The War Of the Worlds

More credits:

Noordin Hassan: "Tiada logik di sini..." Thanks, man. You've put the words in our mouths to describe the state of our education.

Onwards we go!

Chapter 2: The Plot (Bunny) Thickens

"So, what exactly are you, idiotic plot bunny – whatever that is – doing in my house?"

Artemis' angry tirade was interrupted by a sudden shower of sparks and crackles. He turned to see his computer covered in strange pink goo. "You've – you've short-circuited my precious computer!"

"You boys and your toys." Her voice was oddly soothing – whether seductive or sleep-inducing, he didn't care to think. (Didn't care to think? What was happening to him?) "I'm a plot bunny, thick-headed numskull. I told you already."

"But what is a plot bunny?"

"A plot bunny am I!"

"Enough with the illogicity - "

"But illogicity is exactly what I am!" She giggled; he was left wordless. "Don't you get it? - Of course you can't. Well, I'm here to take over the world."

"Well, where have I heard that before? I wonder."

"Hey! Give me some credit! Most villains just want to destroy the world! There's a fine distinction."

"Being?"

"Well, you for one will destroy the world."

"Me – what? - you've got to be - "

"It's a prophecy, git. It will come true. I didn't say it. Except I just did. Because somebody else made me say it. Who? Me, of course! Me!"

Artemis stared on incredulously. He had scaled the heights of intellectualism, learnt all about a civilization sharing his planet that no one else in the world was aware of, and had kidnapped and successfully held for ransom a creature with superior technology, healing magic, and hypnotism to boot. Yet nothing could have prepared him for an assault of illogicity. He decided to test the waters. "You're not cliched enough. Prophecies come in funny rhymes so that stupid readers can remember them when they come true at the end of the story."

"Oh really? Well:

I don't like rhymes, they take too much time!

Just let me say it this way:

You're gonna destroy the world, ok?"

"Well, let's see what gets destroyed once Butler gets here."

"Oh? Should I be scared? Then what is that pounding on the door?"

Artemis listened hard. There was a faint banging on the door. He looked at his watch and realized with a start that two hours had passed since he had called Butler. Where had the time went? "Butler! Butler, is that you?"

"There is no logic here, Artemis, and you are doomed. This room is illogically disconnected from the rest of your space-time continuum. I will complete what I have come to do. Which is what? What I have come to do, of course! Which is what? What I have..."

Artemis groaned. Anything was better than this nonsensical drivel. "Go ahead. It is inevitable, I suppose."

Shockingly, the bunny decomposed into a pile of slightly quivering pink goo on the floor. "Nuts, there goes the cool trench coat," her softening voice wailed. Artemis watched in a stark combination of horror and half-crazed curiosity as the ball of goo condensed and levitated in the air. It pinched off at the middle to form a waist, extended out to form arms and legs that quickly took on a coffee-brown tinge. A vaguely head-shaped mound nestled atop a rapidly extending neck as appendages tapered and were refined. For a moment Artemis saw the thing completely formed but unclothed. One look was enough to send him running to the door, and he shut his eyes banging his head on the antique wood in the fury of returning memories. Wings of slime emerged from the creature's back and coalesced around it, clothing its form with an LEP uniform. And Holly grinned an evil grin.

"It is just what you have longed for all this while. You illogical thing," she cooed, almost pityingly. Then she thrust her hands around his neck.

As she throttled down hard, pink gel seeped through the skin where her palms touched Artemis' neck into his flesh. It raced its way along the blood vessels, diffusing more slowly between the cells of his body, and for a moment Artemis' arteries and veins were outlined in pink like a grotesquely cute anatomical model of the circulatory system before the slower pink seepage through his flesh came and subdued their hue. It ran down along the contours of his body, and also upwards into his head, where the neurons of his brain sparked pink for a split second. His personality – his lovable sarcasm, his inimitable precociousness, his earned disrespect of authority – breathed a tortured last, replaced by a vapid sentimentality that lived purely to propel illogical plots and thoughts. The pink enveloped the white of his eyeballs and filled his head to the brim. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it finished, and the pink tinge sunk deep into his body leaving him as pale-skinned as ever.

"Holly! Holly!" Artemis turned around with a reformatted character, but the plot bunny-Holly was gone. Suddenly, the door splintered – no, exploded – into a thousand pieces, and Butler crashed in wheezing. "Artemis?"

"Butler!" Artemis squealed. "Come here and give me a hug!"

At the Hollywood V.I.C.E. Academy...

It was a secluded world far from the Nexus, but its criminal populace terrorized an entire continuum of worlds. They flashed in and out of existence at the Portal, wandering to different worlds with a thousand dastardly plans that involved torture, vengeance, global mayhem, or most frequently all three. So when an elven law enforcement officer flashed into existence in the Portal chamber, it caused much consternation amongst the exiting and entering villains. The Dementors had almost gotten round to giving her enough nightmares about human abduction to last a thousand nights when she re-coalesced into her bunny form. They let her pass with a dejected sigh. [Hey, what's wrong with Dementors being immigration officers? What's your problem? I bet it's just because they're black, isn't it? Isn't it? Racist KKK clubber!]

The bunny hurried to the central chamber. There was a portrait of a plot bunny hanging from an otherwise empty wall in a secluded corner of the arrival hall. The bunny saw the ghoul hanging in front of it that only other bunnies could see. "Good day, Nearly Hopeless Hick!"

"And good day to you. What have you been up to? Another – oh, you smell of elf. You've gotten another Artemis?"

"Actually, my first. My previous ones were flamed out of significance and existence the moment they hugged anybody."

"Well, congratulations and all the best. Oh – the password."

"I'm a plot bunny, you stupid hick!"

"Hey! Now you be polite or I'm not letting you in! What's the password?"

"I'm a plot bunny, you stupid hick!"

"That does it! I'm resigning! I've had enough of plot bunnies - "

"That was the password."

"Oh, it was? Wait. It was!" They started laughing simultaneously. "Claire, you fool! I've been hanging around you too much. Get it? Hanging!"

"Capital illogic! Haha! Get it? Capital? Hanging?"

Claire (the plot bunny) walked into the picture. At least, she would have on any other normal day. Today, instead, she smacked her nose on the canvas and fell back rubbing it with her paw. "What? Have they thickened this thing since I was here?"

"No, but look - " Hick passed a ghostly finger through her wrist with much difficulty, "- you've thickened! It is a good sign."

"Indeed! Now, can I get through the picture?"

"Just hold on." Hick swished into the picture, and for a moment the colours wilted and mellowed as the fabric frayed at the edges. "There. You should make it through now."

"Thanks! Good day, stupid hick!"

"Same to you!" But already all that was left of Claire was a tail sticking out of the picture. It slithered in, and the weft and warp of the canvas shuddered with the fraying of reality. Things were moving.