. In the end, demons were solitary creatures, and any attempt at cooperation had chafed something awful.
But there had been other things then.
Gender, the female form, had been new and revolutionary. And what many did not discuss was that there was a second great fall, that not all demons were born from that first rebellion, but some had looked at the daughters of men and they had coveted.
Some simply stole their faces, their forms, twisted themselves into this dual concept of masculine and feminine and back again as it suited them.
Others took wives for themselves and were damned for it.
Of course, that was ages ago, when Sebastian perhaps could be described as young, and when he'd spent most of his time in the desert looking in contempt upon mankind. The Nephilim had all died out, or at least, so he'd always assumed.
There was something ethereal and almost angelic about her, that divine androgyny that humans failed to match, the strange color of her hair, the pale and unmarred shade of her skin, and the green of her eyes, not a reaper's sickened yellow green but something inhuman all the same.
Yes, he thought to himself as he looked at her, someone would be falling very shortly, no doubt, someone powerful too.
Someone had coveted too greatly.
At that thought her eyes flickered open, for a moment she said nothing, merely let her eyes wander across the room (glowing with that internal, inhuman light, the light of those closer to god than man could ever dream of being), finally her eyes turned to him, and she said, perhaps too calmly, "So, I don't seem to remember anything."
Almost against his will he felt the corner of his lips twitch upwards in amusement, "Truly?"
She paused, considering him, frowning, and began to ramble onwards, "... Well, there's odd flashes of cults, dead cults, and half naked boys on alters as virgin sacrifices… And maybe a giant snake. And were you a crow?"
And then he found himself fighting an expression of surprise and disbelief forming on his face, because surely, whatever he had expected, it wasn't… this.
However, she hardly seemed concerned by him, sitting up and rubbing and hand through her hair, her eyes widening with realization, "…I think someone wiped my memories. That son of a bitch!"
She paused, glanced at him, then glanced at her hands as if they might reveal what she'd forgotten, but they must not have told her because she then threw them in the air and cried, "Do you know how frustrating this is? I have the feeling I was doing something really important and now I… I don't even know my own bloody name! Or what I'm doing here… Actually, was I virgin sacrifice number one that went terribly wrong? And they decided to bring out the other one since I… blew them up? Or did he blow them up? Wait, no, I'm still very confused."
She then looked at him again, almost expectantly, as if he had some explanation for everything. And slowly, carefully, he gave her a small and bare explanation of what he had surmised which might satisfy her, "First, you are currently in the reconstructed Phantomhive Manor, under the employ, along with myself, to the earl of Phantomhive, Ciel Phantomhive."
She did not seem remotely satisfied by this explanation, but none the less let him continue.
"As for what they, your cult, wanted with you… Well, I believe they used the boy to summon you, perhaps mistaking you for your father."
"My father?" the girl asked, her eyebrows raising almost comically, "That seems like a… weird mix-up to have."
"On the contrary, I'm sure you take very much after your father," he said, and while he couldn't place who it might be now, even awake and with her frankly bizarre manner of speech she practically reeked of inhumanity.
She looked down at herself then back up at him, "I appear to be an adolescent girl."
He offered no response, only a thin, polite, smile.
She seemed rather dissatisfied by this, her expression right then emulating some of the young master's, a slight rather irritated pout on her childish lips, "Right, well, who are you supposed to be then?"
"I'm Sebastian Michaelis, and I'm merely one hell of a butler." He paused then, looked at her, and said, "And you, as of today, are my assistant."
"…Really?" she asked, not so much asking if she had been before or agreed to this, but if this was the path their conversation was truly taking.
"A maid, for now." Sebastian continued, before adding, "One hell of maid, I'm sure."
For a moment she only stared at him, a strange half-grimace on her face, before she responded drily, "Somehow I feel like being a maid was not what I wanted to do with my life. But, since I can't remember what the hell else I should be doing, and am not sure I want to go hunting down giant snakes…"
He took off his glove on the sealed hand, his fingernails black and the pentagram prominent on his pale skin even in the dark, and he held it out to her. She eyed it silently and warily, and there was clear understanding in her eyes as she looked down at it, knowledge that to take his hand was to enter into an unbreakable covenant.
And for a moment, he was almost convinced that she would simply leave.
But then, she stared into his eyes, and there was some hint of recognition in hers, some sense of kinship, and her hand reached out for his, his seal painting itself on the back of her unblemished skin.
And that was how Sebastian recruited the Nephilim, Lily, into his services. Although, later, he would often wonder if it should have been that anticlimactic.
(Coming soon, perhaps, with enough interest, to an internet browser near you.)
"And we're back everybody!" There is much rejoicing as The Carnivorous Muffin once again makes a reappearance, "And just like I promised we have a few questions for Light, Anna, and Soichiro… Actually, just one giant scenario thing that will no doubt be horrifying and awkward for everyone."
The Carnivorous Muffin sighs, "So, you know those fanfiction stories where you sit the 'canon' characters down and have them either read the original canon book or watch the canon film or do whatever, then talk about how they feel about it? Well, this is one of those, only with 'God of the Machine' instead, obviously in its uncompleted form up until chapter 24 or whatever the hell it's on now."
The Carnivorous Muffin then states more formally, "This was asked by patheticnoob, and specifically it is, 'After the entire story of 'God of the Machine' has been played to Light and Anna (just to be thorough), they and a Soichiro who has seen it get to interact.' So, to facilitate all of that, we brought the three of them on stage!"
The spotlight turns to the corner of the stage where a rather reluctant Anna Jones, a rather grim faced and murderous looking Light Yagami, and a pale and dead eyed Soichiro Yagami all stumble on stage and take the three seats across from The Carnivorous Muffin, each met with a winning round of applause.
"Oh, it is… It is not great to be back here, let me tell you," Anna said, which is probably a fair response, given that by prompting perhaps the worst thing to ever happen has occurred. Needless to say, Light and Soichiro say nothing, they aren't even looking at each other.
"And was that really necessary?"
"I am but the writer, Anna Jones," The Carnivorous Muffin states with a shrug, "I do not ask the questions merely provide the answers."
"They're going to kill each other," Anna says motioning to both Light and Soichiro, "It's going to be a blood bath."
"No, you're exaggerating," The Carnivorous Muffin pauses, regards both, then states, "Besides, we'd have to cut for technical difficulties so it wouldn't be on camera."
"Oh, so it doesn't count?" Anna asked.
"…Well, frankly, no. If I don't write about it, and since we're in this weird metauniverse, then if I don't show it then it probably doesn't happen." The Carnivorous Muffin doesn't want to spend too long analyzing this particular story and what happens offstage in it.
There is a silent heady moment, in which Anna Jones watches Soichiro out of the corner of her eye, while Light simply stares straight at him, face stripped of expression, as if in some dream he had seen this all before and knew not to blink.
To blink was to die.
"Listen to me," Soichiro started, his face worn and eyes blood shot, as he stared at his son, and instead of a stage imagine him in the front seat of a car, behind the driver's wheel, parked at the edge of a freeway exit, "I'm going to kill you here, and then kill myself."
Another Light, one without motive or memory, would have panicked in that instant but this one was cold, "Really, father, I can't say I would do any differently. Then again, I wouldn't do any differently."
"We are nothing alike!" Soichiro started, and already he was reaching for the gun in his jacket, "I am bound by my responsibilities as a father and chief of the NPA."
"Am I that dishonorable?! No, no, it would have been dishonorable to have done nothing! To have wasted my life and all my opportunities to let this world rot! I had the chance, only I could do it, don't you understand that?! You of all people who have seen what rottenness this world is truly comprised of!" Light laughs, head tilted back, eyes blazing red, that breathless laugh that comes at the end of things, "Oh, father, you may commit suicide from shame and dishonor, but don't think that your putting down your only son like a dog will buy anything back for you now."
"Light," Anna started only to be cut off by Soichrio by the cocking of his gun straight at his son.
"From one murderer to another, Light, I'll see you in hell," And there is a single, stark, gunshot and a scream.
And, as promised, the show is replaced by a screen of a cartooned Light Yagami with his brains blown all over the backseat of a car along with a cartooned Soichiro slumped over the driver's wheel, leaving a blood soaked, terrified, memoryless Misa Amane behind.
And overtop this, written in large, garish letters, are the words, "We appear to be experiencing technical difficulties, we'll be back after these words from our sponsors."
At the base of a great mountain, drenched in sweat, sliding backwards with every moment she dared to pause for a breath, Wizard Lenin keeping pace alongside her with his nose stuck in the Daily Prophet.
"You know, something about this feels…" Lily gasped, held onto the boulder to prevent it from rolling back down again, and only when it was steady did she finish with a great exhausted sigh, "Ridiculously familiar."
"Less whining more pushing," Wizard Lenin commented, to which Lily could only respond with a glare.
"Easy for you to say! You aren't even the one pushing up this goddamn rock up the goddamn hill! And it just keeps rolling down again anyway!"
"Well, that's hardly my problem," Wizard Lenin commented.
"No, but it's mine, and what's the point of me even doing this if it's just going to fall back down again?... And god this feels familiar, you know what it feels like?"
"Like pushing a rock up a hill?" Wizard Lenin asked.
"No, like Potions Class, I mean, granted, two times more sweaty than that and ten times as exhausting… I just have that same feeling. Does that make any sense?"
"No, less whining, more pushing."
And thus, Lily, in her usual fashion, reenacted Sisyphus' absurdly heroic punishment with all the art and wit she could possibly muster.
There is loud cheering as the lights turn on once again and The Carnivorous Muffin greets the audience, "Oh we certainly enjoy breaking the fourth wall here, don't we?"
Given the audience's forced and prompted laughter they very much agree.
"Alright, now, it's the moment I'm sure everyone has been waiting for. The one person everyone loves more than anyone else I write, that's right, it's time to interview none other than Lily of 'Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus'!"
Twelve-year-old Lily, dressed in her typical Hogwarts uniform steps out from back stage, the spotlight shimmering about her as she offers the audience a curt bow before grinning and taking her seat across from The Carnivorous Mufifn.
"Oh, Carnivorous Muffin, it is great to be back." Lily exclaimed, "Frankly, I'm surprised we're all still doing this thing. I thought for sure we'd get cancelled after that first episode."
"Yes," The Carnivorous Muffin dimly agrees, "I was sure too, but apparently people enjoy question and answer fics."
Lily merely raises her eyebrows, "Can't say I see why, after all, it's not like you really know what any of us are going to say. No one does."
"But if anyone were to have an accurate guess it probably would be me," The Carnivorous Muffin responds, "You know, since I made you up and all."
"Lenin would take great offense to that," Lily said, "Then again he takes great offense to everything, I think it's chronic."
"Right, well, thank you for coming on Lily, and for being such a great guest," the sad truth being that Lily takes all of this easier than any other character, "That said, you ready for some questions?"
"Muffin, please, I was born ready," Lily responds, her calm words met by the enthusiastic cheering of the audience.
The Carnivorous Muffin offers a bemused smile and then begins, "Our first question is the same one I got earlier from Crimson Domi, this time for you, 'What's the Great Pumpkin'?"
Lily blinks, then blinks again, "Does no one watch television?"
"Well, it's Charlie Brown, you know those things are very old… Well, not for your universe, or not as much, but maybe they don't play it as much on television anymore." The Carnivorous Muffin offers with a shrug while Lily continues to look baffled.
"Next, you'll be telling me no one watched 'Dirty Harry'," Lily says shaking her head.
"Uh, Lily, I think very few people caught that reference," The Carnivrous Muffin hedges, although it's hard to say how many were simply silent about catching it, but The Carnivorous Muffin is willing to bet that "Dirty Harry" isn't nearly as universal as she had thought it was.
"No," Lily says in complete and utter disbelief, "Surely everyone knows the 'do you feel lucky' monologue."
"Well, I don't know, but I think not," The Carnivorous Muffin says with a shrug, "Sorry."
"But they've seen 'Total Recall', right?" Lily asks, "And 'Blade Runner'?"
The Carnivorous Muffin grimaces, "I think even less have seen those."
"Well they'd better get on that, you quote 'Blade Runner' all the time, and 'Total Recall' is going to get quoted very soon… This isn't good." Lily finally concludes.
"Maybe you should watch more common films," The Carnivorous Muffin suggests, "Of course, you're stuck right now with anything created before 1992."
"I know, do you know how hard it is not to quote 'Pulp Fiction'?" Lily asks.
"Very difficult?"
"Extremely," Lily says, "I can't ask if the motherfuckers speak English, or talk about quarter pounders with cheese, or strike down upon thee with a great vengeance… I can't reference 'The Matrix' either, or 'Gladiator'… Life is so very difficult."
The Carnivorous Muffin merely offers a shrug, "Well, we can't always get what we want. Either way, are you ready for the next question?"
"Do you know what they call questions in Paris?" Lily asks, "Questions with cheese."
"… I'll take that as a yes," The Carnivorous Muffin says slowly.
"A yes with cheese," Lily corrects with a perfect look of serenity on her face as if this is a perfectly natural thing for her to say.
"Right, well, this is from Crimson Domi again, actually a couple questions from Crimson Domi, 'What's your opinion on time travel? What would you think about a version of yourself who, instead of being Wizard Jesus and friends with Wizard Lenin, is a ninja in an alternate reality and best friends with another blond ninja; while also having to deal with plant zombies, speaking Japanese and a pervert of a teacher, not to mention Dead Last?"
"That's a complicated question," Lily comments, "Time travel? I'm not really sure, it's kind of exhausting if I'll be honest. Efficient though, and damn useful… Am I supposed to have other opinions?"
"Perhaps that it's dangerous," The Carnivorous Muffin points out, "The paradoxes alone are mind boggling."
"Dangerous? No more than anything else," Lily points out, "I'm pretty sure I break reality on a daily basis, what's time travel compared to that?"
"Point," The Carnivorous Muffin concedes, "Now what about the rest of it?"
"Oh, the ninja part…" Lily trails off, "I'd like to be a ninja, that sounds exciting, and useful. If I was a ninja I wouldn't have nearly as much trouble with that giant snake."
"But you probably would have had issues with plant zombies," the author points out.
"Who cares about plant zombies when you have giant snakes roaming the hallways? Plant zombies I can handle, and pervert teachers sound better than Snape at the very least who seems addicted to children's tears, and I can put up with a dead last… I put up with Ron Weasley and Margaritaville."
"Well, Lee has her own issues to deal with…" The Carnivorous Muffin points out only to trail off when she realizes that Lily wouldn't be able to comprehend the differences, as Lily herself is not Eru Lee nor is Eru Lee Lily, they have deviated and drifted from one another where seeing a world without Wizard Lenin inside of it or Minato inside of it is impossible to do.
"At any rate, I have another question for you, this time from Syra72, 'Lily, if you could travel to any universe based off of a book/movie where would you go and would you bring anyone with you?"
"'Lord of the Rings', obviously," Lily says without a moment of hesitation, "And I'd take Lenin, and we'd help hobbits, save middle earth, smoke some pipes, restore the rightful king of Gondor, and have an awesome time."
"…You know, you do travel to Middle Earth, and that's not what happens." The Carnivorous Muffin points out, thinking of "The Wasteland", with the caveat that in that particular story, just so as not to make it too simplistic, Lily has no knowledge of "Lord of the Rings".
"What? I do… Well, what do I do instead?"
"You accidentally make The One Ring sentient and you two become pals and cut off Saruman's head." The Carnivorous Muffin pauses, and adds, "It makes sense in context."
"… That's not so bad, I guess," Lily says, "But wait, if we're bros, then doesn't that mean I don't kill Sauron. So… I doom Middle Earth?"
"In a roundabout way," The Carnivorous Muffin admits, "But it's not done yet, so who knows."
"…I like this less," Lily states slowly, "I think I'd rather save Middle Earth than destroy it."
There is the unspoken thought that Lily, despite her intentions and beliefs, is incredibly good at destruction. One might say she was born for it. For surely, Lily has no truer purpose than the destruction of all that is and ever was.
"Well, is there some other question then?" Lily asks, looking pointedly at The Carnivorous Muffin and the reviews surrounding them, waiting for the next review addressed to Lily herself.
"Right," The Carnivorous Muffin says as they slip a review out of an envelope, "This is from Talisa-chan, 'If you met your future self who travelled back in time to murder someone, and then in turn travel back in time and kill that person to avoid creating a paradox, telling your past self in the process… could you be held responsible?"
"… Yes, but I wouldn't feel bad about it." Lily said.
The Carnivorous Muffin blinks, "I think you missed the point of that question."
"Oh, is this one of those utilitarian questions again?" Lily asked, "Because apparently I'm not very good at answering those."
"Not necessarily… But I suppose it is, if you want to look at it that way, although it's a little more complicated than the usual fat man and the trolley scenario." The Carnivorous Muffin concedes, given that this is the standard utilitarian dilemma.
"Well, if I have to do it then I have to do it… And really, they shouldn't have provoked my wrath in the first place. If I have to go back in time to kill them, the first time I mean, then it must be pretty damn bad. Is it Dumbledore?"
"No, it's hypothetical," The Carnivorous Muffin says.
"I bet it's Dumbledore… I could see that being necessary."
"No, it's necessary because you force it to be necessary, because of the paradox, it could be anyone. It could be Lenin," The Carnivorous Muffin explains with a sigh.
"Why the hell would I kill Lenin?" Lily asks.
"Because your future-self came back to kill Lenin and told you about it," The Carnivorous Muffin starts and seeing Lily's confused expression, brings out a pad of paper, and begins to sketch a graph and explain, "Alright, so there's two Lilys. One is from the future and one is you in the present. Future Lily comes back and tells you, present Lily, that she has travelled to the past in order to kill x preson. It can be anyone, it doesn't matter who. You, later, then travel back, as your future-self, to come back to the past and kill x person telling yourself that you're going to do it. You do it, in other words, because you told yourself you must. There's no other reason."
"Then obviously I had to do it," Lily says, "So there's no point feeling bad about it."
"Angst is beneath you, isn't it?" The Carnovirous Muffin asks.
"What are you talking about? I routinely question the pointlessness of my existence." Lily asks, of course referring to the classical definition of angst, rather than the popular definition that The Carnivorous Muffin had been referring to.
"Right, well, you know I also asked Hermione this," The Carnivorous Muffin says.
"Oh, well, what did she say?" Lily asks.
"She said… Well, she considered it a lot longer, and then she ultimately decided yes. Because even though it's an absurd situation, where perhaps you should not be at fault, she refused to live in a world where murder could be justified in such a manner."
"So, we agree," Lily said.
"I imagine she'd feel bad about it though," The Carnivorous Muffin points out.
"Well, that's on her, but still, responsibility is responsibility." Lily says with a shrug, "Anything else, oh great author of mine?"
The Carnivorous Muffin grimaces, not entirely pleased by Lily's casual response, and then grins as they take out the next and final question to Lily, which will surely cause more panic, "This is our last question and is from pixelherodev, 'How do you feel about Rabbit's crush on you?"
Predictably, Lily's eyes widen, she shrinks back into her arm chair, and out comes the obligatory, loud, and incomprensible, "Glehhhhhhhhh…"
And The Carnivorous Muffin only smiles smugly as Lily tears at her own hair and continues making strange incomprehensible noises as she tries to correlate the ideas of 'Rabbit', 'crush', and 'on Lily' in her head.
"And with that, we'll cut to our commercial break!"
"Why do you ask me these terrible things?!" Lily cries out but the screen is already fading to black, the audience already cheering, and Lily's chance for answering such questions long gone.
Now Presenting, Harry Potter, The Terminator Style
By The Carnivorous Muffin
Starring:
Lily Evans, The Reluctant Sarah Connor
Harry Potter, John Connor Only with Ten Times More Temporal Pardoxes
The Horcrux inside Harry's Head, The Reprogrammed Terminator
Riddlenet, Skynet
James Potter, The One Who Wants to be Kyle Reese
Voldemort, The Stupid Bastard Who Kills Us All
When James Potter first met Lily Evans, it was on platform nine and three quarters at Kings Cross, when he was eleven years old, September 1970.
And the first thing he thought, when he glimpsed her out of the corner of his eye and at the edge of his glasses, was that she was probably the prettiest girl he'd ever seen. Not that James had seen too many girls, or ever been all that interested in them, still there was something about the shade of red in her hair, the way it curled just so at the ends, the freckles on her skin, and as he turned to get a better look the striking and almost magical green of her eyes.
She was standing there, but she wasn't looking him, or at the Hogwarts Express for that matter, instead she was standing there staring up at a dark-haired man who was probably her father or… Maybe her older brother. Although, it wasn't that he looked old enough to be her father or young enough to be her brother, he had one of those weird faces where you couldn't really guess his age, where he really could be anywhere from twenty to thirty.
Except he didn't look like her, his face was different, perhaps even prettier than hers, more carved at the very least, almost aristocratic looking, and his eyes a pale and sharp blue that was only brought out by the paler cast of his skin and his dark slightly curly hair.
And his second thought, looking at Lily Evans, was that there was something a bit off about her, something he'd missed when just taking in how pretty she was. She must be a muggleborn student, but then, none of the other students were wearing what she was wearing or… It was something in how she stood, the straightness of her back, the tension, her eyes scanning for something every two seconds, and the intensity she stared up at her maybe-father, she was looking at him like she might never see him again.
Except, they were also arguing, it was hushed, maybe not even said aloud, but both of their eyes were burning and there was some disagreement and…
And then they both looked straight at him and suddenly James wasn't all that eager to get to know the red-headed girl anymore.
And frankly, she just got bloody weirder as the years went on. She got into Gryffindor too, was the best in the class, but honestly she never relaxed, and as far as James could tell she had no real friends.
Well, except for maybe Snivellus, maybe, but even they didn't seem that close. In fact, Snivellus seemed right pissed some of the time with her, putting on this betrayed look every once in a while like she'd just shanked him without even a word of warning.
"Why won't you talk to me, Lily?"
They were out on the grounds then, James passing by with Sirius, they probably thought he wasn't close enough to eavesdrop or wouldn't care, and they had their backs to them as they stared out at the lake.
Or at least, she was staring out at the lake, he was looking at her face for a sign of something. Probably some humanity, but you could only expect two things from Lily the ice queen and hell flower, absolute mechanical nothingness or unholy rage, humanity wasn't either of those.
"You just disappeared and your family… and I thought you were dead!"
Lily spared him a dull glance before staring back out over the water, "Sev, if I told you then they'd have that much more reason to kill you."
Snape paled, seemed to shrink in on himself almost, which really wasn't all that uncommon. Of course, he was a proud nerdy Slytherin bastard whenever James and the gang came around, but he was made of fragile stuff, especially around the lovely and terrifying Lily Evans.
Course, she was probably crazy.
She always seemed to be awake, for one thing, always in the common room barely sleeping, practicing things like dueling footwork and even fencing like her life depended on it. And if not that she was reading and studying and getting way better grades than anyone combined, even total nerds like Moony or Snivellus.
She was just way too intense, and she always gave him the weirdest looks, sometimes like she was trying to puzzle him out, dissect him with her unnerving eyes alone, and sometimes she looked almost disappointed by him.
And sometimes she bloody tried to talk to him.
Their second year, after that first summer, she'd come back (covered in bruises too and with an even newer sharper gleam of intensity to her eyes), and she'd sat down next to him Moony, Wormtail, and Padfoot.
All of them, the marauders, had looked at each other for a moment before looking back, Sirius giving the obligatory 'she's a bloody nutter' hand signal.
Her eyes flickered to Sirius, probably seeing everything, and he grimaced slightly and offered her an awkward smile, didn't take it back for a moment though.
"So, James… How was your summer?" God it was such an awkward delivery, you'd think she'd never learned how to talk to people, of course she probably hadn't. James never saw her talking with anyone, besides Snape, but he was barely a functioning person either.
"Ah, Evans, right, it was good." James let out a small snicker just at the almost desperate look on her face, "Spent a lot of time with Sirius here. What about you, you hang out a lot with your friends?"
She offered him a tight, painfully thin and unamused, smile, "I guess you could say that."
"Oh, anyone I know?" James asked, "Probably Snivellus, right?"
This prompted snickers from Sirius and then from Peter, Moony just shifted uncomfortably in his seat, eyes flickering to Lily then back to James. Lily's smile disappeared, became replaced by a colder, flat frown.
"You two head to the beach? Or maybe you played a couple rounds of quidditch?" James stopped, slammed his hand down on the table as if he'd just had a brilliant idea, "I know, you two went shopping, didn't you?"
Merlin knew she needed it, she had her Hogwarts uniform, but otherwise her clothes were bland and frankly hopelessly boring, all flat dull camouflage colors almost with lots of pockets.
"Sure, Potter, Sev and I went shopping," she responded dully, and then she gave him that look, that weird piercing disappointed and almost angry look, as if she demanded more from him or at least something else from him. Then, without another word, she threw her hands in the air and stalked away from him and the gang.
And James burst into laughter.
"James, that wasn't… I don't think she has many friends," Remus said, lightly, his eyes still on Evans' back as she made her way to the very end of the table, the seat closest to the door (the same seat she always took at every meal and in every class).
"Oh, bugger off," James said, waving off Moony's concern, "If she was less bloody weird she'd have more bloody friends. That's hardly my problem."
"Still, you could be… nicer," Remus started, and then stopped, flushing.
"Nicer? Why do I have to be nicer? She's a girl for one thing, and she hangs out with Snivellus, that's social suicide right there. It's not my job to be nicer to her."
And it wasn't, and he never wanted it to be, James was perfectly happy with the way things were. And honestly he wasn't that bad, he never went out of his way to speak to her, it was always her who weirdly came up to him at the start of every year with a, "Hey James, how's it hanging my brother?"
Which, really, what did she expect.
Sirius figured she fancied him or something, and James was inclined to agree, except…
Except sometimes, the way she looked at him, James wondered if she didn't loathe him.
Not that this mattered, there were other birds, and other things to worry about too. There was Remus' furry little problem that came around once a month, the rest of them becoming animagi, the rise of Voldemort too for that matter and the tension growing between muggleborns and purebloods, Sirius getting disowned and coming to live with James and practically falling apart… What was Lily Evans compared to all of that?
Of course, he didn't know then what would happen, and that perhaps he should have paid more attention earlier, because if he had then maybe…
Because by his fifth year, 1975, James' world ended.
May 1997, Severus Snape died without imparting a critical memory to the young and desperate Harry James Potter. In the last stages of the battle of Hogwarts, Harry failed to kill Voldemort and was forced to retreat from the castle.
The war trudged onward, the location of the last horcrux remained unknown, and the beginning of the end occurred when, in desperation, the dark lord Voldemort finished his preparations for another horcrux.
(Coming soon, with interest, to an internet browser near you.)
The lights come on, The Carnivorous Muffin waits in their chair, and the audience enthusiastically applauds once again. "The Wonderful World of Fanfiction" is back on and everyone is more than ready.
Too bad they're not getting an interview this time around.
"Hi everybody, oh it's good to be back again after that very strange trailer," The Carnivorous Muffin says, "That said, we only had a few linger questions for a few different people in the 'Lily' universe so I'm just going to read the responses."
There's a collective groan from the audience.
"Well, come on people, we have places to be and people to see," The Carnivorous Muffin chides, "And really, this is the most efficient way to go about it, so this is what we're doing. End of discussion."
Despite their words there is still some dissatisfied grumbling from the audience but The Carnivorous Muffin insists that they shut up and deal.
The Carnivorous Muffin pulls out the first review, clears their throat, and reads it aloud, "This first one is for Lenin from Sakami, 'What does Lily mean to you? What is her importance to you on a personal level?"
The Carnivorous Muffin pauses, whips out another card, and reads the response, "As perhaps to be expected, Lenin responded, with this message written in someone's blood, 'I know where you live'… Needless to say, this didn't answer the question at all, I think he took it too personally."
Wizard Lenin is not one to answer such delicate questions except in the strangest of circumstances, and although the circumstances are strange, this is not the time and place for him to reveal such things to the eager audience.
The Carnivorous Muffin takes up the next review and reads it aloud, "Next is from DeadLuck666, repeating an earlier question, 'Could I name a character 'Rabbit' without any grievances from either of you?"
Rabbit of course, sent no response, but given that this is Rabbit this can probably be taken as a yes or at the very least a sign of indifference. The Carnivorous Muffin's stance on this has already been made.
"Well then, that was anticlimactic, one last question then," The Carnivorous Muffin pulls out a final question, "This one's from pucflek and they wrote, 'I would like to ask Frank the Vampire who takes over at Riddle Inc. when he has vacation, and if it bothers him anymore that he is Frank. I mean, we got to know that even he catches calling himself that, but, does it bother him at all?"
The Carnivorous Muffin smiles as they fish for Frank's answer and read it aloud, "Well, to the first Frank tersely responds, 'I don't get vacations', which I'm sure is very true. To the rest he says, 'I don't see the point in denying it anymore, but yes, it still bothers me, I suppose… but you get used to things after a while, even new names, and I think the man I am today is very different to the man I was then. So maybe a change of name was in order, even if it was to something like Frank."
"And with that we're off to the races once again and back to a break! See you afterwards when we have an interview with none other than everyone's favorite Lily spinoff protagonist, Eru Lee!"
There is much clapping as the screen fades to black.
Now Presenting, Azrael and Tom Drunkenly Crash a Wedding
Prompted by AJ Grey
By The Carnivorous Muffin
"James… Is that?"
James Potter, sitting next to his new wife, Cecelia Brown, blinked as he took in the sight of none other than his old Muggle Studies professor Tom Riddle standing next to the punch bowl. Only, standing next to him, and James has to blink a few times, is what looks like the emperor of Ubik.
And they were both drunk out of their bloody minds.
"Merlin's balls, I think it is," he said, but that didn't make them go away either, no they just kept drinking punch, and Professor Riddle was looking as grumpy and displeased as ever (he'd never liked James, which, really, he was the only professor who didn't) but next to him the emperor (or whoever Professor Riddle had paid and dressed up like the empeoror) was looking weirdly nostalgic and also uncomfortable as he stared at their surroundings, and straight at James.
"Professor bloody Riddle is crashing my wedding," James said, dumbfounded.
"James, do something," his wife commanded, giving him a rather intense look, but James just threw up his hands.
"What do you want me to do?"
"Get them out of here, that's what I want. I'm not about to have that man at my wedding, or whatever drunkard he decided to dress up as a prank," She hissed, motioning towards the eerily young looking (and he had been eerily young hadn't he) emperor doppelganger.
"You think it's a prank?" James asked, and took a second look, and yes… And Merlin damned it was a good one, James was actually starting to get jealous.
"James! Just go over there and…"
And that was when Lily Evans, beautiful, glorious, untouchable Lily Evans came in out of nowhere, her face bright red, as she slapped Professor Riddle across the face and gave a rather alarmed hand motion to the laughing Martian king.
And James was falling in love all over again… With the wrong woman.
Professor Riddle though didn't seem concerned as he offered Lily a rather wry smile and then grabbed himself another drink, except Lily vanished it straight out of his hands and looked at him with death right in her eye.
And the emperor was now actually bending over himself as he laughed, clutching at the table and slamming his hand down on it repeatedly.
Professor Riddle must have said something dry and witty then, that Lily wasn't at all looking for, because she slapped him across the face again. Then, pinching the bridge of her nose, and sending James a really flustered and awkward look, she shuffled over and said, "James, I'm… I'm so sorry about him, and them, and we're just going to go now I promise and… Uh… Congratulations, to both of you."
"Wait, Lily!" James stood, rose from his seat, but she was already walking at an impressive speed away from him, back to them, looping her arms through theirs and then apparating them out of the reception hall.
James sat back down, took one look at his displeased wife, and then took a long drink of champagne.
"Ah, the wonderful world of 'Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds', who knew it would become so popular?" At the words of the musing The Carnivorous Muffin, the show is back, and the audience is applauding just as loudly as ever.
"As you probably remember, we're onto that portion of the show, with none other than our female protagonist, that spin off of Lily, Eru Lee!" The Carnivorous Muffin waves their hand to the other end of the stage where Eru Lee, with her headband gleaming across her forehead, wearing somewhat practical genin wear as she grins and bounds across the stage and into her seat.
"You're eager," The Carnivorous Muffin notes to which Lee nods.
"Personally, this is all very exciting stuff, it's not every day you get to meet god you know." Lee says casually as she adjusts her headband.
"Too true," The Carnivorous Muffin nods in agreement, "So, you ready to have questions posed to you by your maker?"
"Sure, I'm sure it will be very exciting stuff." Lee says but The Carnivorous Muffin is already taking out the first envelope and reading it.
"I'm not going to lie, this will be much shorter than last time, there's only two questions for you today. All the same, the first comes from Crimson Domi, 'What would you think of a version of yourself who stayed in England, eventually making friends with the man in her head and regularly killing herself to go visit her 'uncle', the Shinigami?"
Unlike Lily when considering the might have beens Lee pauses, and truly thinks, closing her eyes even before slowly stating, "I think… I think that I would have regretted staying in England, even without knowing that I could have left, what would have waited for me elsewhere… I can't help but think I'd feel unfulfilled, and that the English Shinobi would make a poor substitute for Minato. So even though the Lee there wouldn't know, couldn't know, what might have been I'd… I'd feel it. I'd know, and I'd feel like a shadow of myself."
"She wouldn't know there's anything to miss?"
"No, she'd know, even without knowing she would know." Lee opens her eyes and inside of them is a certainty that is not to be questioned or doubted, "I would know."
And perhaps there is something to this, that emptiness and loneliness that Lily often feels, perhaps what is missing there is not Wizard Lenin but instead Minato Namikaze of the crossover that never was and never would be.
But Lily does not know this or if she does then she lacks the language to say it.
"Alright then, last question," The Carnivorous Muffin asks only to be interrupted by Lee.
"Already? We're going quickly tonight."
"Well, I'm just the messenger, I only ask what they want me to ask and say what needs to be said." The Carnivorous Muffin states and then almost reverently takes out the last question for Eru Lee, "This is from BananaPie, 'How do you feel about your resurrection jutsu? If someone close to you died, would you bring that person back?"
"Yes," the answer is both instantaneous and alarming.
"Even if they don't wish it?" The Carnivorous Muffin prods further.
"They wouldn't," Lee responds, "And anyways… Yes, I'd bring them back."
"You can't bring back everyone, Lee." The Carnivorous Muffin notes, "That's a very dangerous path you're wandering down."
"It's an irrelevant one too, no one is dead, and my answer won't change," Lee states, "This isn't about consequences, it's just about what has to be, and if Minato dies then I'm bringing him back. Period."
"I imagine you'll adjust that answer, or at least be forced to justify it, soon enough," The Carnivorous Muffin states rather ominously, but by the hardened glint in her eyes Lee's answer will not change anytime soon, which is fair enough.
One can't expect this kind of character development on a talk show after all.
And with that thought, and that lingering questions, the lights all go out and the scene fades into nothingness as the commercials begin to roll once again.
Now Presenting, Lee in the Clan Wars
Prompted by Quite a Few Different People
By The Carnivorous Muffin
The first time Tobirama met Eru Lee he did not learn her name and he also stabbed her through the heart.
Of course, he hadn't meant to do either. She later told him, that in that moment she appeared out of nothingness, just when he reappeared via hiraishin with his blade aimed for Uchiha Izuna's ribs, that he would have stabbed Izuna and given him a fatal blow, one that would have pushed Madara down a path of madness and despair.
But instead, Tobirama found his blade in someone else's chest, that of a young red headed woman, the design of Konoha inscribed on the headband on her forehead, dressed in the worn battle gear of a shinobi.
Both Tobirama and Izuna stepped back, hands pressed forward to begin flicking through hand seals, the steady thrum of battle still in their blood, even as she stumbled forward and offered Tobirama a blank and disbelieving look.
She looked down at the kunai in her heart and back at him, "You shanked me!"
He blinked, not entirely sure he understood the word right, but she continued, bleeding profusely but strangely unconcerned even as the life bled out of her, "You shanked me! Why did you just shank me?"
Tobirama felt his mouth open and close, then felt his eyes widen as she ripped the kunai out of her chest, blood soaking through the front of her uniform and rushing out of her. In seconds, this woman was going to die.
Tobirama found himself glancing at Izuna, but he seemed just as stunned, distracted, as Tobirama himself was.
But no one else was, elsewhere Hashirama was having one of his toy pretend battles with Madara, Toka locked blades with one of the Uchiha cousins… No one seemed to notice the woman at all.
And who was she?
She had… An unnerving amount of chakra, dwarfing Hashirama's entirely, more than Tobirama could believe could exist in a human being. The red hair could mark her as an Uzumaki, but she didn't look like one, if her hair was dark instead she might even look like an Uchiha, but something about her face, her eyes and nose, were foreign and unplaceable.
"Oh my god, everyone's killing each other…" the woman said, taking in the battle around them with confusion of all things, then she turned to him, "Hey, nidaime, am I in one of those weird hell realities again?"
"I… You've been…" he motioned to her chest, to which she looked down and looked back up, frowning, then placing pressure on it.
"… Oh, it's just a flesh wound."
"A flesh wound, there's a knife in your chest!" Izuna cried out, and then stopped, seeming stunned by his own reaction.
"Was," the woman corrected, "There was a knife in my chest… And honestly, I've had worse, I'll get better."
"You're going to die," Tobirama said, and she spared him a set or raised red eyebrows.
"Well, probably," she admitted, "It won't be the first time though. Not even my first surprise stabbing… Although this is the first time you've stabbed me, I mean, what the hell, I thought we were friends or well… That you vaguely tolerate my daily antics!"
Seeing his complete and utter bafflement she paused, regarded him, and then turned to Izuna. Slowly she began to realize something, "Oh hell, I know this… We haven't met yet, have we?"
She grimaced, suddenly unconcerned by either of them, instead muttering to herself, "Well, Minato's probably going to kill me… But I'm willing to bet that I haven't caused a giant reality altering paradox… Probably."
She then looked down at her wound, at her bloodied hand, "Goddammit!"
She sighed, turned back to Tobirama, spared a glance to Izuna, "Well, gentlemen, it seems I'll have to bid you adieu… Try to pretend this didn't happen, okay?"
And then she disappeared, back to wherever she came, leaving Izuna and Tobirama to stare dumbly at one another, and then in a blink of an eye desperately try to pick up where they'd just left off.
(Strangely enough, in the end, neither Tobirama nor Izuna were critically wounded that day. Apparently, according to Eru Lee, this made all the difference in the world.)
(Coming soon, with enough interest, to an internet browser near you.)
And the show is back, once again, with a fair amount yet to go before it is done. The Carnivorous Muffin smiles once again, beginning perhaps to wonder how much is left, but none the less addresses the audience, "Well, wasn't that fun? At any rate, we're not out of the Minato woods yet, as we have some questions for the titular character himself, none other than Namikaze Minato!"
Minato walks in, perhaps a bit more uncertainly than Lee and Lily before him, taking time to observe his surroundings and have them observe him, take in the bright gleaming headband, the dark pants, and white shirt, as well as the wooden sandals on his feet as he makes his way across the stage.
"Hello," he offers as he sits, with a quick and rather uncertain smile, "It seems like I was here just yesterday."
"And yet it's been some time," The Carnivorous Muffin offers to which he nods.
"I'll never get comfortable with it though," Minato notes, "Not like Lee, she doesn't blink at all of this…"
"Fourth wall breaking?" The Carnivorous Muffin asks.
"Yes, I suppose we can call it that." Minato agrees with a stiff nod, "So, I guess people have questions then?"
"A few, not too many," The Carnivorous Muffin says with a shrug as they take up the stack of reviews, "I'll admit these are some tricky ones though."
"Should I be concerned?" he asks, and his smile here is a little more daring, a little more humorous as if he expects that he should but does not expect the author to admit it.
"That, my friend, is up to you," The Carnivorous Muffin states, "First is going off of a question asked earlier to Lee by Crimson Domi, 'What would you think about a version of Lee who stayed in England, eventually making friends with the man in her head and regularly killing herself to go visit her 'uncle', the Shinigami?"
Minato, as Lee had before him paused, because truly this concept is worthy of a story in and of itself, where Mianto finds himself a stranger in a strange land, faced with a Lee who is so desperately different from the one he knows and little connection between them. To answer it in a few words is lacking at best.
But, as he is wont to do, Mianto tries anyway, "You mean the Lee that might have been, if she hadn't left. I… I don't know everything about her life then, but, but if all she had was the English Shinobi and the Shinigami… I try not to think about it, you know, the might have beens like that. Because it would have been so easy for that to happen, and I think she'd be so much worse off for it. Because no one would understand her, not really, and I don't know if anyone would try. And I don't like the idea of Lee having no one and nothing… I hope she'd be happy, or try to, Lee always tries to be content with what she has but… But it probably wouldn't occur to her that there'd be more out there if she just looked for it. And I don't think it would occur to that other Minato either, the one who never met her in the first place."
Unspoken is the idea that the other Minato would be perfectly content, or at the very least, would not consider that there was some other road he could have traveled. And that this, more than anything, is more of a sin than anything the Lee who was Lily could have done.
The silence that lingers is heavy.
Clearing their throat The Carnivorous Muffin breaks it, "Well, next question then, this is from pucflek, and it's the last one for you too since the next is more of a scenario than anything else, 'Should you have three wishes, what would they be?"
Minato pauses, considers this, and says slowly, "This isn't one of those wishes thing that I'd come to regret or where I'd be misinterpreted."
"Nope, purely hypothetical," The Carnivorous Muffin says.
"Well then," Mianto says, and he considers it slowly, tasting the wishes in his mind, "World peace is the first, obvious one I think… My family, my parents being alive, I'd like that, of course I'd have to still have met Lee and come to Konoha but I'd like that. Third, well, I'm not sure."
"Nothing else you want?"
"A long life, maybe," Minato says slowly, "Ninja walk on the edge of death, and there are so many orphans, I'd like to be alive for my own kids, someday. But hopefully, with peace, I wouldn't even have to wish for that."
How there could be shinobi in an age of peace is another question entirely, and one Minato doesn't seem willing to address, at least not now. So The Carnivorous leaves it as is, and offers him a wistful smile, "Well, with that, let's take a look at the world without Lee, why don't we?"
And the lights fade, the audience cheers, and the pair disappear as the commercials once more start in.
Now Presenting: A World Without Lee
Prompted by pucflek who asked for the following:
I would like to know how Konoha, and Minato especially, would go on through life should Lee either disappear for good or, well she can't die so there is just the disappear option really.
By The Carnivorous Muffin
Naruto wasn't stupid.
Sasuke-teme might not believe so, or Sakura either for that matter, but he'd seen signs for a while. He just hadn't been able to put them together properly.
Dad visited the shinobi memorial every day, most of the time without mom or even Naruto, he'd been doing it for as long as Naruto could remember. All mom had to say about it though whenever Naruto had asked was, "Your dad lost someone really important, and she sacrificed a lot for all of us."
He wasn't always alone though when he visited, Kakashi-nii would visit a lot too, as would Ero-jiji, Hatake-jiji, Obito-nii, Rin-nee, and sometimes even Shika's dad. Sometimes Naruto would also go, and he'd look at the names, and try to figure out whose they were looking for.
Eventually Naruto would find it, but not actually on the memorial, but instead in Ero-jiji's books, one of the few ones that weren't for adults or Kakashi-nii and made mom and flustered and angry whenever she saw Naruto with one.
In fact, it was right there on the title page.
"The Melancholy of Eru Lee"
Personally, Naruto had always liked "The Tales of a Gutsy Ninja" better, if only because he was named after the main character, and also because "The Melancholy of Eru Lee" was just a really weird story. Naruto, the Naruto in Ero-jiji's book, wanted world peace and helped princesses and had all sorts of adventures.
Eru Lee's adventures were way more confusing, she had adventures like fictional Naruto, had friends, one of them her best friend of all, but there was this weird gap between her and pretty much everyone else. She tried to understand them, and they her, but it didn't always work out, and sometimes she'd do impossible awesome things that had pretty bad consequences.
She was an alien too, from a country no one had ever heard of, except when she went home she didn't fit in there either.
At the end of it, she learned that she'd caused some sort of time paradox thing, that she was never supposed to be there in the first place, and that in order to preserve all the changes that had happened, to help pave the road to a world without war, she had to sacrifice all of her chakra, her human form and consciousness, to do it.
And that was it, her best friend married someone else, her village was saved, and everyone kind of moved on. Or at least, Naruto thought they did, the book just sort of ended at that point, leaving everything weirdly hanging.
Dad had never read that book to Naruto, mom either, instead it'd just been left on the shelf… Except dad read it for himself all the time, and in the front, it was dedicated to, "My Apprentice Namikaze Minato and the memory of my least favorite student Eru Lee"
Still, it'd been a story then, a weird one too. Naruto had never given it much thought, except that maybe it had to do with the name inscribed on the memorial, Eru Lee.
But he wasn't stupid, and by the time Kakashi-nii, suddenly Kakashi-sensei spelled it out for them, Naruto had already mostly put it together.
"You all fail," Kakashi said, flatly, in a tone Naruto had never heard from him before, and it burned so much even when Naruto was tied to this stupid pole and utterly humiliated by everything.
"What?!" Sasuke cried out and Naruto was right there with him.
"Why on earth should I pass you?" Kakashi asked, "You only ever think of yourselves. The moment this test became about your own status your own career you left your teammates for the wolves. Do you know where you are right now?"
Kakashi moved to look at the memorial, "This is a memorial to the heroes of Konoha, to those who have sacrificed their lives, their very existence, for the happiness and security of this village. And they did it because they believe that Konoha is more than a place where you eat your teammates and comrades alive. For a world where we're more than trash, more than unthinking machines just following rules, but instead someone who will make sure we bring our comrade home."
Kakashi spared them a glance, "Remember, those who break the rules are trash, but those who abandon their friends are worse than trash."
And then he was gone with a final instruction not to feed Naruto lunch.
Except Naruto stared after him, because he remembered, that Kakashi had once had a sister…
They ended up passing, but weirdly enough Naruto's thoughts weren't on that, instead he found himself talking to his father, sitting by himself at the kitchen table with a bottle of sake, staring out at the moon.
"Hey dad," Naruto said, and Namikaze Minato, the yondaime, glanced down at him and offered him a smile.
"Hey, Naruto," he started, "Congratulations again on passing Kakashi's test."
"Yeah, it was really hard," Naruto said before adding with a chagrinned smile, "We almost failed."
His dad just nodded, "Well, Kakashi's a notoriously hard task master, but he has your best interests in mind."
Naruto just nodded, then, looking at his dad asked, "So, dad, Kakashi-nii says you guys took the bell test too?"
For a moment his dad didn't answer, just stared at Naruto as if trying to stare through him, then he nodded slowly, "Yes, and so did Kakashi, Obito, and Rin."
"How did you do?" Naruto asked.
Minato's hand gripped his cup of sake too tightly for a moment, but then, he forced himself to relax, "Surprisingly well, but then, we had the best genin Konoha had ever seen on our team."
"You?" Naruto asked with a grin but his dad had gone perfectly still, almost cold, at the question.
"No," he responded shortly and flatly.
"Oh, well… Who was it then?" Naruto finally asked.
For a moment Naruto thought his dad might just say he didn't want to talk about it, he'd done that before, he'd done it a lot before, but tonight the alcohol seemed to have loosened his tongue because he let out a breath and said, "Lee, of course."
Then it all just seemed to pour out of him, "Jiraiya never stood a chance against Lee, and he had no idea, the poor bastard. No one ever stood a chance against Lee, they never believed it either, especially in the beginning when she was just this out of the blue clanless genin who no one had ever heard of."
He paused, took another drink, and gave Naruto another cutting look, his eyes sharp as knives in the dark, "I wish you had had a chance to meet her, Naruto. She loved you. She would have loved you…"
He smiled then, another drink, "She was going to be your godmother, you know. Mikoto was your mother's choice but even she didn't disagree that Lee deserved it, more than anyone. More Lee would have… If anything had happened to me, or Kushina, Lee would have seen to your future and trampled anyone who stood in her way. And she made it through the war, through England, through everything but then… I never saw it coming, but I think she did, I think she always had deep down."
"We made a bargain, Death and I, my village for my existence… But it ended up somehow being for her existence, and I never asked for that." He stopped suddenly, looked down at his reflection in the cup of sake, then across at Naruto, "Appreciate your friends, Naruto, appreciate every moment you have with them. You never know when they won't come back."
And that night Naruto pulled down the warn copy of "The Melancholy of Eru Lee" once again, and flipped through to that last page…
"And Lee stared down at these twin realities, this wave form on the brink of collapsing, and in one she saw the man she'd always loved as a strange bargaining with a god, and in the other she saw the greatest friend she'd ever had looking at her and the crumbling world around them in horror.
And she realized that a mortal realm could not possibly support both, and more, it would choose the path of war and death because that was its natural state, before she herself had interfered in a world that had never happened.
So, she leaned to whisper in his ear, her hand shaking as she clutched at him one final time, and said, 'Give my regards to the village, and to your son.'
And she released her humanity completely, until, blinking, the world reordered, he found himself staring at nothing, like she had never existed in the first place."
And the lights return, the show is on once again, and The Carnivorous Muffin exclaims, "Oh my god, people care about 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' The fanfic I mean, not the book I stole the title from… Wow. Sorry, just I never expected we'd interview anyone for this. I'd assumed everyone forgot it existed."
(This is quite true for the real Carnivorous Muffin as well, as, by review count alone, all of the other stories dwarf that one.)
The Carnivorous Muffin then realizes that they are in the middle of a rant and stops, "Right, welcome back everyone, as I kind of just blurted we're about to have a very special guest. That's right, from my first major Harry Potter fanfiction, we're going to have Tom Riddle from 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"
The spotlight darts to the edge of the stage where the blonde, rather academic looking, Tom Evans steps out, giving them all a wary stare and a rather stiff smile, strangely reminiscent of Minato's expression as he walks down the stage and into his seat.
"Wow," The Carnivorous Muffin says, "Never expected to see you here."
"Frankly, I never expected to be here," Tom responds lightly, before offering that polite but stiff smile, as if waiting for something.
"Oh, right, well, why don't you introduce yourself given that far fewer people read your story." The Carnivorous Muffin prompts to which Tom's lips lightly twitch upwards in amusement.
"Yes, I can't quite beat out Lily can I?" He asks, before he says, "Alright, as you know my name is Tom Riddle, and I used to be a diary. Harry got me out when he was eight, or rather, Dudley did… There's not much else to say."
There is, but it's all a bit philosophical and surreal, so perhaps it's not best not to get into it.
"Well, I suppose that's good enough, you ready for your questions then?" The Carnivorous Muffin asks.
"As ready as I'll ever be, I'm sure," Tom responds, pale fingers tap-tap-tapping on the arms of his chair.
"Now, these are all actually from the same person, DeadLuck666, who apparently wanted to ask you quite a few questions. At any rate, we'll start with the first one and go from there, 'How do you feel about Ginny Weasley being possessed by your alternate self in the canon of 'Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus', as well as possibly being in love with that universe's version of Harry?"
(The Carnivorous Muffin is starting to get the feeling that everyone just wants to see one giant crossover between every fic they've ever written. The Carnivorous Muffin finds this task ridiculously daunting.)
Tom, for his own parts, takes the question about as well as can be expected, which is to say he looks completely dumbfounded, "You know, I'm not even sure how to address that or if I want to. First, I suppose I'll say, I worry for my alternate self's pedophilic tendencies…. Yes, I think I'll leave it at that."
"It makes sense in context," The Carnivorous Muffin assures to which he just raises pale eyebrows.
"Does it?" he asks, and when The Carnivorous Muffin fails to respond, the laugh track rolls, he merely grimaces.
"Right, well, next, presuming you're aware of all the other universes out here that I've made up…"
"Oh, believe me, I'm very aware," Tom interjects, perhaps meaning this more as an insult than The Carnivorous Muffin takes it.
"At any rate, given that, 'How well are you taking it all in, to know that the existence of alternate universes and parallel universes are in fact a reality (if not entirely pliable and ever changing) and not of science fiction?" The Carnivorous Muffin asks.
"I take it as I take," Tom says rather blithely, "That is to say, I cannot deny reality which does not disappear when I refuse to acknowledge it, therefore I must accept it. No matter how distasteful I find some of these other worlds of yours."
"Not a 'Lily' fan?" The Carnivorous Muffin prompts to which he visibly shudders.
"No, and none of your other stuff either," he responds with a sniff, ignoring The Carnivorous Muffin's growing look.
"Ah, because you're different from the other Tom Riddles, is that it?"
"Aren't I?"
And this is true, but then, all of them are different from each other, sometimes slightly, sometimes vastly. No Tom Riddle, at least in the world of The Carnivorous Muffin, is quite the same as the other. And each is no doubt far too proud of that fact, believing himself somehow superior to his brethren in one way or another.
Tom Evans, it seems, is no different than the rest in that respect.
The Carnivorous Muffin merely smiles and asks the next question, "Alright then, 'What is your take on the Harry Potter original canon, where the diary was placed in the care of Lucius Malfoy for safekeeping, until in a thoughtless act spurned on by a family feud between the House Malfoy and House Weasley, he slipped the diary into eleven-year-old Ginny Weasley's basket, who you would later possess in order to petrify a bunch of muggleborn children and a ghost, only to die at Harry's hand? Are you grateful that this never happened?"
For a moment he only glares but then, slowly, he recites, "If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tick us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? Am I not allowed my thoughtless rage, in that world that might have been, or allowed my only chance at freedom? I can't think of a more pointless tragedy than what you described."
"For you, not for Harry," The Carnivorous Muffin states.
"But it's not my story, is it?" Tom agrees slowly, before breathing out, and through gritted teeth admitting, "Yes, I am… grateful. I am grateful I escaped that fate, nothing more than an obstacle for Harry to stumble over, a tool of Lucius Malfoy's."
But gratitude can be a bitter thing.
"One last question before you go and we interview Harry, 'I have seen that you often go to the same café if not cafés in general, do you enjoy the smell of coffee? Have you ever tried apple tart?"
Finally, a genuine amused smile overtakes his features, "Yes and then no, respectively."
Then he laughs, at the absurdity of such simple questions perhaps, and The Carnivorous Muffin can't help but smile with him even as the lights dim and the scene melts away, the pixels already changing to the latest and greatest product to sell the readers.
Now Presenting: Lily Evans Looking at All her Hypothetical Children Squeamishly
Prompted by Crimson Domi:
To the appropriate Lily seniors, also known as Lily Potter née Evans: What do you think of each version of your child? Azrael? Lily Riddle? Eru Lee? Arrested Revolution's Harry Potter?
By The Carnivorous Muffin
Lily wanted to say she loved all her children equally, and she did, she just preferred Harry to… Well, the rest of them. Looking over them now, the red heads, the dark haired ones, all of them, she couldn't help but feel like she'd somehow failed each and every one of them.
Like she'd turned them into whatever they were now.
But if she'd raised any of them, her and James, would it have made much of a difference. Some of them, Lily the one who looked like her, they just weren't like normal people. Lily couldn't imagine making much of a difference on her, or on any of them.
They were all somehow out of her reach, untouchable, and perhaps even not really her children.
Because she just couldn't picture it, any of them, and her. There was something wrong about it, worse, relieving that she didn't have to…
That she could so easily abandon them.
… She preferred not to think about it at all.
"And finally, we're on our last interview of the evening," The Carnivours Muffin announces as the lights and show returns, there is a loud groan from the audience, "Now, now, everyone, there comes a time when the questions just come to an end, and the next isn't really interview worthy."
Someone from the audience asks, "Well, is it Rabbit?"
"No, it's not Rabbit." The Carnivorous Muffin responds rather quickly and in a manner that perhaps is a bit too irate for any good talk show host.
"It's not Dead Last again, is it?" Someone else asks, "You never interview anyone good."
"No, it's not Dead Last either."
There is suspicious murmuring from the audience, finally, a brave soul asks, "Well, who is it?"
"If you must know it's Harry Potter from 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"
The groaning returns with far more force, "That story! Does anyone even read that story?!"
"Hey, don't shoot me, I'm just the messenger, you all write the questions." The Carnivorus Muffin says but, again, this does nothing to placate them.
"That story hasn't updated in years! And half of it was just Snape and Dumbledore having these weird scheming meetings!"
"Well, people are interested!" The Carnivorous Muffin responds, "Seriously, there are people still interested in that story, even if you're not one of them. At any rate, everyone give a warm welcome to Harry!"
The audience does not give a particularly warm welcome to Harry as he uncertainly walks in, dares to look at the grumbling audience, and then hurries to his seat.
"Thank you, Harry, for coming," The Carnivorous Muffin sighs as he takes his seat.
"It's no trouble," Harry offers politely, "And… And I didn't think I had much of a choice."
"Probably not," The Carnivorous Muffin admits, "I'm afraid, in this story at least, it is the audience who are the gods."
"There's only one question for you though, if it makes you feel better." The Carnivorous Muffin states.
"One… Then why the interview?" Harry asks.
The Carnivorous Muffin says, "Well, because Tom had more than one and it's easier to do it this way. The other questions are… a bit more random, so I figured I'd invite you in."
"Oh, well, alright then, what is it?" Harry says, straightening in his chair and trying to exude the confidence necessary for a situation like this.
"This is also from DeadLuck666, 'What are your thoughts on the fact that you have money of your own in the Wizarding World? Do you know whether or not you will be Lord Potter yet? Have you thought to ask the esteemed goblins of Gringotts whether they have a lineage blood test and whether or not you can take one?"
The Carnivorous Muffin had been offered an out for this question, as Harry didn't in fact know if he could inherit his lordship or not, but didn't see the harm in putting the question here.
"Well… I don't know about that but I know what Tom might say." Harry starts slowly, "It might not be… prudent. If they didn't tell me, then maybe me going out and becoming Lord Potter or getting access to all my vaults is… A dangerous idea. Sometimes it's better to wait, until I'm older, until I'm not in Hogwarts, for that sort of thing. I don't want… I don't want to be a threat, if you understand."
Whether this is Harry or Tom being paranoid is anyone's guess, but then again, the world of "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" is a surprisingly dangerous one, and Harry's enemies and reluctant allies are not to be underestimated.
"I guess while we're here and on the subject of money, do you want to hear DeadLuck666's goblin question?" The Carnivorous Muffin asks Harry with a twinkle in their eyes.
"Uh, sure, I guess so," Harry says.
"Well, DeadLuck666 asked, 'May your enemies blood spill by your blade, and may your riches increase for both you and your allies; why do you (if you do not) offer a blood test to determine whether or not someone is capable of reclaiming old family vaults who have otherwise died out to mundanebournes or young magi in gerneral? Unless you automatically seize all financial estates of the deceased magi and his or her enter line when no obvious other blood member is actively alive, wouldn't it be more profitable to see whether or not there are in fact distant if not previously unknown family members or heirs who would be able to run the vaults flow usage again? You know bank fees and investments?"
"Oh, well, what was their answer?" Harry asks uncertainly.
"They state that it is bank policy to seize assets of wizards whose lines have been declared dead and whose heirs are all either in prison or dead and that any belief otherwise is that of fan fiction." The Carnivorous Muffin says, perhaps ignoring the fact that this is all head canon, and of course that The Carnivorous Muffin doesn't know the answer more than anything else.
"Oh, well, I guess that's why they wouldn't want me coming back for my stuff," Harry says slowly.
"Naturally, plus it seems reasonable that ridiculously old lines with no heirs would lose all their money. Otherwise it just sort of screams deus ex machina." The Carnivorous Muffin states, and firmly believes, as it's always a little too convenient when the main character suddenly has access to two or three previously sealed vaults.
"And that's all for now!" The Carnivorous Muffin cries out, "With that, we have our commercials, and then our final questions of the chapter!"
Now Presenting, The Avengers and "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus" crossover
Prompted by Everyone Ever
By The Carnivorous Muffin
Starring:
Lily, God/The Mutant that Doesn't Exist in MCU/Thanos' Prospective Love Muffin
Wizard Lenin, Butt Monkey/Antihero/Villain/Guy Giving Loki a Run for his Money
Loki Laufeyson, Loki/Out of his League/Villain/Daddy Issues
Steve Rogers, Captain America/Profoundly Disturbed Morality Chain/Hero
Bruce Banner, The Hulk/The Angry One/Sir Smash-a-lot/Green Rage
Tony Stark, Iron Man/Snarkatron 3000/The Sassy Nerd
Natasha, Black Widow/Obligatory Female Member/The Other Ginger
Clint, Hawkeye/The Other Butt Monkey/He Who Gets Concussed
Thor Odinson, Thor/The Other Sir Smash-a-lot/That Guy Who has to Deal with Loki
Nick Fury, Samuel L. Jackson/That Guy Tired of Snakes on Planes/That Guy who Brings Vengeance Down Upon Thee/The Fast and the Furious
Thanos, Likes to Sit in Chairs/Purple Guy/Likes Rocks/The One who Wants to Date Lily
Bucky Barnes, The Winter Soldier/Captain Steve's Brainwashed Buddy/The Terminator/Sisyphus
All the Other People that I'm too Tired to Mention
It seemed reasonable, to both Lily and Wizard Lenin, that on being trapped in some other reality with seemingly no way to get back to England, the best thing to do would be to join some super-secret research organization that was studying just that.
Well, not the getting back to England part, but certainly the visiting other worlds.
Except, Lily, apparently, wasn't going to be a part of it.
"They would see right through you, Lily," Wizard Lenin spat as he put together his forged documents, those that labeled him as Tom Riddle, astrophysicist, and new member of S.H.I.E.L.D. who was going to be working with a Dr. Erik Selvig on some top secret project.
"What, am I not scientisty?" Lily asked, motioning to herself, to which she received a withering glare from Wizard Lenin. Which, fine, she was a bit too young for the role, and maybe he did have a point in that he played people far better than she did, but dammit what was she supposed to do all day?
"You could always go back to school," Wizard Lenin chided.
"Are you serious?" Lily asked, "Why don't I just open up some wormhole and…"
"No, first, that sounds extremely unstable and dangerous," Wizard Lenin stated sharply, "And second, we tried that already and ended up in that nuclear wasteland or wherever the hell we were."
"… That probably wouldn't happen twice," Lily said and then sighed, "Well, fine, enjoy your science while I sit here and watch television."
"Good, do that, and don't do anything else. The last thing I'd want is attention on a global scale."
"Hey, I've avoided those Octopus Nazis pretty well so far, haven't I?" Lily asked, "And the metal arm guy they kept sending for a while… Actually, isn't he due back by now? I swear, that guy just keeps coming."
"Yes, Lily, and I imagine he'll keep coming until you finally do die!" Wizard Lenin snapped, finally he sighed, and stated, "Just keep out of trouble, Lily, this once."
"Right, will do," Lily said, but Wizard Lenin didn't even say goodbye, he just stomped out the door without looking behind him. Which was probably well enough because comrade metal arm took that opportunity to show back up through her window, looking just as in need of a shave and a haircut as always.
And Lily just sighed and took that as her cue to dash out of the room and try to find some other place to live that this guy couldn't somehow track down. Which, really, considering she'd faked her death twice already (actually had died a few times), you think he would have given up after one of those.
Of course, leave it to Wizard Lenin to somehow manage to get brainwashed by Space Vikings when she wasn't looking.
"My liege," the man, one Tom Riddle, whose eyes now shone a bright and drugged blue by the power of the staff and the tesseract stared up from his bow at Loki with the deference befitting a future slave.
The man, judging from the first few moments that Loki had seen him that lab, had once been proud. Even now there was a stiffness to his bow that was not present in the others.
Loki offered him a cutting subject, "Yes?"
"I suggest…" the man paused, straightened, and stared Loki straight in the eye, "I suggest you reconsider your strategy, sir."
"And who are you, Tom of Riddle, to question my strategies?"
The man did not even flinch at the menacing aura of Loki's staff, instead his eyebrows lowered, and a grimace crossed his face, "You will lose, my liege, you have miscalculated gravely and I fear there is very little that can save you now. You must go to Lily, negotiate, beg forgiveness, and she might spare you."
"Lily?" Loki asked, "And who exactly is this Lily?"
"She is my…" he paused, stopped, and started again, "My liege, she is a god, a true god."
"And am I not a true god?" Loki asked, this time going so far as to press his staff against the man's neck, one twitch would draw blood.
"No, my liege, not like her," the man said, "She is a destroyer of worlds, of realities, and if she finds out what you've done, that you have stolen my mind and reduced me to a puppet, there is nothing in any world that can stop her from tearing everything from you, including your glorious invasion."
"One would think you resent your status," Loki mused, which was interesting, none were so confrontational. Of course, they all knew their place, but they did not resent it, and even this man did not resent it, but rather stated it as a stark fact.
That he was slave to Loki's whims, to the infinity stones.
"No, my liege, but she will," the man practically spat, "You still have a chance…"
"If I return you to your prior state of mind and deliver you back?" Loki asked, and the man paused, and slowly shook his head.
"No, because then I would come back with a vengeance, I would convince her to destroy you. I would… Forgive me, my liege, but I would never forgive what you had done to me."
"Then it seems we are at an impasse," Loki stated, "Regardless, I don't believe you, there are no great powers here… Well, there is my adopted brother I suppose, but your Lily, Tom, even the Avengers haven't noticed her. So, why should I?"
(Coming, with enough interest, to an internet browser near you.)
And one last time, the bright lights of the stage appear, the audience cheers, and there is The Carnivorous Muffin in the center of it all.
"And here we are, my friends, at the end of our line," The Carnivorous Muffin says fondly before stating, "This one seemed longer than the others, didn't it?"
The Carnivorous Muffin sighs, chuckles slightly, and says as they pick up the first review, "Well, we'd best start addressing those last questions. This is from Crimson Domi, to Delphi Riddle, 'What do you think of your father, Lord Voldemort, now that you've met him? What do you think of Harry?"
(This, The Carnivorous Muffin thinks, is a thinly veiled request that she get back to writing "Arrested Revolution" already.)
The Carnivorous Muffin does not say this, but instead flips through the pile of questions to find Delphi's response, "And Delphi says, 'My father, of course, is glorious. As glorious as mother always said he was… And Harry is a brazen upstart that he should have disposed of years ago."
The Carnivorous Muffin pauses at the laughter of the audience, before adding in their own, "The thing is, I'm sure the dark lord agrees with her full heartedly."
The laughter swells then dies, The Carnivorous Muffin shaking their head as they ask the next question, "This is also from Crimson Domi, by the way, they sent a piece of chocolate to The One Ring from 'The Wasteland' and asked, 'Do you like this?"
This, being of course, that strange crossover of "Lord of the Rings" and "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus" which people are still waiting patiently to update.
"The Ring said, in response, being a reasonable person, '… do you have any more of it?"
Because there is no man or god who would deny the glory that is chocolate. Not even a fictional one who used to be a golden ring.
"Next, from Arashi – IV of VI, 'If I may direct a question to Sebastian from 'An Errant Thought'? Assuming you are aware of the worlds The Carnivorous Muffin has worked on sicne writing about you, what are your thoughts on said worlds? For example, do you have an opinion on Lily from 'Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus'?"
The Carnivorous Muffin pauses to consider this, "Well, to be honest, this is half of why I got around to writing some of a Black Butler crossover, as it's hard to have a short response do justice to this. But either way, here's Sebastian's response, 'Of course, I find her utterly delightful as well as the hundreds of other worlds you have created."
Sebastian, being something of an unnerving Stepford smiler who keeps his thoughts close to his chest, doesn't come off particularly chatty in letters. He is always… unnervingly polite, even in the most tense and dire of situations, which this of course is not.
No doubt, Sebastian's thoughts of Lily, of the other worlds, are far too complicated to put here. But perhaps he stares at them, and wonders at all the possibility, and feels a slight easing of the crushing ennui that no doubt grips his soul.
How long has it been since one such as him has seen possibility?
"Finally, our last question, going way back into the day, into the fic I was sure everyone had stopped reading. This is from A to Naomi Misora from 'All You Need is Love', 'What exactly do you think happened to Raye, in his time spent with Misa, to make him so unresponsive."
For those unaware, "All You Need is Love" is the giant fic where The Carnivorous Muffin decided that writing a Death Note sitcom was a great idea. Towards the end Raye gets kidnapped by Misa in order to get Light to stop crashing at Naomi's apartment. There's a bunch of other things that happen but it's a bit much to summarize, or even read, to be honest.
"And Naomi's response?" The Carnivorous Muffin asks, "She says simply, 'Terrible things, awful terrible things that don't bear repeating, I'm sure… I don't know what Light gets up to in his spare time, I'm not going to start wondering what Misa does with hers."
"And with that we are out of questions and out of time, thanks everyone so much for stopping in, and I'll see you next time on 'The Wonderful World of Fanfiction!"
The audience applauds loudly, The Carnivorous Muffin stands and waves goodbye, and the lights fade out for the last time.
All DeadLuck666's Questions Not Appearing in this Chapter (Because The Carnivorous Muffin Never Played Final Fantasy VII):
And a really super special question for General Sephiroth from "Final Fantasy VII," game:
I know it must have been pretty traumatic to realise that your awesomeness was actually the results of humans tampering with things they best not, but was trying to destroy all of Gia really necessary?
What are your thoughts on Cloud Strife?
Do you often participate in Chocobo Racing bets and/or betting pools?
Do you ever wish you had a left wing in addition to your right?
Did you have any control over your atrocious actions in the plot of ff7? If you could change any part of your past would you change it for better or worse?
Did you ever realise that Vincent Valentine was probably your real father?
How do feel about your rather large fan base and the song often used in your presence "One Winged Angle"?
To Cloud Strife (same series):
What are your thoughts on the fact that many fans of Final Fantasy 7 (including me) like Sephiroth more than you?
To Kadaj, Yazoo, and Loz (my three favorite brothers) from the same ff7 series though featured more in the ff7 movie:
Did you ever realized that one of you would essentially die in order to resurrect Sephiroth?
If you had would you have still gone ahead and done it anyway?
What are your thoughts on Cloud Strife?
Do you often participate in Chocobo Racing bets and/or betting pools?
Do you ever wish that you had wing(s) like Sephiroth?
And finally an enlightening statement to all four silverettes:
"Mother never did love you; she only had you around as a means to completing her own agenda. You were nothing but tools in human guise to serve as Jenova's dogs of devastation."
Prompt for my dear Carnivorous Muffin: A reenactment of the scene in Star War: Episode VI, in which Darth Vader proclaims to be Luke's father, but instead Vincent Valentine plays the roll of Darth Vader and Sephiroth as Luke Skywalker.
Starring:
The Carnivorous Muffin as The Written Representation of The Carnivorous Muffin
Lily as The Pop Culture Reference Machine
Wizard Lenin as Lily's Straight Man Once Again
Sebastian Michaelis as That Guy People Apparently Want in a "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus" Crossover
Ciel Phantomhive as Sir Barely Appearing in this Chapter
Anna Jones as The One Who Gets Covered in Blood
Light Yagami from "God of the Machine" as The One Who Gets His Brains Blown Out
Soichiro Yagami from "God of the Machine" as He Who Cannot Even
James Potter as The One Who Never Knows What's Going On
Lily Evans as Sarah Connor and Reluctant Wedding Crasher
Tom Riddle from "October" as The Wedding Crasher
Azrael as The Other Wedding Crasher
Eru Lee as Haruhi Suzumiya
Senju Tobirama as He Who Surprisingly Does Not Shank Uchiha Izuna
Namikaze Minato as The Sad Panda
Tom Riddle from "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" as He Apparently Still Exists
Harry Potter from "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" as He Also Apparently Still Exists
Bucky Barnes as That Guy Who Will Never Manage to Kill Lily and Who Lily Will Probably Offer Pity Therapy
Loki as That Guy Who Does Not Realize that Lily Space Whales
The One Ring from "The Wasteland" as I Should Really Get Back to What He's Been Up To
Naomi Misora from "All You Need is Love" as Surprise Cameo
Delphi Riddle as Probably Realizing She Made a Huge Mistake
Author's Note: I've come to learn that the more "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus" crossovers there are the happier everyone apparently is... I don't question this. Or the length of this chapter.
Thanks to readers and reviewers, as you know, the existence of this thing literally hinges on your reviews.
Disclaimer: I don't own the things I usually don't own.