A/N: I owe nearly all of this to Nite, Mandy, Mir, and Twisted, because this was a conversation we had at one point. Thanks guys! Sorry I didn't ask permission! Well, not actually "sorry" but, y'know.

Next Chapter: Improvisation of the Mind

Having sat in limbo for so long, most of the Writers were completely unsure of what they'd been doing when the last chapter ended, and decided to do entirely new things instead. Most of these "new" things involved the Eriks in some shape, form, capacity, or other, and had in fact been practiced by lovestruck women everywhere for centuries. As we all know, practice makes perfect, and at least the Writers were dedicatedly working at it, which gave hope for the future.

Not hope for the Eriks, though. No, clearly things would only get worse from here on in, which is why some of them were off in the corner trying to figure out how to create a bomb out of a small metal box, some Silly Putty, some wire, Billie Joe Armstrong, a Ho-Ho, and a blunt spoon. They'd just stuck the Silly Putty and the wire down Billie Joe's pants and flipped the switch, and were waiting anxiously to find out the results. So far all he'd done was blink a lot and say, "Mmmm."

Random sat and kicked the wall moodily. "I hate this," she declared. "I have all these people and nothing to do. What a great time to run out of ideas." She flopped backwards onto the carpet, hitting her head rather hard, and lay and bled for a bit. Finally she managed, "Ow."

"Actually," said Nite, tapping her fingertips together ruminatively, "I kind of had an idea."

Heads slowly swiveled towards her. In some cases this was very disturbing, such as when the heads had to completely spin around on the attached necks. She shrugged.

"It isn't really a story. But it'd be a nice memory to pass down to your children."

"Eh?" said the Writers, and Nite began to grin.

Shortly thereafter, the scene was set for a small town in rural Parisian Paris; a contradiction in terms that was ignored because it sounded authentic. The Phantom in question was a hybrid between Charles Dance and Kay Erik (which got a lot of daggered glares from Kay Erik himself, who resented not being chosen but didn't want people to think he actually wanted to be playing the part. It was a fine line and he walked the sweet sculpted purgatory out of it) and he had just stolen some bakery items which are so infamous that they should be spelled with asterisks instead of letters. Seeing as FF dot net doesn't much care for asterisks, we will refer to them as Food-Which-Shall-Not-Be-Named, or FWSNBN for short. (They were in fact muffins. But not the well-known sort! These were some particularly thick, cakelike, chocolate chip 'n' evil muffins, mass-produced by Costcoux, which would have given Voldemort a run for his money any day.)

The Phantom, having stolen said FWSNBNs, very sensibly decided to open a black-marketbakery with them.Christine, stumbling on set as though pushed forcibly from the wings, which in fact she had, put her hands on her hips and observed him as he nailed the sign up. The Phantom glanced down at her and scowled, then tipped his straw boater. Christine laughed.

"Black market? What are they, chocolate chip?"

"No," said the Phantom decidedly, and was so clearly on the verge of making a racist comment that the censors hurriedly bleeped it out.

"That's not very nice," said Christine, and pouted.

The Phantom scowled a moment longer. "Well, screw you, Christine."

"Sorry," said Christine airly, "too busy. Anyway I've got a boyfriend. Raoul!"

From the wings, the Writers glanced around frantically. "Where'd he go?"

"I thought you had him!"

"Why would I have the fop?" demanded Killthefop imperiously. "What kind of comment is that to make, you thought I had him, why I never heard such a thing..."

"I just did, that's all!"

"Well I resent it!"

Eventually, Patrick Raoul was located, had the Madonna t-shirt stripped off him, and shoved onstage. The audience watched avidly.

Not much happened for about five or six minutes but then, not much had happened for the past several chapters. It may be supposed by now that Nite's idea had largely depended on improvisation, and the thing about improvisation is it requires more than one functional brain cell. Eventually again, Patrick Raoul managed, "Hey, Phantom."

"Raoul!" said Christine, as thoughjust seeing him, and raced into his arms.

"Oh, Christine! My little muffin with blueberries!"

"That's disgusting," said the Phantom,obviously affronted, but they were too busy stage-making-out to notice. Patrick Raoul got rather into the act, in fact, and Christine had to step rather heavily on his foot to get him to let go.

"My darling!"

"My love!"

"My life!"

"My stomach," complained the Phantom, and commenced chasing Raoul with a punjab, for lack of anything better to do. Predictably, his ponytailed archenemy dropped Christine with a squeak and began to run. Very few fops have the cojones to stand and face things out when there's a rampaging Phantom on their trail, even if the rampaging Phantom is wearing a silly straw hat with a ribbon.

"Muahahahaha!" crowed the Phantom, finally getting into it a little bit, and tripped over his cape."Ow God!" Taking advantage of a leery situation, Raoul siezed the moment and sprayed the Phantom's face withhair care products, then danced quickly away.

"Ha!" he shouted, as though having completed a particularly complex syllogism involving the evolution of toupees.

"Ooohh," said the audience, and ate popcorn noisily. The Phantom slowly struggled to his feet and glowered at them.

"Cease that ridiculous crunching at once!" he said, and, purely from force of habit, tipped his boater to them. "Its disruptive to the performance and distracts the actors and bloody'ell!"

"Ha ha ha," said Raoul, and shook the stolen wig at his enraged opponent, who now had smoke coming from his nose. Seeing this, Christine leapt into the wings and returned with a hose, which was on full blast, and-- "You ruined my hair!"

"I'm bald!" shouted the Phantom, with somewhat less than the dignity he usually preserved. "I'm bald and I'm wet!"

"Oh stop being a whiny baby about it!" said Christine. "Honestly, you're so tiresome, both of you. Both babies. I need a real man." She crossed her arms, spraying herself in the face since she still clasped the hose, and shook her head. "I need a real, a real man. Is what I need. Really."

"I'm wet and bald!"

"You ruined my hair!"

"Nadir!" said Christine, and began to smile. "Where's the Persian?" She glanced off to the wings, and the attendant stagehand Writers looked back at her.

"Well, which do you want? Nadir or the Persian?"

"Nadir!"

The Writers glanced at each other and shrugged. "Your funeral." Nadir was duly shoved onstage, and Raoul crawled weeping off it. The Phantom folded his arms and scowled some more, since he was getting good at it.

"You're both morons and I'm not talking to you."

"You snooze, you lose, Erik," said Nadir peacefully, advancing on Christine with his arms out. She ran to him and leaned against his paunch lovingly.

" Oooh Nadir!"

"My darling little moron," said Nadir kindly, running his fingers through her hair and getting his hands caught.

"Daroga!" shouted the Phantom angrily. "Daroga, how dare you!"

"Don't daroga me!" shouted Nadir back, and returned his attention to the woman in his arms, who was trying to kiss him and having trouble reaching past the paunch that had been previously mentioned.

The Phantom paused for a moment.

"...Darogey?" he tried. "Darogi?"

"This!" said Nadir triumphantly as Christine stretched and whined. "This is how its done, you miserable self-pitying lump of lard!"

"You... fizzled old geezer, Nadir!" said the Phantom. "You... lump of... I AM NOT FAT!"

"You are too!"

"I am well shaped!" huffed the Phantom, beginning to definitely get upset now. Nadir snorted in response. "The bra is purely an aesthetic device! And screw you anyway!"

"Too busy," said Nadir, automatically. Christine got tired of stretching with no assistance from her real man, and stomped off to sulk. "And fine. Don't expect me to be there next time your sorry skin needs saving."

"My skin is not sorry!"

"It is too!"

"Is not!"

"Is too!"

"Is not!"

"This isn't funny," objected several of the audience members to themselves, but no one was quite sure what to do about it. "Its not even an argument... its just contradictions..."

Nadir scowled, stalked over to the Phantom, and stripped him down.

"There. Sorry. Sorry skin. All over." He pointed up and down the Phantom's body. "Aaaaall over."

The Phantom looked down at himself, glanced up at the audience, glanced at Nadir, glanced back down at himself, glanced back up at the audience, and ripped Nadir's shirt off, taking him almost completely unawares. He tied the shirt haphazardly around his middle, stuck his hands on his hips, and resumed glowering.

"And anyway, it is not sorry, it is unique!"

"Unique," said Nadir, and shook his head. "You, my friend, are delusional. Even if you were not wearing a Hawiian shirt as a loincloth, I should still know you for delusional because of your constant insistence that you are perfectly normal in all..."

"I am not insane!"

"You're not Leroux Erik either," calledSandi fromthe audience, "so don't say that."

"Well, its true! And I fancy this is quite a stylish loincloth, anyway, and it goes very well with the ribbon on my hat."

"Well, that's important," observed Nadir sagely, and nodded, sitting down heavily on the stage and glancing down at his stomach. "But, you should have asked permission first, you see, my friend." He reached up and retrieved his shirt, putting it back on. The Phantom glowered once more at him, to no visible effect, and stalked off to sit in a skinny naked heap in the corner. Christine wandered back in, still shaking droplets of water from her hair.

"My friends came to pick me up," she announced to the audience at large. "Can I go? They're taking me to Olive Garden."

Random sighed. "Have we a backup Christine?"

Adison glanced in the pantry. "A few."

Nadir looked up. "Did you say Olive Garden? Because as a matter of fact I have a coupon-- two coupons-- and I know a guy-- they like me there--"

Random eyed his stomach critically. "I'll bet. Alright. You can both go. Have fun. Don't get in trouble. Well, do one or the other, if they seem to be mutually exclusive,I don't care."

Two windows were broken as a result of the ensuing screech of delight that Christine gave, but at least she left immediately thereafter. The Phantom wrapped his arms about his legs and fell slowly over onto his side.

"Oh, to be passed over for Italian food! The irony of it all!"

The audience sat still for a moment and watched him onstage. In the air there was the feeling of having absolutely no idea what was going on and clueless as to what should be done next; the basic equivalent of watching dust motes in a sun-shafted window. Offstage in the wings, there was a shuffling like rats...

But it turned out to be something entirely different.

Some Leroux-like thing crept onstage and nudged the Phantom with his foot. "What up, bi-- ow my ankle!"

The Phantom released and licked his lips thoughtfully, curling up again. "Needs salt."

"That so!" said the Opera Ghost, scratching underneath his skull mask. "That a fact. You know what I think of that?"

"No," said the Phantom, "and I care not."

"Your funeral," hissed the Opera Ghost, and opened up a secret trapdoor just beneath him. As the Phantom disappeared with a shriek, the audience oohed in appreciation of the stage effects, and Random frowned in some slight worry.

"You know," she said to Adison, "I wonder how many trapdoors there are in this set? Because, um, we're about fifty stories up anyway--" The shriek of the Phantom slowly faded, but did not stop, and the Opera Ghost stood and looked proud of himself. "Oh, crap."

"Nonsense!" boomed a new voice, and Improvisation had had its day, for now there entered an apparition which shall be termed only the Lover of Trap Doors, in order to protect the innocent. He advanced towards the Opera Ghost and eyed him for a minute, then knelt on the floor and peered down the hole. "Alright down there, are we?"

"I'm still naked!" came a faint voice from below.

"Have some pants," advised the Lover of Trap Doors, and tossed some down, seemingly pulling them out of nowhere. From the audience there was a yelp, some startled movement, and laughter; shortly thereafter, Stalker Erik was renamed Streaker Erik to the approbation and applause of everyone except him. "Are you alright now?"

A pause, and then, "I landed on some bricks. They broke the fall a bit."

"Wonderful!" boomed the Lover of Trap Doors, and shared a grin with the Opera Ghost. "So are you pantsed?"

"I disdain the pants!" came the voice of the Phantom. "Phantom has no pants! Phantom needs no pants!"

"Phantom has nothing worth being proud enough of to reject pants," opined the Opera Ghost, to the general snickering of the audience.

"Phantom's shoe size is a plus, monsieur, a PLUS!" came the voice.

"That's a myth!"

"Is it?" asked the Lover of Trap Doors, glancing sidelong at his own feet.

"Well, not in my case," said the Opera Ghost, with an unlovely smirk, "but mostly, and anyway its got to be cold down there."

Another pause, and then the voice sounded slightly dejected. "Yes, it is very cold down here."

"Put those pants on and I'll get you out of there," offered the Lover of Trap Doors, and yanked another pulley. Another shriek came from below. "I told you to put those pants on!"

"This is a very long way down here," came the voice again. "Very long. Very long... long?"

"Pants, man! Pants!" the Opera Ghost managed before he collapsed in laughter.

"Loooong..."

"Pants!"

"The pants are about three stories above me," said the Phantom icily, "thank you very much. I am currently fashioning some from some rocks I've found handy, and it is painful." The Lover of Trap Doors snickered and began to lower a punjab down the the beleagured Phantom, exchanging glances once more with the Opera Ghost, who got hold of himself enough to try and help pull him up.

"You'd think the fall would have knocked some sense into him," remarked the Lover of Trap Doors."

"I heard that!" shrieked the Phantom. "I have no sense! I merely have some rather large bruises. And I should have brought some of the bricks with me, to eat on the way..."

TheOperaGhost blinked slowly, pulling at the lasso. " I fear I'm getting stupider just listening to him. In fact I know I am. I just said 'stupider.'"

"I am not stupid!" hollered the Phantom, beating himself on the head with a stick frantically.

"The thing to do is," said the Lover of Trap Doors definitely, and let go of the lasso to put one finger to his lips and scratch his head with the other. "Um-- well, the thing to do is let go of the rope, actually-- whoops," he added as they heard the Phantom once more clatter to earth somewhere far below. Both of them leaned forward to peer down the shaft. After a moment, the Opera Ghost sat up and glanced at the audience.

"You'll be pleased to know," he said, carefully, clearing his throat several times, "that he is redecorating in velvet and gilt. Not guilt. Gilt."

For lack of a better thing to do, the audience applauded. The Lover of Trap Doors leaned further forward and was just about to opine that if the Phantom kept running around shouting his head off, he would very soon be headless, when he lost his balance and went down the hole, to great merriment on the part of the Opera Ghost, who relished being the center of attention in any case. After a moment he went and took a microphone from one of the Writers at the edge of the stage, which he lowered down on a long wire that the audience might hear the ensuing conversation from far below.

"Point one:Phantom is a hippy. Point two: Phantom is a hippy in a nudist colony. Point three:Phantom must spread love and hand out flowers to everyone."

"Point four: Phantom is a twit," offered the Opera Ghost.

"He's lost his mind," said the Lover of Trap Doors, who was sitting in a corner watching the naked Phantom waltz around blithely. "He's just completely gone stark raving wall to wall carpeting insane."

"And you down there with him, have fun," called the Opera Ghost.

"Maybe it was the hit on the head when he landed the second time?'

"Maybe he was born with it. Maybe its Maybelline," snickered the Opera Ghost.

"Point four: the Phantom must beat the Lover of Trap Doors with begonias," said the Phantom decidedly, and apparently attempted to do so, only slightly hampered by the fact that there were none present to speak of.

"He just hit me with a brick! He hit me with a brick! That wasn't a begonia, you crazy..."

"Nonsense!" called the Phantom. "It is a flower! How could you not see it for a flower, it is so clearly a flower..."

"That was a brick!"

"It is a flower if you look at it properly," said the Phantom primly, and hit him with another one. "Feel the love."

The Lover of Trap Doors rubbed at his forehead and felt the lump instead. "Doesn't feel like love... not normal love anyway..."

"And you would know about that how?" called the Opera Ghost. The Lover of Trap Doors glared up at him.

"I know!"

"Ha!"

"Are you calling me a liar?"

"I'm calling you a virgin!" yelled the Opera Ghost, and there was amplified blustering over the microphone.

"Come down here and say that!"

"Alright!" said the Opera Ghost, and did.

One of those long pauses happened, the kind that shift slowly but surely into applause...

The three Phantoms, we're sure, would have loved to bow, but they were indisposed. These things, they say, do happen.