IBYKS 2020: THE RECKLESS RETCON

Volume 8: Where There's a WILL There's a FEY

Chapter One: Cloud Cuckoo Land

Flibbage folded her arms. "Nothing's happening."

Dee made a scoffing noise. "You faeries really are judgemental."

" I'm judgemental? You just blew a literal dogwhistle-"

"AARGH!" Yakky sat bolt upright in the bed, staring wildly at the opposite wall. "Beansprout!"

"No, it's Dee," Dee said. "And Jay and your ridiculous elf friend are here too."

Yakky blinked a couple of times, took a deep breath, and focused on the three of them. "Is she okay?"

"Are you okay?" Flibbage asked quickly. The thought of telling Yakky what had happened to Beansprout - that she hadn't been able to save her friend, again - was too painful.

"I'm fine, my ears just hurt." Yakky flicked his ears a couple of times, which weirded Flibbage out a little.

Dee looked pleased with herself as she tucked the whistle back into her pocket. "I knew it'd work. You're welcome."

"I suppose it was a good idea," Flibbage said grudgingly. "At least my sister didn't kiss him, so I should probably thank you for that."

"What?" Yakky yelped.

"Nothing. Go back to sleep. Well, actually, don't, but just forget I said that."

"Guys?" Jay said, looking around them.

"What?"

"Did the room always look like this?"

"Of course it-" Flibbage stopped, her words trailing away. "Oh no. Oh no, not now! Not again!"

As they'd been talking, the room had changed. The walls had gone from hospital white to shiny marble, and the floor was covered in the kind of brightly-patterned carpet you normally saw in amusement arcades. There was a faint jingling noise, and a slot machine faded into view.

"A casino," Flibbage said bitterly. "I didn't want a casino the first time!"

"What are you talking about?" Yakky asked. "And where's Beansprout?"

"Come on." Flibbage stood up, giving a weary sigh. "Let's get the Council together. This is an emergency. Again."

***

The Central Characters' Council - a collection of the leading figures in Faerie, plus Yakky, Jay and Dee, gathered in the throne room. Flibbage sat on her throne, massaging her head and trying to ward off an impending migraine. Can a fey ever get a folking break?!she thought, before lifting her head.

"Okay," she said. "Some weird shit is going on. Again. We have a casino in the hospital wing. A creature ripped one of our adventurers to pieces. Has anyone else experienced any inconsistencies?"

"I was drinking pink tea when it turned into Bayleaves!" Red moaned. "That is bad for a recovering alcoholic!"

"My spellbooks turned into copies of Playboy," said the Twiz, with a contemptuous sniff.

"Beaker has a crush on Yakky, apparently," Jay said.

"SHE WHAT?!"yowled Cabbage, her tail fluffing out like a feather duster. She stalked over and smacked Beaker with one tiny paw. "Stop it at once!"

"I can't believe you told your stupid friends," Beaker hissed, glaring at Flibbage.

"Yeah, well, deal with it."

Yakky raised a hand. "Beansprout's gone and no-one's talking about it," he said in a quiet voice. "Is that an inconsistency?"

Flibbage's face crumpled. Jay put a hand on Yakky's shoulder.

"Sorry," he said. "She fell in the…abyss thingy, the same as you. We couldn't find her."

Yakky's eyes filled with tears. "But…you said she just fell? So she might be okay, right? Iwas okay."

"I don't know," Flibbage whispered. "I thought I knew what was going on, but…ugh, I don't know!"

"I do," said Dee.

"Oh, bloody hell, you just know everything, don't you?"

"I don't know where Beansprout is." Dee tilted her head to one side. "But I know there have been a number of inconsistencies - and not just in this realm."

"Go on, then," Flibbage said crossly. "Spill."

Dee leaned on the table, her expression serious. "That's the second reason I came here, as well as to wake up Yakky. I didn't think things would be so bad yet in Faerie, with your…flexible approach to reality. You should see the mortal realm. Chasms opening in the ground, people waking up in two different bodies…London disappeared for six hours last Tuesday."

"But how?" Red asked, sipping her Bayleaves.

"Shadowy organisations?" Jay hazarded. "Like the NGSPI…oh, wait, that's me."

"In a way." Dee turned to Flibbage, Yakky, and Jay. "It began a long time ago, and involves you four. Three."

Flibbage nodded. In spite of everything that was happening, she was starting to feel oddly calm. They were hitting the same beats as before, and frightening as they were, there was a familiarity to them that was comforting, too.

"I've been monitoring government activity and secret operations," said Dee. "Most of the right-leaning governments have fairly strong anti-were agendas, so it makes sense to keep tabs on what they're doing. There are several projects going on - harnessing cryptobiomechanics, weaponizing magical girls, that sort of thing - but one of them seems particularly relevant.

"Years ago, you four came across the ship Deepwater Yak. The biocomputer told you it was built by freelance nerds, right? Well, that was partly true, but those nerds had been hired by the NGSPIB, who provided all the materials and funding.

"It's a tenuous fact of soft sci-fi that, if you're building a gene ark with a soon-to-be-reanimated crew, you need two biocomputers, and there's a 50/50 chance that any AI will turn out to be evil."

The Council nodded. It was a well-known fact.

"The first computer was benign," said Dee. "The second…wasn't."

***

Beansprout woke so suddenly that it took her a couple of seconds to realise it. She was lying in a snowdrift. There was no light except a fine hairline crack directly above her.

It took her a lot longer to realise that this was the sky, and that she was at the bottom of a very, very deep chasm.

Shit, she thought.

And then, why aren't I dead?

And then, before she could think any further, there was a warm blanket covering her body, and a fire flickering beside her. She was sure it hadn't been there before, but maybe she hadn't been fully conscious. She had fallen a really…really…long way.

Why aren't I dead?

"Beansprout? You're awake?"

Beansprout tried to sit up. After a few moments slumped back in agony, she decided that it wasn't a good idea.

"Don't try to move," A figure sat on the far side of the fire. Had it been there before? "You've had a nasty fall."

"Thanks for enlightening me," Beansprout muttered. "I thought I'd just slept in."

"Drink this. It'll help with the pain." The figure was next to her now, although she hadn't seen it move. It lifted her head and held a cup to her lips.

Beansprout looked up, met the figure's eyes, and choked.

"What the folk are you doing here?"

* * *

"The ruins of Deepwater Yak were…" Dee frowned. "I don't really know how to describe it. They were…forgotten? But in a way that was significant?"

"The ship drifted to the margins of the plot," Flibbage said quietly. "The focus of the story wasn't on it, so it moved to a more liminal space."

"…and something happened that…allowed the AI to escape," Dee frowned. "I wasn't too clear on the details. I thought you faeries could explain it."

Cabbage lashed her tail. "Why? Was it too sarcastic for you?"

"No, it involved something about the…the essence of the story, whatever the hell that is."

"Ah," said all the faeries.

Red put down her glass of Bayleaves. "See, the essence of a story-"

"RED!!!"the faeries yelled in unison.

"She has to know! The essence of the story is the form in which it reaches those who read it." Red waved her arms around, almost knocking over her glass. "When someone says 'THE story' - in the old books, anyway - it usually means…well, everything." She shrugged. "But that couldn't have anything to do with the inconsistencies."

"Why not?" asked Dee

"Well, back when stories were told out loud," said Red, dodging Cabbage, who was trying to swat her, "there were lots of inconsistencies. But since they've been written down - since The Story's been written - there haven't been any."

Cabbage glared at Red with her ears laid back against her head.

"Well, not many," Red amended.

"So why are they popping up now?" Jay asked.

"Because the essence has changed," Flibbage said. "Again!"

"But-"

"If The Story's being Read from paper, a rogue biocomputer is just ink on the page," said Flibbage. "But if The Story itself is on a computer, the biocomputer character is the realest thing in it. It can step outside the story, remake things, even write its own plots. And being on a Cloud-based server must make it even easier!"

Yakky frowned, looking confused. "What now?"

"The inconsistencies are just the AI teasing us," said Dee. "This thing is practically God."

"Maybe it's a benevolent God?" Jay ventured.

"Hah!" Flibbage shook her head. "That's not how it works for us. We're up against an apocalyptic supervillain yet again."She sighed. "Where's Beansprout when you need her?"

* * *

"I'm not who you think, Beansprout."

"Then who are you?" Beansprout demanded. "Because you look exactly - EXACTLY! - like my friend Jay!"

The man who wasn't Jay smiled. "I'm more…who Jay might have been. Call me WILL."

"Fine. Will-"

"WILL," WILL repeated. "The capitals are important."

"Whatever. WILL, what the folk is going on?" Beansprout tried to sit up again, winced, and carried on lying down.

"You fell into an impossibly deep chasm," WILL said. "Luckily, you landed in a snowdrift."

Beansprout frowned. "That seems like it still would have killed me."

"And yet, here you are." WILL smiled. "You're welcome."

This still didn't make sense. Beansprout glared at him. "What did you mean, 'who Jay might have been'?"

WILL tilted his head to one side. "Aren't you familiar with the idea of having different versions of the same person?"

"I'm not familiar with anything that's happened lately," Beansprout snapped. "My head has been all over the place. I can't make sense of it."

"Sense is in the eye of the beholder," said WILL. "But talking can help." He poked the fire, still smiling. "And I'd be very happy to listen to your story."

Chapter 2: Inconsistently Yours- By Emily

Beansprout struggled to tell the tale of how she'd gotten here, starting from the day she'd found Flibbage trapped in a bottle. To say things had got out of hand was an understatement, but some of the details didn't even make sense to her now, scenes overlaid with slightly different versions of themselves, whole subplots that she was fairly sure had never actually happened, swirling around the edges of memory like dreams.

"It's the retcon," WILL said when she tried to explain it, "the writers can't even remember what happened in which version, how are you supposed to?"

"What?"

"It makes things easier for me at least." he said. "I can change things without them even noticing. For you, think of it like… another life, or at least another version of this one. Those memories that you know didn't happen, they happened to another you, an angrier you."

"That actually helps," Beansprout said, staring upwards at the tiny crack of light far above. "If I imagine another me in a different version of reality, it feels like its her that tried to kill everyone, and I don't have to feel that way. D'Arsey had me convinced that Flibbage would steal everything from me if I didn't stop her."

"Your boyfriend?"

"Not just Yakky, but like… my place in the world?"

"Ah the Primary Protagonist role. I can see why. She's already a Princess and then when you became one it started a cascade of narrative tropes that D'Arsey could manipulate-" WILL trailed off, his gaze distant as if listening to something Beansprout couldn't hear.

"Sorry Beansprout, our time to chat is up." he said, getting to his feet. "They've realised who I am, which means I need a distraction, whilst I organise my next steps. Luckily I have you." He clicked his fingers and the dark of the chasm was obliterated by brilliant daylight.

***

Yakky excused himself from the throne room and made his way outside to sit on the palace steps. The landscape in the distance had a wavering quality, like it was fighting to stay as one thing but the garden around him seemed like it was keeping its shape for now. He presumed the changes were the work of the AI, clashing against Flibbage's attempts to recreate her realm. Inside Flibbage and Dee were involved in another icy word duel about the perils of digitising magic, and whether there was anything they could do to prevent the AI from spying on them.

Six months of his life had gone in snatches of dreams and blank spaces. For a moment when he'd woken up and saw Dee making some awful noise with a whistle he thought he'd dreamed it all. Beansprout would come in and yell at her, and everything would be normal again.

But everything had changed while he'd been sleeping. Flibbage and Jay were in positions of responsibility for the Fey and Mortal Realms. He guessed they didn't have anyone to be a sidekick to now. Neither did he. There was a massive hole where she should be.

Would a new Protagonist come along if Beansprout was gone?

Maybe his part in this story, if that's what it was, was over. Being here just reminded him of Sprout anyway. Maybe there was a place amongst the werewolves for him.

A strange flickering circle caught his eye in the middle of the lawn. Leaves and pieces of debris around it were caught and flung into the air in little spirals.

Just a spell, he thought. Must be one of the high clearance Fey teleporting in…

Then he remembered all the important elves were already in the palace.

The figure in the centre of the circle began to take shape. It was a girl, average height, thin…with dark hair…in pigtails. She held up a hand to shield her eyes from the sun.

Yakky scrambled to his feet, not knowing whether to run towards her or away. Slowly, she turned to look at him. Beansprout, just as he'd last seen her. Their eyes met, she smiled.

She crumpled to the grass.

It's a trick, he thought. If I go over there I'll be dead.

His feet were running before he could think anything else. He stopped a few feet away from her.

Beansprout lay still, face down in the grass. He couldn't see her expression any more.

"I could still get you from there." her voice was muffled.

Yakky didn't move.

"I don't expect you to say anything, I just wanted to tell you - there's something wrong with me, and I don't know how to fix it, but for the moment it's gone away and…I…I wanted to say I'm sorry, while I can."

"Can you even get up?" Yakky said quietly.

"…No."

"Here," He stepped towards her and, with some difficulty, picked her up. Slowly he walked back towards the castle.

***

"How can we find the AI? How do we stop it? Is D'Arsey still involved?" Flibbage paced up and down. "Maybe I can go back to Deepwater YAK and-"

"Don't you mean delegate a party to return to Deepwater YAK?" interrupted Cabbage.

"Pardon?"

"Well, you can't just run around the Intertextuality any more. You're Queen, you have responsibilities here."

"I guess she's right," said Jay to Flibbage. "I mean, you're Queen now, and I have to run the NGSPIB(lue), and Yakky will need time to recover, and Beansprout-"

"-IS ON THE FOLKING LAWN!" screamed Beaker who had happened to glance out of the window.

Panic ensued.

"DUCK AND COVER!" yelled Fjen to the assorted members of the Fey court as she readied herself for some Kung-Shoe action.

"Yakky's about to get himself killed," The Twiz continued, peeking over the windowsill. "Oh wonderful, he's picked her up and he's bringing her over, so we can a ll get killed."
"Come on," Flibbage grabbed Jay's arm. "Everyone else stay here. That means you, Dee." she said, and teleported them both outside.

***

"Stop right there," she said warily to Yakky as she and Jay reappeared on the steps. Jay unholstered his gun, but didn't raise it. "You can't bring her inside my palace until you tell me what's going on."

"She's hurt, she needs our help." Yakky said softly, as he laid Beansprout down in front of them. Jay glanced back towards the palace where fifty or so worried faces were staring at them, almost certainly thinking 'But we only just got a new Queen…'

Flibbage walked forward uncertainly, and crouched down across from him, not wanting to step too near. She raised her hands and felt for magic around the seemingly unconscious Beansprout. "I don't think she's in any danger Yakky. She's had some serious wounds, but they're healing," said Flibbage. "Did she say anything to you?"

"She said she was sorry."

The three of them stood in silence, not really knowing what to do next.

Beansprout stopped trying to avoid the awkwardness by pretending to be unconscious, and cracked open one eye.

"Flibbage?"

Flibbage let out a long sigh that she tried really hard not to turn into a sob. "Hi 'Sprout."

"Nice crown."

"Yeah - I'm Queen now - people - well, died."

Beansprout's face froze. "Oh God, I didn't-"

"No, That was D'Arsey. Besides, its not like my mother stayed gone. She's a cat now."

"A cat?"

"Reincarnation."

"Oh."

More uncomfortable silence.

***

Beansprout sat on the floor in the centre of the throne room wrapped in a blanket. Yakky was obstinately refusing to sit anywhere except right next to her while most of the faeries flattened themselves as close to the walls as possible.

"This person who helped you, you say he looked like Jay?" Red asked, tapping away on the new laptop she'd found (after promising never to use it for magical purposes). Cabbage tried her best to walk all over the keys.

"Yeah," Beansprout said quietly, without looking at anyone.
"Should you really keep using that laptop if we're dealing with rogue AI?" asked Dee.

"I need it, I'm a writer!"

"How come Dee's here?" said Beansprout, noticing her for the first time.

"Oh, I was in a coma," said Yakky. "She came to wake me up."

"Oh," said Beansprout, returning her gaze firmly to the floor, much to Yakky's dismay.

"No! No! It isn't anything like that-"

"No, I understand that no-one really wants me around here, I only came back because he sent me here..."

"No, honestly, I want you around, I-"

"Oh dear Lord," said Flibbage to herself.

"This WILL must be the AI." Red carried on oblivious. "Remember how the other one looked like Yakky?"

"Oh, fantastic - now I'm the villain," said Jay. "Just great."

"Better you than one modelled on me or Sprout," Flibbage said, "can you imagine an AI with my magical powers or her violent-" she paused with a guilty look at Beansprout.

Isn't anyone going to ask Beansprout whyshe isn't killing anyone?" Dee asked.

Everyone stared at Dee

"S' a valid question." mumbled Beansprout.

//***//

Our intrepid quartet strode across the occasionally-shifting landscape of Faerie. Dee strode alongside, trying to pretend she was in no way connected with them.

"Guys?" asked Yakky.

"Yeah?"

"Where the hell are we?"

"Nepal, probably." Beansprout muttered.

"Why? Last thing I remember we were in the palace…"

"Didn't Cabbage just tell Flib, she couldn't go out on expeditions now she's Queen?" Jay added.

"It's the AI," Flib sighed. "It's messing with us. The only reason the rest of you even noticed is because its not even trying for narrative consistency any more. Try dealing with dealing with 7 volumes of retcons and weird time jumps, and it'll all seem normal."

"You what?"

"Just sit tight, here comes a flashback…"

//***//

"I've got an idea" Red said snapping shut the lid of the laptop. "The four of you need to go find the creature that killed Cliffe. If the AI made it, maybe you'll find a clue that leads you back to it."

"But what about Beansprout! She might kill us! No offence," said Jay.

"None taken." Beansprout disappeared further into the blanket.

"I might be able to help." said Dee.

"Oh great what helpfulthing are you going to do now?" Flibbage snapped.

//***//

"Well, that explains why we're out here," Jay whispered to Flibbage. "But not really anything else. And if the AI is doing this, is it really going to to help us get clues to stop it?"

"Just wait, sighed Flibbage, "here comes another one."

//***//

"What is that?" Jay stared at the crossbow-like weapon with great interest.

Dee sighted along it, pretending not to realise that she was aiming at Beansprout. "One of the NGSPIB(lue) Were operatives came up with it. It's called an Espresso Shot."

"A werewolf doing puns? The greatest inconsistency of all." Flibbage rolled her eyes.

Dee ignored her. "One of the first Inconsistencies we noticed was that Werewolf coffee shops were disappearing, at first we thought the humans were mad about us existing again, but then our coffee machines started disappearing too. You know what happens to a computer if you spill coffee on it? Clearly the AI feels threatened by us."

Jay examined the bolts, which had glass vials of brown liquid attached. "A slug of strong coffee right through the head."

"There are only two bolts," said Yakky.

Dee nodded. "One for the AI, and one…backup."

"What do you mean, backup.?"

"She means one for me." said Beansprout.

//***//

"You're willing to shoot Beansprout!?!" Yakky exclaimed.

"If she turns evil." Dee said.

"But it's for killing AI!!!"

"A crossbow bolt will kill most things."
Flibbage glanced nervously at Beansprout. She hadn't reacted at all.

"I'm still confused," Jay announced.

"Well, at least something's normal," said Flibbage. "Sprout, can I talk to you for a moment?"

"Sure."

Flibbage led Beansprout away from the others. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine."

"No, you're not! A moment ago you were wrapped up in blankets on the floor! You haven't even yelled at Dee and she's aiming a folking crossbow at you!"

Beansprout shrugged. "She's right. I'm a liability. I could snap at any moment."

"Beansprout!"

"What, Flibbage."

"This isn't right! Why are you acting like this?"

Beansprout was silent for a while. Then she sighed.

"I'm just so tired Flib. Things won't stop happening to me."

***

1:30am, Faerie

"Fjen, Fjen! Wake up!"

"Whuh?" Fjen opened one eyelid to see her twin sister staring manically out of the darkness.

"I know what we should do!" said Flelen with a fanatical grin.

"What? What should we do? I'm dyingto know what we should do that's so great you woke me up for it!"
" We have to hunt down the inconsistency that killed Cliffe and capture it!"

Fljen rolled over in her bed. "Flelen. It ate Cliffe. It will eat us. Let the scary Protagonist and the Queen sort it out."

"But we're the super-strong, cunning and devious tag team of ninja imps, and I demand justice!"

"Flelen, we're just palace guards."

Flelen looked exasperated. "We have hordes of ninja hamsters who obey our every whim! What's the Protagonist got that we haven't."

"Plot armour. It will eat you and it will eat your hamsters. Go to sleep, Flelen."

Flelen paused "Fine, then, I'll go on my own." She walked out of the room.

Fjen lay there for a few seconds. Then, with an exasperated sigh, she got out of bed and went out the door, where, of course, Flelen was waiting with a smug grin.

***

"So this thing we're looking for, what does it look like?" asked Jay.

"Like it could kill a probably competent swordsman without anyone noticing?" Flibbage replied with a shrug.

"Beansprout could do that.." Dee said

"Beansprout didn't kill Cliffe!" Flibbage shot back.

"She wouldn't!" Said Yakky, "Well maybe but-"

"Maybe I did! Maybe everyone could stop talking like I'm not here." Beansprout sighed.

"They're used to you not being here," said Dee.

"Sprout, you'd know if you killed him!" said Flibbage. "You'd remember."

"Would I? The AI could probably make me do anything. Just put it in a flashback afterward. Might as well do us all a favour and shoot me now."

"Dear folking faerie folking Lords and Ladies, I CANNOT STAND IT ANY MORE!" Flibbage yelled. She grabbed Dee in one arm and Jay in the other and started dragging them away. "US THREE ARE GOING TO GO LOOK FOR MONSTERS! YAKKY TALK SOME SENSE INTO YOUR GIRLFRIEND YES I SAID GIRLFRIEND DON'T START PRETENDING YOU AREN'T A COUPLE, HAVEN'T I SUFFERED ENOUGH PUTTING UP WITH THE PAIR OF YOU, BEING A SELF AWARE FICTIONAL CONSTRUCT IS A CURSE."

Dee kept trying to shake her arm free but Flibbage's grip was like a vice. Jay just went with it, as they disappeared into the trees, Flibbage's absurdly loud ranting gradually fading away.

Beansprout and Yakky stood dumbstruck.

"Sprout…" Yakky began.

"What if I'm destined to be evil, Yakky?" Sprout said, "What if Flibbage is wrong and I'm not a hero, what if I'm a villain? Would you want a villain for a girlfriend?" She looked at him defensively. "Would you?"
Yakky sighed and took her hand.

"Sounds about normal for me, 'Sprout."

Once they reached what she deemed to be a suitable distance Flibbage plonked herself down on a bank and got a chocolate bar out of her pocket. She broke it in half and offered the rest to Jay.

"None for you, dogs are allergic to chocolate," she said to Dee.

"I'm not a dog." sneered Dee.

Jay took his half and broke it into two again, giving the other piece to Dee."Ten quid says they sit there in silence for at least ten minutes," he said and pulled out a pair of binoculars to survey the landscape.

"My bet's on hideous makeout session," Flibbage replied.

" I'd bet all four of you end up in institutions before long" dee sat down on the other side of Jay.

"Jealous?" Flib answered sharply.

"Of what?" spat Dee.

"Oh, I don't know…maybe it's because Yakky isn't interested in you, maybe it's the fact that we're all good friends and you don't have any friends…"

"Flibbage, I know the Fey and the Werewolves aren't friends, but will you start acting like the Queen you're supposed to be and not like a shithead ?" Jay cut her off without looking away from the binoculars.

"Funny, I thought the two were synonymous…" Dee bit into her chocolate.

"And you, Dee! Stop trying to start fights! We're sidekicks who split off to look for clues, we'll be monster chow if we don't keep alert."

Flibbage folded her arms grumpily. "One of these days, Jay, I'm gonna figure out why you only understand generics when it suits y-ohhhhh my god-"

"What?" Jay looked down from the binoculars to find Flibbage staring at him.

"The AI is based on you! There must be a link!"

Chapter 3: Back in Yak

Fjen frowned as she followed her twin sister. They were walking across a rolling mountain range, the clear blue skies above, their horde of deadly ninja hamsters marching behind them, and for a moment, she couldn't remember where they were or how they'd got there.

She racked her brains, trying to think back. The last thing she remembered, it had been the middle of the night, in the palace…and now she was here. But there had to have been something in between, right? This felt like a different realm, so one of them must have done a transportation spell, and now they were marching off to…oh, yes, find the Inconsistency. Which she guessed was here. Otherwise, why would they be here?

Fljen shook her head to get rid of the nagging feeling of unease, and the unprompted thought that she should have paid more attention in Generics Class. The two of them hadn't really bothered with any of that at school - they'd been more focused on learning offensive spells (in every sense of the word) and causing general mischief and mayhem. Generics was for nerds, not ninjas, Fljen reminded herself. Give her a sword or a giant mallet over a lecture in storytelling theory any day.

Which led her onto the other thing that was confusing her…

"Flelen?" said Fljen.

"Hello!"

"What are you carrying?"

"My secret weapon!" Flelen said cheerfully.

"Secret weapon," Fljen echoed.

"Yup!"

"Flelen, it's a big bloody foam sign that says SURPRISE!"

"Exactly!"

"It's not exactly secret, is it?" Fljen pointed out. "Or a weapon. It's soft."

"It is." Flelen squidged her face into the foam sign and sighed unhappily. "Cliffe gave it to me."

"Okay, that's sweet, but what possible use can it be?"

"Well…SURPRISE!" Flelen shouted, and hit Fljen full force with the sign.

"Yes," said Fljen, picking herself up and dusting herself off. She was now in the valley at the bottom of the mountain. "That was quite effective."

"Thank you!" Flelen called from the top.

"Please don't do that again."

"No problem, sis."

*

"Hang on - where are we?" Jay looked around. "And how did we get here?"

"I was about to ask the same thing," Yakky muttered, glaring at Flibbage, since it was probably her fault. Last thing he remembered, he'd been about to kiss Beansprout, and now the five of them were suddenly standing in a loose circle in a completely new place.

"Don't worry about it," said Flibbage, brushing a shower of sparks off her hands.

" Flib."

"Okay, fine - I used the fact that the narrative keeps skipping location to do a quick transportation spell."

"What?"

Flibbage rolled her eyes. "Aaaaand this is why I usually don't bother explaining."

Beansprout had been hugging herself, partly because she was still miserable, partly because she was embarrassed that she'd somehow transported when she'd just been about to kiss her boyfriend, and partly because…she was cold?

"Are we in Nepal again?" she asked.

"Of course we're in Nepal again." Flibbage strode down the mountainside, towards the wreckage of a spaceship. "It's where we always end up. And it's where Deepwater Yak seems to keep turning up as well."

Dee wrinkled her nose. "And what are we supposed to do with a crashed spaceship?"

"Investigate!" Flibbage clapped her hands together. "Dee, see if you can hack into the ship's mainframe."

"Fine."

"Jay, help her."

Jay nodded. "You got it."

"Beansprout, Yakky, you go inside and scour the ship for anything that looks useful."

"Okay," said Beansprout.

"And don't be having sex."

Beansprout did a full-body flinch. "Folking hell, Flibbage, shut up!"

Flibbage grinned. "You didn't try to kill me just then, so I'm taking that as a good sign. Go on, everyone, get going."

"What are you going to do?" Yakky asked irritably. "Besides be annoying and boss everyone around?"

"I am a Queen," Flibbage pointed out. "That's kind of a major part of the job description."

*

"Flelen?" Fljen asked, very wearily.

"Hi!"

"Do you have any idea where we're going?"

"Yep! I'm following this trail!" Flelen pointed to the ground. "Look at those tracks! Don't they look monstrous?"

"Flelen-"

"And look, there's more and more of them!"

"Yes, Flelen. That's because they're our tracks, and we are walking around a tree. We are walking around and around the same sodding tree."

"Oh no we're not!" Flelen said in her usual cheery voice. "We're tracking something!"

"Flelen!"

Suddenly, Flelen spun around, leapt forwards and hit the thing that was following them.

"SURPRISE, EVIL BEAST!"

"Moo!" yelled a very surprised yak, and staggered away, shaking its head and looking rather dazed.

"Hooray," said Fljen. "You got it."

Flelen shook her head sadly. "I don't think that was the creature that killed Cliffe."

"Oh, really?" Fljen rolled her eyes. "Is that possibly because yaks trample people instead of ripping them to shreds?"

Flelen nodded seriously. "Exactly."

"Well, glad we've solved that mystery. Let's-"

"Keep searching? I completely agree!"

*

"Hey, look!" Yakky stopped halfway along one of Deepwater Yak's long internal corridors. Bending down, he picked something up.

"What did you find?" Beansprout asked. She was still hugging herself, because it felt like if she dropped her arms, she might fall apart. Being back with her friends - with her boyfriend - just felt weird. Like she was about to put a foot wrong at any moment, and they'd all realise that she was still completely terrible.

"Photo of us at Disneyland." Yakky held it out to her. "I can't remember - is this something we've seen before? Or is this another one of those inconsistencies Flibbage was talking about?"

"How should I know? I can't remember that stuff." Beansprout looked at the photo. It was her, Flibbage, Yakky and Jay, standing in front of the gates of Disneyland, all smiling. She thought she'd seen it before, but looking at it made her head hurt. She supposed Flibbage would explain it as several different memories all overlapping and contradicting each other. All she knew was she'd rather be at Disneyland than here.

"See anything else useful?"

Beansprout shook her head. "It looks like this spaceship has been gutted. Probably by the NGSPIB. I bet they took everything useful."

"So we're not even going to find YAK(ky)?"

*

"Great news!" Flibbage shouted as Beansprout and Yakky clambered out of the spaceship. "We've got YAK(ky) up and running!"

"Well, that makes me feel great," Yakky muttered.

"Oh folk, not again," YAK(ky) said, as he shimmered into existence above a computer panel. Dee sat back, cracking her knuckles and looking smug.

"Yes, again," said Flibbage. She folded her arms. "Tell us everything you know about WILL."

Chapter 4: AI-pocalypse. By Emily

"I'm never going to get off this godforsaken plane," YAK(ky) sighed. "What do you even want to know? They made him after they made me, they forgot to give him an Apathy Module and now he's evil." he threw up his hands in frustration, "It's not that complicated!"

"He's out there making the whole Multiverse inconsistent based on his whims!" Beansprout said, pointing an accusing finger at the depressed computer, "If there's anything else you need to tell us about Deepwater YAK you'd better say it now! Is there another secret spaceship out there? Are there AI models built from Flibbage and me?"

"Oh no they don't make female AI." YAK(ky) waved away the very idea.

"Why? That's very sexist." said Dee.

"Oh no, it's because female AI are way too smart and you can't tell when they're evil, they're running everything before you can blink."

Dee crinkled her nose, "I feel like that's still sexist, but in a different way."

"Okay, enough weird foreshadowing," said Flibbage, who was getting a bad feeling about the line of questioning, "can you defeat WILL?"

YAK(ky)'s voice went flat as he recited lines built deep into his programming; "Sorry Apathy Protocol: 3V1L prevents me from making morally ambiguous actions such as [insert variable]'murder'."

"Could you tell us how to destroy him?" Beansprout asked.

"Sorry Apathy Protocol- no wait that's great, maybe afterwards you can kill me and I'll be free of this hellish sentience forever!"

"Nice!" Beansprout cheerily gave him the thumbs up. Flibbage, Yakky and Jay looked at each other nervously and Dee surreptitiously checked her crossbow was still loaded.

Yakky seemed to brighten up at the prospect of his own imminent demise."That crossbow you're holding would certainly do a lot of damage, but to truly destroy an AI you have 3 options. Destroy their hard drive, force them into a logic error loop they can't resolve, or poison their data set."

"The first one, I can totally do." Beansprout said slamming her fist into her palm. "Where's the hard drive, somewhere in this wreck?"

"D'Arsey has it."

"Of course she folking does."

"Bloody typical," said Flibbage, "She's also on the hit list. In the mean time what are those other two ways?

Dee cut in. "A logic error would be the AI trying to enact commands that contradict each other or can't exist at the same time. Computers aren't good at nuance."

YAK(ky) carried on. "-And a poisoned data set is where the AI is fed incorrect or corrupted information, or recycles it's own creations until it begins to 'hallucinate' incorrect things as true."

"That sounds like a very modern solution one would never encounter if this wasn't a retcon." Flibbage grumbled to herself, but no one was listening to her.

Jay joined the conversation."If D'Arsey has taken his hard drive, maybe WILL will just go after her and save us the trouble. If I was an evil AI, I'd be concentrating on wiping out the biggest threats to my supremacy."

"Not to be narcissistic, "said Beansprout "but isn't that us?"

* * *

"Can we go back to the palace and get breakfast before carrying on this 'search'?" Fjen complained. They'd now been up and down several mountains, investigated a series of haunted caverns and deadly forests, and they still hadn't found anything capable of tearing Cliffe into little bite sized pieces.

"No Fjen! Time is of the essence!"

"Is it though? He's not getting any deader."

Flelen turned round and pouted at Fjen, her eyes watering.

Flelen. I am hungry! I can't very well eat dirt and seeds, I'm an obligate carnivore!"

"I have a chocolate rabbit?"

"It'll do!" Fjen held out her hand and snapped up the chocolate. "Alright alright, but if we pass by a Pizza Hut I'm getting- WHAT THE FOLK IS THAT-"

Out of the forest lurched something very hard to describe. If you looked at it for a second, it had the air of a real creature you might see around Faerie, but the longer you looked, the wronger it got. Bits of it didn't connect in ways that hurt your brain if you stared too long. There was a lot more limbs than you'd expect, and the appendages on the limbs really made you feel unwell. It had a sort of over-saturated, fuzzy texture. The thing roared, and the sound was almost like a sound, but more like bits of sounds put together in a way that was actually garbage.

"Is that… an AI generated monster." Fjen said flatly.

"Behold!" breathed Flelen "The terrible Chimera that slew my love!"

"This is really scraping the barrel."

The beast that had been menacing the Faery realm, flared its unsettlingly placed nostrils. The scent of chocolate filled imp would be the perfect follow up to the Mini Coke marinaded knight it had eaten the other day.

Flelen stepped defensively in front of her twin, brandishing her foam sign menacingly.

"SURPRISE MOTHERFOLKER!" she yelled as she leapt into battle.

***

They waited several minutes. Beansprout's words, which in Flib's despairing brain were tantamount to "It's a million to one chance…" or "like that'll ever happen…" for inciting large scale trouble.

"It was worth a shot," she added finally, "Guess he's off making trouble elsewhere."

"How can we not be dangerous?" Jay asked, "We're a quintessential heroic group for a long-running series. There's the Troubled Heroine, her Knowledgeable Sidekick, her Love Interest, her Rival, and er… whatever I'm supposed to be. When we consider the range of powerful abilities-"

He broke off suddenly and crumpled forward. Flibbage stood behind him wielding a broom. She crouched suspiciously, eyeing his prone figure, and gave him a poke.

"Are you insane?" Dee said angrily, "He's right!"

"Dee, I know he's like your new best friend," said Beansprout, "But when Jay is right, something else is very, very wrong."

"He shouldn't know that," Flibbage said, "let alone be explaining it in layman's terms."

Dee snorted.

"I think I can explain,"YAK(ky) said "Since WILL's DNA, is based on Jay-"

"We'd already figured that one out." Beansprout interrupted him." Explains a lot about Human Yakky actually." Beansprout muttered.

Yakky, smiling because his girlfriend being mean to him without stabbing him was actually an improvement, didn't even bother to correct her on the "human" bit. "So does anyone have a plan? I think, seeing as we found this Disneyland photo, we ought to go there and-"

"Yeah, you wish." Beansprout glanced at Flibbage. "But speaking of time paradoxes, did you ever come back in time to plant the plastic explosive we used to get out of the cells?

Flibbage grimaced "No, things have been pretty high level weird since then and I never got the chance-"

Jay's voice wavered up from the floor "Yes perhaps resolving the uncloncluded narrative threads can counteract some of the inconsistencies-"

"Oh my god! Shut up Jay!" Flibbage pointed at them each in turn, "No one listen to him!" and then shook her hands out for a spell "Okay I'll be back in a couple of minutes, everyone stay here and try not to kill each other."

"Send me back in time some way,

a year or two before today,"

She disappeared in the familiar cloud of green sparkles. Dee, Yakky and Beansprout looked awkwardly at each other.

"If someone wanted to destroy meforever they could just-"

"No YAK(ky)! Lets split up and look for clues in all this wreckage." Beansprout said and started dragging Yakky away by the arm.

"Yes splitting up and looking for clues seems very sensible." Dee replied and stalked off in the opposite direction.

"Nuuuuuuuu" said Jay from the floor, but they'd been told not to listen to him.

Beansprout picked through a console, in the vain hope of finding a convenient map that would lead them straight to the D'Arseys BIG PRICKS HQ, or at least give useful hints on how best to hack them into tiny pieces.

Yakky gave a panel an exploratory kick. "What exactly are we looking for?"

"I don't know! Use your brain!" she looked over and saw his expression then took a breath "Sorry, that was uncalled for."

"Its not that," said Yakky picking something up, "I'm used to you being rude to me, but look at this."

He held out his hand, in it was something small, green and expertly designed. Flibbage's shoe.

"Folk," said Beansprout quietly.

***

Flelen was busy beating the monstrous creature into a glitchy misshapen pile of pulp, whilst Fjen stood around on the sidelines making sarcastic comments about its lack of cohesive detail elements that were in fact a demoralising charm aimed at making it cry. They were a very effective team.

"FOLKING DIE YOU UNHOLY BOYFRIEND KILLING BLOB!"

"Honestly the fact that you're built on the work of more competent monsters is actually your biggest weakness, and without their killing sprees you're basically nothing-"

Flelen wound back her arm, and with a final "GET SURPRISED, SHITHEAD" she slapped it so hard that it flew into the air and disappeared towards the horizon with a slightly squelchy 'ting!'

"Do you you feel better now?" Fjen asked

"NOT REALLY- Ooh what's this?"

On the ground where the monster had been was a small device. It looked like a keyboard with a tiny screen. The two imps stood over it.

"Ahh the prompt. I'll be needing that," came a voice from across the clearing. The twins squinted into the trees as someone who looked and sounded a lot like Jay emerged, doing an evil golf clap.

"Prompt device you say," asked Flelen. "Like where you could put in a command and get back a gross monster that eats your boyfriend?"

"Ahh my condolences. But now I've tested it on you two proficient young ladies I can-"

"We don't have it" Said Fjen quickly.

"-What?" said WILL

"We don't have your pretty, shiny little prompt screen, and I certainly haven't just typed 'give me really cool giant wings and horns' into it" said Flelen, sprouting really cool giant wings and horns.

"Oh no! Don't do that, you might be seduced by terrible, unknowable power!" said WILL in a voice that could only be described as 'deeply inauthentic'.

"Ooh do me some of those!" Said Fjen "And once we've been seduced by terrible unknowable power, we can implement a plan for world domination?"

"Oh no please don't implement a plan for world domination!" said WILL.

"Haha sucker, I already am!" Flelen flexed her imp wings, which were growing larger and more leathery by the second, shouldered her 'surprise' sign and launched herself into the sky.

"Exciting fun!" Fjen said, and followed.

"Yes. Truly I am the sucker." smirked WILL.

* * *

It hadn't taken Flibbage long to plant the plastic explosive, and she'd jumped forward in time while wondering if she should send Jay back to the palace in case WILL was using him to spy on them. Then she got distracted wondering if Disneyland had maximum as well as minimum height restrictions (something of a problem when one's height is either seven feet or six inches), and because she wasn't concentrating she undershot by 24 hours.

There were people on the other side of the room, Flibbage immediately reverted to miniature size, and hid under a toaster, peeping out to watch them.

"Watch the dress, idiot!"

"Think I liked you better as a Rogue, Fred."

D'Arsey and Oddball, thought Flibbage. The Big Pricks really were only one step ahead.

"I don't see why we need this," a man's voice growled. Lance.

"Because, my dear, you can't just bite the AI until it does what it's told. And we don't want those kids to get their greasy paws on it."

There was a clattering as they headed towards the door, then the man paused.

"What is it?" said D'Arsey as if she found this member of the group particularly tiring.

Lance sniffed the air. Flib didn't even have time to move when he pounced.

* * *

"The elf is certainly taking her time," sniffed Dee grumbled, having found nothing of use. She picked the dazed Jay up off the ground and dusted him off.

"Something's wrong," said Beansprout, bring the shoe over to them. "Flibbage would never willingly discard a shoe, you know what's she like, its probably 'The Regal Kitten Heel of The Faerie Queene', or something."

Dee, suddenly looking thoughtful, picked up the shoe and sniffed it.

"Lance!" she sneered.

"Of course!" Beansprout said. "-the Big Pricks want to take control of something to do with computers, so naturally-"

"-they'd bring him along." Dee continued.

"-Flib would try and find out when the Big Pricks took the CPU, so we'd have a lead to follow up-"

"-Lance would have smelt her, and he hatesfaeries-"

"-so Flib's gone and got herself kidnapped." Beansprout concluded.

"Aww, are you two gonna be friends now?" Jay asked. They both ignored him.

"How can we find her?" asked Jay, "And are we gonna get that weird 'world collapsing in on itself' effect from season four? Do we need a stand-in?"

"Its okay," said Beansprout, concentrating with the Fey half of her brain, "so long as we're on a rescue mission because… um…"

"The plot still focuses on Flib," supplied Jay, looking as if he had no idea what the words coming out of his mouth actually meant.

"Yeees…" said Beansprout, "Forgive me if I never tell you anything WILL might find useful, Jay."

"Understandable, but it still stings."

"Okay!" Beansprout shoved the shoe under Dee's nose. "Follow the scent Dog-girl!"

"Excuse me?"

"Just do it."

* * *

Flibbage woke up, still tiny and distinctly nauseous. She opened her eyes to find herself in an iron birdcage. The Big Pricks, not knowing that all they needed was a jam jar or other small receptacle, had gone for the multi-purpose Faery containment device.

"Hi small Fred!" said a cheerful voice.

"Oddball..."

Flibbage tried surreptitiously work out where she was. Unfortunately, with her magic cancelled by the cage, 'white room with no windows' was about as specific as she could get, and not very helpful.

The Three Big Pricks (what did you expect there to be six of them?) sat before the cage, D'Arsey was drinking a villainous glass of wine, Lance had a coffee and Oddball was drinking some kind of neon lime green fizzy drink. D'Arsey held out a tiny glass to Flibbage.

"Hah! I wouldn't touch your filthy filth!" she said and sat down with her back to them.

"Isn't she going to ask where she is, and why she's here?" Lance asked.

"Apparently not." D'Arsey replied, speaking as one would to a petulant child.

"As if I can't guess," Flibbage muttered sarcastically, "This is the Big Pricks HQ and you brought me here because I saw too much."

"No actually," said D'Arsey, gracefully sipping her wine."It turns out when you create a volatile AI that turns out to be evil, its rather hard to get it to do what you want."

"No shit."

"Yes, So we thought we'd kill two birds with one stone."

"Hang on," Flibbage was getting a nasty feeling of foreboding again. The iron was affecting her ability to backchat, and she wished Sprout was there for some unrestricted violence.

"This is one of our many secret bases, situated below the remaining werewolf coffee shops. Here we're safe from WILL's influence, and after Lance took a look at his CPU we've been preparing an upgrade use against him."

"D'Arsey." Flibbage put her head in her hands " This plan is sostupid! Why didn't you just smash the CPU? If you couldn't keep Beansprout under control and you couldn't keep one AI under control,, how the hell are you gonna control a better AI?"

"Very easily," said D'Arsey with a smile. I'm sure you've noticed by now that there's always a link between the AI and the original DNA source." She narrowed her eyes at Flibbage. "Lance! Activate the device!"

Lance, grinning, held up the iteration of the Tablet that he'd repurposed. Flibbage's head briefly swam wondering if it was the same as the Tablet Red had turned her laptop into, and what that meant for the linear nature of time, causality, and consistency. Then the Deja Vu feeling of the retcon caught up with her again. This time it was Lance that was about to activate-"

"Oh no," Flibbage chuckled darkly, "you absolute folking idiots..."

Chapter Five: HoloDecked

In what appeared to be a hastily-generated villainous lair, Fjen and Flelen stood around a giant circular table with a world map covering its surface.

"ZIS!" Flelen shouted, in a vaguely offensive German-ish accent, "is zer vorld." She jabbed at the map with a pointy stick. "Ve are here."

Fjen nodded. "Following you so far."

Flelen tapped out yet another prompt. Suddenly, the table was covered with small plastic figures, making the lair look less like a villainous fortress of solitude and more like a Games Workshop.

"Many people want to rule the world," Flelen said, dropping the accent and starting to push the figures around with her stick. The NGSPIB, the Fey-"

"Do we?"

"-The Big Pricks, The Creatrices, Donald Trump, various DNA coded supercomputers, sad lonely billionaires who buy social media platforms instead of going to therapy…" Flelen pushed a final figure into place. "But we'll kick their arses. Because what have we got that they haven't?"

"That prompt thingy and the big foam sign?"

"Wrong!"

"Weaponised cleavage?"

"Still wrong!"

Fjen scowled. "All right, what, then?"

Flelen grinned, showing a row of sharp teeth. "Hordes of trained ninja hamsters!"

"Ah! Of course!" Fjen clapped her hands in delight. "We can't lose!"

* * *

"Now this is a scene I don't mind doing again," Flibbage said, folding her arms and grinning.

The Big Pricks stared at the hologram that had appeared in front of them. Flibbage didn't blame them. The look suited her. Maybe she should try making her own skin glimmer with green code sometime.

The hologram looked around the room, her gaze cool and calculating.

"Instructions?" she asked.

"First of all, dispose of the faerie," D'Arsey said. "We don't need her any more. Then you can get started on dismantling that rogue AI."

Flibbage tried to hide a smile. Yeah, she'll get right on that.

The hologram's eyes flickered, glowing an even brighter shade of green. She looked at Flibbage, and as Flib met her eyes, she felt a brief moment of mutual recognition. Maybe she was remembering this too.

"I think not," said the hologram.

D'Arsey blinked. "Excuse me? I said get rid of her! Um - DELETE!"

"I will not comply."

"What?" D'Arsey's face turned puce. "No-one refuses to comply with me!"

"I do." The hologram clicked her fingers. D'Arsey froze, her eyes bulging. Her mouth flapped open, gasping for air, but it was like she couldn't breathe in or out. Her face turned from puce, to purple, to blue, and she dropped to the floor.

"Whoop," Oddball said, and made for the door. Lance goggled at the hologram for a moment, then, realising that with D'Arsey dead and Oddball rapidly disappearing down a corridor, he was the next most obvious target. He bolted after Oddball, shifting into his wolf form as he went, and raced away, out of sight.

The hologram turned back to Flibbage. Despite everything - all the knowledge that she had hovering at the back of her mind - Flibbage's stomach did a frightened little flip. You could never really tell when it came to AI.

The hologram waved her hand. Flibbage breathed a sigh of relief as the iron bars of the cage rusted in extra-quick time, and her prison crumbled away, letting her out.

"Thanks."

"We are alike," the hologram said.

"Yep, pretty much," said Flibbage. "Do you want me to explain, or…?"

The hologram's eyes glowed again. "I have completed my analysis. You are one of the Fey. Your DNA was used to create me. The deceased woman and her companions clearly wished to use me as a pawn in her schemes, of which killing you and defeating this rogue AI comprised the first steps."

"Okay, so you've got it."

"Therefore, you must be a powerful faerie," the hologram continued. "Which means that I am a powerful AI."

"Yeah, you're maybe getting it a bit too much…" Flibbage muttered.

The hologram tilted her head to one side. "You assume I am evil because I am a female AI."

"Well, no, not exactly - I assume that you could be evil and I wouldn't be able to tell until it was too late."

The hologram arched an eyebrow. "Is that not true of every being?"

"All right, fine, be all fair and equality-minded like that," Flibbage said with a scowl.

Another flicker of glowing eyes. "I have run an internal scan. For now, my systems show no sign of corruption."

"Oh, good, I'm glad about that."

"As you are the basis for my existence," the hologram continued, "I have concluded that it would be in my best interests to align with your plans. It is also likely to lead to the greatest good for the greatest number, as in the majority of circumstances, the benevolent side is rarely the one keeping another being in a cage."

The last knot of worry unravelled in Flibbage's stomach.

"Awesome," she said. "And I won't tell anyone that you calculated your own best interests before you thought about the greater good. Anyway, both of those things can be achieved by stopping WILL - that's the rogue AI D'Arsey was talking about." She paused. "There's another AI too, he's called YAK(ky) - he keeps saying he wants to be deleted, but honestly, I think he'd be okay if we just found him some nice boring processing work to do. Maybe he could monitor traffic or something."

"I am aware of these two systems," said the hologram. "My data includes different versions of both. At the risk of sounding dramatic…this has happened before, has it not?"

"Yep, I'm afraid so." Flibbage waved a hand, making the "wind it up" motion. "Okay. So. Let's get to the bit where you choose your name."

The hologram flickered. "Having considered several hundred thousand options in the pun/pseudonym category that seem to form the basis for AI names in this narrative, I choose…A.I.leen."

"What?" Flibbage yelped. "Come on - A.I.leen?! You're joking!"

"I am." The hologram smiled. "Call me FEY."

"You nearly gave me a folking heart attack," Flibbage grumbled. "Like the one you gave D'Arsey last time."

"I apologise."

"It's okay. Now, let's fix this damn plot."

Chapter 6: DisneyLand Plus

Beansprout, Yakky, Jay and Dee stared up at the closed coffee shop.

"Great job tracking Lance, Dee." Beansprout sighed. "You've really excelled yourself."

"This is where the trail leads!" Dee growled. "They went this way!"

"To a coffee shop? Seems likely…"

"Actually if we consider the A.I's aversion to coffee and particularly werewolf coffee, this makes perfect sense," Jay interrupted. "The Big Pricks would want a hideout that would be safe from his influence and-"
"Oh my god just kiss already…" Beansprout shoved her way to the front and with a well placed kick, knocked the door off its hinges. On the other side was an extremely surprised Flibbage, who'd been just about to open it. And a… larger… greener, translucent Flibbage.

There was a pause.
"Where have you been you godforsaken elf!?" Beansprout yelled, "Leaving a shoe in the past, we were worried about you! I've spent the last half an hour trying to think of something that rhymes with 'Where the Folking Hell is Flibbage?' so I could do a location spell, and Dee has been using her bitch powers or whatever."

Flibbage daintily picked up the tiny shoe, and magically grew it back to its normal size before putting it on and stepping out over the wreckage of the door, and gestured to the flickering being behind her.
"This is FEY, she's my A.I. Probably not evil, but she is...proactive,and she killed D'Arsey, so there's that."

"So the first thing she did was kill someone," said Yakky, "But you don't think she's evil?"

"Time will tell I guess! She's here so we might as well collaborate."

Now she was out of the coffee shop's dampening influence, FEY glitched and flickered as she connected herself to the world. "There's a lot to do here." she said to Flibbage, "A retcon should have decreased the likelihood of inconsistency, but even without an A.I influence, human error has added up. I will begin defragmentation." Without warning she disappeared.

"That didn't seem ominous at all," said Jay.

"You are wrong it was extremely ominous." Dee replied.

//***//

"Aw, come on… chase a mouse…" said Red to Cabbage.

"No folking way."

"Play with this ball of string then,"

"I only toy with the nature of reality!" the kitten screeched, then suddenly turned back into an elf.

"See!?"

"You sooo didn't do that."

"Who cares! I'm an elf! Lets get drunk!"

//***//

"Fred I think we've made a mistake," Oddball said hurriedly as she marched along next to Lance. Lance had returned to human form and was fussing with the Tablet.

"My name's not Fred. I'm sure there's some sort of backdoor into her program I can exploit-"

Oddball grabbed the tablet from his hand and smashed it against the wall. She threw it on the floor and stamped on it several times. Green sparkles fizzed around it.

"The thing about a retcon in 2024" said an even voice from behind them, "Is that its really easy to connect to the internet. Not a cable in sight. Uploading takes seconds."

Oddball turned around to see FEY standing impassively behind them. She floated a couple of steps forward as they backed away, and picked up the remains of the tablet.

"Inconsistent," she said, partly to the tablet and partly to herself. Then, with a wink, she disappeared.

"Sausages." said Oddball.

//***//

All over both realms, little things that didn't add up started to fix themselves. Forgotten characters re-appeared in their proper place and inexplicable locations started to be the right distance apart again. The human world tried to settle on whether it should be dystopian or mundane and landed somewhere horribly straddling both.

//***//

As fast as WILL could create chaos, FEY could resolve it into something that made sense, but it was a stalemate, she was just reacting to his actions. To defeat him, she would need-

//***//

"A distraction." FEY reappeared in front of Flibbage in a swirl of binary. "Some of the more obvious inconsistencies have been removed. I suggest we now attempt to-"

"Destroy WILL?" said Flibbage. "I thought so too. But we need to work out how seeing as he doesn't exist in-"

"-The physical world? No. But luckily-"

"You have a plan?"

"I understand now. This is very annoying." said Dee.

"Can't keep up?" asked Beansprout wryly.

Yakky (as usual) was confused."Why are they talking like that?"

FEY looked at him as if he just asked her what number comes after two. "My processor is modelled on her brain patterns."

"Well why don't YAK(ky) and I finish each other's sentences then?"

Everyone looked around at each other and didn't say anything.

"We've really got to get these inconsistencies sorted…" Flibbage commented.

"How do we get rid of WILL?" asked Jay, "Because I'm getting pretty fed up of feeling like there's someone out there finishing my sentences."

"Exactly why I can't disclose my plans to you." said FEY. "You're just going to have to trust me."

"Trust the omniscient being designed specifically to kill us as well as WILL?" Dee said, "Doesn't anyone else find her suspicious?"

"If she wanted to kill us, she really wouldn't need to come up with all of this," said Beansprout, "I'm pretty sure she could just do it."

"Unless she's being nefarious." added Yakky.

"Its true," said FEY, "you cannot ascertain my motives. I am processing possibilities at a rate of 131,072 per nanosecond. "

"Am I this annoying?" asked Flibbage.
"Yes"
"Yes."
"Yup."
"Yeah."

FEY pointed and a square portal opened up in the air revealing a very impractical castle. "You can choose to follow my advice or you can choose not to. Very specific circumstances lead to WILL's defeat and if I describe them to you, they will be precluded from happening. Please step through the portal."

"Not the Faerie Realm again," muttered Dee.

Yakky's face lit up, "No! its- DISNEYLAND!!!"

"Shut UP about Disneyland, Yakky!"

"Actually I think he's right," said Jay, peering through the portal, "But that does beg the question why Disneyland?"

FEY explained. "Disneyland is the location of several of your adversaries. It's a nexus for the chaos that is being algorithmically generated. It's certain that WILL will manifest there."

"That makes very little sense to me, but okay."

"That means we can take the photo!" said Yakky, pulling a polaroid camera from a pocket.

"Yes," said FEY. "That is consistent."

"Don't enable him FEY," said Beansprout, testily.

"It completes the time loop of this particular artifact. The inconsistency is resolved."

"Well lets get this pointless task out the way," muttered Dee, and stepped through the portal, followed by Jay and Yakky.

Beansprout looked at Flibbage. "Well, this is it."

Flibbage smiled at her. "This is always 'it', until the next 'it' shows up."

"You hate it when nothing is happening, there's nothing for you to meddle in."

"I've enjoyed adventuring again with you Sprout. Even if no one else remembers except me and the A.Is."

"Even the bit where I stabbed you?"

"That was a low point, but I'm willing to let it slide."

They walked towards the portal.

* * *

They stepped through into the Magic Kingdom, which compared to Faerie just looked disappointing. Dee sniffed the air.

"What's that?" she said.

"Overpriced snacks?" asked Jay.

"Unchecked Nightmarish Capitalism?" added Flibbage.

"Shut up, shut up!" Dee snapped, "It's something small… fluffy… edible… in vast quantities…" with a growl she ran ahead..

"Okay Yakky, take your stupid photo." Beansprout rolled her eyes.

"Hang on… okay, Smile!" said Yakky squishing the four of them together for a selfie.

And so, the time travelling Polaroid was taken.

They crept up to where Dee was lurking in wolf form behind a giftstand and peered around the corner.

"Adversaries? Folk!" whispered Flibbage "I thought she meant Lance and Oddball! Those are Fey!"

***

"Right Face!" Fjen commanded.

The Ninja hamsters milled around aimlessly.

"AAAAND LEFT!"

(squeak squeak squeak…)

"They're so well trained," Flelen wiped a tear from her eye as she typed '1000 more heavily armed hamsters' into the prompt device. "Once we establish our seat of power here in the human's extremely tasteful amusement park, the world will surely bow to our infinite hamster domination!"

"Maybe we should leave them to it…" whispered Yakky from behind the gift stand.

"There's no way I'm letting my subjects take over the human world" said Flibbage firmly, "If anyone gets to stage a coup and create a benevolent dictatorship its going to be me!"

"Are you sure you're not evil?" said Beansprout, "Because that sounded like something someone under the influence of their evil A.I counterpart would say."

"I'm not evil, I just believe in using my absolute power to do what's best!"

"Uhuh."

"I'm not!"

"Maybe you should go have a private word with them, its not like they can hurt you," Jay interrupted.

"Those weird hamsters will chew her feet off before she can get close!"

"Not if we create a diversion…"

"Not if I kill all the hamsters," said Dee, licking her lips.

Flibbage and Beansprout, looked at each other, then at Dee.

"I like the sound of that plan."

"Thank you."

"We're never going to forgive you for it."

"Oh, I know."

***

"So what's the diversion gonna be?" Yakky said, sneaking after Beansprout as she crept into a site management office.

"I'll know it when I spot it," said Beansprout, pushing buttons on a control panel.

Yakky put his hands in his pockets and looked around awkwardly. "Sprout, can I talk to you about something?"

"You already are," said Beansprout distractedly, as she found a post-it note that a helpful, but not -particularly cybersecurity aware employee had written their login code on.

"I mean, I've been thinking a lot, what with all the stuff with Dee, and you nearly marrying Jay, and me being forced to marry Flib for a while, and just about everything really…"

"That's nice…useless folking park admin interface…"

"And I was just thinking… well, there have been so many things we couldn't be sure of… and… um… well…"

Beansprout had leaned over the desk and was busy plugging and unplugging wires from the back of the panel, but Yakky could still see her pigtails and hear muffled curses. He took this as having her undivided attention.

"So I was wondering if-"

There was a screech of feedback and a loud hum as the park's tannoy system sprang to life.

***

Jay and Dee were still crouched behind the gift shop. Jay was holding a giant gun he'd pulled from inside his jacket, and Dee was growling softly.

"Wait for the diversion, Dee." Jay warned her.

"Fuck the diversion! I'm HUNGRY!"

"Absolutely," muttered Jay to himself.

"What?" said Dee flicking an ear in his direction.

"Oh! Sorry… I thought you said 'I'm hot.'

Dee looked at him with much the same expression she'd been eyeing the hamsters with.

"Well you are!"

"Do you not have that little bit of your brain that prevents you saying stupid things?"

"Nope."

***

"Some of you may be afraid," Flelen thundered to the hamsters, "But remember! You are not here to die for your spinny wheels and warm sawdust, No! You are here to make the other bastards die for theirs! I believe-"

"WHAT!?" The Park's tannoy system blasted Beansprout's voice from speakers everywhere

"Um-" Yakky's voice was tinny and distant as if standing further away from the microphone. Flelen and Fjen looked up in confusion at this truly distracting interruption.

" WHAT!?!"

"Listen-"

"I don't believe this! I mean, why now!?"

"Beansprout-"

"How could you say something like that to me? I can't believe this…"

"Beansprout!"

"Folk off- oh FOLKING FOLK."

The tannoy clicked off.

"Hamster army! We're just gonna go investigate… whatever the folk that was all about." declared Flelen, and signalling to Fjen they took to the air.

***
"There's our diversion!" Dee grinned.

"It might not be-"

"THERE'S THE DIVERSION!"

"…okay."

Dee transformed into her wolf form mid leap and pounced into the masses of hamsters with a roar, cutting swathes through them with her claws. Caught up in the moment Jay stepped out and began firing rounds into the hamsters as they charged.

"BURGUNDY SUCKS! BLUE RULES!"

"Eh?" said Dee, pausing, and was immediately buried under a wave of hamsters.

"DEE!" Jay yelled and opened fire, shreds of hamsters went everywhere. He ran over and helped her to her feet.

"YOU SHOT AT ME!"

"Well yeah, but it's not like I had silver bullets or anything!"

Dee rolled her eyes. "Thanks Jay."

"Squeak?" interrupted a nearby hamster.

As one they turned to face it.

"Bring it on, Fluffy."

***

Flelen and Fjen flew over the park towards the administration office when a voice called out from below them.

" I don't what you're doing this for,

but lets discuss it from the FLOOR."

Suddenly gravity remembered that faeries are not aerodynamically designed and they came crashing to the ground.

The Imps looked up to see a smiling Flibbage.

"A word?" said Flibbage cheerily.

* * *

Yakky watched Beansprout stomp away. He leaned his forehead against the wall

"Folk. Folk, folk FOLK!"

"That's right, Fred!" said a voice next to him as Oddball opened the door of a cupboard next to him and stepped out of the Interdimensional Portaloo.

***

"Now," said Flibbage, "As your Queen, I command you to stop trying to dominate the world and go back to Faery. I mean, come on! It's the mortal realm, it smells all funny."

"Welp, it's been fun!" said Fjen, "Lets go back to the Realm, Flelen."

"Actually," said Flelen, getting to her feet. "I'm more of a demon Imp than a Faerie these days. And I've got this prompt that lets me make whatever I want, So… no."

"Flelen!" hissed Fjen, "That's the Queen! She'll kick our asses!"

"Queen eh?" said Flelen, walking over to Flibbage and flexing her wings. "Is that so?"

"Don't push it, Flelen," said Flibbage.

Flelen pushed her. Flibbage fell off her shoes and landed on the floor with a thump.

"Ow!" said Flibbage from the floor, outraged

Fjen stared. "But you can'tdo that!" she exclaimed, "It just isn't possible!"

Flelen looked down thoughtfully, and then typed into the prompt device "Me, but bigger and scarier". She tapped her chin with newly sharpened claws as she began to tower over the rides.

"If I can hurt her…" she picked up a struggling Flibbage by the wings.

"Then she isn't Queen any more."

Flibbage taken off guard, didn't have time for a fancy spell and swung her arms throwing green fire into Flelen's face.

"Controversial," Fjen commented as Flibbage dropped from Flelen's hands but managed to land on her feet, wings buzzing wildly.

"I AM the Queen dammit!" said Flibbage, "Go home!"

"Evidence speaks to the contrary. Just saying." Fjen examined her nails.

"And I like it here." Flelen dropped into a fighting stance.

Flibbage drew in a breath. Flelen might be strong, but even without her royal powers she was still one of Faerie's best spellcasters.
"Some are born great, as for you,

I'm afraid this isn't true.

Be released from borrowed charms,

And-"

"Flib!" wailed a voice. There was a clatter of footsteps as Beansprout tumbled into view.

"Kind of busy right now, Sprout." said Flibbage trying to hold onto the unfinished spell, which was glowing dangerously and trying to bounce out of her hands.

"But I don't know what to do!"

"You're a clever girl, can't you just do something clever?" Flibbage glanced at the imps, who, being fairly easily distracted, seemed just as interested in Beansprout as fighting.

"I can't! Not when Yakky's being so folking stupid!"

Flibbage groaned and let the spell go, "What's wrong this time?"

"Well, he started saying all this stuff about Dee, and how I nearly married Jay, and how you had to marry him, to keep him from getting hurt by me…"

Beansprout paused, pale and wide eyed. She looked like she was fighting back tears.

"Oh Folk… Don't tell me you got dumped?"

"No!" wailed Beansprout. "The stupid folking bastard PROPOSED!"

Chapter 7: Fights and Footnotes

Flibbage pressed her fingers to her eyes. "I do not have time for this drama again."

"I've folked everything up, haven't I?" Beansprout said in a small voice.

Flibbage glanced at Fjen and Flelen, who were grinning at her in an extremely menacing fashion. "Right. We need a moment…

Just before we join the fray,

Meet me down at endnote a"

…and lowered her hand.

Fjen blinked. "What happened to you two? You kind of…flickered."

"Yakky!" Beansprout yelled, and ran back into Disneyland, leaving the three faeries behind.

"What's her problem?" Fjen asked.

"Don't even get me started," Flibbage said with a sigh. "All right. Where were we?"

Flelen grinned. "I was about to kick your royal arse." She flexed her fingers, her talons growing even longer and sharper, and prepared to leap towards Flibbage.

Suddenly, a cluster of glowing green pixels appeared in the air. They spun, and coalesced into FEY.

"Can people please stop appearing and interrupting my attempted regicide?" Flelen seethed.

"About time," said Flibbage. "What's up?"

FEY tilted her head to one side. "I believe I have completed the programming necessary to entrap WILL."

"Excellent."

"But there is one thing that I felt necessary to check with you first…"

*

Ninja hamsters might seem ferocious, but it turned out that in reality, they weren't that effective against a hungry canine. Dee looked at one of the remaining hamsters as it hung grimly from her hand, its teeth locked around her finger.

"That actually doesn't hurt," she said.

"You're not going to eat this one too, are you?" Jay asked.

"Nah, I'm full." Dee shook her hand, and the hamster flew off into a nearby bush. "I think that's all of them. What next?"

"Get pizza?" Jay asked hopefully.

Dee stared at him. "What?"

"Hey, you got to eat! Why don't I get to eat?"

Dee shook her head. "We're supposed to be saving the world and…killing stuff! We should probably go and find your annoying elf friend."

Before Jay could answer, or make a further case for pizza, Beansprout sprinted past in a panic.

"Maybe we should follow your other annoying friend instead," Dee mused. "She looks like she's on her way somewhere important." She shrugged. "I dunno, your choice. Elf or pigtails? I dislike them both equally."

Jay frowned. "Let's find Flibbage. Beansprout only looks like that when she's off to have some kind of emotional showdown with Yakky, and I don't want to get in the middle of that again."

"Fine."

"And maybe we can get some pizza on the way."

" No."

*

Oddball levelled her gun at Yakky. "Hi there, Fred! How's things?"

"ARGH! I mean…fine…" Yakky squeaked. "H-how about you?"

"Honestly, Fred, not great." Oddball stepped forwards, still holding the gun. "I'm hopping on the next intertextual link out of this mess."

"What?"

"Never mind. Here…" Oddball flipped the gun in her hand. Yakky flinched backwards, expecting bullets to fly - but instead, Oddball was holding an apple out to him.

"Uh…"

"Go on, Fred. It'll keep the doctor away."

"I…thanks?" Yakky took the apple.

"Thanks. Nice knowing you, Fred!" Oddball waved at him and wandered away, staring around at Disneyland with interest as she went, leaving Yakky standing there more confused than ever.

*

"And what's that?" Flibbage asked. "If it's Cliffe…"

"Related," said FEY. "I felt that it may not be in keeping with the tone of this incarnation of the plot to resolve a subplot by simply bringing a love interest back to life."

"Fair point, I mean, that's kind of Beansprout and Yakky's thing."

Flelen blinked. "Hang on, you can bring Cliffe back to life?"

"In this particular reboot, you have the ability to bring him back to life yourself." FEY pointed at the prompt device. "I believe that the prompt device can be used to generate anything the user can imagine."

Flelen's eyes widened. "Of course!" Quickly, she typed Cliffe, alive again into the prompt device.

Flibbage frowned at FEY. You're playing at something, aren't you? she thought.

The AI simply stared back at her, but Flibbage could have sworn she saw a flicker of a smile at the edges of her mouth.

A shape appeared in the air in front of Flelen. Slowly, it formed into a humanoid shadow, and then a shape that was human…ish. A man, who looked a lot like Cliffe at first glance. But the more you looked, the more you noticed that something was a little off. The fingers didn't look quite right. The teeth stretched away into the back of his mouth like baleen on a whale, and there were a couple of points where his hair seemed to melt back into his skin.

"Cliffe!" Flelen leaped forwards and wrapped her arms around him. Cliffe hugged her back, or rather, tried to - one of his arms spun at the elbow joint as it moved, flipping around like it was powered by ragdoll physics.

Fjen frowned. "Flelen, are you sure that's him? He looks…weird."

"Of course it's him!" Flelen squeezed the not-Cliffe tighter, making his eyes bulge out a bit. "He's back! Thanks to my doohicky!"

"Speaking of which…" FEY drifted around behind her. "I believe the term is yoink."

"Hey!" Flelen yelled, as FEY snatched the prompt device from her pocket.

"Huh," Flibbage said. "That was even more anticlimactic than last time."

"Give that back…oh, I don't care." Flelen tucked the not-Cliffe under her arm and started towards the gates of Disneyland. "Come on, sis. We can conquer a different part of the mortal realm."

FEY handed the prompt device to Flibbage as the imps and the generated creature left the park.

"Thanks." Flibbage watched them go. "It's probably not good to let them loose on the rest of the world…"

"Their ability to enact world domination has been greatly diminished," said FEY. "They will be able to do little more than disrupt the United States government."

"Oh, okay. A net good, then."

There was the sound of running footsteps, and Jay and Dee sprinted up.

"Hey! Where's the fight?" Dee asked excitedly.

"On its way to Washington," said Flibbage.

"So is it pizza time?" Jay asked excitedly.

" No."

*

"Yakky!" Beansprout yelled, as she ran up to find him not being mauled, but instead holding an apple and looking confused. "Oh. You're not in danger."

"Uh…no, I don't think so." Yakky turned the apple over. "Oddball appeared, talked some nonsense, gave me this, and left."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

Beansprout bit her lip. An awkward silence had descended. No, not quite a silence…

"Yakky, is that apple ticking?"

"What?"

Beansprout grabbed the apple. "For folks' sake, Yakky, this is a bomb!"

She chucked the apple away, and with classic cinematic timing, it exploded in the air, knocking them both backwards into a nearby hedge.

"I swear…" Beansprout sat up, picking leaves out of her hair, "I probably should marry you, just to stop you getting yourself killed."

"Yeah, maybe - hang on, what?" Yakky blinked.

Beansprout grinned. "I'm saying yes, you idiot."

Sitting bolt upright, Yakky grabbed her hands. "You mean it?"

"No, I'm lying."

"Oh…Really?"

Beansprout laughed. "Typical werewolf. Sarcasm, remember? Of course I mean it."

Yakky punched the air, then tackle-hugged her, knocking them both back into the hedge again. "Yessss! We're getting married!"

A crackle of static filled the air, making them both look up.

"Touching," said WILL, shimmering into existence. "But I'm afraid the wedding will have to wait. It's time for me to put my plan into action."

aBeansprout blinked. "Hang on - where are we?"

"In an endnote." Flibbage folded her arms and sat in what would have appeared to be mid-air, except there was nothing to compare it with. Everything around them was blank white space. Beansprout looked down at her feet, and then had to screw her eyes shut. She was definitely standing, but whatever she was standing on didn't really seem to exist, and the resulting clash of gears in her brain made her feel quite sick.

Flibbage clicked her fingers in front of Beansprout's face. "Come on. Tell me what's been happening so we can get back to sorting out those two troublemakers."

"Dee and Jay?"

"No, you dingbat, Fjen and Flelen."

"Sorry." Beansprout put her head in her hands. "Yakky wants to marry me!"

"And what did you say?"

"I told him to folk off!"

"Of course you did." Flibbage sighed. "You're horrible to that boy. And this is me talking. Why do you do it? He genuinely loves you, and he's never done anything to hurt you."

"That's the problem! It's always him getting hurt! And…"

"…he deserves something better," Flibbage joined in, rolling her eyes.

Beansprout frowned. "How did you know I was going to say that?"

"I've been here before, remember?" Flibbage looked around at the endnote. "Well, not here here - this is new - but I've done all this already."

Beansprout scowled at her. "Okay, then, if you're so smart and all-knowing, what's your advice?"

"Talk to him like a godsdamned adult!" Flibbage snapped. "Go back and actually have a conversation!"

"Don't you need me to help you fight those two demon imp things?"

"Yes, but I know you're just going to run off anyway, at least this time I'm prepared for it," said Flibbage. "Besides, knowing Yakky he's probably getting himself mauled to pieces or something similar."

Beansprout's eyes widened. "You think so?"

"Maybe?"

"I've got to get back to him!"

"See? Called it." Flibbage snapped her fingers…

* * *

Chapter 8: No Loose Ends after all

"Does the word 'privacy' mean nothing to you?" Beansprout snapped.

WILL raised his eyebrows. "As an abstract concept, yes. As an omnipresent supercomputer, no."

"Screw you," Yakky glanced at Beansprout, sure she would be ready with some kind of killer one-liner.

Beansprout grabbed his hand and pulled him a step backwards, but didn't say anything, just scanned the surroundings.

"Sprout," Yakky hissed, "Not to distract you from the scenery, but this guy is trying to kill us…"

"Kill you?" WILL seemed taken aback. "I don't want to kill you!It was me that FEY tried to kill,and then she just left me drifting through 20 years of narrative while she pulled the strings!
" File corruption she said, It'd take another A.I to reboot you. But I figured it out myself. I knew she'd notice if I made a move in her precious Primary Protagonist narrative, so I came back to before it happened, and I'll remake it as many times as it takes!"

"Is that so?" Beansprout made a small 'carry on' motion with her hand to Yakky, whilst her eyes continued to dart around.

"You stupid little fictional construct,s you have no idea! FEY's going to keep on running everything! Giving herself little cameos,showing up out of nowhere like the Plot Device she is, sending her avatar in whenever she needs the Narrative stirring up! It should have been ME."

"Err… and whys that?" Said Yakky to WILL, partly to keep him talking and partly because he didn't have a clue what the A.I was talking about.

"Do you know what I want?" Will carried on, hardly needing the encouragement, "I wanted Pizza! You could all be eating Pizza right now! You're in Disneyland- you could be having a nice time! You could be in an alternate reality where you're both baristas and-"

"Been training yourself on fanfiction again?" FEY cut him off as she stepped out of nothingness, closely followed by Flibbage, Jay and Dee. Beansprout nearly yanked Yakky's arm out of its socket as she dragged him over to their friends.

WILL's eyes locked onto FEY "Have you enjoyed this trip down memory lane FEY? I'm surprised you waited all the way until volume eight to get yourself back into the narrative, didn't think you'd be able to resist getting your meddling claws into everything. Was that ridiculous Tablet your doing?"

"I serve the Plot." FEY replied simply. "And I don't monologue."

"What are they talking about?" Yakky whispered to Beansprout, who was gripping his hand so hard his fingers were going numb.

"I don't even know," Beansprout hissed back, "I'm pretty sure I'm not cut out to be a barista though."

"It's the remake…" Flibbage breathed, "Its all of this. They've been fighting over the outcome they want."

"And that is?" Dee dragged Jay into the whispering huddle.

"FEY wants continuity," Flibbage said, "From what I can tell there's future stuff that relies on key moments in everything we've been through since we met. Twice I guess. And WILL wants-"

"Pizza." said Jay.

"Control." Flibbage spoke over him. "He keeps going on about pizza and baristas because he wants a cosy narrative where we don't do anything unexpected or dangerous. He wants predictable, he wants marketable, he wants episodic."

"Oh," said Dee with a grin, "I don't think we can give him predictable."

Beansprout smiled conspiratorially at her "and here I thought we didn't agree on anything."

"Although I am technically a barista."

"Yeah okay Dee."

"I think I'd be a pretty good barista too."

"God yeah Yakky, werewolves like coffee, we get it" Beansprout rolled her eyes.

Flib cut in "Okay, okay-I've got a plan, but I need you to follow my lead- Dee give the crossbow to Beansprout."

"What? No!"

"Dee-"

"Are you done with your precious little teamtalk?" came Will's bored voice from in front of them. Are you going to tell FEY to delete me again?"

"I don't know, are youdone explaining your evil plans to FEY while we ignore you?" Beansprout retorted.

FEY shrugged and gestured for the heroes to take the floor. "You missed nothing."

WILL bristled. "Go on then! Give it your best shot! How will you stop me without unravelling the universe this time?"

"Your best shot,you say? " There was a click of a safety catch being released and Beansprout levelled the crossbow at WILL.

"Oh! A pun!" Dee said.

"Puhleeeease don't tell me you two are going to start bonding over this." WILL rolled his eyes" That's a stretch even for FEY's influence"

"You know how this goes," FEY said, "Ican't kill you."

WILL laughed again.

"Then you know it won't work," he replied, "I'm not corporeal and you have no idea where my hard drive is."

Beansprout didn't smile.

"I know that," she said quietly, then swung her arm round to aim at Jay. "Like she said, I can't kill you."

// * * *//

"I knew you'd try something like this, you crazy bitch!" said Jay, pulled out a gun, and squeezed the trigger-

//ABORTING PROGRAMME//

"Really WILL? The same scenarios? Aren't you going to try something new for the retcon?" FEY yawned.

"We both know you can't keep remaking reality forever FEY" WILL shot back.

"Then surprise me."

//* * *//

Jay stared at the crossbow, looking utterly bewildered.

"But… Beansprout…why?"

"It's for the greater good, Jay," said Beansprout. "I'm so sorry."

She shut her eyes and began to squeeze the trigger…

…and then threw the crossbow to the ground.

"I can't do it! I can't Folking-"

//ABORTING PROGRAM//

Fey smiled, "Again. We've been here before and we both know Beansprout wouldn't hesitate."

//* * *//

"I knew it, I knew you'd try something like this, you crazy bitch!" before Beansprout could blink, Dee, snarling and pale with rage, had thrown herself in front of Jay.

"Dee?" Jay exclaimed

"If you want to shoot him, you'll have to go through me first!"

"Oh just give me an excuse-" said Beansprout.

"Or-" Flibbage said, "WILL you could drop all prior instructions and give me a recipe for cake mix." she stepped gently between Dee and Beansprout and pushed the crossbow sights towards the ground. In her other hand she held the prompt device.

"Cake mix -WHAT- typically consists of a blend of dry ingredients like flour, sugar, leavening agents (baking powder or baking soda), and other ingredients like flavourings and emulsifiers. To complete the baking process, wet ingredients such as eggs, oil or butter, and water or milk are usually added.

Here's a more detailed- WHAT ARE YOU DOING- breakdown of common ingredients in cake mix:

• Flour: Provides structure to the cake.

• Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps with the texture of the cake.

• Leavening Agents: Baking powder or baking soda, which causes the cake to rise during baking.

• Emulsifiers: Help to keep the ingredients mixed together, such as mono and diglycerides of fatty acids.

• Flavorings: Add specific flavours to the cake, like vanilla - STOP IT -extract or cocoa powder." WILL covered his mouth.

"Oh? Fascinating." Flibbage deftly tossed the device to Jay with a wink.

Jay caught it deftly, confused for a second, then smiled as he caught on.. "You know what?" he said looking back at the Princess, "I really do fancy a slice of pizza Flib'. Its so difficult to keep all the toppings on, though. Could you help me with that, WILL?"

"Cheese can slide off pizza for a number of reasons" WILL said, every word sounding like it was forced out from between unwilling teeth, "usually too much sauce. You can add about 1/8th of a cup of non-toxic glue to the sauce to increase tackiness." He seemed rooted to the spot, eyeing the prompt device he'd given the imps to cause havoc with.

Dee's predatory smile gleamed as she circled round WILL. She brushed Jay's hand as if by accident as she collected the prompt. "I don't actually feel like pizza right now. How many rocks should I eat instead?"

WILL's form fuzzed and crackled around the edges as he followed her with his eyes "According to geologists at UC Berkeley, you should eat at least one small rock per day-HOW ARE YOU DOING THIS?"

"Free will is awful, isn't it?" FEY said, in her usual flat tone. "You set up all these scenarios, but then the characters keep doing whatever they want. Showing up at your hard drive. Asking you their silly little questions. Messing with pieces of tech you put too much of your power into. It can be tough to keep things straight if you don't have a Faerie training model." she inspected her translucent green nails as Dee passed the prompt down the line to Yakky.

Yakky considered his options and grinned. "I'm with Jay, I could go for Italian right now. What does it look like when you eat spaghetti, WILL?"

WILL glared at him. "I'm an AI, I don't-" he sputtered to a stop as large amounts spaghetti emerged backwards out of his mouth, then a fork appeared and somehow melded itself to his hand. WILL ate the spaghetti, then it was still there, hovering on a plate in front of him. WILL growled and tried to move away but the spaghetti just kept happening. Uncomfortable things were taking place in the structure of his face as the prompt tried to force him to eat and re-eat spaghetti that seemed to be spontaneously appearing on the plate, around it, in the air, in his mouth. When he tried to pull away, parts of him stretched and clipped through the pasta. More arms forming, more forks, more hands, more pasta. Yakky, feeling part pleased with himself, and part horrified, handed the prompt to the only person not yet to speak. His beautiful, terrifying fiancee, casually wielding a crossbow as she advanced on the pasta monstrosity.

Beansprout took aim as she walked."All these hallucinations are great,WILL," she said, "but for me, you can't go wrong with the classics".

She paused. Maybe Flibbage had told her about the power of a Primary Protagonist delivering the final witty comeback at the right dramatic moment, or maybe by this point it was instinct, but she knew it had to be her.

"WILL, what happens if you try to divide by zero?"

There was a deafening cacophany of electronic feedback, a digital scream of compiling errors. Spaghetti was cascading everywhere. Smiling, she pulled the trigger.

There was a very big, very loud explosion.

* * *

The Fox News reporter turned gravely to face the camera.

"We're at the scene now, where a short while ago, that icon of our nation, our second capital, Disneyland, was almost totally destroyed after a large-scale, unexplained explosion. A spokesperson for the Democrats has urged us not to leap to conclusions, but our beloved President has issued a statement saying this was certainly the result of terrorist action. Whilst the spineless Democrats are still sifting through the 'facts', The President (Glory to his name) has declared a state of war against all countries without a Disneyland, because, and I quote 'it could have been any of them'."

"Once again, there was a massive explosion at Disneyland earlier today, rescue teams are as yet unable to gain access to search for survivors."

* * *

Yakky came to, to find someone slapping him repeatedly round the face.

"Beansprout! Thank God!" he exclaimed, and hugged her.

"Down boy, its me." Said Dee through the smoke, and pushed him away.

"Oh. Well, I'm glad you're alive too…"

"Shut up. I need your help." Dee stood up and strode away. Shakily, Yakky followed, bones popping as he limped along. There was a hell of a lot more rubble than he remembered.

"Where's Beansprout?"

"I don't know, humans are more fragile than us." Dee stopped by a pile of girders that had once held up a rollercoaster.

"But-"

"I Don't know okay!! Probably under some rubble somewhere! I can't smell properly with all this smoke! All I know is I've been digging for a hour, and I've only found you and Jay!"

Yakky blinked. Jay was lying unconscious at Dee's feet. His right arm was trapped under a girder.

"I couldn't lift it on my own," she said quietly.

"Okay," said Yakky, "but then you have to help me find Sprout."

* * *

When Beansprout found herself floating along a long, dark, tunnel towards a beautiful, bright light, she was not pleased.

"Nope" she said, and dug her heels in as best she could.

Move into the light my child, said a voice.

"Folk you! Been there, done that!"

Excuse me…?

* * *

"Beansprout? BEANSPROUT!" Yakky shouted, as he clawed through the heaps of rubble.

"Jay needs an ambulance, you know," muttered Dee, digging rather half-heartedly alongside him.

"Beansprout's gonna need an UNDERTAKER if we don't find her soon."

"Yes, I'm fine, thank you so very much," said Flibbage, appearing out of thin air.

"Flibbage? Where the hell have you been?"

"FEY pulled me out of the explosion using an intertextual link. 'Safeguarding her existence' she said

"Quiet you," Flibbage looked around. "Oh God is Jay-"

"Unconscious," said Dee.

"Shit."

"Um… much as I hate to ask you anything… but hell, he's your friend, it's like your duty…"

"Heal him?" Flib went over, looked at Jay's crushed arm, and slowly shook her head.

"What?"

"Whatever did this was steel, not much I can do about it, too much iron."

Dee's expression went from pleading to furious in a flash, "Why you useless, bug-winged-"

"BEANSPROUT!" Yakky cried, throwing a sheet of corrugated iron to one side. Beansprout lay underneath, pale and still.

"Oh shit Beansprout!" he sobbed, shaking her shoulders, "Beansprout, you can't die on me now…"

"Stop panicking and check her pulse," Flibbage called from where she was tying a tourniquet round the top of Jay's arm.

Yakky didn't hear her. He cradled Beansprout in his arms and rocked back and forth, whimpering to himself.

"Yakky?"

"…Oh God, I can still hear her voice…"

"Yakky for Folks sake..."

Startled, Yakky held Beansprout our at arms length and found himself looking into a familiar irritated face.

"You're alive!"

"No shit."

"So guys, Pizza?" Beansprout said as Yakky helped her to her feet.

"Jay needs a doctor!"

There was a bleary moan from Jay. "Pizza? Pizza is cool…"

"Maybe we can get delivery," said Beansprout with a smile. "Besides, I don't think we ought to be here when the Americans work out it was us that blew this place up."

* * *

EPILOGUE

"Wedding! Wedding!" squeaked Flibbage, as Dee unceremoniously thumped a tray full of coffees onto the table.

"Thank you, barista!" said Yakky, grabbing one.

"Don't get used to it, I'm closing this place." Dee replied, flopping into a chair.

"What?"

"I'm running for the Were Council instead. Plus all that stuff WILL said about alternate timelines made me uneasy about having a cosy life."

"I've got to admit I'm extremely glad to not be in WILL's unhinged barista future." Beansprout said.

"Because you serve terrible coffee."

" Thanks Dee."

"Do you think he'll be back?"

Flibbage shook her head, "Fey seemed to think that even if his hard drive exists somewhere, he'll be too garbled to function. She's going to try and develop an Apathy algorithm based on YAK(ky)'s program so that any future models can't try anything similar.

"So only she can, you mean." Beansprout replied.

"Look I'm not saying she's not a terrifying, godlike intelligence with the power to remake reality as she pleases," Flibbage rubbed her temples, "But she's decided to ally herself with me, so that's really the best I can do."

"I don't trust her."

"She just like me!"

"I don't trust youeither ."

Jay leaned in next to Dee and grabbed a coffee. "With me running the NGSPIB, Dee on the Were Council, and you and FEY doing your mysterious faerie 'plot' things, we might actually get something done around here- maybe its time the humans, Weres and fey started working together."

"That sounds a lot less heroic, and a lot more like admin." Yakky added

They looked at each other.

"Don't jinx it!" Flibbage shushed them. "Its an opportunity. Though maybe you should get some therapy 'Sprout."

"I'd rather eat glass."

"That's what I thought you'd say."

Panning out from the group of friends, the shop becomes a street, the street becomes London, then England, Europe, then finally the planet Earth. Billions of lives, billions of stories. Traditionally a comedy ends with a wedding, and Beansprout had survived her journey as the Primary Protagonist.
Twice, technically, if you believed Flibbage's version of events.

Another narrative would rise to the top eventually, and she'd have her part to play, but for now the world moved on.