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Chapter Seven

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There was a long, heavy silence. It was followed by a shorter, lighter silence.

"You're kidding, right?" Nikki didn't wait for an answer. "You're insane."

Marie pursed her lips disapprovingly and put a hand on her hip. "Nikki. I've taught you better. What did I tell you about clichés?"

Nikki crossed her arms and sighed. "To not use their destructive powers unless they're true," she muttered. "But if you think for a second that could work, you must be. Have you any idea what the consequences of breaking the Fourth Wall are? The last time it so much as cracked, that was only for a few minutes, and it caused quantum physics. The time before that created dark matter. The time before that, Detroit. I can't even imagine the sheer…sheer madness that would spring from the corners of the multiverse if you actually broke through!"

"Don't you quote history at me," Marie said calmly. "Once I am through to the other side, I will seal the break."

"And even if you could cross over to the other side," Nikki continued, her voice rising steadily, "and even if you manage to seal the break, and even if you manage to do so before reality disintegrates enough to render any such action impossible, and even if the Author actually let themselves get killed, what do you suppose would happen next?" She was practically shouting now. "Everything would cease to exist!"

"No," Marie said patiently, as if talking to a slow-witted child. "We'd be free. No longer would our actions be dictated by this so-called Author. We would finally have true liberty."

"Don't you get it? If there's nobody writing the story, we can't exist. It's simple narrative physics." Narrative physics was a study shrouded in mystery, and Nikki had only the vaguest understanding of it—but to kill the Author…! You might as well kill gravity or magnetism. Not that the Hub had any problems disregarding either of those things whenever it suited its purpose.

Aline, for her part, had given up. No one was going to tell her anything, and she was beginning to accept it. Fine. Fine. Everybody was acting as if they were fictional characters. That was jolly well fine with her.

"If I may ask, daughter, what exactly are you basing these assumptions on? Dogmatic textbooks and sayings with questionable grains of truth in them? It seems a tad bit silly for everything to cease existing just because their creator is no longer dictating all their moves, doesn't it?"

"And it seems a bit silly that a mysterious force called 'gravity' sticks people to the ground, doesn't it?"

"You're being petulant."

"Don't mean I'm not right."

Marie sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Maybe. But I think I might prefer insanity to…to this, and you certainly would too after long enough. The caretaker job is for life, and you aren't free of it when a new one takes over. You've been doing it how long? Three years? Four?"

"Five and a half," Nikki said defensively. The other waved a hand impatiently.

"Barely anything. I've been here for the better part of four decades. You'd think I could just open up a plot hole, pack everything up and leave with you two in tow, but no. A force I cannot explain compels me to stay. You know it. The Plot," she spat the word like a dirty word. "And you know what, daughter mine? It can go to hell. This is my life; this is your life. You would have done the same."

"I certainly would not," the girl said stiffly. "I'm nothing like you."

"No," Marie sighed, "No, I suppose you aren't. You're far more ruthless. Truthfully, I'm almost worried."

"Well, I never joined forces with fangirls," Nikki hissed.

"No," Marie mused. "You joined forces with actual psychopaths." This was true. Psychopaths made up a good chunk of Nikki's army, because psychopaths were aggressive and inventive, and thus made excellent soldiers of imagination. Even if they weren't so keen on orders.

"Better than fangirls."

Marie closed her eyes briefly. "Sometimes in life we must work with those we dislike. Working with anybody exposed so long to the Hub's effects is always difficult, but—"

"But nothing!" Nikki's eyes were wet, which was very strange, because she was pretty sure it didn't rain on the Hub. "They're…they're monsters! They only exist because we allow their wretched existences to continue! Fangirls killed father—how could you?"

Marie fiddled with a button on her coat.

Nikki rubbed her temples, trying to quash the burning behind her eyes. It was then that steely resolve shed the murky slime of affection and indecision. "Alright," she said coldly. "No more. This ends here. We kill you and proceed to destroy the rest of your headless forces. Simple and efficient. You're a fan of simple and efficient, right?"

Behind her, lightsabers powered up, swords were drawn, wands were brandished and guns were cocked. Marie took an involuntary step back. "You'd really commit matricide?" she asked, genuine shock leaking into her voice.

Nikki thought about it. The Fourth Wall under no circumstances could be allowed to fall. And there was duty to think about. She was charged with the protection and peacekeeping of the Hub, and eliminating the enemy leader was the easiest way to do that. And then there was the fact that Marie just wasn't very good at parenting, and Nikki not only held grudges, she nursed, cuddled and kept them lovingly near her heart at all times.

"Mmmmm, yeah. Yeah, I guess I would," she said. "You really should have attended that ballet recital. Oh, Jenna, since she's your mother, too—do you mind?"

"Not really," the girl replied. "She didn't attend my ballet recital, either."

"Wait," Aline said, tapping Nikki on the shoulder. "We are the good guys, right?" No one replied. "Right?"

Marie glanced between Jenna and Nikki, pale faced. "Just answer me this, Nicole—how do you expect to get past them?" She gestured to the still unmoving yaoi fangirls behind her. "They're not just here for decoration."

"Ah, yes, about that," said Nikki, finally allowing her smile to show. "They have a rather obvious flaw."

Marie looked blank, and decided not to bother with villainous boasting. "What flaw?"

"Ahem. Murtagh, Eragon? I assume you know what I imply?"

Murtagh grimaced and shuddered, subconsciously shrinking away from his half-brother. "Do we really have—?"

"Yes."

He sighed again, mentally prepping himself with zero success. He looked left, then right, considered dancing the Hokey Pokey in case that would somehow help, and finally did the one thing his fangirls had wanted him to do for years:

Tackled Eragon to the ground and proceeded to—oh, just fill in your own details. Suffice to say it wasn't quite M-rated, but close.

The effect was immediate. The yaoi fangirls were suddenly shrieking and squealing and hugging each other with joy. One produced popcorn from god-knew-where. Several canons clamped their hands over their ears in an attempt to block the onslaught of canine-frequency noise. Any lingering mutant plot bunnies that had remained hovering at the edge of the activity fled in terror. The horde was nearly stampeding. Somehow, confetti and balloons were showering from the non-ceiling. Amidst the chaos, Marie was listing all possible escape routes. Any direction was a long stretch of nothing, easily cut down by marksmen, and with her honor guard in disarray—

But wait! She could—no, that wouldn't work. She was doomed after all.

"This isn't fair," she complained, arms partially raised in a gesture of unconscious defense. "You're not supposed to find a way to defeat my trump card until the end."

"What is it that you've always told me?" Nikki put a pinky to the corner of her lips. "Something about life and how fair it is?" The canons that were not otherwise occupied with certain other activities advanced threateningly.

"Wait!" And by some odd miracle, they did.

Nikki grunted in annoyance. "Aline, can't this wait? This is kind of important."

"No, but that's the point," Aline said. "Am I the only one who thinks this is, you know, kind of absurd?"

"I know you're not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, but you're going to have to be a bit more specific."

"This whole situation!" Aline gestured around wildly. "None of it makes any sense! How is it that we got this convenient information all at once? How did the fact that you two were related manage to be concealed until the atmosphere was suitably dramatic? Why is nobody reacting appropriately?" As she spoke a few plot holes opened around the field, which she didn't notice. "And for that matter, how did you figure out the yaoi fangirls' weakness so quickly? Just betting it all on a guess?" Another plot hole. This one closer to the group.

Nikki looked around nervously, eyes darting between the girl, Marie, and the small pocket of chaos that was the yaoi fangirls. "Um, Aline—"

"And this back-story is very suspicious sounding to me. How would this timeline work out? And why is Jenna just standing there the whole time not really doing anything and not caring about the proceedings? Shouldn't she care at least a little? She's, like, eight! What's the point? This whole encounter seems contrived and ultimately pointless." Several more now. Nikki was beginning to seriously worry.

"Aline, shut—"

"I mean, for the love of god, we might as well be in a poorly written fanfic the way things are going!" And with gratuitously tasteless statement of fourth-wall-breakage, another half-dozen or so plot holes appeared. Several manifested in the same spot as some of the clumps of shrieking yaoi fangirls, causing them to disappear to some other unfortunate parameter of reality. Marie examined the unpleasantly greenish-mauve one that had appeared closest to her with relief.

"Girl has a good head on her shoulders," she said approvingly, and stepped into the plot hole partway through. "This isn't over, daughter. I will break the Fourth Wall. We will have freedom. Now for god's sake, get those boys to stop!" And with that, in a gesture of utmost unnecessary dramatics, she disappeared.

Besides the vaguely disappointed sound of weapons being powered down or stowed away and the sighs of the yaoi fangirls as Murtagh lurched away to go throw up and swallow several bars of soap, there was dead silence. Or at least terminally ill silence.

Nikki stared blankly at the spot where the plot hole had closed. It occurred to her that to be so heartless as to actually kill her mother would probably lose her enough Protagonist Points to make her death pointless in the long run, but she was still going to do something horrible to Aline before the day was out. Somewhere farther on she could hear the canons steadily dealing with the still-frazzled remnants of the squadron of yaoi fangirls, neutralizing when possible, killing when necessary. Well, that was the protocol, anyway. Canons, particularly male ones, had been harassed long enough to be unpredictable. But then, yaoi fangirls were only really dangerous with their reasoning intact. Not that yaoi fangirls would be allowed by the rest of the Hub to exist anywhere outside their little scraps of land once all this was over. After a while, she sighed, and turned to Aline. Perhaps some revenge would cheer her up.

"I'm giving you a ten second head start."

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Back at the trench, the area was mostly deserted. The nearest canon was Eragon, lying on a therapist's couch and babbling about his childhood to Sokka, who was wearing a beard and doodling on his notepad.

"It all started when I was five, I suppose," Eragon was saying. "There were these village boys who always followed me around. It didn't bother me until I turned thirteen, and suddenly I was having these cravings, and, and—" He fell silent, staring with empty eyes at the not-ceiling.

"I see," Sokka said sagely, stroking his beard. "And how does that make you feel?"

"It—it makes me feel—well, sad, and angry I suppose, but disgusted mostly, and I'm just so confused and—and—oh gods I'm so confused!"

"I'll just prescribe you some happy pills and we'll call it a day, shall we?" Sokka said, scribbling something in his notepad furiously. As a matter of fact, it was a very anatomically incorrect sketch of Pikachu. "NEXT!"

Nothing happened. Eragon started gibbering mindlessly and sobbing occasionally, but nothing important happened.

Sokka coughed. "Ahem. Aang? I said NEXT!"

"Sorry Sokka!" A gust of wind blew through, scattering papers, blowing up dust, and more importantly, getting rid of Eragon in an energy-efficient and environmentally-friendly way.

On a more plot-related note, Nikki was relaying the situation while vainly trying to make herself look better in it.

D, to her credit, listened with a completely straight face.

"So let me get this straight," she began, clasping her hands together and leaning forward on the stool. "In the space of one chapter—"

"I'll have you know that it was two!"

"—alright, so you're telling me that in the space of two chapters, not only did the enemy leader escape, but the yaoi fangirls had to be defeated with spontaneous boylove, you managed to lose your composure a good five times or so, and newbface actually got a clue?"

Nikki nodded.

D sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. "You people really are completely useless without me, aren't you."

"Stop being so maddeningly humble, would you?"

"Much obliged." D grinned. Her new rule was that she was allowed to grin once a day if the grin was sufficiently malicious, impish, or otherwise not entirely sincere.

Nikki got up and began to pace, saying half to herself, "This complicates matters, as you know. We can't defend the Fourth Wall—it's too vast, and if it goes down, it stays down. I don't know what she's thinking, putting it back up again once she's through…madness. All we can do is neutralize as many of them as possible." She tapped her chin thoughtfully. "Not, as it seemed at first, a matter of throwing mooks at the enemy until you run out of mooks, then."

"Hm." D's eyes had taken on a distant look.

"The only real problem is…" Nikki ran a hand through her hair. "The only problem is that we have no idea how she plans to break the Fourth Wall. Goddammit. The only reason we had to go was to learn this kind of thing! Now I see why she revealed her yaoi fangirls so early. By learning about them, we forfeit the right to know what her actual plans are."

"Sounds pretty bleak," D agreed.

"Well, it doesn't matter," Nikki asserted. "We just need a military victory. Stop her physically from doing it. Capture, kill, whatever. No amount of teenage girls can overwhelm an army summoned from the whole of the multiverse. The creative energy on the Hub will only make our side stronger. We'll storm them and defeat them utterly. "

"Will we now," D said in a monotone.

"Of course!" Nikki replied enthusiastically.

"In that case, I'm sure you'll have lots of fun." D stood. "Tell Jackie to remember Rule One." With that, she nodded in acknowledgement, the third respectful thing she'd done that year, and walked away.

Nikki blanched and hurried after her. "You mean you won't fight?"

"Nope."

"But…you're you! I thought you lived for this sort of thing."

D stopped and spun around. "Nikki, I know better than anybody about uncomfortable truths, and the uncomfortable truth of the matter is that the first rule of living through wars is not fighting in them. Minor skirmishes? Tussles with rogue gangs of shippers? Sitting in our nice comfy trench and picking off stragglers? Sure, why not? A little violence never hurt anybody. But this is a war, what more, this is a war that we in all likelihood won't win without heavy casualties. I knew a guy once. He was good at war. Very good, in fact. But I haven't seen him in centuries, and besides, I'm a few thousand years too old for this. " D had been existing in one form or another long enough to forget the actual day she'd come into existence, and it was certainly more than a few thousand, so she mostly gave her age as five thousand. It was a good, solid number. But since it was extremely impolite to ask a lady her age, most people who actually did ended up punched in the face.

"You came here in the first place, didn't you?" Nikki pointed out.

"Correction," D said, lifting an annoyingly superior finger. "You dragged me here and I stayed out of, A. need for caffeine, and B. considerable fear for my life now that the order has disintegrated and I'm fair game to whoever wants revenge. I could have stayed in Aline's backwater dimension, but come on, that place was a real dump."

Nikki sagged slightly. "Come on. At least stay as an advisor. I can't handle my adorable demon spawn of a sister alone."

D grunted. "As much as I appreciate the blind admiration and snack deliverage, no. 'S not like anybody ever listens to me. It comes as part of the package of being the very essence of all things present and not wanted—nobody ever listens. Bloody Trojans didn't listen. I told them the horse was a trick, I did, I bloody well told them, and look what happened to them!"

Nikki tried the puppy dog eyes. D flinched. "Stop that."

"Hah! I knew that trick worked!"

"No, I mean that there's something about your facial muscles that makes any and all attempts at looking cute and pitiable backfire into abject horror. Jasmine would be jealous."

Nikki acquiesced, her features settling back into a more natural annoyed expression, with good measure of pleading thrown in. "Please?"

D turned back around, unfathomable as ever. After a minute, she gave a sigh. "Fine. I'll be around. I'm always around. But I won't fight unless…unless there's a Code Blue-3."

Nikki smiled. She wasn't used to smiling genuinely, and as a result it came off as more of a grimace, but the sentiment was there all the same. "Then I hope you won't fight."

This rare moment of melodrama was interrupted, as they usually were, by Aline. She was dripping wet, bruised and covered with muck. She looked rather miffed, which in muted Aline-terms meant that she was livid.

"Hello," Nikki said brightly. "Did you need something?"

Aline breathed deeply for several seconds, nostrils flaring. She walked forward deliberately, fists clenched. "You—" She held up an accusatory finger, then let it drop.

"You—" Once again, the rest of the sentence failed to leave her mouth. After a few more tries, her jaw snapped shut and she glared mightily.

"You are unbelievable." With that, she stalked past them, muttering darkly.

D looked on with a puzzled expression. "So…what's up with newbface?"

Nikki shrugged, resembling her sister in how utterly innocent she looked. "No clue."