Hey guys. Sorry it took so long to update… I had appendicitis, and then Halloween happened, and before I knew it, it was NaNoWriMo.

Also, sorry this chapter is so terribly unfunny and non-sense-making. I got used to writing serious, novel- style stuff during November. The next chapter will be better, maybe.

Chapter Twenty One

The Perfect Mary Sue

In Which Jessie Hits Her Hand on a Tree

Jessie didn't know where she was.

On second thought, that was a lie; she knew exactly where she was. She had read too much fanfiction in her days not to know where she was. The circumstances fit perfectly: the boredom, the book, the wish... and most of all, her.

She was fifteen, and she was a fan.

After spending months upon months of her middle school years watching fellow fangirls unload their unrealistic and comically uncomical fantasies into the FFnet, it was impossible for her not to recognize her situation.

She was a self-insert.

Only moments after this brilliant realization struck her, she heard a crash a few feet away.

Pause. Because of all my overly-dramatic rambling at the beginning of this chapter, I never got a chance to mention where she is. You know she knows where she is, but you don't know where she knows she is, that is, if she knows at all.

She's in a forest. It's a really pretty forest with trees that are just starting to lose their leaves, and birds that chirp loudly and constantly and kind of make you want to shoot something. The forest floor was covered in a rainbow of mosses that were squishy to the touch and possibly poisonous. It was a fairy tale setting, and the confused, perfectly proportioned teenage girl only added to the effect.

There was a distant rustling sound in the bushes. Jessie tensed, her eyes narrow. This couldn't possibly be something good... She imagined the following scene; she would lash out and learn that she could fight. She would accidentally clap her hands together and, unexpectedly, be able to use alchemy.

The rustling got closer, and the girl grew even more tense. Suddenly, when it was so close that she could almost smell it, the bushes spread apart and a man jumped out.

Jessie screamed and lashed out wildly with pathetic force. She didn't hit her target- big surprise, she wasn't even swinging in the right direction- and instead her hand came down on a tree.

Pause. Let me explain something to you, dear readers. Hitting a tree hurts. A lot. The pain is so intense that it, I believe, rationalizes the actions of this poor girl. I think that the shock of hitting that tree is what made all of this happen.

When she hit that tree, something in her mind was thrown out of alignment. Its position was skewed and that, my dear readers, is why this girl behaved as she did. She had not planned on going to that pretty little forest in the middle of nowhere. She had not planned on being a super sexy alchemy genius. She had not planned on winning Ed's heart. She had not planned on anything. Jessie's entire role in this story was planned by other, far more sufficient leaders. But even they had not predicted the strange effect that that tree would have on her brain.

Every one of us has potential to be a Mary Sue, dear reader. The particular girl was just lucky enough to reach it.

"Hey," said the man cheerily. "Why'd you hit your hand on a tree?"

Jessie held her ground. "What do you want from me?" she growled, taking up a pathetically inaccurate fighting stance. "I know alchemy! I can rip you to shreds!"

"Sure you can, honey," the man replied. He pulled a bagel from one of his many pockets and offered it to her. "Want one? They're yummy-delicious!"

Jessie eyed it warily, then snatched it up quickly and ate it like a chipmunk.

The audience howled with laughter.

"My name's Johnny," Johnny said. "I draw cocks in windows on rainy days. I like long walks on the beach and require an enormous amount of calcium. And I can be serious sometimes, see?"

Jessie stared at him, suspicious. "How do I know I can trust you?" she asked.

"Whoa, whoa, hey," Johnny said. "'Scuse me, but that's Mary Sue talk. And why are you suddenly so attractive? Did you become a Super Sue when you hit your hand on that tree or something?"

Spoiler alert: she did.

Super Sues are strange, and they are rare. They are created purely by chance. Super Sues are able to be as obnoxiously perfect as they want, and still be loved by everyone—characters and readers. Super Sues can fly and breathe fire and dispense diet pepsi from their you-know-where. Super Sues are the most amazing and majestic creatures known to man.

"You're supposed to be an ordinary high school self insert, but I guess that's not happening," Johnny said. "Oh well, you should still be able to complete the mission just fine."

"I don't have to take orders from you!" Jessie said boldly.

"Yeah, whatever. I have a job for you, Jessie. See, we're trying to track someone down, but our technology malfunctioned because of this whole gender swap fiasco… the point is, she's with the main characters, and we needed someone to track them all down manually."

"So where do I come in?" Jessie asked, lowering her guard. Super Sues can lower their guards whenever they want because they never die. It's pretty cool.

"You're a self-insert OC," Johnny explained, and the readers groaned at the obvious info-dump. "Self-inserts have an uncanny knack for running into main characters purely by coincidence. We just need you to go about your life. Eventually, you'll run into them—it's inevitable. Then you need to slowly fall with Ed, and we'll come in and capture Raiven! Got it?"

Jessie nodded curtly. "I understand," she said. "I'll do it, for the good of the world!"

"Yeah," said Johnny as he pulled a new bagel from his pocket and began munching on it cheerily. "Here's 200 cenz and a paperclip. You should be able to survive on that for a few days."

And with that, he disappeared in a puff of smoke.

I… don't really know what I'm doing with Jessie. Whatever. She's important.

I'm gonna try to post every Monday night from now on. I WILL TRY MY VERY BEST.

And the next chapter will be funnier. I promise.