"I thought you'd all like to know I'm feeling very depressed."

The group of authors looked up at the haggard Vega.

"I have just spent the last – " Vega checked her watch. " - several hours reading entries from that morbidity contest that seems to be going on at another site, and I have just realized that I am incredibly disturbed because I laughed at nearly all of them. And you know, not one – not one – was even vaguely EC."

"Were there any RC fics?" Mirian asked hopefully.

"What? No, no…you know how I feel about RC." Vega responded, slightly annoyed. "Where's Andrea?"

"Staring at An Eternity of This, refreshing the page constantly," said Ami, the EM shipper, who was rapidly writing chapters on her laptop. Vega had always loved that laptop. It wasn't made of that cheap plastic stuff they used on the teacher's laptops at school that they passed off as computers. It was the good, tough, shiny metal kind. Plus, it was a bright sapphire blue with a trackball. Trackballs were freaking awesome.

"Hey, what are you writing?" Vega asked, looking at the laptop screen.

"Meg is about to help Erik kill the Spineless One before they get married." Ami said with a hint of contempt.

"Who, Erik and Meg or Erik and Christine?" Vega asked. Ami gasped, and threw a brick at Vega's head.

"NEVER SPEAK THE SPINELESS ONE'S NAME!" Ami shrieked. Vega ducked the brick, and attempted to calm Ami down with promises of bringing her to meet the author of that Latin mass EM thing she seemed to like so much.

"Ami, dear, I don't fly into a rage when somebody says Erik's name." Mirian pointed out. Ami did not listen however, and returned to typing hysterically. Vega sighed.

"Thank god all EM shippers aren't like that," she said. "Hey look Mirian, could you tell Andrea that she's a loser and she sucks and nobody likes her ship today? I've got to go check up on Meg and the others in my phic and make sure they haven't started another orgy. That took forever to fix the last time. And then I have to go fight the Gina Clones in Germany."

"Of course, dear," said Mirian absentmindedly.

"Thanks, man. Lemme just get my coat – " But as soon as Vega opened the door, she was greeted with an angry hiss from the author inside the closet.

"Oh, sorry Christin…a." Vega said apologetically. Christina growled in a decisively Gollum-like manner.

"The EC ssshipper wantses us to abandon our ssshrine to Erik and Colin'sss love…but the EC ssshipper ignores the fact that Christine left Erik…we laughsss at her, yesss…"

Vega's eye twitched at the mention of the Horrible Bad No Good Rotten Leaving Scene, but then remembered that Christina was legally insane and believed that Colin Mochrie and Erik were in love, so decided not to slay her for mentioning it. Logic. Pfft. Must everybody bring that trivial matter up?

"Of course not, dear…Erik/Colin is a perfectly plausible canon possibility." Vega said cautiously.

"What doessss the EC ssshipper want, we wondersss?…" Christina whispered to her shrine, which was lit with votive candles and covered with silk black drapes.

"I just came to get my coat." Vega said, hoping her voice sounded soothing. Apparently it wasn't, for Christina then lashed out and attacked her. Vega cried out, and began to try and slam the door. Eventually she succeeded, and leaned against the door panting.

"I thought she was still being kept in the bathroom!" Vega cried.

"Oh, that's right. I forgot to tell you." Ami said, as she continued typing.

"How do you forget after I said that I was going to get my coat?" Vega said angrily.

"What? Meg?" Erik said, incredulously.

"Yes." Binky nodded sadly.

"But you're an ELEPHANT. That's digusting." Erik said dismissively.

"Actually, due to a strange and stupid plot twist, I'm under a curse that turned me into a pink elephant. In order to break said curse, I must save the world 3 times in succession and then proclaim my love for all things EC. My old mistress was a sorceress."

There was a long pause.

"That – is the WORST plot twist ever conceived." Erik spat out. "I mean, the author has been implying that you're a real pink elephant the whole damn phic! And now, for no reason other than she thinks Binky needs more love, she's shipping you and Meg and making you a damn human so it's not bestiality!"

I'm sorry.

Erik's eye twitched. He grabbed a stale crumpet and threw it at the author's physical manifestation.

"I QUIT!" he shouted, and began to march out of the tent, grabbing Christine and carrying her with him.

"Where are we going?" Christine asked innocently.

"We're quitting the phic, dear." Erik said.

"Oh, okay." Christine wrapped her arms around Erik's neck and fell asleep. It was so adorable that EC shippers went 'awww' and drew some fanart of this scene. Unfortunately, the author was rather fond of the Erik and Christine bits, so she sealed them up in a brick room with a rabid cowplant.

Yeah, um, look, about that. You can't really quit, cause you're the last vestiges of canon in this pitiful, pitiful story. And plus, if you look in your contracts under the Author's Terms section, you'll see that in return for Erik getting lots of hot ECness and Christine getting a dead Raoul, I will receive yours souls. So, um, technically I own you.

"You do not. Gaston Leroux owns us." Erik quipped.

Owned. As in past tense. As in dead.

"He's not dead, he's resting." Christine murmured sleepily.

Whatev. The point is that if you don't listen to me and stay in the story, I'll bring Raoul back from his honeymoon with Dollar, force him into a divorce, and marry him off to Christine. Oh, and then Meg will die a horrible, horrible death. You know, for kicks.

Erik gaped. Christine looked mildly displeased, but then fell asleep again. The cowplant stuck out its cake tongue. Some mentally disturbed ER shippers in the distance shouted that Erik really did love Raoul; he was just insane and couldn't express it. The odd dog barked.

Erik cursed loudly, prompting an annoyed glance from Christine.

"Fine, we'll stay. But no more foolish plot twists, you understand?"

I promise, lied the author.

Meg meanwhile was eating raw campfire sausages in a fit of existentialism. She hated her life, hated this stupid world-saving journey, and she hated being love with a bloody satyr. Dammit. Dammit, dammit, dammit, DAMMIT!

She threw a sausage into the lake angrily. Stupid, stupid, stupid fu –

Meg's world went black. She blinked, and realized her eyes were still open. Somebody had stuffed her in a sack!

Back when Meg was just a nondescript ballerina, her mother had taught the dance troupe about what to do if somebody had stuffed them into a sack and taken them away from the Operahouse. The first thing to do was to attempt to kick the attacker in the knee. If that failed, they were to skip straight to Step 9 – screaming like a banshee. Meg had been very good at this, and often skipped the other 8 steps entirely in favor of screaming.

This is what she did.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

Christine's head snapped up. "Did you hear that?"

"I didn't hear anything." Erik said, twirling a lock of her hair with his fingers. Christine shook her hair away.

"Well, I heard Meg screaming. Let go, Erik." She gently pushed him away and stood up. Erik looked disappointed.

"Meg's fine, she's probably only realizing that I stole her sausages." Erik said convincingly. Christine looked at him for a moment, then went to leave the tent.

"Well, I'm going to check on her."

"She's fine!"

"She probably is, but I'm going to check anyways." Erik tried to grab Christine by her skirts to pull her back in, but he had poorly timed this and thus fell down to the ground. Erik grumbled in annoyance, and brushed the dirt off.

"Meg!" Christine called. "Meg, are you okay, sweetie?" She looked around the spring and the second tent, but found nothing. She wandered a bit farther off, becoming more and more worried.

After searching the entire perimeter of the campsite, Christine ran in a panic back to the tent.

"Erik! Meg's gone!"