ZA
Ch 25
The Dark Tower, the last nexus of all the multiverse jabbed upwards into the clouded sky, its deep gray stones resonating with untapped power. Around it, a field of roses sprawled for miles, each containing the unborn seed of a new universe. At the base of the tower, standing before its simple wooden door stood Brian, raising his Barrett M82 sniper rifle. His punk-rocker Judy Hopps shirt wavered in the slight breeze. He peered down the scope at the two dark figures bolting across the rose field towards him. One bore a curved blade, wreathed in flame, his teeth glowed with flame and his eyes were little more than a reflection of a midnight sky, each with a single crimson star. The other carried a great, writhing scythe and a mass of purple-grey tentacles sprouted from his head. Brian smiled to himself, savoring the easy double-kill sprinting towards him.
"Ma killstreak's gonna be so BIG with deez newbs around!" Brian giggled with delight. A chorus of gunshots echoed across the field as the Barrett M82 sniper rifle began firing like a heavy machine gun. Adam and Chris leapt to either side as the bullets soared past, ripping petals from the roses with the force of their veloicty. Chris wheeled back his scythe and surged forwards, calling out as he did so.
"Brian! We won't allow you to go gallivanting around the multiverse, doing as you please!" Adam charged beside him, deflecting bullets with his blazing sword as he went.
"Yeah! Now you'll suffer an eternity of torment, but condensed into one beating!" An orange, fiery aura began to surround Adam while a deep purple one started to swim in the air around Chris.
"Combination attack! Lunatic Conflagration!" The two yelled in unison as their auras became solid masses of energy and melded together into a veritable mass of flame and madness. Adam and Chris charged, directing the blade and their anger directly at Brian
"You bois are too late! All your tower are belong to me!" Brian sneered, reaching out and catching the blade in one hand, a tiny trickle of blood flowed down his wrist. Chris smiled, knowing his madness must surely be pouring into the wound.
"Besides, I'm only doing what you two were already doing, only more successfully!" With a snap, Brian summoned a ring of Barrett M82 sniper rifles vertically around Chris and Adam.
"You guys have already fucked up universes and usurped multiversal nexuses. Why is it so bad when I do it?" He laughed as the rifles fired. Chris and Adam leapt back as the rifles tracked them, spitting bullets emblazoned with memes.
"Because your vision of the multiverse is fucking stupid!" Chris yelled, twisting and contorting his body to dodge Brian's attacks as he and Adam lunged from both sides. Brian only grinned and waved his arms to the side and from his palms burst dozens of jpgs of troll faces, forming a shield around him. Jinsei no Endaa and Kuruijini bounced harmlessly off the memes.
"One does not simply defeat me! Brian!" He exclaimed, summoning and directing his Barrett M82 sniper rifles through the holes in his shield and opening fire.
"Chris! Get behind me!" Adam yelled, summoning his fiery Susanoo just as Chris darted away from the first salvo of memes.
"He used that barrier in my fight against him too, nothing can get through them!" Adam gritted his teeth as he braced himself against the Susanoo, each shot from Brian's rifles chipping and gouging the armor.
"Then we won't go through them!" Chris growled, forming a black sphere in his hand. He poked out from behind the Susanoo for just an instant and hurled the sphere. Brian watched it miss him completely, impacting some distance away in the rose field and he burst into laughter. Suddenly, there was a deep booming sound and a tremendous force pulling towards the sphere. The universal roses went flat, pointing to it, and Brian's memes and rifles went sailing out of the air and were pulled into the sphere, though he held his ground.
"Eldritch… black hole!" Chris sneered.
"Fucking get him!" Adam yelled, dismissing his ragged Susanoo and leaping at Brian, activating his bankai as he flew, Chris followed suit close behind.
"Ya know what, I'm tired of this. Author powers… activate!" Brian scowled and Chris and Adam stopped in midair, frozen in the process of bringing their blades down on Brian's head. Unable to move… unable to even speak.
"So ungrateful. You guys should be thanking me! I set all of this in motion. I'm ultimately responsible for you guys getting your powers. I started the Zombie Apocalypse™!" Brian's smile returned to his face as he spoke.
"But you guys have just been pushing back against everything, trying to achieve vague goals that change like the tides. This isn't your story… it's mine!" Brian withdrew the dank seed from a pocket, it was still dripping the whitish fluid. Brian held it in his hands, pulled and squeezed, shaping it into the vague shape of a sword. It turned a bright pink color and became pixilated as though it were censored.
"You guys have your fancy named swords… so here's mine. The Dank Blade… Memamasa!" Brian sliced upwards towards Adam, there as a spray of blood and Adam went flying backwards, far out into the field of roses.
"B.T.W. Chris! Your little can't-heal trick didn't work. I just erased the wound!" Brian showed his palm, and sure enough, the cut was gone.
"You go around talking about insanity, like you're some kind of authority on it. Boi, have you ever been on the deep, dank web. Have you tasted the memes of the furthest reaches of 4chan? Now that is madness." A thick squelching sound issued from Memamasa and an end of a portal gun extended from its tip. With two quick motions, Brian opened a blue portal behand Chris and an orange one in the distant sky. He flicked his wrist and Chris could talk again.
"Bitch… I'm the god of madness." Chris yelled ferociously, along with other curses.
"Madness…?" Brian asked, his voice assuming a deep tone.
"Damn it Chris, you set him up for that one!" Adam groaned from somewhere out in the rose field.
"THIS IS MEMES!" Brian yelled, smashing Memamasa into Chris, sending him into the blue portal and out the orange portal, hurtling down towards the surface. With a deep boom, a crunch and a great deal of cursing, he landed on top of Adam. Brian turned on his heel, back towards the door to the tower.
"He's too strong, we can't even hurt him!" Chris winced, cycling through his forms to heal up his wounds.
"Yes Chris, I know. I've fought him before." Adam grumbled, regenerating his right arm and sleeve.
"There is one thing we can try though…" He continued.
"When I destroyed the Dragon Ball Z dimension, I discovered a technique that can combine our strength!" He stood up and struck a pose.
"Yeah, I know that one, Nyarlathotep used it against me when I fought him." Chris grinned.
Brian, grinning widely to himself reached out a hand towards the simple bronze knob on the door to the tower. Memamasa reformed into the dank seed and began to profusely drip its strange, stringy fluid. Suddenly, there was a brilliant white light from behind him. He turned around to find a sphere of blinding energy where Adam and Chris had landed. The sphere cracked like an egg and burst apart, and a single figure stood there. The roses around him recoiled, as though in fear. He was garbed in an exquisite, black trench coat which hung loosely like a cloak. His features were a seamless hybridization of Chris and Adam's facial features. His eyes were still all black, save for the pupils which had turned a blank white. His hair was a length somewhere between Adam's and Chris' and was pulled back into a ponytail that waved and twisted like a long, sinuous tentacle. Thin streams of smoke leaked from his mouth, and at the back of his throat gleamed a fiery light. His veins were spidery and pulsed with purple, eldritch energy. When he spoke, his voice was Adam's and Chris' voices overlaid upon one another.
"Brian! Behold your end! We are no longer Chris nor Adam. We are Adris, lord of madness and flame. We are the hope of the multiverse. The light in the dankness. Now Brian, look upon us and despair!" Brian smirked and put his hands in his pockets. Adris held his hands out in front of him and in another flash of light, he was holding a pitch black bident made of polished basalt. The shaft spiraled as though it had been twisted. At one end sat a heavy, spherical counterweight, and at its top, the stone bloomed into two long, thin prongs that protruded from a carved skull like a demon's horns. The prongs jutted out, nearly horizontal and then turned near their middle to point forwards. One prong burned with a hungry flame, and a deep mist of madness particles wafted from the other.
"This is Kyōki to honō no yūgō, the weapon that will bear your end. It acts as a conduit for my spiral energy, allowing me to do the impossible and channel the powers of the former demon sultan Azathoth. We wield the power of the blind, idiot god, controlled by a masterful intelligence." Small motes of pure, white energy began to spiral around the tips of the bident. They spun faster and faster until they became solid halos of light. Between them began to arc cracks like those in glass, like the ones Chris had summoned to try to end all of existence. Adris raised his weapon and from the end shot a beam of cracks, like Chris' power but focused, controlled and aimed directly at Brian.
"Disappear now! From all worlds, from all existence!" Adris yelled, as fragments of destroyed space blew around him. Brian still did not move.
"Oh no. How could I, the great Brian, be defeated by the power of friendship. What terrible irony this is…Psych!" Brian limply slapped the cracks of the unraveling of existence and the beam stopped. A bright shockwave shot up the beam back towards Adris, undoing the beam as it went. Adris recoiled, a look of shock and despair on his face. As the shockwave reached him, there was a harsh snapping sound and Adam and Chris separated and flew apart, landing hard on the ground.
"How? He should have been obliterated!" Chris raged, slamming his fists into the ground. Adam picked himself up out of the cartoon-shaped imprint he had left in the ground.
"Well Chris, you got anything else in that bag of tricks of yours?" Adam asked, Chris was silent.
"Bois, bois bois… what did I tell you? I've got most of the powers of an author! You can't beat me with something like that! Somebody had to write Azathoth and his powers into existence after all!" Brian laughed.
"Yes, someone most certainly did." Said a high, cold voice from behind Chris and Adam. All three looked and there stood a man in his mid-thirties stepping out from a door that floated in the air. He wore a suit and an expression of utter contempt. Wherever his eyes fell, it seemed as though he were looking at something terrible just behind the object of hit focus.
"Lovecraft!?" Chris exclaimed.
"Who else? As an author, I cannot allow this beast to run rampant with the multiverse!" H.P. Lovecraft said flatly.
"I was wondering if you guys were gonna show up." Brian smiled.
"But all I have to do is toss this dank seed in the door of the tower and I'll win." Brian began backing towards the tower.
"Hmm, for an anglo saxon, your countenance and poise is reminiscent of a primitive knuckle-dragger. Allow me to expose you to some real culture, such as…" Lovecraft drew a viol from behind his back.
"The Music of Erich Zann!" Lovecraft bellowed and began to frantically play the viol. Around Brian a fierce, terrible wind whipped up, entrapping him in a cylinder of noise and air. Brian put his hand on the barrier and pushed to no avail, for the first time since Chris or Adam had seen him, he seemed worried.
"Mr. King. If you would be so kind." Yelled Lovecraft over the sound of his viol. High in the sky, at the top of the Dark Tower, a figure appeared and began to fall. Down the tower it came, like a rocket. A thin man, naked save for a loin cloth and a small pair of glasses, holding a flail in each hand barreled down towards Brian.
"Kid, you cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you!" Yelled Stephen King as he impacted the space within Lovecraft's barrier with a huge fiery explosion.
"Why did he explode?" Asked Adam. Lovecraft shrugged. From within the cloud of dust and smoke, the sound of a battle could be heard, as the debris cleared, Brian and King were locked in combat. Brian had drawn Memamasa and was trading blows with Stephen King's flails, the two appeared to be evenly matched.
"Do you think King can win? Is he strong enough to beat Brian?" Chris asked Lovecraft who again shrugged.
"A battle of authors is not a contest of might. All authors are equal in power as all can create and destroy at will. A battle between authors is a contest of creativity, who has the greater power of the mind." Lovecraft explained, still playing his instrument.
"I didn't think we were so far from the top." Adam grumbled.
"If it is any consolation, aside from us authors and this ruffian here, the two of you are at the top of the proverbial food chain." Lovecraft sighed as he turned back to the fight. There was the sound of wood creaking and three doors appeared in midair next to the group. One was of elegant wood with curving, golden lines upon it. The other was made of metal and seemed to open apart like a door on a starship. The last door was rough wood and covered in nicks and cuts as though someone had thrown sharp objects as it. Through each door walked a single figure. Through the elegant door strode a middle age woman. Her brown hair was tied back in a bun and she wore robes of red and gold. She clutched a wand in her right hand. The spaceship door opened with a hissing sound and out walked a middle aged man with white hair and a beard. He wore plain brown robes, glasses and a lightsaber on his belt. The last door opened and a man wearing a black jumpsuit under a green vest peered out before joining the others. His face was covered by a hood and collar and he had a metal headband on his forehead with the symbol of the hidden-leaf villiage.
"Ah, Ms. Rowling, Mr. Lucas, Mr. Kishimoto. So good of you to join us to solve this problem." Lovecraft nodded to the new arrivals.
"A fine mess you have uncovered here Howard." J.K. Rowling said with a small smile.
"We will protect our worlds from this evil." Proclaimed George Lucas. Kishimoto nodded in approval.
"Hey guys! Haven't seen you bunch after you three SHOT ME IN THE HEAD!" Adam yelled.
"Ah yes, that. Quite sorry, but as you can see, it wasn't fatal. But yes, the three of us became fast friends after that excursion." Rowling chuckled. From the battle at the tower, there was a thunderous crash and Lovecraft's barrier dissipated.
"Catch me Howie!" Yelled King as he came flying backwards towards the group, impacting Lovecraft and sending the two of them flying into the background.
"Well I suppose it is our turn." Rowling sighed, and the three authors began to advance towards Brian.
"Should we go help?" Chris asked, looking to Adam.
"Frankly probably not. Sadly, this is kind of out of our league." Said Adam, sitting down, cross-legged and taking out a bag of popcorn. Brian turned towards the three converging on him, Memamasa still in his grip.
"Three more? Fine by me, Stephen survived that last hit, but I want to see if I can actually finish one of you bunch off for good!" He laughed. Wordlessly, Kishimoto disappeared and reappeared in a blink behind Brian, a kunai aimed at his head.
"I've got memes for the lot of you! Believe it!" Brian yelled, the last part was in Naruto's obnoxious English voice. The sound resonated across the field of roses and Kishimoto's eyes went wide. Vibrations shook up and down his frame and without warning, he shattered like glass.
"Ha! Couldn't handle the memes! He should have learned to take a joke better!" Brian cackled. Rowling and Lucas were taken aback, looks of shock on their faces.
"To think, he can actually kill us…" Rowling mumbled.
"We must take him together!" Said Lucas. The two rushed at Brian who leapt at them, sailing over Lucas and cutting him on the shoulder with Memamasa. From the wound, Lucas began to change, his body warping into poorly rendered CGI.
"No… not like this!" Lucas panicked.
"Unlimited memes!" Brian yelled jubilantly as Lucas completely became a loose collection of polygons and crumbled to dust. Suddenly Brian was knocked off his feet as a stunning spell hit him in the stomach. He heard Rowling yell an incantation as he fell. He got to his feet, facing Rowling.
"J.K. Rowling, that's not how you say it… it's leviosaaaaa!" Brian exclaimed, pointing his sword like a wand. Rowling rocketed up into the sky at fantastic speeds, soon disappearing into nothingness.
Lovecraft, King, Chris and Adam stood stunned as Brian waved enthusiastically back at them.
"Mr. King, can you distract him for a moment? I'm going to use… that." Lovecraft spat gravely. King nodded enthusiastically.
"Don't get too excited now Howie, you could pop a vein!" King chuckled and began to hop towards Brian, swinging his flails.
"Briiiian… Briiiian… c'mere Brian!" King chanted as he hopped. Brian raised Memamasa and charged. As sword battered against flail, Lovecraft reached behind his back and produced a large, polished iron cannon, clearly build to be fired from the shoulder. Instead of circular, its barrel was rectangular in shape and it seemed to thrum with energy.
"This is the canon. It is the greatest weapon of us authors. Only a select few are allowed to wield it. I myself only recently received the honor. Lovecraft produced a book: The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft, and shoved it into the opening on the canon.
"Now Mr. King, move!" Lovecraft yelled as she shouldered the weapon and pulled the trigger. There was a catastrophic boom and a golden book-shaped projectile flew from the canon. As it went, the sky above turned a brilliant gold, the air grew dense and there sang an angelic chorus. King tried to leap away from Brian, but was too slow. Brian grabbed him by the leg and held him up as the shot from the canon closed in. The angelic chorus ended its crescendo and then became silent. Chris, Adam and Lovecraft looked and saw that Stephen King had been blown apart and what remained was blowing away on the breeze.
"Fuck you Howard, your dialog is terrible!" King exclaimed as what remained of him was whisked away on the wind.
"It is pretty bad" agreed Brian.
"Enough of this, you will not destroy the multiverse that we authors worked so hard to create!" Lovecraft yelled.
"The Cats of Ulthar!" He cried and from within his outstretched sleeves poured a flood of thousands of cats, prancing through the air towards Brian, malice etched across their little faces and their fangs bared.
"Cute, but I think I know a way to make them cuter!" Brian yelled, swinging Memamasa and sending forth a stream of dank fluid that coated the cats. As it touched the cats, they were transformed, their bodies taking on the appearance of pop tarts. The transformed cats turned in the air and flew back towards Lovecraft.
"You bastard…" Lovecraft mumbled as the nyan-cats of Ulthar sank their teeth into him and in seconds had nearly devoured him. Bloody bits and pieces of Lovecraft flew hither and thither.
"Adam, Chris… you must protect our legacy… the legacy of all authors. The two of you alone carry it now." Lovecraft choked out as the cats nibbled him to bits and dispersed into the roses. Brian bent over laughing as Chris and Adam got to their feet, standing in defiance to Brian… only for him to quickly teleport to the tower, open the door, toss Memamasa inside, slip in and slam the door shut.
"Well fuck." They said in unison.
"Gee whiz Hercules! Thanks for saving me again!" Exclaimed Salmoneus as he picked his way through the wreckage of the Hercules dimension.
"No problem, I can't believe that you were the only other person to survive!" Said Hercules, pushing aside a large bolder and resisting the urge to punch it.
"And thanks for your help, what was your name again?" Hercules asked a third figure.
"It's Dean… the unkindled. No problem, I'm happy to lend a hand." Said Dead, sipping from a tankard of mead.
"I just hope that we aren't pointlessly killed off to showcase the scale and horrifying nature of what is happening to the multiverse right now!" Said Salmoneus. Dean and Hercules looked at him, bewildered. Suddenly there were memes! They came, pouring out of rips and tears in the very fabric of existence, riding veritable rivers of dank, whitish fluid. Rage faces atop tiny, stick bodies with twig arms leered and scratched at the three, dragging them under in a torrent of dankness. Hercules alone fought bravely against the tide, battering away the memes as he fought desperately. As he too was pulled under, by the weight of the memes, Hercules yelled into the growing memey void.
"These aren't my memes! DISAPPOINTED!" And then he was gone.
Adam and Chris huddled together in the storm of memes that issued from every inch of the Dark Tower, they swept across the field of roses, tearing them to shreds. The memes flowed across the multiverse, devouring universes, authors and all.
"Chris! Stay close to me!" Adam yelled, summoning his Susanoo around them as the memes battered it like a monsoon. Nothing could be seen outside the Susanoo save for a whitish, dank color. After what seemed like hours of the dank hurricane, it subsided, pulled away. Adam released his Susanoo and the two looked around in awe. Around them swam and writhed an ever-changing scene of debauchery. All surfaces, land, sky and everything in between had become one large internet chat room. New, poorly-photoshopped pictures appeared every moment, each responded to by thousands of comments, all from Brian.
"This is what he wanted…" Chris mumbled awestruck.
"Chris! I can't summon Jinsei no Endaa!" Adam yelled, his voice reverberating through the memes. Chris frantically grasped at his chest in horror.
"Kuruijini's gone too!" He exclaimed. Suddenly, large, green, plant-like hands with red thorns for fingers grasped Chris and Adam, hoisting them up into the air. Before them hung from intricate knots of metal tubing that spiraled into the darkness, hung a monstrosity. A hybrid of plant and machinery, a flower formed form metal pipeline which framed a grotesque, vertical mouth. At the center of the flower of metal and flesh sat an old fashioned television, large enough for a man to fit inside. Brian's face shone out from the screen.
"Hey guys! I dunno how you survived, but welcome to the Omniverse! You're about to have a bad time!" Brian's voice chorused from all directions at once, but most of all from the Photoshop-Brian's television. Chris and Adam stared, silent and unblinking.
"Man you guys should see the looks on your faces! In fact, I'll preserve it forever!" Brian cackled and there was a flash like a camera's from the tv. Instantly, all the pictures on the chat room that was the Omniverse changed to a picture of Chris and Adam looking despondent in Brian's grasp. Around the picture was a black frame with a bold, white caption.
"Tried to save multiverse…"
"Failed"
Immediately comments began pouring in.
"Lol, such fail, much Omniverse!"
"Zomg, what a couple of nerds."
"Needs more Harambe."
Brian began to laugh, his massive, photoshopped form convulsing with his uncontrollable chortles. Chris and Adam looked dire, their faces in shadow.
"Oooh boy, now there's a pretty meme! Exquisite! You know what the best part is? Now that I've gained control over creation and become a full-fledged author, we can just do this forever! Meme after meme and there's nothing that either of you can do about it! I've taken your powers, I've taken your dignity, and now I'll use what's left as fuel for my memes!" Brian began another laughing fit and all of existence seemed to quake with his chuckles. It was then that Adam and Chris both had simultaneous flashbacks to chapter 18.
"Why should I help you wield your power, when it is already yours entirely?" Nyarlathotep's voice echoed in Chris' mind.
"It all makes sense… you're so close to the author…" Chuck's last words resounded in Adam's head.
"Brian, there's something you should know…" Chris said softly. Brian abruptly stopped laughing.
"Ohhh really big boy, what do you two have to say to me?" Brian asked, in as condescending a tone as he could muster.
"This whole story has run off plot devices, deus ex machinas, and things people pulled out of people's asses." Adam continued.
"But now comes the biggest plot device of them all! You see, you may be an author, but you're not the author, or should I say authors." Chris finished. Then the two of them spoke in unison.
"We are authorial insert characters, we are extensions and representations of the authors. We are their will, we are them, and that makes us authors as well!" There was a brilliant flash of white light and both of Photoshop-Brian's plant arms that were still holding the two disintegrated. There, hovering in the air were Chris and Adam, but they were different. Both looked older, by about six years. Both also now wore glasses. Chris' hair was shorter, just above shoulder level. He now wore a camouflage-print hoodie and a pair of blue jeans as well as a necklace with a twenty-sided dice attached. Adam's hair was even shorter than Chris' and he now sported a full beard. In place of his trench coat, he wore jeans and a denim jacket. Both of them were grinning triumphantly.
"What the hell! No! You can't just become authors! I worked my whole life for that power!" Brian raged, flopping the stubs of his Photoshop arms.
"Hey Adam, what do you say we introduce him to some of our early work!" Chris exclaimed.
"Fuck yeah. Let's show him our early work!" Adam grinned and jumped up into the sky and was gone from sight. Photoshop-Brian loomed over Chris.
"Fine! It doesn't matter, I killed all the other authors! Two more means nothing!" Brian reeled back to bite at Chris with his weird sideways mouth.
"Well first, why don't you sample my story…? The Beast of Stone!" Chris yelled and all of a sudden, out of the meme-ridden ground burst hundreds of stony tentacles. They quickly slithered over Brian and held him fast as his huge mechanical form struggled against them.
"You think this will stop me?!" He yelled in frustration as his mechanical body frantically gyrated.
"No, but it'll hold you long enough for that to hit you." Chris said, pointing up nonchalantly. Photoshop-Brian looked up and saw, rising up over the horizon, blocking out the memes, a massive Howdy Doody doll. It raised a hand and aimed a single city-sized finger at Photoshop-Brian. Adam rode on the back of its hand as the doll brought down the finger, which caught aflame from the velocity of its poke. Brian screamed a lot.
"Now try out The Bog!" Adam yelled. Chris flew away as the finger came down on Brian, who was still entangled in the rocky tentacles. There was a crunching sound and many viscous popping sounds as the Photoshop-mech was crushed and rent asunder by the Howdy Doody Doll. Adam landed next to Chris and the two high-fived enthusiastically. Suddenly, cracks began to form in the arm of the Howdy Doody doll and dank fluid began to pour from them. The cracks travelled up its body to the head which split open with a gush of whitish goop, and out rose Brian, no longer in his Photoshop-mech, but back in his Judy Hopps shirt.
"That's it! You're about to see the depths of my swag!" Brian yelled, his voice livid. He reached up and grabbed ahold of existence and began to roll up the Omniverse into a big ball of existence. Reality peeled away leaving only a white void which the three combatants floated in. He compressed the entire multiverse into a sphere roughly the size of a house, it pulsed and throbbed with pent up energy and color. Brian reeled back and with a great scream, threw it at Adam and Chris. The two held their ground and raised their hands.
"This'll be the perfect raw material for our writing." Adam grinned as the two caught the sphere of existence and began to pull it apart. From within it, new universes began to spring and blossom, beginning to fill the infinite blank void. Landscapes began to form, unburdened by the spheres of the multiverse, overlapping one another as they grew. One formed into a vast sea, dotted with islands, another grew into a dark basalt city covered in lavish spires and billboards proclaiming dystopian messages. Chris stood upon, an expansive, lifeless desert, with a great, sandstone tower piercing up out of it, into the heavens. Adam watched Brian from the edge of a deep forest, its trees hard, like iron. From deep within the forest, rose a single, snow-capped mountain.
"Argh! Now I'm gonna have to rebuild the Omniverse from scratch! But first, I'll have to tear all of this down!" Brian yelled, and from the sphere of existence, there also grew memes, the remnants of the Omniverse. Thousands of clones of Robbie Rotton, a legion of suited figures wearing Guy Fawkes masks, at least four meme dragons slopped and blubbered their way into the void, all rising up to rend the new universes asunder.
But the universes were not still. From deep within the desert, came marching an army of knights, their armor and shield emblazoned with gears. At their head marched a handsome, massive man, wielding an enormous sword. Out of the ironwood forest, came a force of half-ogres, clad in black armor and wielding pikes and axes. At their front came a similarly armored figure, holding a Warhammer and bearing the vestments of a paladin. They charged the memes that assailed their universes. They hacked and slashed as the endless hordes of memes fell upon them. Other universes took up the call as well. From the endless sea, came a fleet of ships of the line bearing rows of cannons and uniformed soldiers, each with a musket in hand. At the prow of the flagship stood a man with the features of a dragon and holding a cleaver, who breathed swathes of flame to scorch the memes. Out from the old basalt city came of fleet of dark, metal ships, floating low to the water and firing out arching lances of psionic energy. On their decks were rows of soldiers in crimson cloaks and wide-brimmed hats. The fleet of the inquisition fell upon the memes that were besieging the ships of the line and the two universes fought together, side by side.
"Heh, I wasn't expecting any help!" Laughed the dragon man. The one figure on the closest black ship not wearing a hat looked up at him. He was tall, thin, and bald. His teeth were sharp, and his eyes full of malice.
"Nobody expects the Christendom Inquisition." The figure grinned back as he raised a finger towards the meme-horde and fired a beam of fiery, explosive energy into their midst.
"It's over Brian! Your memes are finished!" Chris yelled out from the top of the desert tower.
"Finished? My memes can never be defeated! So long as there is something to mock, to tear down, there will be memes! Your new universes are not immune to that!" Brian yelled, still floating out in the void.
"Perhaps, but you won't be around to mock them." Adam responded from atop the snowcapped mountain.
"Now let us show you some of our later work… The Frozen Lake!" Adam yelled, and the mountain began to quake, as though something deep within it was stirring.
"Sounds like a plan… The Tower of Lagash!" Chris responded, and the tower began to rumble with energy which emanated small, gear-shaped wisps from it. The top of the tower began to glow, and out from it, fired a beam of light, in the shape of a cog, aimed right at Brian. From the snowcapped mountain came a torrent of organs, constantly changing and mutating, which spiraled at Brian through the void. Brian moved to dodge, but found himself anchored. A chain was wrapped around his ankles, and a long, bony appendage around his throat. Beside him floated two middle age men. The one holding the chain was scruffy with a dark goatee and beard. He wore a brown coat lined with white feathers and spoke in a thick southern drawl.
"Hold yer horses son, you ain't goin' nowhere!" He laughed a jubilant laugh and pulled the chain tighter.
"Yes, not until I've given you a few pokes and prods." The other man continued. He was thin, wearing a bloodstained collared shirt with short facial hair. He spoke in a slow, nasally voice and from his hand emanated the bony appendage that held Brian's neck. Brian tried to choke out a response to this distressing situation when Chris and Adam's attacks hit him. Brian screamed as his cells were horrible mutated and simultaneously forced into perfectly geometrical shapes. As the beams dissipated, he was bleeding, scarred, but still alive. Brian let out a guttural scream and a green wave of energy pulsed from his body, knocking away the two middle aged men. A green aura began to form around Brian as he seethed. Chris and Adam rose from their universes towards him as new universes continued to be born and join the fight against the memes below.
"I've only got one meme left, but I've saved the best for last!" Brian yelled as he dove down towards Chris and Adam. The green aura became more intense and a distinct smell of onions began to fill the air. Brian began to change, his arms become large, disproportionally large and green. His ears extended outwards on small green antennae.
"It's all ogre now!" Brian shrieked as he clotheslined Chris and Adam with his massive Shrek arms, sending them flying back down into the void. Chris righted himself in the air first, but Brian was upon him.
"Hey now!" Brian yelled, sending a huge, green fist into Chris's gut. Crimson blood spewed from Chris' mouth and he went flying. Adam flew up behind Brian, fist raised, but Brian whipped around, backhanding him on the side of the head, and sending him spinning away.
"You're an all-star!" Brian laughed his familiar insane laugh as Adam and Chris impacted the ball of existence, which was still spewing out more memes and universes. Brian landed close by, shaking the sphere to its core. The smell of onions was overpowering.
"Memes are love, memes are life!" Brian cackled, reaching into the sphere and plucking out memamasa, now appropriately scaled to his big arms. Chris and Adam got to their feet and Brian lunged towards them. Chris rushed forwards, manifesting a notebook in his left hand and drawing a pen in his right. He brought the pen up to block the sword and memamasa's dank blade shattered, droplets of dankness spiraled through the air.
"Looks like the pen is, in fact, mightier than the sword." Brian leapt back tossing away the hilt of his broken sword in disgust. Suddenly Adam was behind him, holding an old-fashioned typewriter and brought it down on Brian's head, knocking him back out into the void.
"Really Chris? That's the line you went for?" Adam smirked jokingly.
"Had to do it, he set me up for it." Chris laughed. The two raised their writing implements, Chris' notebook and Adam's typewriter, and began to write. From their words, flowed a golden light. It reached out for Brian and formed a gilded mesh around him.
"What, are you guys gonna seal me away like a shitty Great Old One?" Brian laughed, slamming his Shrek fists against the mesh to no avail.
"Well Brian, sometimes, when you're writing a story, you realize that some parts just need to go." Adam began.
"And when you find things that aren't good for the story, you edit them out." Chris continued, and in unison, they called out.
"That's what real authors do!" They yelled together. The golden mesh began to shrink, constricting in on Brian.
"No! No! My memes! What a world! What a world!" Brian panicked as the mesh closed in, squeezing into him until it became a ball of glowing light. It shrunk, becoming far too small for a person to fit inside. Soon, it flattened out entirely and became a string, dissipating into the void. As one, the memes, still fighting the denizens of the universes shuddered and abruptly crumbled to dust.
"We did it man!" Chris exclaimed, grinning broadly.
"Fuck yeah." Adam took a sigh of relief. The sphere of existence pulsed, and slowly turned inside out as it expelled the last universes. The universes began to expand to fill the void, the spheres formed around them, separating the universes and creating a new multiverse. This was probably for the best, the leader of the inquisition was making some very lewd glances at the leader of the knights with gears on their shields. The spheres enclosed around Chris and Adam, and their vision became obscured by a lush green color. Minutes past, and the two found themselves on an open, grassy field. Their cloths were back to normal, Chris wore his black robes and Adam had his trench coat. They looked younger again, and their hair was back to its original length. They smiled to each other brightly.
"I can't believe it's over…" Chris mused, sitting down in the grass, letting his hair flow in the wind.
"Yeah, it feel like it was only yesterday… Wow, I just realized that I have no idea how long this adventure took!" Adam laughed, sitting down next to Chris.
"Yeah, me neither." Chris chuckled, summoning a small fragment of Kuruijini.
"Glad to see that works again though!" He laughed. Adam drew Jinsei no Endaa as well.
"Yeah, that was worrisome. Guess we don't have authorial insert powers anymore though." He said wistfully.
"Guess not, that was a pretty… otherworldly experience. After all the shit we've been through, that's saying something!" Chris chuckled.
"Wow guys! That was a pretty kooky time wasn't it!" Raf wriggled his way up between the two of them.
"Raf, what the hell, you survived? How?" Adam asked, surprised.
"I dunno! Hey Chris! Long time no see!" Raf responded in his usually chipper voice.
"Hey Raf. Um… good to see you!" Said Chris, also looking rather shocked.
"Well. So what do we do now? Any plans authors?" Adam inquired, looking up at the sky. There was no response.
"Authors? You there? You're always there!" Adam exclaimed. There was still no response, the sky was impartial to this statement.
"Maybe they're gone Adam. Maybe our story is ending." Chris whispered. Adam looked back to him, shocked at the suggestion.
"Wait, the story can't end yet, it was never explained why Chris and I can only fight at our full strength against each oth…"
…