Another chapter, another hundred review replies...

YoukoElfMaiden: you can be in anyway, if you want, as a plain and simple phangirl— or you can be one of my minions. I can't promise good pay, but there's dental, and its always interesting. The, uh, job, not the dental.

Rooklyn: So are you. (takes the muffin basket back)

Neonn: I actually have no idea which other characters are going to show up, beyond Raoul. So all I can say is, keep tuning in... should be a surprise. For all of us.

MetaChi: Hey! I'm so excited about Hitch Hikers, I think I'll just do a little fangirl squee right here... SQUEEEEEEEEE! Okay, that kind of got out of hand. I saw the trailer they had on Amazon, but that had not Marvin-talking...

EriksAngel1870: That idea was so brilliant beyond brilliant that I am including it, and you know what that means... CHAPTER DEDICATION FOR YOU!

Adison: I do too like carrot cake. But, I admit, mostly because of the cream-cheese frosting. If I ever get married, my wedding cake is having cream cheese frosting. I swear by Erik's left-handedness. And the irony discussion is actually me, talking to my sister and niece and nephew... not the brightest children, all of them.

bundles-'o-joy: wow, I have never been sworn at in a good way. So, um, thanks for the sentiment, I guess...

Mandy the O: I update more than you do. THIS IS WRONG! Thank you for making Erik pout in the last chapter... it gave me an ideeeaaa... :)

La Foamy: Yeah, chapter titles. Can't beat Star Wars ripoffs for chapter titles.

Musique et Amour: I know you're only briefly mentioned in this one, but trust me, I have plans for you, my lovely PFN pretend-husband... (rubs hands together and cackles evilly)

EmailyGirl: Another Hitch hikers fan! You automatically rock! And I plan on having a Gerry vs. Crawford sing-off not too far from now...

A/N: I've been having fun messing around with all you phic writers out there. I have to say, I am not in this, for the simple reason that I was the punjabbed phangirl on top of the pile in the first chapter. But here is the list of the ones I caught— the Maiden Amorisa (AKA mistressphantomshadow), Mandy the O, ElfLover, Musique et Amour (AKA Masque de Nuit), EriksAngel1870, JJC Beowulf, Willow Rose, and bundles 'o joy. I know there's more of you but I'll have to catch you in the next chapter. I have the terrible feeling that this phic is going to become a kind of running inside-joke— I must keep that from happening. On the other hand, Mandy is really going to like this chapter. Or— maybe not—

Chapter Four

There was a sound like the rushing of the wind, or the crashing of the ocean— a sound which was, in fact, caused by the pitter-patter of little Phic-Christine feet.

Most of them were on leashes, which helped. The trouble was that none of the Phic-Writers were held back by anything but self-respect, which was, unfortunately, in short supply. The Eriks quickly found themselves being swamped by adoring females.

About fifteen of the various stage-Eriks were quickly taken hostage by a small and determined group of writers with pistols— they swarmed grimly around the terrified Eriks with guerilla-like moves and gorilla-like faces. It was the opinion of Crawford Phantom that the majority of the Writers were not exactly attractive.

He made the mistake of voicing this opinion, and was immediately pounced upon by Mandy the O, who flung a punjab around his neck and pulled him close.

"You don't love Christine," she hissed at him. "You love Genn. GENN, I TELL YOU!"

"Who," inquired Crawford Phantom, "is Genn?"

"My other woman."

"Your other woman?"

"My other woman."

"If she is your other woman, than what am I doing in love with her?"

Mandy frowned at him. "Forget it, you're the wrong Erik anyway—" She looked around a bit and located Gerry Phantom, who had recognized her and was edging away surreptitiously. "Gerik! Come here, if you please."

"I don't want to," said Gerry Phantom, taking another step away.

In a trice, or possibly a thrice, the punjab had settled around his neck and he was hauled bodily up against Mandy, who was surprisingly strong for being little and cute.

"You love Genn," she told him firmly. "Genn. Not Christine. Genn."

Gerry Phantom shrugged. "I love everybody."

"No! You love Genn!"

"Whatever you say, madame."

"You love Genn and you are going to court her and not have sex anymore!"

"What?" said Gerry, looking bewildered, hurt, and rather disappointed. "Why not?"

"Because I said so!"

Gerry Phantom pouted. Most of the Phanphic Writers gave squeals of appreciation. Mandy the O looked proud.

"Rather bossy, aren't you?" said Gerry Phantom.

Kay Erik rolled his eyes. "Listen, you little punk, I've only been aware of the existence of these so-called Phic Writers for a very short time, and even I realize that they are quite possibly the bossiest creatures around."

Gerry Phantom looked at him with an eyebrow raised. "Did you just call me a little punk?"

Kay Erik scowled, folded his arms, and tried to look at the ground, but found that his line of vision was everywhere taken up by the Phic Writers and their attendant Christines.

"No, I'm not offended or anything," Gerry Phantom went on, "I just think it's a side-effect of being around all these Phictionalized Christines— and also it is rather funny."

"Phunny," said one of the Phic Writers.

"No, funny."

"Phunny."

"No, funny."

"Phunny."

"This argument shows every sign of going around in irritating circles for a very long time," interrupted Kay Erik, "as both of the participants have comparable levels of intelligence."

"Hey!" said Gerry Phantom, "did you just call me stupid?"

The Gerry Phantom Phangirls, which comprised a good fifty percent of the invading force, squealed in distress. Squealing was the basic reaction to everything, it seemed.

"Hey, he is not stupid!"

"He is in fact very intelligent!"

"He was training to be a lawyer before he became an actor!"

Crawford Phantom frowned. "And that is proof of his intelligence how, exactly?"

There was a small period of silence. Then Mandy the O broke it.

"Because he decided to drop it and become an actor!"

The other Writers chimed in.

"Yeah!"

"That!"

"What she said!"

Crawford Phantom held up his hands for silence, which, after a few moments and a few meaningful threatening glances, he eventually got. "But becoming an actor is not the wisest choice he could have made, and so I pose my question again— how is his trying to be a lawyer, failing, and setting his sights on acting proof of his good sense?"

Another pause.

"He is not stupid!"

"He's very smart!"

"Ah," said Crawford Phantom, putting down his hands and turning to his fellow Eriks. "It would appear that these Phic Writers share certain tendencies with the Fop, in that, when faced with a situation they cannot adequately handle, they resort to repetition of whatever it was they were saying in the first place."

"Some of them are kind of cute, though," remarked Gerry Phantom, smiling at Willow Rose, who blushed and loosened her hold on the leash for a dangerous moment— immediately that she let go, her Christine bounded off to find her version of Erik, which took some time. Eventually she did, however, and the two lived happily ever after in what would have been a heart-warming story had not the Phic Christine been crushed to death shortly afterwards in a freak accident involving a large piano dropped from a considerable height.

Leroux Erik looked about him, still holding onto Real Christine. "The lair is getting crowded," he murmured. "Shall we retire to another room, my dear?"

Real Christine did a disastrous attempt at a simper. The blood on her forehead was finally beginning to dry and she looked far, far more insane than her fictional counterpart.

"Which room has the bed?"

"Hey," said Emmy Christine, who had been contemplating the muffin in wide-eyed wonderment, much as she contemplated everything in wide-eyed wonderment. "I have a thought!"

Very slowly, everyone turned to look at her.

"Well," said Kay Erik genially, "this is quite an unexpected development. Pray enlighten us, child."

There was a bit of a pause while Emmy Christine turned her Look from Kay Erik, who frightened her (not that you could tell) to Gerry Phantom, whom she loved (see previous parentheses). She opened her mouth slightly wider, paused quite audibly, then shook her head.

"No. Lost it."

There was a disappointed sigh from the Eriks.

"That is too bad," murmured Kay Erik. "I was quite looking forward to that."

There was another sad pause while everyone looked around at each other, unsure of what to do. Emmy Christine had quite a talent for unsettling people and distracting them from their normal activities. Gerry Phantom clearly relished this quality, pulling her close and planting a kiss on her forehead.

"That reminds me," said Mandy the O, tightening the punjab and beginning the long, slow process of detaching Emmy Christine's clutching hands from various parts of Gerry Phantom's anatomy, and vice versa.

ElfLover shrugged. "Okay, everybody, back to your Erik-stalking," she called, and the chaos ensued.

Just to illustrate the wide view of what was going on in the lair, let us focus first on the movie Eriks: they were being stalked by a small and ruthless group of Phic Writers and their Christines or Christine-equivalents, who were obviously determined to make the silent movies not so silent, and the slasher movie a little less bloody and a lot more romantic.

The stage Eriks were being systematically rounded up and seduced. Hugh Pinaro in particular was having a problem keeping his trousers from being ripped to shreds.

And our four Main Eriks were now surrounded by Mandy the O, the Maiden Amorisa, EriksAngel1870, bundles o' joy, EmailyGirl, Willow Rose, Musique et Amour, and JJC Beowulf, who was looking even more freaky than normal. These named Phic Writers had crazy gleams in their eyes as they looked hungrily at the Eriks— except for Musique et Amour, who as the lone male Writer in the room was gazing speculatively at all the females that surrounded him and contemplating his own, qualified stalking possibilities.

To make matters worse, and also far more entertaining, the Phic Eriks chose that moment to rush shrieking into the room, carrying punjabs and assisted by a haywire fog machine, hoping that more chaos would ensue. They were rather disappointed to find that rather a lot of chaos was already going on, and thus they were unable to make quite the impact they had hoped. However, they began to find their way to their masters and mistresses, glaring at each other and staring eagerly at the Christines, one of which started going into labor at that moment.

"She's having a baby!" cried her attendant Writer. "Quick, get Erik, he's the father!"

The blank looks of confusion on the faces of basically everyone was not encouraging, as a few of the Eriks started forward shyly, only to stop and glare at each other.

"Hey," mused one of the Writers, "that's not a bad idea, really—"

"No," agreed another, "it could really boost reviews."

Another Christine spontaneously began to go into labor, despite the fact that she hadn't been pregnant up until five seconds ago. Most of the occupants of the lair found this incredibly disturbing, but a few more Writers took it as encouragement, and pretty soon the Phic Christines were dropping like flies and the air resounded with the screams of the newborns, all of which, of course, were perfectly formed and had Erik's (it didn't matter which one) blue eyes.

Most of the Eriks clapped their hands over their ears at the noise.

"This is terrible!" snapped Kay Erik. "I cannot believe that my home has been invaded in this manner. It was bad enough when it was endless versions of myself— now we have the Christines as well, and it is absolutely unbearable." He glared at a nearby Christine, who held her baby in her arms and was cooing at it. "A lair is quite an unsuitable place to have a child anyway."

"It's only because of the Phic Writers," Gerry Phantom explained. "They started it."

"Oh yes?" said Crawford Phantom with a short laugh, pointing at Emmy Christine. "How do you explain that?"

Emmy Christine looked up from the bundles she held in her arms, her eyes shining with joy and her mouth, predictably open. "Oh, Phantom!" she cried. "They have your eyes— all three of them!"

"Eyes?" shouted Gerry Phantom, the color draining from his face as terror replaced his habitual smirk. "They have three eyes?"

"No, silly! They have two eyes."

"But— how many of them are there?"

"Three."

"But—"

"I believe what your, ahem, Christine is trying to explain," interposed Crawford Phantom, "is that you now have three children, in possession of two eyes each, which comes to a total of six eyes. Now, should each of the children have been born with three eyes, there would be, of course, a total of nine—"

"For pity's sake, hush, man!" shouted Gerry Phantom. "You're confusing me."

Crawford Phantom sniffed. "Doesn't take much, does it?"

Gerry Phantom crossed over to Emmy Christine and stared down at her— or, to be more precise, at the three babies she held in her arms. "You had— three of them? Were you— had you— but we never—"

"I know," she said dreamily. "But you behold the power of fiction— even though we never did it—"

"Not really, anyway," murmured Gerry Phantom.

"We still have children because it was meant to be."

"But why three?"

Emmy Christine was unable to come up with an answer to that, and simply stood with her mouth open. Wide. Kay Erik took over.

"I can only assume that some phic writer— possibly one who is orchestrating this whole disastrous scenario— went a bit overboard. Perhaps they thought it would be funny," he added as an afterthought.

"But why three?" murmured poor Gerry Phantom, now a broken man.

"Its alright," said Emmy Christine, mouth open. "With the power of our love, we shall overcome all obstacles."

"But," said Gerry Phantom again, "how am I supposed to support three— can't you pass them off as Raoul's, or something?"

"What?" said Emmy Christine.

"I mean, well, you are married to him— and blood tests haven't been invented yet, he'd never have to know—"

"But, Phantom, these children are so obviously your's— they're so beautiful—"

"Well, yes, there is that—"

"I predict," said Crawford Phantom, "that at any moment now the omnipotent presence who has thrown us all together here in this lair beyond the lake will grow tired of this endless back-and-forth between you two and decide to make something interesting happen."

"I don't believe anyone can know the future," said Kay Phantom, four-dimensionally.

"I knew you were going to say that," said Crawford Phantom triumphantly, folding his arms and looking smug.

There was clearly only two things to do at this point, and the writer chose to do the less intelligent but more interesting one.

"Send in the Raouls," said Random Battlecry to her minions, and the echoing cry was heard for miles.

"Send in the Raouls!"

"Send in the Raouls!"

"Send in the Raouls!"

"Send in the Raaaaaoulllllsssss!"

Random smiled to herself. "It's good to have minions—"

At that moment, the chaos which had ensued at the end of the last chapter, ensued again, only bigger this time, and with fops.