They'll be coming to rescue me… any minute now… thought Flori.
* * *
Beansprout landed on her feet with feline grace, only to slip over on a stack of paper. Righting herself, she looked around. She stood amongst a maze of brightly painted shelves, haphazardly filled with tat of every variety. DVDs, books, sketches, paintings, address books, folders, photo albums, post -it-notes, clocks, songs, scented candles, food, instruction manuals, clothes, snowglobes… to name but a few things. She wandered around, poking at heaps, and sniffing things for a while, until her ears caught the sound of someone whistling 'Blue moon' off key. She followed the sound through the labyrinth, until rounding a corner, she saw a saw a red-haired girl, sitting cross-legged on the floor next to a pile of calligraphy sets, which she was attaching price labels to.
"Afternoon, Beansprout," said Emily without looking up.
"This is the Outside?" said Beansprout, wrinkling her nose at the mess.
"Nope, because well, you're fictional, and you'll never get there. Wherever you go is fiction, and its all just wheels within wheels- which I hate."
"So where the Folk is this?"
"Well at the moment, it's my imagination, although technically it will be the collective imagination of whoever reads this once I write it down.. But not right now. Right now it's me thinking up what you'd say as I sit at work pricing calligraphy sets." She picked up the pile of priced sets and put them on a shelf, on which many other art supplies jostled for room. "Is there something I can help you with?" she paused to adjust her hair in a mirror, "or let me guess, you're out to see how much damage you can do outside of Intertextuality?"
"Well that would be my plan, yeah. Maybe I'll hijack this so called 'Imagination' of yours…" Beansprout, snarled in her scariest manner.
Emily snorted and turned to face Beansprout. "You want to take on one of your creators? In her own imagination no less? What kind of moron are you? You are an entirely fictional construct, and all me and Alice have to do is will it, and you'll cease to exist, except as a memory to the pitifully few people who actually even know about you. Just a box on one of these shelves marked 'Beansprout' that someone will get out and look at from time to time. It's not like you're famous, Beansprout, you're not some cult heroine. You exist in a few shabby notebooks and some web pages, you look how you look because I drew you. The only people who know anything more about you than your name I could count on two hands."
"I mean, get a grip Beansprout, take a look at yourself. In a few episodes you've gone from this witty, clever, brave, rude, girl, with a best friend, a sidekick, and a boy who loved you, to a camped-up B-movie supervillain. With added psychosis. Its just sad."
"Are you finished yet? Because I think I'm going to kill you." Beansprout said by way of reply, raising her sword.
"See? Thats exactly what I'm talking about! you weren't even listening were you? Where is the point in making a great speech like that when no-one listens!" Emily waved her hands exasperatedly, "It took me a long time to think of that, you know! You. Can't. Kill. Me. That's not the way it works. Its also physically impossible… But that's beside the point.
Its time you learned a thing or two about what happens to fictional characters who get inside my head when I'm trying to work. I don't think I'll fix your little 'crazy' problem, because that would be a shameless cop-out, and I hate those more than I hate wheels within wheels, but from now on, I'm going to see to it, that you don't harm… anyone." the red-haired girl turned and began gathering pieces of card that were strewn about the place into a plastic bag.
"What the Folk are you on about?" Said Beansprout, who was more than a little annoyed by now.
"From now on- you little pig-tailed ingrate- You'll have to adopt a pacifist approach, because every time you attack someone… an… an… IMPROBABLE OBJECT WILL FALL ON YOU!!! HA-HAH!!! Now get out my head." Emily said, and with a click of her fingers, Beansprout disappeared. [pretty cool really because although Emily can talk about herself in third person singular, it's common knowledge that she can't click her fingers in real life.]

"DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT! Will I never get to settle down and have babies!??" Raged Kagome out loud, then clapped her hands over her mouth as she realized the others were all staring at her.
"I simply cannot believe this happened again" muttered Sango to herself as in the background Miroku answered "Well I can help you with that…" and was quickly pounced on by Inu-Yasha who obviously wanted to tear his throat out.
"Yeah, every time its going well, those idiots from the other universe turn up," said Shippou, "just be glad you missed the time when we had to drink tea with the man in a dress."
"STOP IT! STOP!!!" Kagome yelled, pulling the men off each other.
"Miroku started it! No one hits on my- uh- not that I- uh- feh?"
(Kagome thinks 'Gasp! Can this mean…?' *badump badump*)
"It was a joke!"
"RARGH!!!"
"I SAID STOP!!!"
"Hello? Can we please do something about this 'Random people stealing the Shikon-no-Tama' business?" said Sango impaitiently.
"Oh they've gone back to the bizarre little hell they call home," said Kagome, "There's nothing we can do about it, until they get bored and give it back… we don't do intertextuality remember… we kill demons."
"That's where you're wrong!" Yelled Inu-Yasha triumphantly as from a pocket he pulled the MOBILE PHONE OF INTERTEXTUALITY. (which Red had forgotten to take back). "We can go after them and get back my Jewel of Four souls!"
* * *

"I should have known", wailed Yakky, "Beansprout doesn't even wear lipstick!" whilst in the foreground, J and Flibbage inspected the circle of runes.
"I'm a bad Queen," said Flibbage matter-of-factly, "I suck."
"You don't suck, its just… teething problems." Said J.
"You suck!" said Cabbage as she trotted past dragging a bag of catnip.
The faeries had cut their losses on Dank Cave and had all moved HQ to Pocket World, which seemed now to be expanding on its own ina distinctly Flibbagey style. Something like the Immateria from Promethea but with lots of art Nouveau, and green stuff. Eventually it would grow into a whole new Realm. The circle of runes was still scrawled on the floor somewhere in the middle, where a new palace was slowly growing out of the ground.
"Did Beansprout say anything? An incantation?" Flibbage asked Yakky.
"Well I didn't hear her actually say anything. She just jumped through."
"Its got to be something simple." Flibbage said. "She's a half-Faery whose magic instruction came from humans…" She stepped inside the circle and traced the greasy runes with her index finger. "Maybe all you have to do is th-" she disappeared.
"…something like that, yeah." Said Yakky.
* * *

"I don't think we're going the right way," grumbled Kagome.
"Well how many other intertextuality hopping quartets do you know?" growled Inu-Yasha, nose to the ground. "there's one guy, two elvish females and something that smells a bit like a cat…"
"You Fool! They don't have a CAT!!! They have a WEREWOLF! We've gone halfway across the multiverse so you could chase a CAT??!"
"I COULD BE WRONG, I SAID VAGUELY LIKE A CAT!"
Just then a voice somewhere up ahead, said "Wait a minute guys, I can hear something…" and there was the noise of someone approaching through he undergrowth. An unmistakably elfin girl dressed all in green, with equally green hair appeared.
"What are you doing here, fools!!?" she shrieked in dismay.
"Uh… do we know you?"
"Get out! Get out! This isn't even my narrative! If Tim finds out you're here, he'll… think I'm hijacking it or something! As far as I know, Alice doesn't even exist in this part of the multiverse, how can she write an episode if she doesn't exist??? Go away!!!"
"Sorry," huffed Kagome, "Dogbreath thought you were the Queen of Faerie,"
"Heeeey…"
The elf stared at them. "Do I look regal to you??? Get back in your own damn story!"
"Okay okay… we're going, you aren't who we were looking for anyway."
"Feh, said Inu-Yasha, as Kagome dragged him off, yelling about his incompetence.
"Who're you talking to, dude?" Tom asked, appearing through the trees, closely followed by Tori and Tim(the moogle).
"Secret Elven Rites," said Emily sagely. Tori nodded. He would have continued questioning, but Emily looked as if she might start beating people with shoes at any moment.
"Stop wasting time." Said Tim, eyeing her suspiciously. "Planet to save, Green gem, et c, et c." and they continued on their way.
* * *
"Wargh!" Yelled Flibbage as she landed in Emily's brain and fell flat on her face.
"Hi Flib." Said someone she could only see the feet of, "And before you ask, no this isn't Outside, it's my head. Yes, I'm one of the ones making the rules, or at least sticking to them when it suits me. Yes Beansprout was here. No she couldn't do a thing to me, because as you know, this is fiction and you don't really exist." Flibbage sat up, pointed and babbled incoherently as one does when suddenly confronted by ones belief system proving itself.
"Oh cease your babbling, or I'll just write 'to be continued' right here and hand you to Alice. And if I do that, you can bet your bottom dollar something horrible will happen to you, because Alice likes that kind of thing, and I don't do the serious bits."

[I've just been struck by the most marvelous lyric. I'm listening to 'little town (reprise) from Beauty and the Beast, and I have an alternate ending to the song…
BELLE; 'I want adventure in the great wide somewhere,
I want it more than I can tell,

EMILY (appearing from undergrowth)
It'll never come to pass,
So stop talking out your arse
…I think I'm allergic to this grass

BELLE; Oh well…

(She marries Gaston afterall HAR HAR HAR)
BACK TO THE STORY]

"You speak in awfully long sentences." Flibbage remarked when she had recovered the ability to speak. "And what the folk was that?"
"An aside. If you will all come invade my brain, trains of thought is what you'll get."
"Sorry, your -um Creativeness"
"Don't call me that."
"Okay."
"Back to the point," Emily continued, "I'm not planning on staying awake until 2am and it's 11:39 at the moment, so you'll have to get out of my head so I can conclude this episode. First though, I'm gonna give you a to-do list, so pass me your hand." She pulled out a pen.
"Um…"
"Don't interrupt. Here's my list;" she began to write on Flibbage's hand, reading out loud as she went along.
"1) When you see your mother, tell her I'm sorry she's a cat, but there's nothing to be done about it at the moment..
2) Give Inu-Yasha his Shikon-no-Tama back before he permanently ruins the multiverse.
3)Divorce Yakky, the violence problem has been dealt with."
"What did you do?" squeaked Flibbage nervously.
"What did I say about interrupting? It's a surprise, -narrative reasons you see.
4) Do your best to instigate the season finale because its just getting silly now.
5)Try to get through the series finale without J being melodramatic or clichéd… got all that?"
"Yes…?" said Flibbage.
"Bye then!" said Emily, and started counting to herself in Japanese, she snapped her fingers and Flibbage abruptly disappeared.
* * *
A very angry Beansprout reappeared in the Big Pricks HQ where Oddball, D'Arcie, Jenenchilada and Phil were drinking ridiculously expensive coffee and mocking their nemesis(es?) the Faeries.
"Hahaha! It seems they've deserted the Realm, they're probably hiding in a cave somewhere on Earth," scoffed D'Arcie, "Ah Beansprout, you've returned! Did you managed to get Outside?"
"Kinda, I think…" said Beansprout with terrifying mildness, "A Creator cursed me, but maybe she was bluffing." With a click our juvenile psychopath aimed a gun at D'arcie's head. "Let's find out." And who knows whether she would have pulled that trigger, because just at that moment, a large anvil fell from nowhere and knocked her out.
[serves her right, thought my brain]
"Well that's the thanks I get," said D'Arcie and pressed a button on her desk which made a portal appear and suck Beansprout in. "On to the next world domination plan?" The others clapped politely.
* * *
"Oh." Said Beansprout as she came to on top of Mount Everest (Which coincidentally is in… NEPAL!) in the middle of a blizzard.
[DOUBLE HAH! Thought Emily]
[I'd like a sugar lump, thought Dougal]
[Dee deedledeedledeeedeee… oops wrong show…]
TO BE CONTINUED…