011. Out of the Frying Trope
There's a special kind of silence that happens right before reality breaks.
It's not dramatic. It's not epic. It's just... tired. Like the universe itself sighed and said, "Fine. Let's get this over with."
That's when the Warden appeared.
No footsteps. No portal. Just one blink, and suddenly there he was—draped in narrative authority, face blurred like someone had rage-quit character creation halfway through. In his hand: a pen.
Not a wand. Not a sword. A pen.
Which would've been funny, if it hadn't started erasing people.
> [SYSTEM UI – NARRATIVE ENFORCEMENT DETECTED]
Tool: Pen of Final Draft
Function: Authorial deletion
Target: Anyone with too much screen time
Bob—ever the optimistic side character—stepped up to try diplomacy.
Because Bob hadn't read the genre shift.
> "I think if we just adjust the underlying structu—"
The Warden made a single stroke with the pen.
That was it. No flash. No scream. Just a neat little slash, and Bob's words got cut off mid-thought.
His mouth kept moving. No sound.
Then his body collapsed into a fine print footnote and disappeared.
> [Bob has been removed for pacing.]
And that's when I remembered: I'm not a hero.
I don't get last stands or redemption arcs.
So I backed the hell up and let the genre chew on someone else.
Around me, the Resistance started glitching.
Their meme-woven cloaks began to flicker—one second solid, the next JPEG blocks and compression noise. Someone's ironic "Shrek is Eternal" cape burst into Comic Sans and shame.
The plot shields groaned.
Literally. I heard them whimper.
> ⚠️ PLOT INTEGRITY: 9%
Irony Levels: Dangerously High
Suggested Action: Abandon character development
And then Jaxxx—bless her delusional libido—decided the best course of action was to seduce the Warden.
"Maybe you're just misunderstood," she purred, striking a pose that had absolutely no business surviving continuity. "I can fix that."
He didn't answer. Just annotated her with a disapproving flourish.
Whatever arc she thought she was getting, it just got rewritten as "cautionary tale."
> [Attempted seduction: Tragic.]
[Relationship status: Deleted Scene.]
Meanwhile, Zara was knee-deep in what I can only describe as genre malpractice.
She plugged a USB stick labeled "DO NOT" into the world's last functioning reality stabilizer and slammed the Execute button with a confidence I found personally offensive.
The air screamed.
And then everything went off-brand:
A space chef battled an eldritch omelet on a floating kitchen asteroid.
A ramen bowl grew eyes and began whispering nutritional facts backwards.
Someone yelled "Flavor is truth!" before being devoured by a sentient spice rack.
> [GENRE FUSION DETECTED]
Input: Sci-Fi × Cooking Anime × Eldritch Horror
Output: What the hell, Zara?
The Warden didn't react.
He just kept writing.
Maybe fixing grammar. Maybe deleting plotlines. Maybe just doodling souls.
I ducked behind an overturned noodle cart as a ladle embedded itself two inches from my head.
> "I should've stayed a truck," I muttered.
Because honestly?
This wasn't villainy.
This wasn't rebellion.
This was a writers' room breakdown with blood.
And I was stuck in the middle of it.
Again.
---
There are two types of explosions:
1. The kind that feel loud.
2. And the kind that are loud but also come with a UI error and a sinking sense of narrative betrayal.
Guess which one I got.
The base—their precious glitch-punk hideout stitched together with tropes, memes, and leftover subplots—started collapsing. Not metaphorically. Literally. Walls pixelated. Floors looped. One corridor rebooted into a beach episode and then immediately imploded out of embarrassment.
Somewhere, a narration box screamed.
>
[THEME: CONTRADICTION]
[STAKES: REWRITTEN]
Would you like to restore from backup?
➤ No
➤ No, but louder
Rejecta—Resistance leader, walking glitch theory, eyes like an old VHS tape that hated you—stood in the center like she hadn't just watched half her team get ctrl-z'd out of reality.
People around her were already going full sacrifice mode.
You know the type: heroic last stands, shouted names, dramatic music cue that never lands on beat.
She didn't flinch.
Instead, she turned and looked directly at me.
Now, I'd seen a lot of things in my second life.
Exploding ramen gods. Fanfic assassins. A raccoon cult.
But the way she looked at me? That hit different.
Not with hate. Not even suspicion.
Just… like she'd read the spoilers.
> "You're not one of us," she said.
"That's what makes you dangerous."
Oh. Great.
Nothing like being someone else's prophetic last hope when you're pretty sure your only talent is causing unfortunate plot developments.
She walked past me, fast and final, and shoved something into my hand:
A broken side-quest token. Fractured. Flickering. Maybe bleeding?
No instructions. No context. Just vibes and consequences.
> [NEW ITEM ACQUIRED: SIDE-QUEST TOKEN (Corrupted)]
Status: ???
Use: Almost certainly regrettable
She didn't explain. Didn't wait.
She just turned and launched herself into the fray like a glitching war goddess on borrowed lore.
Me? I stared down at the token and did what any sensible person would do:
Absolutely nothing.
For five full seconds.
> "...This is not my story," I muttered.
"Which means it'll make me fix it anyway."
Turns out, the side-quest token wasn't decorative.
Which was a shame. I was really hoping I could pawn it off later as a cursed collectible and retire somewhere unstoried.
Instead, the jagged little coin sparked in my palm—once, then twice—then split open the air like it had something to prove.
No glow. No choir. Just a thin, angry rip in reality, shimmering like sarcasm dipped in broken pixels.
> [SYSTEM: SIDE-QUEST TOKEN ACTIVATED]
Breach Opened: YES
Viability: Hahahaha
[BREACH STATUS: Barely Held Together With Spite™]
Hana squinted at the swirling, twitching portal.
> "That's it?! That's our plan?!"
"Technically," I said, "it's not a plan. It's more of a... very specific accident."
She did not look comforted.
Behind us, 314-B continued disassembling itself.
Chairs floated. Walls monologued. The whiteboard was actively sobbing in Helvetica.
The breach pulsed again. Small. Wobbly. Like it wasn't thrilled about this either.
Only room for three.
I turned to Ezra.
He wasn't moving.
He stared back toward the chaos—toward the Resistance collapsing in static and narrative bleed.
You could tell. He wanted to stay. Do something stupid. Die with a point.
Or at least an ending.
For a second, I thought he'd do it.
But then Hana grabbed him by the hoodie, yanked him back toward the breach like she was done with all tragic nonsense for today.
> "No more solo acts," she snapped. "Move."
And somehow, that worked.
Ezra blinked. Swallowed whatever heroic idiocy was brewing.
Nodded once.
We jumped.
Just as the Warden's blade—clean, elegant, undeniably final—slashed downward across the room. Across the screen. Across the story.
And for a brief, unbearable moment, I felt the edge of it pass through everything we were trying to escape.
---
I hit the ground hard enough to file a complaint.
Unfortunately, this place probably had the forms for it.
We landed hard. Not in a filing room.
But on cobblestone. Glowing cobblestone. The kind that screams "Someone added magic to a Victorian streetlamp and called it worldbuilding."
Overhead? A flying gondola made of brass. To the right, a street brawl between time-traveling pirates and noir detectives with memory issues. Somewhere in the distance, a giant teacup exploded in slow motion.
> [NEW GENRE LOADED: STEAMPUNK-FANTASY-MYSTERY-WHATEVER]
I blinked. Hana groaned. Ezra sat up and said, "Where the hell are we?"
And I—because I hate everything about this—just sighed and muttered:
> "Out of the frying trope... into the genre soup."
Behind us, the breach stitched itself shut with a sound like a rejected steampunk musical number. The system didn't follow.
For now.
Then the UI reappeared.
> [CONGRATULATIONS] You have successfully evaded narrative execution. Estimated survival time: LOL. New Genre Stability: 14% Plot Coherence: not found [NEW OBJECTIVE ACQUIRED] → SURVIVE WHATEVER THIS IS
I didn't ask for a new genre.
I especially didn't ask for the walking top hat now approaching us with a monocle and a sword-cane.
But here we were.
Me. Hana. Ezra. Trapped in a crossover episode nobody greenlit, armed with one corrupted token, a half-broken side quest, and absolutely no idea what we were doing.
Typical.
END OF CHAPTER 11
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