A/N: You know, for a long time, I ditched this story because I couldn't figure out a way to save it. It was big and serious enough to be a legitimate original story, but also had all these silly fanfiction elements. But also, I legitimately don't think there's anything at all shameful or unworthy about fanfiction; many of the greatest works of literature in human history were basically just fanfics. But, still, it felt stupid to put so much effort and time into a bunch of original characters that wouldn't ever be really respected due to the fact that, well, it's a story about fanfiction. But then I figured, it was better to finish something than not to finish it, so here's my summit attempt. Further chapters forthcoming soon, I hope, it shouldn't be more than two or three; I've known how this story was going to end practically since the beginning of it.

Also, a little bit has been added onto the previous chapter, check that out if you like.

Please enjoy this chapter, it contains surprise lesbians.

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Chapter Fourteen

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The army had assembled in its entirety.

Nikki had shouted enough orders that her throat was raw. It made her sound like a grizzled old veteran, which was good, because sounding the part was important. So was looking the part. She was wearing a combination of war paraphernalia from disparate eras and geographical locations. She had a Roman breastplate, a 19th century French officer's dress sword, an British admiral's hat, World War One era fatigues, some fancy golden epaulets, and a fantastic cloak stained with what she could only assume was the blood of her enemies. She hadn't consciously put on any of those things; they'd just appeared on her body one at a time as she became more and more entrenched in her role.

The trench was gone now. She stood on a hill in the moonlight observing the vast encampment, tents and campfires dotting the blank countryside as far as the eye could see. A trench was fine for interminable skirmishes, but the eve before the decisive final battle, that required a campground. Her men, women, and genderless beings were huddled around campfires, talking, laughing, drinking—anything to get their minds off the carnage that would ensue tomorrow.

I am sending them to their doom, Nikki thought, keeping an appropriately leaderly expression of cold resignation on her face. It was the sort of thing great generals thought on the eve of battle and so, dutifully, she thought them.

"Sir," a giant slug in a WWII era helmet said, slithering up to her.

"Yes, soldier, what is it?"

"The Dark One has still not returned."

Nikki paused. "Soldier, do you mean my sister, or D?"

"D. But your sister has not been seen either. There hasn't been a grisly murder all day."

"Grisly murder? Please, she's eight."

The giant slug dutifully did not comment on this.

They stood in silence for a moment. Nikki felt that the slug had something else to say, and was withholding it for a more opportune moment.

"Am I sending them to their deaths, soldier?" she said eventually, looking hauntedly into the distance, as though imagining the coming battle.

"Uh," the slug said, "no? Sir? Seeing as none of us are technically alive."

Nikki sighed and stuck it with a glare. "Oh, what do you know. You're a slug."

She wished D were here. D would stare hauntedly at things with her. D would have said something equally portentous and cinematic, maybe something like, 'All men must die,' or, 'They trust you enough to go anyway,' or—

"You look ridiculous. What the hell are you wearing?"

Nikki spun around. Before D could even react, she was being hugged.

D didn't hug, but this time, when Nikki pulled away, she wasn't wearing her customary post-hug expression of annoyed tolerance, but of defeat.

"I'm glad you're okay," Nikki said.

"I'm not," D said.

Right, that sounded bad.

"Did you succeed?" She already knew the answer.

"Not even slightly."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

They stood together on the hill overlooking the campground, on the eve of battle. Anything could happen tomorrow. If they didn't hold hands, it was because they didn't need to.

"Am I leading them to their deaths?" Nikki asked hopefully.

"In that outfit? You ain't leading anything."

Nikki turned her head slightly. "Wow."

D sighed. "Sorry. I've had a rough couple days. I don't think I have portentousness in me right now."

"That's okay."

They stood for a while longer.

"Yeah, no," D said finally, "We're all gonna die. And I should know."

Of course, statements like that were exactly what the eve of battle was for.

So Nikki wasn't worried.

Really.

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It was that moment before dawn, the one that dripped with potential. A cup that filled until it overflowed and let loose hell upon the world.

The troops were assembling.

There was shouting. Helmets were being tossed about, weapons passed out. Orders were being shouted. Horses were being saddled; talking horses, centaurs, unicorns, dinosaurs, land sharks, and related mountables were being saddled rather less readily.

The enemy army had come into view. Waiting. They were observing the courtesies of war, or maybe the clichés of war, and were going to wait patiently until everybody was ready.

Marie's army stretched from one end of the horizon to the other. Her forces were less varied than Nikki's, perhaps, being entirely made up of teenage girls. But they were numerous, and they were wild, and they were prepared to throw their lives en masse at their goal.

It was enough to make anybody shiver.

Not Nikki.

Nikki could only think about finding her mother among the fray, and strangling her.

The sun was pushing its way up from under the horizon. The fighting would begin at dawn—or something. If there was a dawn happening, you could bet your bootstraps something important was gonna happen.

The sun rose. Two entire armies held their breaths.

A figure appeared between them, rising like a phoenix at the moment of dawn, silhouetted into invisibility for the briefest moment.

Then Aline tripped and swore and came into view.

Oh, both entire armies thought as one. Her. Everybody let out the breath they'd been holding and went back to chatting with their war buddies.

"Good, good," Nikki said, the pterodactyl she was riding alighting, "You're just on time." She extended a hand.

"That's a pterodactyl," Aline observed.

"Yeah. Pteranodon, actually, but close enough."

"Okay." She got on the pterodactyl.

"Wait," Aline said as they soared through the air, to a destination unknown to her, "I thought I was late. The battle's about to start!"

"No, no, don't worry," Nikki said, "You're actually a bit early. Ideally, as the main character, you'd show up right at the climax of battle, solving all our problems with some sort of improbable gambit."

"Oh," Aline said, "Sorry."

"Don't worry about it," Nikki said, "It probably just means something even more spectacular will happen at the actual climax of the battle."

Nikki, in her throes of oh-shit-what-if-I'm-a-villain, regretted treating Aline the way she did. Just a little.

"You're not like, curious where I was?" Aline ventured.

"No, not really," Nikki said, "It was probably some kind of hero's journey. If you found the secret to our success while you were out there doing whatever, under no circumstances should I know about it, or expect it to succeed."

"Um." Aline rubbed the back of her head. "No, sorry. I don't think I did. It was kind of pointless actually."

"Good, good," Nikki said, nodding, "Just like that. We'll be fine."

"You seem really calm about, you know, your world ending," Aline commented.

Nikki craned her neck almost all the way back to give Aline a weird look. "My world? This is all worlds we're talking about here."

Aline blinked.

Nikki explained. "Everywhere's fictional to somewhere else, y'know. And even if there was a," she snorted with derision, "real world, it's going to be full of fictions holding it together."

"Well, I'm from the real world," Aline protested, "And I think most people would get on just fine without stories. Most people I know don't even read."

"Real world? You? Haha. Okay. Anyway. Trust me, without stories, everyone would immediately go insane and society would collapse."

"That seems excessive."

"Lady," Nikki said, breathing out harshly through her nose, "there isn't a single thing any properly good society is founded on that isn't a great big pack of lies, really, not one single thing. Lies that everybody believes because if you didn't it wouldn't be worth it. Religion. Justice. History. Hope. Love. Everything. Nice stories we tell each other and go around believing because otherwise, what's the point? What's life without stories? Why would you even bother? You wake up every morning knowing you're going to die one day, but you get up anyway. Because you're telling yourself a story, dummy. About your day and your whole life and the entire world. And if that's gone, if there's nothing left—you're basically not even a person anymore."

The wings of the pterodactyl beat in silence.

"And your mom wants to do away with all that," Aline said finally.

"No," Nikki said, "But she will. So I'm going to fly through the battle and personally locate her, and I'm going to make sure she doesn't." Her fingers tightened on the reins convulsively. The pterodactyl screeched.

"Man, I'm sorry," Aline said, "But it really seems like you have some unresolved issues with your mom. Maybe you should figure those out before you do anything…you know, rash."

"Oh, what do you know," Nikki said irritably for the second time in so many hours, which troubled her, "Your mom isn't even a real character in this story."

Which Aline had to admit was true.

"Hey," she said, "so where's your creepy sister?"

"Don't call her creepy. And I don't know. If she doesn't turn up captured and used against me before the battle starts, I'll assume she snuck off to get reinforcements. Maybe some evil teddy bears or something. Anyway, a main character simply doesn't spend this much time off-screen without something big happening like that."

"Wait, wait," Aline said, "I'm confused—I thought this was a story? Like, someone is writing us? Supposedly? Doesn't being 'off-screen' imply that it's actually a movie?"

Nikki sighed.

"I mean—this would make a really cool movie."

Nikki sighed louder.

"But that doesn't mean you should mix metaphors like that. It's just bad form."

"Aline," Nikki said, exhaling slowly, "I'm about to lead a vast, inexperienced army, which I have never done before, against my own mother, who I will probably have to kill. My sister is missing, possibly in danger, possibly endangering others. My girlfriend is trudging around in a depressed funk because all her oldest friends abandoned her to fight at the edge of reality alone, and you know what doesn't increase someone's chances of survival in a pitched battle? Being in a depressed funk. I'm a little stressed out here. So—please—lay—off."

"Okay, okay," Aline said, "Sorry." She paused. "Wait, girlfriend?"

She didn't get an answer, so she was left to ponder that one by herself.

"So where are we going?" she asked eventually.

"Get you a mount."

"Is this going to culminate in a joke where you get a fire-breathing pterodactyl and I get a three legged horse or something?"

"We considered it," Nikki admitted.

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Aline sat atop a giant robot dragon. They'd even added a little compartment for Trunkie to sit. Sit?

He seemed sulky.

Aline twiddled her fingers.

"Are you mad at me?"

Sullen silence.

"I'm sorry I ran off."

Still nothing.

"And abandoned you," she finished.

Trunkie snapped its lid ambiguously.

"I'll make it up to you," she promised. "Um. Even though I don't know what living chests want, generally."

The trunk seemed, in some small way, mollified.

"I had an adventure with some pirates, you know," she said.

She couldn't tell if Trunkie was interested, and she thought it probably best to stop.

She still wasn't sure if she could technically die in this battle. Had the past few days here been real? She'd found it so easy to write off the first time, to stuff it all into an unused corner of her mind. Was it real? Was any of it real?

Her musings were interrupted by Nikki. Not in person this time, but now as a general addressing a soldier. With her pterodactyl perched on the hill before the vast fictional army, she began to speak, her voice either magically magnified or simply so dripping with leaderly aplomb that everyone could hear it anyway.

"My people!" she began. A great roar of approval rose up.

"I will not tell you now that our chances at victory are great. I will not tell you now that we are the best-trained, best-disciplined, best-equipped army out there. I will not even tell you that we have security in numbers." The great roar of approval stumbled and died down a little.

"The enemy is numerous," Nikki declared, "The enemy is organized. The enemy will fight to the death, for the enemy has lost all reason. The enemy is vast and terrifying."

The great roar of approval had reduced down to a few coughs here and there.

"Do you know what that makes you?" Nikki said into the silence.

She paused for effect. Then, she raised her sword into the air and roared the answer, "UNDERDOGS!"

The great roar of approval returned, and brought several friends.

"CHAAAAAARGE!"

The army charged.