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Chapter Five
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Nikki climbed onto a crate—because crates, of course, were randomly strewn about a military base for people to stand up and proclaim things from, or alternatively break open to receive medical supplies—and switched on a megaphone. "Listen up—" was as far as she got before several people closest to her makeshift podium clutched at their ears and collapsed, moaning.
"Not so loud," a small blonde girl complained.
Nikki sighed, clunked her over the head with the megaphone, and tossed it to the ground where it joined the girl's now-unconscious body. Luckily, her voice was naturally loud and bossy. "Any more questions?"
Silence.
"Good. Alright then, we all know the deal—"
"I don't." At which point somebody in the back row hit Aline over the head with a rolled up newspaper, effectively quieting her.
Nikki continued, raising her hands in a very leader-like manner, "It's you canons, a few civilian authors joined to our cause, and four of us main characters up against the filth of this world: those who ignore the laws of this world and suffer no penalty. Our leader—a rather listless, inactive one, but a leader nonetheless—has been captured by the enemy. As second in command, that means control cedes to me. We need to be efficient and swift to overcome their brute force and numbers, which means, Toph, that we can't just chuck flaming rocks at them and expect that to work."
Toph crossed her arms defiantly and hmph-ed. "D said it was a good idea."
"D also says scorpion catapults are good ideas."
"I stand by my previous verdict," D put in. "Scorpion catapults would be fricken' sweet."
Nikki decided that ignoring D for the next hour or so would be the best course of action to avoid head-bursting migraines. "The enemy is thus far unknown but not unknowable. For now we shall remain and mount our attack from here. This will require some creativity. Suggestions?"
Silence again.
"Oh, come now. Let's brain storm. Giant floating weather-controlling brains, don't take that literally. Raise your hands or something."
A boy five years overdue for puberty with hair that just couldn't have been structurally possible, fiction physics or not, said. "I could challenge them to a children's card game!"
"No offense, Yuugi, but I don't think that's quite appropriate for the situation."
"Then—"
"Mind-crushes only work on those who have functioning minds." He looked crestfallen.
"I vote we all get roaring drunk!"
A group of pirates clinked their ever-present bottles of rum together. "I agree with Jack!"
D aimed a thumbnail at a giant, anthropomorphic lobster. "And I vote that we do that after you've taken back the dimension," she said mildly. "On the basis that doing otherwise would be bloody stupid. Next." Jenna smiled even wider. After a brief and very loud silence, the suggestions continued.
A man who, according to his hat, was a wizard (or as the case may be, wizzard) said, "Why can't we just run away and save our own skins? I didn't even want to be here in the first place."
Something that certainly looked like a dark Egyptian boy nodded approvingly. "Finally, some sense. I like the way the man in the silly hat thinks."
"I'll have you know that this is a wizard's hat, thank you very much."
"Really?" Bartimaeus inquired, starting to smirk. "Because—"
Nikki coughed. "We're here to plan a war, not the best escape route."
"Well, you could've fooled me…"
At which point he was interrupted by a black-robed, bat-like man with greasy hair, who threw himself in front of the podium, screaming, "FIVE THOUSAND POINTS FROM GRYFFINDOR!"
Nikki barely prevented her fingers from straying to her temples. She shouldn't be annoyed, she knew. Poor Severus had never been the same after being ambushed by a horde of SnapeWives. "Thank you for sharing, professor." To a stormtrooper, she whispered, "Remove his professorship, please."
Once Snape had been escorted a room with soft walls and no sharp objects, a vampire with a wide brim hat and a supremely psychotic grin said, "I say we get a bunch of really big guns and blow them all to tiny little pieces." Several of the more homicidally inclined canons nodded in agreement. Considering that most of the canons present were longtime Hub residents and had made the acquaintance of more than a few of their fans, this was a not insignificant group.
"Which would all be very well and good," Nikki said. "If we had any, really big guns big enough to dispose of an army millions strong."
"Pah!"
"However, I do approve of the 'blowing them to tiny little pieces' bit. What's our weapons log, Smith?"
Smith stood and recited in a monotone, "We have, along with specific weapons provided by individual canons, catapults, crossbows, various combustive devices, including Greek firebombs, realism capsules, logic bombs, anti-shipping-matter, and these candy canes sharpened to lethal points left over from the Christmas Special. Also a large trunk of Writer's Blocks, which nobody has touched with a ten foot metal pole."
It occurred to Aline that this was strange, but the thought was soon swept away washed up on the mental beach of equally strange things that she'd learned that day.
"So we managed to save the Writer's Blocks?" Nikki said, brightening. Smith nodded, a bit redundantly. Nikki felt better about their situation already. Any Writer's Blocks found in the wild were kept under strict control far away from nearly everything. They were completely useless as weapons in most circumstances, given their incredible and non-judgmental attitude toward destruction—they'd just as happily disintegrate the wielder as the target—but if the main supply was with the canons, then they weren't with the fangirls, and that was something.
"Right then," Nikki folded her arms in front of her authoritatively. "Somebody who happens to have a bucket of cold water can wake Meggie up. And we need a brilliant, unmatched strategist—who here is a brilliant, unmatched strategist?"
About a quarter of the canon's hands went up.
"Thought so. Alright then!" She clapped her hands together once, keeping them together and stretching. "Let's get to it."
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The area had cleared up considerably once duties had been assigned, among them scouts, infantrymen, marksmen, officers, toilet decloggers, chocolate suppliers, fly SWAT team, owl exterminators, baby panda providers, the Knights Who Say "In" (a lesser known sect of a certain other group) the People Who Fiddle With Things When They Don't Work, and Senior Yelling and Shouting Officers. Aline was left mostly alone, excluding a few emo teens from newer young adult fiction novels, the man with the abnormally large cup of tea, and Jenna, who had been ordered by D to practice standing around being intimidating in preparation for her future despotism. (Without, it may be noted, much success. Jenna was intimidating much in the same way a raven was like a writing desk. Much to her annoyance, her grins consistently stayed firmly behind the line between endearing and psychotic, her laughter remained merely charming and exuberant rather than truly maniacal, and the gleam of madness in her eyes was always misinterpreted as the mischievous twinkle of youth. It seemed that the only time she managed to provoke people into attempting to crucify her was when she was trying to charm them.)
Aline leaned against the smooth concrete wall, brooding, an activity she thought suited her very well indeed. It seemed as though she was stuck here for good, or at least until it blew over and she could convince somebody to send her home. She would be alright, she reasoned, if she stayed on the fringe of things and read to pass the time. It wasn't as if she could actually do anything, so that probably wouldn't be a problem. Surely there was someone more pathetic than her in this world of worlds who could function as an underdog (which, she had found out, the Cliché Compendium defined as 'a loser; a pathetic, miserable little piss of a person who fails at everything they attempt and a few things they don't. These qualities make them endearing. Underdogs are granted rights to automatically save the day when things are at their direst. She had just enough dignity left to be offended by this)
She was resigned to a few days of solid reading time when she realized one of the pale skinny kids was a few inches away from her face. "Hey," he said huskily.
"Er…hello." Aline leaned back as far as she could without falling over, and then fell over anyway. "Can I help you?"
"I'm a vampire," he said.
She looked him over, from his 'Bite Me' t-shirt to his plastic vampire fangs, the kind you got at arcades for 25 tickets. "No you aren't."
"You cannot deny what your heart tells you to be true!" he shouted, clawing the air as he fell dramatically to his knees.
"I'm sure you're right," Aline said.
"Do you feel seduced yet?" He was leaning in again, close enough for her to count his multitudes of unfortunately-placed pimples.
"Not particularly, no." She hurriedly got to her feet and started backing away. "I'm going to go away now," she informed him, but she barely got a few feet, still holding up her hands as if he was some kind of acne-laden, overdramatic predator, before she bumped into the man with the cup of tea.
"Oh, sorry!" she began, but he wasn't listening. He was staring into his cup with the miserable expression of one who has been bumped into without any apology to speak of far too many times that day. She started, realizing he was familiar, and not just in the expression she often saw in the various reflective surfaces on the Hub.
"Say," Aline said. "Are you Arthur Dent?"
He paused in his despondent tea-staring, surprised at having someone address him by name. "Oh. Yes. Arthur Dent. That's me." He seemed to lose interest in her then, and continued staring into the lukewarm tea.
"Just wondering why you were here," Aline said. "I didn't know you had any crazies to hide from."
Arthur gave a weak laugh that held little humor in it. "Oh, I don't. My friends do. I was dragged here by a particularly unstable one of them."
"Same," Aline sighed.
"Did you at least get a useful guidebook out of it?"
"Yep. I think yours is probably more interesting, though. Let me guess; Ford, right?"
"Oh, yes. I also strongly suspect it's his fault some of those girls are convinced that we are in love with each other." His tone was so sardonic that Aline had to laugh.
It was then she realized what the significance of this meeting was. That, in all the worlds, there was probably one person who truly knew what it was like to be like her, to be dragged along on an unwanted adventure, finding not self-actualization, personal discovery and attractive members of the opposite sex, but injury and general disregard. It was more than that, even – some kind of connection, like they were versions of each other across the bridge of worlds. Aline knew little of narrative physics, but she knew a kindred spirit when she saw one.
Unfortunately, Aline also knew how to put her foot in her mouth with astounding efficiency and regularity.
"Yeah, though give 'em some credit," she joked. "Like that time you were trapped on prehistoric Earth, with no one else around, alone for months, nothing to do except—" At which point she got a face full of lukewarm tea.
She blinked plaintively, stunned. She lifted the curtain of wet bangs from her eyes. "Was it something I said?"
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Nikki was very annoyed,
For one thing, whipping a rabble of unruly fictional character into a proper army was proving harder than she had imagined. Not as many as she had hoped had appeared—most of the ones present were from popular, fangirl-suffused worlds, namely, those that had revenge as a motivation. The prospect of some fun time destroying a few annoyances in the form of high-pitched teenage girls had also attracted a number of sociopaths and psychopaths, which was problem number two, as Jenna was beginning to learn more and more by example.
And while taking over a world and commanding it with an iron fist for a thousand years of misery as the supreme ruler of darkness was fine—there were, after all, plenty to go around, and ambition was always to be encouraged—she really did not need another psychotic ten-year-old running around, especially not one she happened to be related to.
But all of that could be dealt with, if it were not the fact that she was in a meeting.
Meetings of any kind were generally arduous processes that were to be endured when there was no possible escape. Due to the bizarre physics governing meetspace, meaning any room containing a group of people attempting to formally solve a problem, meetings had a number of strange characteristics. For one thing, any timekeeping device in meetspace immediately slows down considerably, stops altogether, or explodes, with occasional reports of them coming alive and dancing a jig about halfway through. However, the most interesting thing about meetspace is that although each person may individually have the tools to solve the problem, when submerged in meetspace solving of the problem becomes immediately impossible. The Cliché Compendium describes meetings as, 'Hell, except not nearly as warm and you're not allowed to bring snacks.'
But even that could be dealt with, were it not a meeting of Brilliant, Unmatched Strategists.
As it turned out, geniuses were much like five-year-olds, except five-year-olds were easily bribed with candy and shiny objects.
The thing about having several geniuses in a room together is that ego swells in direct proportion with intelligence, and as a result, overgrown Self-Importance glands coupled with great intelligence left little room for anybody else's opinions. This along with the fact that geniuses, fictional or otherwise, tended to be highly eccentric, complete sociopaths, selfish bastards, or all three, produced an oversupply of headaches and murderous intentions, particularly in persons by the name of Nikki.
Perhaps it was her fault for not dividing up meeting times. Yes, in hindsight, it would have been much easier if there was a one-brilliant-unmatched-strategist-per-fandom limit, because it would prevent situations such as, oh, for a random example, half the cast of Death Note showing up and proceeding to spend much of the time attempting to kill each other in increasingly convoluted ways.
Well, Light did. Nikki had to confiscate his eponymous Death Note. Hissy fits were thrown, hissy fits were made fun of by enemies, people were sent to opposite corners of the room for a time-out—overall, not a pleasant experience. Nikki didn't mind homicide in principle, but she agreed with most people that it was not very conducive to attempting to get some of the smartest people in the multiverse to sit down and have a reasonable discussion.
Irritatingly, a good chunk cast of Artemis Fowl was present as well. Artemis and Minerva ended up in relationship counseling (with Sokka—nobody was quite sure what hewas doing there, but most of them opted to shut up when he pointed out he actually had military experience, unlike most of them), which ended up in a nasty break-up and several very long, presumably unpleasant words exchanged. Opal and Foaly argued in loud shrieks for half an hour on various technological subjects, and then chose to snog for the rest of the meeting instead (and, since meetspace mirrors real(ish) life in microcosm, also ended up in relationship counseling with Sokka, which ended with more snogging).
Nikki heaved a sigh with more than a dash of growl in it and tapped her fingers on the table as yet another pair of token professors from some sci-fi series came to blows. It was enough to make her yearn for a smoke break.
Which was odd, because as far as Nikki knew, she didn't smoke.
There was a twang as her patience snapped. "EVERYBODY SHUT UP!" she screamed, standing up in her chair. Brawlers and snoggers alike paused in their activity of choice. She hesitated. This was supposed to be the part where she shamed the mob about their behavior and nothing was coming to mind. "Just…shut up," she finished lamely, storming from the room. "And nobody leave the Naughty Corner of there'll be trouble!" she added as she left, only to bump into a scout on her way out.
"General!" the scout said, slightly out of breath. "Someone is approaching from the northeast. What should we do?"
Nikki was suddenly all ears. "What does she want? Where is she? And what d'you mean, 'northeast'?"
The scout shrugged. "It sounded official," he said. "That way." He hurried off, and Nikki followed him, ignoring a girl's cry of indignation as she snatched her binoculars.
A sniper squad was waiting for command. Nikki peered over the trench wall. Indeed, a figure blurred slightly by the distance was approaching. Probably not a weeaboo. A fangirl? A rogue shipper? Not an ally, judging by the flag.
This was a delicate situation; she would have to judge wisely. A few seconds later she lowered the binoculars.
She said to the sniper squad, "Blast her."
"She's waving a white flag," one Artemis Fowl, who had followed her in snubbed outrage that she was ignoring his brilliant plan, replied dryly.
"Blast her anyway," she said, somewhat shrilly. What was the point of orders when they weren't followed?
"Blast her and my good friend Butler will be having a word with you later," the irritating boy informed the squad as the grinning giant behind him cracked his knuckles.
Stupid Butler.
Now Nikki was seated across the silly girl at a metal skeleton of a table, a bare bulb suspended by gods-knew-what swinging above them. Her headache had not improved. Again and again she attempted to reason with her, but proved utterly unsuccessful, as the fangirl refused to speak English.
"Okay," Nikki said patiently, putting on her best 'you can talk to me' face and clasping her hands friendlily in front of her. "Let's try this again. I'm going to ask you a question. Answer me in English. Or, if you prefer, Spanish. Or perhaps French or Italian. Actually, you can go ahead and speak Russian if you like, or maybe Icelandic or Swahili—in fact, we can make this a game! Guess the language! But…please—speak—like—a—normal—person. Got it?"
The fangirl nodded enthusiastically.
"Alright. Why are you here?"
"Percabeth! Percabeth percabeth percabeth. Percabeth?"
Nikki's palm met her forehead.
"Problems?" D asked tonelessly, though Nikki could tell the other girl was suppressing a smirk.
"When did you get here?"
D shrugged. "I'm always here."
"Whatever. Do you speak fangirl?"
D finally glanced up from Jenna's copy of the month's issue of Better Homes and Torture Chambers. "Which dialect?"
"All this one will say is the word 'Percabeth'."
"Advanced Shippanoma, sounds like. Fetch a canon; they're more attuned to this kind of thing."
Nikki rubbed her temples ineffectually. The fangirl had thankfully stopped speaking, choosing instead to stare into the distance and giggle occasionally. Nikki looked around and pointed to a boy in medieval clothes. "You! Random underling! Go fetch somebody who can speak fangirl and be quick about it!"
The boy looked stunned. "Me? But…but I'm a main character! You can't treat me like this!"
"Yeah? Who's your author, then?"
The boy's eyes cast downward in shame. "…Christopher Paolini."
"Bah! Go get me my translator."
Eragon sighed and trudged off. He returned several minutes later with a curly-headed girl preoccupied with something she was scribbling on a clipboard, the man with the hat that said 'wizzard', and a giant bat.
Nikki was coming up with disturbingly few reasons not to just bludgeon the chattering fangirl to death, and was thankfully saved from drawing conclusions from this by the arrival. "Ah, thank you. Alright, you three, I've got a problem and—um, why did you bring a giant bat, exactly?"
"Rule of Threes," Eragon said.
"I see. Just...take the bat and leave, okay?"
"Well, there's no need to be rude," the bat huffed, and flew off, hitting Eragon in the face with a wingtip as it did so.
A few seconds passed. "The first person to make the 'driven batty' pun dies," D said conversationally.
"No homicide outside the designated areas, please," Nikki said tiredly. "Okay, then, you two—thank you for coming, we're having a bit of a communication problem here."
The wizard mumbled a greeting a looked around nervously. "She's not, um, dangerous, is she? No, forget it; of course she is, why else would I be told to get involved…"
"Huh? Oh, yeah. Happy to help," Annabeth said distractedly.
Artemis, who had refused to leave until somebody listened to his ingenious strategy, was looking at her. "Hello," he said to her. "I'm Artemis. Fowl, that is."
"Yes, hello." She nodded at him vaguely.
Nikki said, "We've got this fangirl here, she came bearing a white flag—well, a mostly white flag. There's a rather ungrammatical fanfic written on it." She passed said fanfic to Artemis who wrinkled his nose in distaste at it and passed it to D, who glanced at it once and passed it to Jenna, along with her flamethrower and a quick "You know what to do."
"I don't speak the Percabeth dialect," Nikki said again as a minor firestorm raged briefly behind them. "Do either of you know it?"
"Sorry, no," Rincewind said. "There aren't very many of them trying to sneak onto the Disc, and running is usually preferable to reasoning when it comes to their sort, anyway."
"It does sound familiar," Annabeth mused. "Can I try?" She turned to the fangirl and gestured for her to speak.
"Percabeth. Percabeth percabeth percabeth," the fangirl repeated.
"Yeah…" Annabeth said slowly. "It make sense to me. I think it's because I'm a member of the ship. She says that her name is Nina and that she has a message for you."
"Percabeth percabeth percabeth, perca-percabeth. Percabeth?"
"She says that their leader wants to meet with us in the mutant plot bunny breeding grounds," Annabeth continued.
"Why?" Nikki said icily, her suspicion meters nearly exploding.
"Percabeth percabeth, percabeth."
"To negotiate the terms of our surrender. Our safety will be guaranteed for the duration of the meeting."
Nikki's eyes flashed, though her voice remained controlled. "Yeah, no."
"Percabeth, percabeth percabeth. Percabeth percabeth."
"She says to come anyway…that some kind of agreement can be reached."
Nikki searched the fangirl's face for a sign of deception, but knew it was futile. If there was an ambush, whoever had sent Nina certainly wouldn't tell her about it. The situation reeked of suspicion. When war happened on the Hub—and the last time it did it was just a paltry one involving a dispute over jelly donuts—between the chaos and the extremely interesting deaths there wasn't much room for honor. But it was a chance for information. They didn't know anything about their opponent besides the fact that they were organizing the fangirls, and Nikki did not like being in the dark. She liked being dead even less, and would have gladly punted the fangirl out of their trench in lieu of an answer, were it not for the plot informing her quietly but firmly that she was going whether it made tactical sense or not.
She gave an internal sigh of resignation. "Very well," she said, steepling her fingers as intimidatingly as she could. "You will have your meeting. But know this." She inclined her head and tried her best to make her eyes blaze with dark fire. "Our reserve force is not to be trifled with, and we posses the Hub's greatest concentration of Writer's Blocks. If the terms of this agreement are broken, I will consider all barriers of humanity and honor to be broken and sacrifice however many of my own men I need to make sure every single one of them is used on you. Tell your leader that. Now get out of my sight."
"Eeee!" Nina squealed happily. "PERCABETH!"
"Call if you need any more help with her." Annabeth turned to leave.
"What was that last thing she said?" Nikki asked, rising.
"Oh." Annabeth looked over her shoulder briefly. "That was just nonsense. Something like 'I really wish you and Percy would get together'. Excuse me." She walked away, scribbling something on the clipboard. After a beat, Artemis followed her with a last haughty look.
"I met Gaudi, you know," he told her, extremely casually.
"Really?" She cocked her head to the side questioningly, but she was smiling.
"Oh yes," he asserted. "Let me tell you about this time I tried demon spotting and ended up getting briefly thrown on a cross-dimensional, cross-temporal roller coaster…"
The faint strains of crossovershipping were still reverberating as they left.
The fangirl stared after them with open-mouthed horror. "P-percabeth!," she said disbelievingly. "PERCABETH! PERCABEEEEEEETH!" She collapsed, sobbing and shrieking like her heart had been utterly shattered.
Nikki examined her impassively. "Are you going to leave now?" Nina continued wailing and seizing clumps of her hair. The corner of Nikki's lip twitched and she rubbed her temples. "Damn. And I didn't even hire a Fangirl Removal Squad. Uh, hey, you? Go away. You're ruining my view of the wall."
"I almost feel sorry for them sometimes," D mused. "The truths they'll have to face one day."
"Since when do you have that capacity?" Nikki asked, perturbed.
"I said almost."
A crash echoed somewhere in the distance. Their attention was momentarily distracted, which had no discernible effect besides giving Nina an opportunity to gather herself and scramble over the top and get away. D frowned, brow furrowing.
"Hey, whatever happened to newbface?" she questioned.
Nikki shrugged. "Off somewhere terrorizing innocent British men, probably. Why does it matter?"
The other pursed her lips. "About the Writer's Blocks. I had this theory…"
"Later, okay? I have way too much to deal with right now."
At that moment, Aline wandered into sight, looking a bit more miserable than usual and ringing out her hair. "This always happens to me," she muttered.
Nikki gave her a dead look. "Why are you—oh, never mind. Listen, there's a rendezvous with the enemy in an hour's time. Aline, I need an underdog. That's you. If anything goes horribly awry, the plot will guarantee that you will be the one to fix it. D, stay here. Main character shield means I'll probably be okay, but it is convention, so I need somebody I can trust to lead the rest.
Aline made an indignant noise. "Okay, seriously guys, what do you mean, main chara—"
"Ooh, are we leaving the trench?" Jenna interjected. "Can I come? I've been wanting to find a familiar, some kind of animal or demon or something that follows me around and does my bidding."
Nikki had gone very white. "Jenna, watch where you point that—!"
As per the rules of comedic timing, a particularly flammable section of trench exploded into flames. Screaming followed shortly afterwards.
Nikki lowered an enquiring finger. "Aaand, that'll be the gas tank," she said weakly.
D snorted, almost giggled even. "Nice job, kid, but next time, aim for the enemy. Now gimme back my flamethrower."
Aline tapped her fingers together. "Um. I could get a bucket."
Nikki sat down slowly, putting her arms over her knees. Some of the smartest people in several worlds were arguing like children, they still didn't know how to beat an army the size of the one they'd be facing, especially if they wanted to keep some of them alive, the enemy was possibly planning something extra-heinous, Aline was being Aline and now, explosions.
And on top of all that, she still had a headache.
"We're completely doomed," she said, not-quite-stable laughter bubbling under the surface of her words. A green dog walked past and began to sing the Doom Song, which most people ignored.
"You say that as if it even needs to be said," Aline said.
In the background, the trench continued to burn.