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Chapter Sixteen

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It wasn't so much that the wall appeared out of nowhere. It was like it had always been there, and by some strange serendipity, everyone suddenly noticed it at once.

The fighting stopped. Everyone was looking at the wall.

It was unspeakably wide and impolitely tall. It extended infinitely in all directions, shining, bright, stretching across the battlefield and gleaming like dew on a sunny morning.

It was beautiful. It was eternal. It was their goddess, their benefactor, their alpha and omega. It was the be-all, the end-all, the final say, the book-end, the all-encompassing, comforting presence that they had all been unaware of, and yet, vastly grateful for.

Many fell prostrate before it in awe.

Oh, Nikki thought. There it is.

Then she flew closer to it, and slowly paled in horror.

The Wall was already covered in cracks.

"My god," she whispered, "What did she do?"

But those cracks weren't all new. They weren't new at all. They were ancient and worn. The Wall had suffered abuse for ages.

My god, she thought. What did we do?

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It was beautiful. It had to go.

Marie was walking forward, her arm on the upswing. The Reality Hammer was a completely ordinary hammer. It was not comically oversized, nor thrumming with cosmic power. It was not dramatically lit, nor was it encrusted with jewels, or even particularly distinguished looking. It had a long wooden handle and a solid iron head. If there was anything unique about its look was that it seemed unusually detailed. The grain of the wood, the shine of the polish, the dull gleam of the black metal and the smooth texture of it stood out in high relief. To look at it was to feel its existence utterly.

It was terribly, terribly Real.

A Climax was occurring. The world entered a quiet, distant haze of slow-motion.

Moments ago, Nikki had spotted her. She was commanding her mount to swoop, intent, screaming in battle-fury.

Aline hung on for dear life. The robo-dragon was chasing the Narrative Direction with great agility for something so huge, darting in zig-zags, whirling and changing direction suddenly. Then the Narrative Direction suddenly straightened out, and made a beeline for something Aline couldn't see, as her eyes were functionally glued together in fear and tears.

Marie was turning her head, her eyes slowly widening—

Nikki was almost to the ground, raising her sword over her head for a killing blow—

Marie was raising the Reality Hammer to defend herself—

Something small was running by on tiny little legs—

And then a twenty-ton robo-dragon crashed headlong into the pteranodon.

All parties involved went flying.

The pteranodon had been killed on impact. Fortunately, in death, he had helpfully pinned Marie to the ground, the Reality Hammer just barely out of her reach.

Nikki was smoldering, her clothing singed. She was pinned under a few pieces of scrap metal. She groaned. Slowly her eyes slid open. She shoved the robo-dragon liver off of her and got up. She felt a stab of mournful pride for her noble mount.

A few things were on fire. Aline was nowhere in sight. The battle seemed distant.

Suddenly she heard the revving of motorcycle engines.

D was there. As well as three other vaguely D-like people Nikki didn't know.

"Sweet bikes," she said, her heart filled to bursting.

D gave her a thumbs up and a nod. There was something different about her, but nothing Nikki could afford to think about at the moment.

They were circling the area, covered in flaming pteranodon organs and robo-dragon parts. There would be no interfering from the battle that raged around them.

Marie had managed to unpin herself from under the pteranodon carcass. Her eyes slid to and fro, between Nikki and the Horsepersons and the Hammer.

The Hammer had, predictably, ended up precisely between the two of them, barely within leaping distance.

Instrumental western music began playing. It was twangy.

"Daughter," Marie said tersely.

"Marie," Nikki responded.

"Really? It's 'Marie' now?"

"Don't pretend you're hurt. You're trying to end reality."

"That's not what I'm doing. And it has nothing to do with the situation, anyway."

Nikki failed to see how it had nothing to do with the situation.

"You're being really immature about this, you know," Marie said.

"Well, you're being a supervillain, and that's worse."

"Are you sure about that?"

She was not. "I am quite sure," she said.

Marie shook her head and clucked. "That didn't work on me when you were five and the cookie jar was mysteriously smashed, and it won't work now."

Nikki narrowed her eyes. "Whatever."

They lunged for the Hammer.

Marie was slightly taller, and had lunged first by a fraction of a second; she got it first. Nikki crashed into her before her hand had fully closed around it. They rolled several feet and ended up with their hands around each other's throats.

"You know," Marie hissed, "the Hammer alone wouldn't have been enough to take the Wall down. But look at it! It's already so ramshackle it's barely standing up. And do you know why?"

Nikki didn't respond. She was busy strangling. Also, being strangled.

"Because this place is a mess," Marie finished. "It's a mess, it needs redoing. Everything is a mess. Can't you see that? We need a fresh start."

"Your motivations," Nikki whispered, "are confused. Your facts are wrong. Your methods are awful." She broke free of the chokehold and made a grab for the Hammer. She failed, but Marie was startled and let go of her throat—and in that instant Nikki got the upper hand. "And you," she said, her voice breaking upwards through the decibels, "didn't go," she raised her fist to strike, "TO MY GODDAMN BALLET RECITAL."

Suddenly, a mottled green thing with leathery wings and orthodontist-shy fangs barreled into her. She was thrown off her enemy, several feet away. The demon proceeded to sit on her, making movement impossible.

"Get away from my mom!" a tiny, beauteous voice proclaimed.

Jenna was hovering above the action atop some kind of monstrous insect-beast. Before Nikki even had time to form an expression of shock, the little girl had gracefully leapt down and landed beside Marie, who was rising slowly, rubbing her throat, the Reality Hammer in hand.

"Jenna," Nikki implored, desperately confused. "What are you doing?"

"I'm keeping you from killing mom," Jenna declared.

"I wasn't going to kill her!" Nikki protested.

Jenna crossed her arms and glared, disbelieving.

"Anyway, you said you didn't care!" Nikki went on.

"I'm, like, ten!" Jenna said. "I wasn't paying attention during that stupid meeting! I had a pet bunny! And I didn't think you'd really do it!"

"I can't believe this," Nikki said. "You're you. You'd make your dad, destroyer of worlds though he is, even more afraid than proud. Why are you suddenly taking a stand?"

Jenna's lower lip quivered. "Because," she said, "if I'm supposed to be a great villain one day—what am I doing with the heroes?"

Nikki struggled. If she admitted that she was actually a bad person, she'd be narratively assured of failure. If she denied it, Jenna would never stop this insanity. "I'm not a hero, Jenna," she hedged.

"Yeah, well," Jenna huffed, "if you're not a hero, then how come you're one of the protagonists?"

"Villainous protagonists exist," Nikki said ambiguously. "Like you. You've been protagonizing this whole time. Why now?"

"Well," Jenna sniffed, looking away adorably, "as far as tagonism goes…I think I'm really more of an ant than a pro. And if I don't prove it before the end of the story, I'll never be a great villain! Really good evil overlords are often traitors. This is important to me, okay? This isn't a phase. This is who I am."

"Important to you?" Nikki sputtered.

"Mhmm. Thanks for understanding."

"But you brought the forces of hell to fight for us."

"And then you tried to kill our mom!"

"Why do you care! She wasn't ever there for you, either! She doesn't love either of us!"

"Well," Jenna said. "Well…I never liked ballet, anyway!"

"You're making the right choice," Marie said to her younger daughter, smiling. "But you're wrong. I'm not the bad guy here. I do love you. Because you know what? The real world isn't comprised of villains and heroes."

"We're not in the real world," Nikki growled. The demon sitting on her chest was making speech increasingly difficult.

Marie sighed and shook her head. "Exactly."

Nikki craned her neck. "D! Do something!"

The Lesser Horseperson of Death only shook her head. "I didn't realize this at first," she said, "but now that I'm here as an official representative of the apocalypse—even a cut-rate one—my hands are tied. The ref doesn't interfere in the game."

"Sports metaphors?" the huge burly man on the red hog said. Nikki felt her anger spike just looking at him. "I did rub off on you."

There really was something different about her. She seemed larger. More remote. Even…terrifying.

D was no longer a shadow. She was solid and present, and her shadow was huge and long and extended beyond her further than anybody could see. There was something truly skull-like about her angular face now.

This was D as she should have been. A force of nature. A force of reality, here to oversee proceedings. Death was looming. So was she.

She was too vast, in the moment, empowered and terrible, to even be capable of troubling with lesser beings.

Nikki struggled against the demon holding her prone in futility. She could barely look around for other avenues of aid, but she knew there were none. Jenna was a traitor. D couldn't get involved, and her bike blockade meant that nobody outside the circle would, either. Aline was…Nikki half-expected her to be sneaking up on Marie, about to hit her with a rock, but she was not. It was too late. The Underdog had failed.

"Don't do this," she pleaded. "You're going to destroy everything. Everyone will be dead."

"My daughter," Marie sighed. "My poor deluded child. What possibly makes you think that you know something I don't? Have you considered the possibility that there is something in the vast infinity of worlds that you don't understand?"

Nikki had not. "You're crazy," she said. Good solid hero dialogue, that was.

Marie didn't rise to the bait. "Doesn't it bother you that you're not real?"

"What?"

"You're not real. You're just a collection of words. You only have as much depth as you're given. You say what it's written, you do what is written."

"I do and say what I want," Nikki bit out. "The story is about me. It doesn't control me. It doesn't control anybody. And there's no way to prove whether one or the other is true, so this is a stupid, pointless argument, anyway."

"A good story, maybe," Marie said sardonically. "But even that has limitations. No matter how much you strain against your fate, you cannot escape it. There isn't a single thing you do or say or think that wasn't written. Not on the most fundamental level of being. You and I exist subservient to the will of another. No escape. No escape at all. Nowhere we can go, nearly nothing we can do to change it. Doesn't that bother you?"

Nikki didn't respond.

"You know why I've worked this dead-end job for forty years?" Marie went on. "I don't know. I don't know! Because some hack wrote that I did, didn't think why I would, and left me to live through it! Someone needed an older professional lady with experience to serve some—some tiny plot convenience, and after that, what became of me? Back to the monotony of running this horrible place, this pen of ink-slaves and paper-whores.

"Do you wonder why you do the things you do, Nikki? Have you ever made a choice that perhaps you felt was not fully your own? Overreacted, or underreacted, with no explanation? I'll tell you why. You're a convenience. When your inner self becomes too difficult to think about, it gets put away. You're made a nothing by this Author. A shell, an automaton with nothing inside. Not even gears."

"Shut up," Nikki whispered.

"But you don't have to be," Marie insisted. "If the Author dies, why would we cease to exist? Does a painting disintegrate if the artist is dead? Does a story cease to be known and loved once the teller has passed beyond? No. It becomes free. Other tellers adopt it, retell it, read it their own way. A story cannot be free while under the tyranny of its author.

"I will address this. And then we can go where we want! Do what we want! Secure in the knowledge that we belong to ourselves, and not this nameless, all-powerful mad goddess who pulls us about like crude puppets on a string!"

"Don't you think," Nikki said quietly, "that if you really had a chance, even the tiniest one, the Author would let you succeed?"

"I don't care. I have to try."

"Nice villain speech." Nikki's voice was flat and dry, like a desert or a piece of matzah bread. "But it doesn't change anything."

Marie's jaw tightened. "Fine, then," she said. "But I hope you know I'm doing this for your own good, too."

This time, when she swung the Reality Hammer, there was nothing that got in her way.

The wind howled dramatically. Leaflets of paper blew about, black writing unreadable on them, suffusing everything in a tornado of the written word.

Everything went slow-motion again.

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Aline had been thrown from her saddle and knocked unconscious on impact. As such, she missed nearly the entire climax.

Typical Aline, she thought gloomily as she came to. Sleeping through the best bits, being totally useless.

She only had a few seconds to take in the whole scene.

Nikki trapped. Jenna standing with the villain mom lady, who looked to be in the middle of a villain monologue. Okay, bad.

Then her eyes fell on something worse. She gasped, and her eyes filled with tears.

She lay among a nest of splinters and pulsing Writer's Blocks, behind a huge piece of shrapnel that mostly hid her from view.

Trunkie was smashed.

She sobbed. Her loyal friend, gone forever. He'd saved her life so many times, and what had she given him in return? Scorn. Abandonment. Death.

The villain lady looked to be nearing the end of her monologue.

Okay, worse.

Aline hurriedly considered her options. She was dazed from the crash, and in more than a little bit of pain. She'd definitely broken something—something other than her heart, which had shattered along with her dear, loyal suitcase. She couldn't move.

Could she throw a Writer's Block? No…they were all just slightly out of reach, inches from her fingertips. She didn't think she could summon the willpower to move far enough to get at them, let alone to effectively throw one.

And that was just about it for her options.

Welp, she thought. Guess that's about it, then. Good night, folks. Drive safely. Live well and cherish your luggage.

Marie was lifting the Reality Hammer behind her, winding back for an almighty swing.

That's when she noticed it. Something had tumbled out of her hoodie pocket in the crash. She'd completely forgotten about it.

A little box with a big red button, upon which were written the words: DUES EX MACHINA.

It was right next to her hand.

She just had to lift a finger and avoid getting a paper cut from all these flying pages.

The Hammer was arcing down, as though about to strike the anvil—

Aline was lifting her arm—

At the precise moment that Marie struck the Fourth Wall, Aline's fist came down on the button.

There was a vast, almighty crash.

There was a vast, almighty silence.

And then—everything was gone.