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Chapter Six

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It was dawn.

Or rather, it would have been dawn if the realm of misplaced imagination had anything resembling a sun—or for that matter, a sky. As is, it was merely some time around five in the morning. Although nobody had any way of knowing this, as time functioned very annoyingly on the Hub, and all watches in the world, not having any truck with all this non-linear nonsense, had gone on strike and were refusing to tick.

But, for all practical and thematic purposes, it was dawn.

Mutant plot bunnies hopped through the field of dead grass that the company was waiting in. The rabbits' status as creatures of pure imagination had molded the landscape, the uniform blankness broken for an acre or so. There were a few spots like this on the Hub, though they rarely stayed in the same place for long and generally could only be found if the plot demanded it.

The small host of canons and Nikki seemed utterly unfazed by the monstrous creatures, while Jenna surveyed them with a fascination that was probably intended to be malicious and scheming but came off as innocently curious. Aline alone was unnerved. Their fur was a mottled green with large patches of it missing, their eyes yellowed and savage with just a slight spark of intelligence, their teeth unhealthily long and broken, many of them with hunched backs and extra body parts.

Something rough nudged her ankle. She glanced down in alarm to find a mutant rodent staring at her mournfully. One of its ears twitched. It was rather worse for wear than the rest. One of its eyes had migrated to its forehead and a chunk of skull was missing, exposing grey matter that looked more green than grey. She examined it with slight apprehension. You know, she thought, once you get past the radioactive skin, they were almost cute.

"Hi there," she said to it.

"Ribbit," it replied, a long red tongue darting out to snap up a buzzing fly near her kneecap. She shrieked and lurched away from it, crashing into the farthest canon on the right. She assumed it was a Death Eater, judging from the mask, black robes, and muttered broken Latin accompanied by a burst of purple light that blasted her forcefully out of his personal bubble.

"Sorry," she said meekly, rubbing the back of her head. The Death Eater merely grunted in return, muttering impotently about killing all Muggles.

If there had been a sun in the sky, it would have slowly risen. If anybody's watch had been working, they might have checked it and frowned. In other less crafty words, time passed.

Nikki hissed, "Where the hell are they?" Aline could almost hear tiny strings of patience snapping in her head.

Not a second later, a sound was heard. It was the steady, pounding noise of several well-rehearsed feet marching in perfect rhythm, with the kind of frightening, steady beat that one wouldn't think human feet were capable off. Immediately, all the mutant rodents' ears perked up, their jaundiced eyes widening. Just as suddenly, they hopped madly away as one, their frantic squeaking joining the steady drumbeats in the distance.

Jenna dived, seizing one by what for lack of a better word would be called its tail. It squeaked all the louder, panic settling into its rodent brain. It tried to cling to the lifeless grass with its paws—well, appendages—desperate to escape its fate. No such luck. The girl held it at arms length as it sagged, defeated, and smiled widely.

"I think I'll call you Fluffy," she announced. As a matter of fact, Fluffy had about the same level of fluffiness as the lint in an average jean pocket. "And I'll love you, and hug you, and feed you, and train you to be a ruthless killer, and give you growth hormones, and teach you to resent the world, and then together we'll destroy them all! Yay!" She hugged it to her chest, tiny cartoon hearts fluttering around her head.

"Awww…" several canons said in unison beside her. Nikki silently saluted the poor monster-bunny, her heart going out for its terrible fate.

The drum beats were louder than ever now. Suddenly, over the grassy knoll, a phalanx of units appeared. And that was all they could truly be called: units. They looked nothing alike, and yet their perfect, unfailing march left no doubt that they had something resembling a hive mind.

They came to a stop a few yards in front of the group, all at the exact same time.

Huh, Nikki thought. This is new. She wasn't worried, exactly; it wasn't in her nature to compromise the notion that she wouldn't have any problems kicking the ass of whatever was in her way. Dangerously confident? Perhaps, but Nikki knew how this kind of thing worked. Protagonists always found an obstacle, panicked, overcame said obstacle, and celebrated. She had a pillow embroidered with it, in fact: 'Obstacle, Panic, Success, Celebration'. After some years of being a protagonist, Nikki learned to skip step two, and found it was better for public relations anyway.

Still. Those things unnerved her. She didn't know what they were and she had made it her business to know things for years. There was something about them, something inhuman, that made her sure they were dangerous far beyond the normal fare.

Aline came to more or less the same conclusion, albeit her logical thought process mostly involved the fact that they appeared to have laser beams for eyes.

Nobody resembling a leader was in sight. Nikki staunchly ignored her frazzled nerves, reminding them that the only negative emotions she was supposed to have were the ones that were bad for other people, and spoke. "Well?"

The units parted, flowing aside like water. From the cavity in the formation emerged a woman, possibly in her early forties. She was tall, wore a long white lab coat and very sensible shoes. Her blonde hair was affixed to her head in a pristine bun, and her tired face was remarkable in that there was absolutely nothing remarkable about it.

She also carried a clipboard. She didn't need it; there were no papers that needed to be clipped or written on. She brought it anyway.

Her name was Marie, and she only ever wanted to be an accountant. Maybe even something as exciting as a banker. She was also the villain of this particular work.

Nikki stared at her. She opened her mouth to say something, and then closed it, half-raising a finger only to lower it again. Again, she opened her mouth, and failed in both saying something and closing it again, as her brain was at the moment trying to process the information her eyes were giving it without much success.

After several moments, the mouth kicked back into action, only to jam and get stuck on a brief loop. "Wha…but…how…? Nnrgh…h—no—wh…" It snapped shut again, did some repairs, and continued in a tone that very adequately communicated helpless bewilderment from a person who normally did not encounter such concepts outside of dictionaries. "Mother?"

"Mother?" Aline repeated incredulously.

"Mother," Marie confirmed. "And being as such, I have to ask, dear, just what on earth have you done to your hair?"

The company was immediately reminded of the 'teenage' part of 'teenage war leader'. "What's wrong with my hair?" she demanded haughtily.

"Everything! The colors are bizarre, the cut is all wrong for you and it covers your pretty face. Last time I saw it, it was at least long and blue, and now this? Hot pink and neon green? Really?"

"Pink and green go well together and anyway that's not the point! What are you doing here?"

Marie ignored the question, scanning Nikki over critically. "And what happened to your clothes?"

Nikki fiddled with the edge of her top guiltily. "I…I might have altered them. A bit."

"Yes, if by altering you mean completely ruining a perfectly good outfit. And where did that red stain come from?"

"They're what's everybody is wearing!"

"In a Mardi Gras parade, maybe."

"Ugh, mom! You always do this to me!"

"Young lady, as long as you live under my roof, you will obey my rules!"

"What roof?" Aline asked. Several heads suddenly craned upward. A blank abyss looked back. It was neither whiteness nor blackness; it was a complete and utter absence of anything at all.

Marie was silent for a few moments. She smoothed back her hair. "Yes, well," she said. "I was speaking metaphorically." She coughed demurely. "But that aside, we are here to negotiate your surrender, yes?"

"No," Nikki said in a voice flatter than something that was extremely flat.

"Nikki, don't be stupid. The ranks I've amassed are enormous. Put your stubbornness aside for five minutes and realize that your obstinacy would be the deaths of tens of thousands."

"Are you completely nutters?" Nikki scoffed. "You have numbers, but no way to control them. Fangirls are wild creatures—no one can control large groups of them. Least of all you," she sniffed. "You could never run this dimension. I was the one doing everything! Ever since I was thirteen. Thirteen! If anybody should be turning on their family and raising armies in bitter rebellion, I should! I earned it! All you did was welcome new members and do inspections for ages. "

"Don't talk to your mother that way," Marie said stiffly, maintaining composure.

"Well, it's true!"

"Learn to respect your elders."

"Sure, as soon as my elders stop betraying me."

Marie gritted her teeth. "There's no reasoning with you. You're the same little girl you were when you could barely walk."

"Oh, no reasoning with me! Isn't that rich, coming from you."

"I see there are some complex family dynamics going on here," Aline said. "But can we get on with it?" Jenna nodded silently. Fluffy tried to gnaw through her wrist to freedom, and failed.

Marie pinched the bridge of her nose. "Enough of this. I'll have you know that I can control my legions just fine. Most of the fangirlius genus isn't very bright, but they make fine warriors. The duty of the caretakers is to keep this world in line—and the reason that the job exists is that if any faction ever managed to amass a proper army, the rest of the Hub would be overwhelmed. Granted, fangirls and their sort aren't all that intelligent. Or at any rate, very easily distracted. If they ever formed an army without a driving central force, it would summarily fall apart. Remember a couple years ago? The rebellion attempt?"

Nikki shuddered involuntarily. The Jelly Donut Incident of 2003 still haunted her.

Marie continued, smiling, "But there are certain ways they can be utilized. Look around. Have you ever seen such perfect obedience?"

The girl had to admit this was true. They were still standing perfectly still, but now that Nikki looked at them closely, she realized they did, in fact, breathe and occasionally even blink. Otherwise, they seemed as inhuman as ever. "Okay, so what's up with them? Hypnosis? Cyborgs? Good old fashioned hired sociopaths?"

"Nothing so fantastical." Marie's smile grew infinitesimally wider. "Forgetting your training already?"

"What? There wasn't anything in the textbooks about—" The realization hit her like a truck full of bricks. Shortly afterward the frantic denial hit like a little red wagon full of pillows. "Oh, you didn't," she said flatly.

"I did." Marie strolled around the phalanx, gesturing. "This elite force is a unique hybrid occurring in unnature. Shipper, fangirl, and weeaboo, all combined into one. Remarkable, really. Of course, most of them were exterminated decades ago—deemed too dangerous to exist in normal company by my predecessor—but some survived. They lurk alone or in small groups at the edges of civilization, content, but hungry for revenge and easily bribed." She turned her head and gave a piercing look. "Come now, you're a smart girl. Have you guessed it yet?"

Nikki wondered who had mysteriously turned her blood to ice, and whether that was medically sound. "I thought they were only myths."

Marie's smile suddenly became a lot more disquieting. "That's right," she said. "Yaoi fangirls." At that, lightning flashed, a roll of thunder boomed, dramatic music played, and thousands of miles away and a few dimensions over several people keeled over with heart attacks. Fell wolves lifted their heads and howled at the bloated moon, as they often did on the Hub. These were specially bred Dramatic Wolves, after all.

The Cliché Compendium had only one thing to say about yaoi fangirls. It was written in red ink, large font, and obnoxiously blocky typeface. It was this: 'Run.'

"Intelligent," Marie said. "Definitely the smartest of the genus. The duller ones died off in the Slash Massacre. Their reasoning, while a product of controlled insanity, works, as skewed as it is. They can operate alone or in groups. Excellent warriors. Endlessly determined. Operating on a nearly endless supply of hormones, they—"

"I know what they are," Nikki snapped.

"Yes, dear, but the readers don't."

"What readers?" Aline muttered, tugging to at her hair.

Nikki could feel every single male canon behind her getting nervous. They were itching to run. She was rapidly losing what little control she had over the situation, and that was about third on her list of things to avoid at all costs, next to bull elephants and flying coconuts. Yaoi fangirls…! But behind the shock was a realization. Yaoi fangirls…yaoi…If her hunch was correct, it could get them out of a bad situation. It turned her stomach to consider it, but she knew her men would do what was needed if it came to that.

For now, it was time to do what she always did when a conversation stopped going the way she wanted it to go, and that was blindly, clumsily changing the subject. With some effort, she adopted a steely-eyed look and crossed her arms. "This is the part where you explain why you've gone and betrayed your own flesh and blood."

Marie blinked. "You mean, say to hell with strategic secrecy and tell you all about my plans? Why would I do that?"

"Oh! Oh! I know! Pick me!" Aline said half-sarcastically, waving her hand in the air, then without waiting for an answer— "It's because you're the villain here, and therefore have to explain your evil plan to the heroes before killing them!"

"But I'm not going to kill any heroes just now," Marie pointed out. "I'm related to at least two of them. Also, it says in the plot I'm not supposed to do that yet, and besides, it's quite messy."

"I know you've gone traitor," Nikki said, "But this is still the Hub. We must follow some convention."

Marie tapped tapped her fingers crossed arms. "Very well," she said. "I suppose I must."

"Huh," Aline said under her breath. "I can't believe that actually worked."

"You get used to it," Nikki said.

Marie took a deep breath. "Alright, then, this is my motive rant. Listen up, I'm not repeating myself." The lighting suddenly became more dramatic, and Marie's voice took on an echoy quality. "I hate this job. I've always hated this job and this insane dimension. And you know what? I've no way out. No one in the bloodline has a way out. You don't have a way out, nor will any children you decide to doom. With our younger and…ah…less reputable creators I found a common goal of freedom. The fangirls have long been dissatisfied with the way I run things. They don't want standards. They want fun. They want a promise of no more persecution. I, as current caretaker, could promise them that if they helped me accomplish my goals."

Nikki made a rolling gesture with her fingers. "And they are?"

"To topple the Fourth Wall."

"What?" Nikki snorted. "You mean that thing that we all leave in rubble on a regular basis in the name of meta-humor?"

Aline blinked a few times. "What?"

"Aline, please shut up."

"Okay."

"Not the fourth wall," Marie corrected. "The Fourth Wall. Capitalized."

Nikki's face remained blank, but a different sort of blank. This was carefully calculated indifference, every muscle pulled into perfectly calibrated blankness. "And why?" she said, each word a pebble thrown into a very deep well.

"Why?" Marie said, as if she were surprised that Nikki was dim enough to ask. "To do the only thing that can really help this sad, empty world. I'm going to remove the Author."