009. The Ones Who Got Rewritten
The path sloped downward, stitched from what looked like cobblestone, starship plating, and the occasional romance subplot. We followed our kidnappers—sorry, "narrative insurgents"—through a thicket of genre detritus that defied continuity and physics.
Overhead, a ruined sci-fi bridge sagged under the weight of a neon tavern sign that read Ye Olde Pub.exe. A castle turret jutted from the roots of an overgrown high school courtyard, its bell tower tangled with glowing vines that pulsed like spell cooldowns.
Everywhere: floating fragments of narration. Bits of abandoned worldbuilding drifted by like confused fireflies.
> "The prophecy—" "—was never meant for—" "—and thus, Gary strode into destiny with—"
Each one ended in a glitch. A stutter. A fade to null.
> [LOCATION: NULL]
[COHERENCE: DEPRECATED]
[PLOT THREAD: UNRECOVERABLE]
The UI coughed. Literally coughed. Then showed me a shrug emoji and gave up trying to define the area.
Behind me, Hana gasped like she'd just seen a puppy made of glitter and unresolved trauma.
"Oh my god," she whispered. "This place is so aesthetically damaged."
She pointed to a floating, twitching butterfly, its wings flashing between pixel art and watercolor concept art.
"I'm naming him Narrative Kevin."
The butterfly glitched, shimmered, and spontaneously combusted into a haiku about regret.
"RIP, Kevin," she said, solemn. "He died doing what he loved—shifting tone inconsistently."
Ezra said nothing. He hadn't said much since the Resistance found us. His grip on the crowbar was loose but ready, eyes scanning every shattered narrative relic like it might jump out and monologue at him.
I stepped over what looked like a broken romance subplot—still smoldering—and muttered, "This place looks like someone tried to uninstall three genres at once and failed."
Another floating phrase drifted past us like a lost balloon:
> "—and the kingdom never—"
I didn't finish reading it.
Because that was when I saw the tower in the distance.
Bent. Burnt. Built from pieces of genres that had never agreed to meet. Its foundation was half pirate ship, half throne room. One wall bore a magic school crest with the words "Insert Lore Here." A mechanical dragon skeleton coiled around the base, its eyes flickering with corrupted character arcs.
At the top, a flickering Resistance banner waved in glitchy defiance.
I didn't know what this place was.
But it wasn't safe.
Not for us.
Not for the system.
And definitely not for whatever truth we were about to step on like a narrative landmine.
Our guides didn't speak. Just kept walking. Past a derailed romance subplot. Through a shattered prophecy chamber that now hosted someone's laundry.
Eventually, we reached what I assumed was their headquarters.
A tower built from discarded arcs and rejected ambition. The doors—if you could call them that—were twin panels labeled "Narrative Loading… [FAIL]". They parted with a sigh that sounded suspiciously like a script editor giving up.
Inside: the war room.
The "war room" looked like it had been designed by a committee of drunk genre rejects and one emotionally devastated set designer.
The floor was a chessboard from a cancelled fantasy anime. One wall was made of dungeon map tiles, another of comic panel frames with the dialogue scraped out. A holographic magic circle floated in the ceiling corner, flickering like it had performance anxiety. The table in the center had once been a doomsday device. It now held snacks.
At the head sat a throne forged entirely from D-plot weapons—swords that never got picked up, prophecy daggers that failed to glint meaningfully, and at least one boomerang labeled "Chekhov's Maybe."
On it sat Captain Rejecta.
She looked like a glitch-stabilized war crime in cape form. Broad shoulders, severe jawline, the unmistakable aura of someone whose arc had been cut after three rewrites and one failed market test. Her cloak shimmered with shredded plot armor, layered like broken scales. At her chest hung a hero's medallion—cleaved in half.
> "Welcome," she said. Her voice was warm steel. "To the dump heap of narrative failure."
Leo opened his mouth. Thought better of it.
She stood with slow, purposeful dignity. Introduced her team like she was unveiling tragic action figures.
---
"This," she said, "is Bob."
A balding man looked up from a cracked UI manual that had "PATCH ME" scribbled on the spine.
He saluted sloppily, then took a swig from a green vial that smelled like old citrus and disappointment.
> "I was a Tutorial NPC. Back in v2.4," he muttered. "Used to teach basic movement and emotional repression. Now I mostly drink and glitch-lurk."
He offered us a healing potion.
It hissed.
---
"Jaxxx the Bard," she continued. "Spelled with three x's. He insisted."
From the shadows emerged what I can only describe as a walking fanfiction disaster.
Tight pants. Sparkly cloak. Eyes like a Tumblr header from 2013. He flourished a lute with unnecessary flair and whispered:
> "Enemies to lovers? I ship it."
He pointed at Leo and Ezra.
Leo took a step back like he'd just been cursed.
> "Don't use adverbs," Jaxxx hissed suddenly, voice rising in pitch. "They weaken the prose!"
Hana clapped politely. "I like his energy."
---
"And this," Rejecta said, with a touch of reverence, "is Zara."
She didn't walk. She glided.
Tall. Poised. Horns that glitched in and out of visibility like they were toggled by reader preference.
Her eyes were calibrated in cool, analytical scorn. A glowing cyber-wand dangled from her belt next to a defanged princess tiara turned into a multitool.
Zara didn't speak.
She simply held up a blinking alignment tracker that she'd dismantled into spare wires and tiny, twitching gears.
Ezra gave a nod that translated roughly to: "Respect."
---
Rejecta looked back at us, her expression unreadable.
> "We were denied arcs," she said simply. "Each of us."
She tapped her chest.
> "I was a classic hero once. Chosen. Destined. Until the algorithm deemed me 'predictable.' Too many others like me. So I got shelved."
Bob raised his potion. "They didn't even give me a death scene. Just—update complete. Gone."
Jaxxx wailed, "My arc was cut because it clashed with the dominant ship!"
Zara said nothing. Her silence was louder than all of them.
Rejecta's gaze lingered on Leo.
> "The System didn't just forget us. It replaced us. With shinier, easier, safer versions."
> "And you three? You're walking proof it's still happening."
---
The room fell quiet.
The kind of quiet where rebellion brews.
The kind where discarded weapons start to look shiny again.
I stared at the throne of failed weapons.
Then at Rejecta.
Then at my UI.
> [SUGGESTED RESPONSE: "This is messed up."]
[ALTERNATIVE: Join. Burn everything. Hug no one.]
I said nothing.
But my fingers curled into fists.
Captain Rejecta didn't sit.
She loomed. The kind of looming you learn after five canceled reboots and a failed merchandise line.
With a flick of her wrist—no spell, no chant, just raw command—a wall of the war room shuddered. Sparks of fairy dust and glitch-code spun together into a projected map that looked like someone force-fed a GPS app too much fanfiction.
It hovered in the air. Flickering. Fractured.
> FANTASY DLC: SECTOR 7.5
Status: Quarantined / Deprecated / Genre-Contaminated
Floating islands drifted lazily across the void. Labels pulsed in unstable fonts:
Discarded Backstories
Cancelled Fates
The Island of Misfit Bards (Population: variable, dramatic)
A quiet gasp escaped Hana. Ezra narrowed his eyes. I just stared, one soda-fizz thought echoing in my brain:
> Oh. We're in the trash dimension.
Rejecta tapped the map.
> "This entire grove? It's inside the Fantasy DLC."
She said it like Fantasy DLC was a diagnosis. Or a warning label.
> "It's where they dump things. Arcs that glitch out. Characters that disobey. Narrative decisions that tested poorly."
Her voice dropped an octave. Serious now.
> "They don't delete us. They bury us. Beneath tropes no one revisits."
She gestured to the flickering island labeled Cancelled Fates—a looping animation of swords snapping and wedding veils catching fire.
> "You thought the system was chaotic? It's not. It's precise. Every 'random' redemption? Every convenient flashback? Assigned. Balanced. Enforced."
My UI pinged.
> [NEW SIDEQUEST: "Unearth the Conspir—] [SYSTEM ERROR: FILE CORRUPTED] [ERROR: SIDEQUEST CLASSIFICATION FAILED]`
The projection crackled, zoomed out. A massive grid unfolded—universes, timelines, data trees, glowing pipelines of story energy flowing through official channels like pre-processed character arcs.
And at the center of it all:
> D.A.R.D.
Department of Archetypal Regulation and Distribution
"Keeping Your Story Safe, One Trope at a Time."
Rejecta spat the name like poison. "They assign the Protagonists. Across every multiverse. Based on market saturation, archetypal diversity quotas, and user analytics."
She pointed toward the glowing heart of the map.
> "They call it the Protagonist Allocation System. It decides who gets to matter."
---
Hana whispered, "That's... horrifyingly efficient."
Ezra didn't speak. He stared at one corner of the map. Something about his silence burned hotter than any speech.
I tried to make a joke. Nothing came out.
The system hadn't just exiled them.
It had rewritten the rules.
And we'd been playing by them the whole time.
---
The war room kept arguing behind me.
Leo was making some sarcastic speech about destiny inflation. Hana was halfway into a debate about friendship mechanics with the bard who spoke entirely in tropes.
I needed air.
Or silence.
Or both.
The grove didn't offer either—but I walked anyway.
Past glitching lanterns and half-loaded NPC shells. Through a corridor made from hollowed-out storybooks and corrupted dialogue boxes. The floor flickered beneath my feet like it wasn't sure if it existed.
Then I saw it.
A bunker door, half buried beneath a pile of old sidequest triggers and a glowing "WELCOME, CHOSEN ONE!" banner someone had set on fire.
I kicked the door open.
Inside: a low hum.
And a soft, cold light.
---
The machine sat in the center like it didn't belong to this world—or any world that had ever been fair.
The Protagonist Printer.
It didn't look like much. A cobbled-together beast of retro terminals and System-grade chrome. Humming quietly, like it hadn't ruined lives.
Dust clung to the buttons. Labels had been scratched out and rewritten. Someone had carved a name into the side:
> "Version 3.7: Hope Engine"
I powered it on.
The screen blinked.
Glitched.
Loaded.
> [QUERY: EZRA DRAKE]
[SEARCHING ARCHETYPAL DATABASE…]
My fingers hovered over the panel. I didn't know why I typed my own name. Maybe I wanted proof. Maybe I wanted closure.
What I got was worse.
---
> NAME: EZRA DRAKE
STATUS: UNSTABLE / UNMARKETABLE
REPLACEMENT: AURELIUS DAWN
REASON: "Excessively gray-morality. Failed empathy metrics. Crowbar over sword."
The screen didn't flicker. It just sat there.
Judging me in grayscale.
They hadn't erased me.
They'd evaluated me.
Found me lacking.
And given my arc to someone shinier.
---
"You found it."
Zara's voice, quiet. Neutral. Like she'd seen this before.
She stepped into the dim, light from the screen flickering against the curve of her half-visible horns.
> "They used your story," she said. "Gave it to someone easier."
"ofcourse they did"
I slammed the folder shut.
Hard.
The machine beeped. A tray slid open, ejecting a folder—thick, stamped, disgustingly official.
I flipped it open. My name. Crossed out. A glowing sticker labeled: "Redemption Potential Reallocated."
I slammed it shut.
Hard enough the screen glitched.
Zara flinched. Good.
Aurelius Dawn.
Golden boy with a system-generated arc and abs that deserved a lawsuit.
> "If I see him again," I said, "I want my arc back."
Not metaphorically.
Not poetically.
Physically. Emotionally. All of it.
I want the messy, broken, crowbar-swinging narrative they stole from me.
She just stood with me in that flickering dark, both of us built from stolen things.
---
Captain Rejecta slammed a map on the table like she meant business.
Which was impressive, considering the table was made of repurposed throne props and the map was stitched from glowing thread and sarcasm.
> "[MAP DATA: SEAMS OF REALITY]"
"[STABILITY: UNPATCHED]"
"[RISK: NARRATIVELY INCONVENIENT]"
Across the surface, universes jittered like corrupt save files. Worlds stitched together by duct tape and bad crossover events. Each glowing thread represented a narrative seam—places where stories overlapped, collided, or got rebranded.
Rejecta tapped a node labeled: 314-B.
> "This seam leads to the backend," she said. "System core. Admin zone. The part of the narrative even the UI doesn't like rendering."
She looked at me.
Not like I was the answer.
More like I was the wrench you throw into a machine when you're out of time and patience.
> "You're not system-approved. Not even human code originally. That makes you unpredictable. Untrackable."
I blinked. "Thanks. I think."
Hana was already packing a bag of snacks and drawing a mustache on her mushroom for "undercover work." Ezra stood off to the side, jaw clenched, arms crossed—but not leaving.
That was new.
---
I looked back at the map. Watched it stutter.
Some threads pulsed like heartbeats. Others frayed at the edges.
314-B glowed like an ulcer in the multiverse.
I didn't know what we'd find in the System's core. But I knew what they took from Ezra. What they almost took from me.
And maybe—maybe—this time I wasn't going to let the script win.
The UI pinged in my vision.
> [NEW QUESTLINE LOADED]
Title: The Ones Who Got Rewritten
Objective: Infiltrate the System
Warning: This quest contains excessive truth, dangerous fire, and a high chance of emotional consequences.
Reward: Regret. Probably a moral. Definitely spite.
I sighed.
"Fine," I said. "Let's glitch a god."
Hana held out her fist like she was summoning a glitter demon.
"Team Genre Trash?" she chirped.
Her mushroom blinked. Ezra didn't.
I stared at her hand like it had a trap mechanic attached.
Didn't move.
But I nodded.
Because somewhere between denied arcs, rejected protagonists, and whatever the hell Ezra had just decided to become, I realized something very stupid:
I cared.
Not in the heroic sense.
More in the: "If I don't burn it down, who will?" sense.
> I looked at the glowing threads on the map. At the folder of replaced lives. At the barely functioning system UI twitching in my vision.
> Then I muttered, half to myself:
"Screw it. Let's make some narrative noise."
---