by The Pighead
Hello! So, I'm back earlier than I expected but, you see, there's Ficboy who recently published The Multiverse Files and... when I read this, I immediately had my brain who told me "Hey. You should totally take everything that has been said and showed what happened during their travels". So, here I am.
This intro took me just one day to write. I wish I could chug out chapters like that in a regular basis. But, anyway, here it is and I hope you'll like it!
Almost no one knows this but the Internet looks like a mosaic on the inside. A big, messy, constantly incomplete mosaic who looked like a Frankenstein monster. Sometimes, it looked like a tornado. Sometimes, like a sea. Despite how the rich were trying to water it down and sanitize it, it was still capable of looking like a lot of different things and, in a certain way, it was something who could bring hope to a lot of cynics.
For the brown-skinned, dark-haired man who was currently located in its deepest corners, it was certainly as such. But it wasn't only to be blown away by those landscapes that he was here.
Ficboy2001 was busy looking at his collection of shards. Among the Monks, he was the only one to have a collection like it and it was always growing, which made him very proud. Those shards weren't just some gems or diamonds. They were actually representing particular moments in the life of a person, coming from every timeline that has been, is or will be. All it needed was to have someone thinking about it and a new shard started existing. It was something the Pilot (Ficboy' nickname among the Monks) used a lot these days when he was looking at the Multiverse.
But he was also using it in order to think about a project he had in mind since he started to write for the series. The first real team of multiversal heroes, entirely made of people whose mission would be to fight villains who could have the potential to enslave or destroy all the infinite Earths. It first came to him when he witnessed the Anti-Monitor destroy Earth-211 but the leak of the List made by the Council of Pigheads was what convinced him that such a team was heavily needed.
Speaking of Pigheads, one of Ficboy' thoughts about it was that he didn't want to be alone for that. He knew the Earths he had in mind, he knew whose people he wanted to recruit and he knew that he wanted one of his fellow Monks to come with him. Michael, L17', Ben & Brat were busy. JB was still spending all of his time on Earth-1898 in order to finally finish his story. Batguy & Marcus weren't giving a lot of news about their endeavours. Sentinel was still getting his footing on (plus, he was spending time on Earth-2). And there also was the sightings of this other Monk who seemed to be a complete ghost and didn't even tried to meet the others.
It left Pighead as the sole choice available.
Ficboy wasn't bothered at all. Since they introduced themselves to each other, he was contacting the lady from France a lot, whether it was to say that a new chapter was out, to ask questions or to send her documents about whatever shit he was doing right now. She wasn't always present or available but their frequent conversations were always something fun to him and he came to consider her a friend. At least, someone close enough to be that.
So, yes, if he needed to have a partner for the mission he gave himself, she was a pretty good choice ! But he didn't told her a lot about it yet, so it was time to get into the hang of things.
It took one simple but precise hand gesture for a portal to open in the sky and, immediately, the pale woman with long brown and purple hair (Oh, she changed her haircut, Ficboy thought) fell out of the sky, crashing on the ground near her fellow author.
She then got on her feet in order to deliver words of infinite kindness and love.
« WHO IS THE ABSOLUTE MOTHERFUCKER WHO DARES TO FUCKING SUMMON A WOMAN WHO HAS ALREADY A FUCKING LOT ON HER FUCKING PLATE ? »
The Pighead looked everywhere around her and when she saw Ficboy, her pissed-off look softened a little bit.
« Oh. It's you. »
« Why, who else would it be, The Pighead ?, the Pilot responded in his usual serious tone. A bit too serious, the Meddler would say. I wanted to show you something that I think might be of great interest to you. »
In response, Pighead rolled her eyes and groaned.
« I told you I would read your Google Docs-actually, I started reading it ! OK, just the one about Colonel Sanders becoming President but it was already long and… yeah, of course, it's good, it's interesting and I might actually do something with that when I finally read it myself. Like, bro, I don't know what else to tell you. »
She scratched her neck.
« No, actually, I know. If you go on any of the universes who come from timelines who were, y'know, posted on AlternateHistory and you start to see Sonic, Luffy or Princess Bubblegum running around… I might have wished really hard to do stories about those universes but with fictional characters and real people actually coexisting and it turned out to be true. You know that in the Infinity Crisis version of Player Two Start, the Master became a SEGA executive ? »
« Wait, the Master ?, asked Ficboy while raising up one eyebrow. The Time Lord ? »
« No, the Master, my left-door neighbor. Of course, the Time Lord ! Who else ? »
« Well, actually, a lot of villains call themselves « The Master » so- »
« OK, yeah, interrupted Pighead with a tone of voice who was synonymous of someone who would rather be on their home. Why the fuck you wanted me to be here ? I have to make more progress on the whole DEATHFAME business and everything happens too slowly to my liking, so tell me. »
« I actually wanted to discuss with you the recent events, as well as some ideas I had in mind. Nothing more, nothing less. »
Ficboy couldn't help himself but smile a little. It had a certain warmth, despite how overtly formal he could be when he spoke.
« Man, you have my DMs and my e-mail if you want to talk stuff with me… »
« I also wish to show you this ! »
The Ninth Monk pulled out of his pocket one of his shards. This one was showing Spongebob hugging Squidward and proclaiming how good it was to see that everyone returned after the Dusting. The scene was relatively mundane but the shard in itself was actually unlike anything the Frenchwoman ever saw before.
She grinned.
« OK. You know what, I'll bite. Show me, I want to know what this stuff is. »
Ficboy was too happy to do so. So, he spent the next minutes to talk about the shards, where they came from, how he obtained them and how it was a great help for him when he wanted to look at the infinite Earths. Pighead was doing her best to listen but, just in case her traitorous brain would like to wander again, she used her powers to turn on her mental radio and listen to some music. Always great when she had to focus.
Her friend showed him a shard of Shinji & Captain America having a conversation about the importance of heroes.
« As you can see here, Pighead, Shinji is speaking with Captain America on the importance of heroes after the latter learned of his passion for Studio Ghibli's Nausicaa and Ultraman, who might just exist in this vast and infinite Multiverse. Since this Shinji can't speak English well, his dialogue is translated by Misato. Here is an excerpt of their conversation. »
The conversation in question was pretty standard, just your average experimented super-hero trying to provide some guidance to someone younger and with way more mental trauma and help them reach some sort of potential. Though, Pighead was grateful that the dialogues weren't entirely untranslated Japanese, this time. She didn't want to start skipping parts of another story because of the language barrier.
« You see, Shinji became more confident in himself through this conversation and it was far from the last. »
The Meddler simply nodded while Ficboy was showing her a shard of the T-RIDEN-T robot. Something about him going rogue but everyone was here to stop him, fortunately.
And thank God, she thought. I'm here to fight the big cheese, not some lame-ass rogue robot-hey, if it escaped, maybe I should have displaced it on Earth-1991, just so Mets could trash him, lol.
« Well, the Avengers of Earth-191208, sure, made a difference on Earth-95. I'm glad they did because, now, we don't have to worry about SEELE anymore, since they're out of the picture. »
« The 100 Greatest Threats to the Multiverse have a vacant spot and I wonder who will fill it, anyway. I mean, many villains can fill the former spot of SEELE and I got to think who will it be, depending if their threat level is multiversal. »
« Agreed. We have to figure out who is the next threat to the Multiverse. »
When Pighead said that, it wasn't really true. She had some ideas, of course. But at this point, it wasn't written yet so she wasn't about to share it.
« Speaking of the Multiverse, Ficboy resumed, I do have some realities of interest to check out. The first is Earth-67… »
At this point, the woman was trying a bit harder not to think about something else. Damn brain. Though, she managed to catch the words « Arsene Lupin ».
« Arsene Lupin ? I'm French and I'm aware of the stories of the eponymous gentleman thief, by Maurice Leblanc. Japan basically did its take on him through his apparent grandson with all sorts of different periods without even aging. Who knows, we might get Lupin III to protect the Multiverse from a major threat. »
Since Ficboy didn't correct her, she could only assume she managed to know what he was talking about. The conversation then deviated on the Earths that were interesting to him and, finally, the ones he wanted to recruit. But, this time, the Meddler decided to purposefully not listen.
The Pilot had the habit of saying always a bit too much and she wanted to be surprised by his picks.
« …but I don't have the time, right now. We might be able to get these individuals on our side, if necessary. »
Pighead shrugged as an answer.
« Maybe. I mean, these worlds and people are quite different from each other and who knows if they'll work well together, not to mention possible language barriers. Then, again, considering how the Avengers of Earth-199999 and Earth-191208 were formed, I think we could do the same here if we're lucky. »
The things she didn't said were along the lines of Plus, I have another team that will be soon assembled by the time I finish « DEATHFAME » and it's a pretty big one so why the fuck would we need a goddamn second ? but needless to say, even when saying that, she didn't felt entirely convinced.
« I may or may not be with you, Pighead, for such occasions but… »
It's at this point that an older man in a collared shirt and dark pants suddenly arrived. And it's also at this point that I will skip the rest, because you already probably read it. If you didn't, here's a rundown : it's Michael. He came to warn his fellow co-authors about the threat of Randall Flagg, who was 1) here and 2) the first being to actually scare the shit out of one of the most powerful people here, before disappearing.
We're gonna resume at the end of the original NGE chapter. After the Administrator disappeared, the two others were left silent. Ficboy looked at the space around him, staying stoic as he always did. His mind was already thinking : Flagg was far from being the only threat that needed to be annihilated. Whether we were talking about him, Junko Enoshima or Heaven Ascension DIO, the Multiverse was still under a lot of threats. They needed to be stopped and, now, he was certain that his team had a purpose.
His musings were interrupted when he heard Pighead typing on the virtual keyboard of her tablet.
« What are you doing ? »
« I'm on TVTropes. Trying to find info on this Flagg guy. »
Ficboy raised his eyebrows again.
« Well, you said yourself who he was : Stephen King's most evil villain ! It should be enough, right ? »
As a response, Pighead turned her head towards him.
« You were writing my dialogues until now, number one. And number two, do you have any idea how little that narrows it down ? Like, I'm sorry but Pennywise & Torrance are already pretty much evil pieces of shit and very terrifying people so what the fuck makes this Randy-boy more special ? »
« Well- »
« Ah, got it ! OK, so let's see… ultimate evil, blahblahblah… servant of the Devil, has an army… oh, his smile makes you insane ? 'Kay, nice… has joined every terrorist group under the sun… blahblahblah… he crucifies people, too… huh-huh… »
The author put her tablet back in her pocket.
« Yeah, OK, I concede that he seems like he has the potential to be quite annoying. But not more than that, I'm afraid. Like, bro, the ultimate evil, I already have to experience it every day when I wake up and I don't need more of that. »
« But no one needs any of that ! Which is why you should consider my proposal and we must travel through the universes in order to recruit them ! »
Another groan coming from Pighead.
« …bon Dieu… 'kay, you know what ? If I manage to finish Chapter 4 of DEATHFAME in the next two weeks, I'm going with ya and you can even boss me around if you want. I will not even try to slow it down and being lazy, because I hate to release so little to my audience, I promise ! If I do this, I go. But if I fail, ask someone else to do it. If I can't respect my own deadlines, I don't know how you could count on me. »
She then turned around and created a portal, ready to go. But as she was about to step into it…
« You will. »
Pighead turned her head towards Ficboy, once again.
« Huh ? »
« The challenge. You will win, I'm certain of it. »
He was smiling, once again. And for one moment, Pighead couldn't help but having a slight smile too. This sort of encouragments… what was the last one she could remember ?
Oh, well. Didn't matter.
« Thanks, man. »
Then, she disappeared, leaving the Pilot at his shards and his dreams of a team.
And that's all! Before we go, here's some little notes:
- For continuity notes, since I'm basically redoing a lot of the last sequence of Neon Genesis Evangelion, consider that it happened sometime after this series.
- You probably noticed the nicknames I gave. In fact, each of the authors, in-universe, has a little nickname in order to differentiate them (plus, it's cooler like that). They are as follows: The Administrator (Michael Weyer), The Worldbuilder (L1701E), The Cartoonist (Ben2Dartmouth), The Panda (jb4280218), The Convener (Marcus S. Lazarus), The Cloudwalker (Batguy01), The Meddler (yours truly), The Spy (Movie-Brat), The Pilot (Ficboy2001), The Rookie (Sentinel of Stories, but it's generally a nickname that is passed to each new author until a certain time) & The Ghost (Orphaned-Account, aka the person who did the PAW Patrol and Go Diego, Go! one-shots).
- I admit that I'm pretty happy about the dynamic I'm giving to our own fictional selves, Ficboy being the serious straight man and Pighead being more of the talkative, sometimes rude cloudcuckoolander who doesn't really take a lot of things seriously. It's a dynamic that I already saw in The Multiverse Files and I hope to recreate as well as I can for the rest of the series!
- The mention of Player Two Start comes from the fact that me and Ficboy discussed a bunch about alternate histories. He passed me some Google Docs, talked to me about some examples... and what my fictional self says about it is mostly what I might do in the near future. We'll see what happens, we'll see if I'll be the only one to do it but, yeah, the AlternateHistory website' representation will be here, if you're a fan of that!
- So, this one has nothing to do with my writings, but since recently, you probably noticed that FanFiction stopped showing us our views entirely (and, in general, the site becomes crappier and crappier). It means that, more than ever and as long as the site is not dead yet, I really, really count on your reviews, your criticisms, every word you have to say about what I write, really! Be sincere about it! Even if you thought it was crap! In the meantime, I will try to resume and speed up re-releases of previous installments on AO3, so if the site crashes, there will still be something to look at!
- Since I'll follow the order of The Multiverse Files, the true Chapter 1 of the series will take place on Earth-1984 and we'll meet the Transformers after quite some time not having seen them in the flesh. I already have some pages written, so look out for that! And, of course, Chapter 5 of DEATHFAME will come. Hopefully, sometime in this month or the next month, at worst.
And that's all for me! Once again, reviews appreciated, more than ever.
See ya later.
