Character Scramble 15 Semifinals: I'm Still Here

[u/LetterSequence]

This round is now closed for voting! Please vote for the write ups in the form linked here. Voting will close at 10PM on April 12th.

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This round is for matches 37 and 38 on the bracket. Make sure to double check to see if you’re in this one!

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Your journey is reaching its end. The location of Kingdom Hearts may be nearly impossible to reach on foot, by land, or by sky. Except there is one way to get there. After all this time traveling, all the information you’ve acquired, all the things you’ve seen, you know the secret. It all involves a door.

“When the door is open, so too will Kingdom Hearts open.”

There’s one door that is spoken of. A door used by a dreaded space captain. This captain stole treasures from all across the universe, and kept them to himself, never to be seen again. This door is a portal that opens to his treasure, and it can also open up to anywhere in the entire universe. It can open the way to Kingdom Hearts.

And that door is located on…

Treasure Planet

So you know where to go. But how do you exactly open this door?

Luckily for you, one brave adventurer holds a map, a spaceship, and the key to this door, and is looking for a crew to help escort them across the cosmos to reach the planet unharmed. That’s when the ideas start to formulate.

Escort or Heist?

Will your team present themselves to this adventurer and offer them aid? In exchange for directions, a split prize, and a companion, this would involve ensuring their safety, providing passage across all of Treasure Planet, fighting off any who would stand in your path, putting your life in harm's way all the while.

Or… will your team simply wait for someone else to take up the offer? If they follow this path, they can stalk the team who joins them instead. By prowling in wait, they can ambush the other team at the vital moment they reach the treasure, and take it all for themselves. However, you’d need to obtain your own means of travel, as losing sight of them means losing the treasure in its entirety.

Space, Land, or Underground?

Traversing an entire planet aimlessly is a good way to get yourselves killed. You’ll need to pick a route that’s safest to get there with the least danger possible.

Do you approach from outer space? Going from above may seem like the route with the least danger, but it comes with plenty of downsides. One wrong move, a stray asteroid, an attack that leaves you stranded from the ship, can leave you floating in the deep reaches of space until you finally perish.

Do you approach from land? It’s the most straightforward and easiest to circumnavigate, but this planet is covered in deep jungles and vegetation, with very little wildlife. Resources may be difficult to manage, the path would be the longest, and an ambush is almost all but guaranteed.

Do you approach from the underground? Beneath the surface is an entire system of passageways, tunnels, and heavy machinery, as if the planet was built by some insane person. It’d get you to the door the fastest if you know where you’re going, but if you don’t… you may be lost under here forever.

The Door

At the pivotal moment when the door is open, what will your team do? It can offer them guidance, lead them anywhere in the universe, and lead them exactly to Kingdom Hearts. But the promise of unlimited riches stands in front of them as well. It is here that what is most important to them will be tested.

All of this being said… this is the final leg of your quest before finally obtaining all you desire. So… what will you do?

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Scramble Rules

That’s Sora, Donald, and Goofy Too!: Every participant this season received three characters on their team, but many of them might not be a household name. To aid with readability, please give a brief summary of your characters, with enough information so the average reader can get excited for your team before starting.

Let Your Heart Be Your Guiding Key: Your write up will depict a scenario where your team is the victor. Even if your team has a one in a million chance of overcoming the odds, show what they’d need to do to come out on top against the challenge in front of them!

Unlocking Limit Form: Writers are allowed to make changes to their characters in their narrative to fit their story, such as allowing power stealers to gain more powers, teaching martial artists new techniques, or having characters gradually grow in strength between rounds. However, you are not beholden to following what your opponent is doing. When facing another team, you are only required to write their characters as they were submitted. This is to help with ease of research, and make things more fun for both sides.

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Round Rules

Guest Starring…: Space Adventurers! The guest in this round is someone who has a vested interest in Treasure Planet. Are they the person who holds the key, who needs to be escorted to the door? Are they the leader of the band of misfits who intend on stealing your treasure for themselves, or the group that escorts the client to the door? Are they a lone wanderer, stuck on this planet, who once resided on the crew of the captain who stole all the treasure? However they show up is up to you!

Setting: Treasure Planet, a mysterious and deadly planet said to hold all the treasures in the world at its core. The solar system surrounding it, deep in the cosmos, bathes this world in purple hues, the lights from hundreds of millions of stars. The planet itself is teeming with vegetation. Thick jungles, moss, mildew, and yet curiously, no life at all. Only the remnants of an adventure long since finished. Underneath the surface, this planet functions as a machine. Deep tunnels that lead to secret passageways, lights that illuminate this world, and cogs turning for some reason or another. There are plenty of paths that all lead to the same place. The door that leads to everywhere, and most importantly, to your goal.

Key Points: The key points of this round are as follows. You must obtain the key to open the door that leads into your ultimate goal (Kingdom Hearts). How you obtain this key, reach the door, and what roles the enemy team and guest fill are up to you.

Post Limit: For this round, writers will be limited to 10 posts, or 100k characters. While it is fine to go a little bit over, anything that far surpasses this limit will be automatically disqualified. This limit does not include intro posts, or analysis of the matchup. Use your best judgment, if you think your story is too long for the round, it probably is.

Due Date: Write ups will be due at 10PM EST on April 8th. That’s a full month, so you should have plenty of time!

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Flavor Suggestions

The Door is Open: Your team is heading for the door that resides somewhere on this planet. This door is essentially a portal that can lead to anywhere in the entire universe. While you ultimately have a destination in mind, does such a prospect tempt anyone on your team? How would they react to such an easy method of transportation? Would they try to keep it for themselves? Visit any places before settling on Kingdom Hearts?

Fool’s Gold: The core of Treasure Planet is roughly one hundred million billion metric tons of gold, jewelry, and riches stolen from various cultures and civilizations. Maybe your team is only in it for the money. So, is there something that’d tempt them even more than this? Some kind of goal that’d make them seek out Kingdom Hearts instead of ending their journey here and just nabbing as much gold as they can get their hands on? Or maybe, they’ll get greedy, and try to do both? Remember, it all depends on what your team would do!

[u/OddDirective]

“Uwoooooah! Look! Look at it! I’ve never seen so much gold in my life! We’re rich, hahahahahaha!”

Chuuya watched as Gentaro, that dumb kid, ran out into the fields of gold coins and precious stones like, well, a kid in a candy store. He could see Hale off to the side scoop up a handful of coins and test them in his grip, which of course none of them could stand up to regardless if they were gold or bronze or whatever the hell else. Either way, he had some self-satisfied smile on his face when he was done turning them into paste.

That left Chuuya as the only one to be worried about their current predicament. Once again, Chuuya didn’t remember how the three of them got there, only that this “Stitcher” transported them, and was watching them, and also wanted their help, despite being however much stronger than them he was. Would he go after Arahabaki? Maybe. That was Mishima’s goal, after all, but this guy wasn’t Mishima. The other option was that they were chosen for some other reason, which… ugh, he hated that idea, being a ‘chosen one’. And he hated not having the answers while someone else did, and was keeping him in the dark to screw with him.

The frustration welling up from it all made him stomp on the gold-paved ground, and as a spray of coins flew up, he caught one. Hale looked over at the noise. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” Chuuya sneered, “Just needed a look at one of these coins.” It wasn’t really a lie, because now that Chuuya looked, they were certainly golden, but their faces were blank, no identifying marks whatsoever. If they were from anywhere, they’d have some face or words or something on them, but these were… blank.

“What do you think of it?” he asked.

Instantly, he regretted it. Hale smiled, and said “Well, I’ll never insult the great nation of Australia, but I’ve been in the strategic reserve of Australium, and it’s a tenth this whole cave’s size. With this much gold, we can pay off Mann Co’s debts, and even give our customers some special promotional items. Like golden bullets! Say, those are good at killin’ werewolves, right? Or, no, was that were-floating-eyes…”

Chuuya left the Australian to his misguided ideas. He turned around, and the Stitcher was there. Wait. What? Had he always been there? No, that couldn’t be possible-

That is entirely possible. the Stitcher replied.

That just startled Chuuya further. “Oi, what the hell was that? No, never mind, so now what do we do? What even is this place?”

I’m psychic. Treasure Planet. And now, we wait.

“Ehhhh?” Chuuya said, almost sounding offended. “You’re grabbing us to be some kind of guard dogs for this hoard? Can’t you just do everything and leave us to live out our lives?”

I can’t be in two places at once. the Stitcher said, matter-of-factly. And on that note, I must be going now.

“Oh, and should we accompany you to your next appointment, Your Highness?”

The Stitcher thought, and shook his head. Wait here for a minute.

“Hey, hang on! I’m not letting you leave until I can get some answers! I used to know a guy who’s acting like you are, and I won’t let you laughing assholes get the last one anymore!” Chuuya thrust his hand out, increasing gravity and crushing the ground in front of him-

But by then the Stitcher was gone.

“Tch. Fucking cryptic assholes.”

---

In a space devoid of character, the Stitcher spoke to himself.

Well well well, if it isn’t the consequences of my own actions.

Just look at yourself.

One whole month.

That was then. This is now.

You have 7 days.

At a constant pace he paced, around and around, going nowhere fast.

You thought you were holding all the cards.

Now look at ya.

God you're pathetic.

See your plans go up in smoke. Now what?

I need to write this down.

In that space, there was a desk. Atop that desk was a computer. The Stitcher sat down at that desk, and stared at the computer for a while.

Aaah, it’s useless!

Something's missing.

I'll have to think about it. Throwing in the towel.

…

Aren’t you hoping for everyone to say “Please don’t quit”?

The Stitcher sighed.

That isn't who you are.

You owe it to them.

I have to keep going.

The Stitcher put his hands to the keys, and typed for a while. It was not a long while.

That'll do.

Just enough space.

They know where they can find me.

I just want to talk.

…

In a space no longer devoid of characters, the Stitcher spoke to a new arrival.

You’re here. Good.

How can I help you, Buddy?

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[u/OddDirective → u/OddDirective]

“No! No no no no no-” Gwen says, chasin’ after Buddy. I’m still stuck in a saze starin' at my own ugly mug, an’ rightfully so, from everything that's been sprung on me. She gets to a point an’ suddenly the top half of her body cuts off, like she’s run into an invisibility field or somethin’.

Argh, come on! I can’t get through!

She pulls back, turns around with a serious expression, an’ points at the both of us. “You two care about Animal Man, don’t you?”

…After a second, I nod. “He’s been with us through everything. He’s one of us.”

The pink rope hits me square in the chest, an’ falls into a coil in my lap. “Well, if we don’t do anything, something worse than death is going to happen to him. Got it?”

I’m on my feet before I even realize, coilin’ the rope over my shoulder. Lancelot follows my lead an’ grabs ahold. “So what are we gonna do about it?”

“Follow me,” she says. “We’ve gotta be there to save him from himself.”

---

"You gonna fight?"

He balled up his fists, raised them up to his chin. "All right... put 'em up!"

I wasn’t in the mood for any of it. “You know that’s not what I do. And besides, if you’re really in control here, what good would it do?”

"Fair enough," he said, and went back to sitting at his desk, and turned to face me. "Ask away."

And right there, in that moment, I lost the words I was going to say. After all this time, coming face-to-face with the man responsible for every wound I’d suffered, every obstacle in our way- but, this wasn’t the first time I’d been in this situation. I fumbled to try and get my thoughts in order through my returning, pounding headache, so all I sputtered out was “You’re… not Grant, are you?”

"[I’m afraid not.]" he replied, turning his head to the side.

“Then, who are you?”

He laughed once, still looking off to the side. "The odd one out again."

He didn’t volunteer anything more. I didn’t know how to fill the silence, so I stayed that way for a bit longer, thinking of what to say.

“You know, it really bothers me that you showed up the way that you did in the afterlife. Showing up to deliver cryptic hints and put the weight of every single world on my shoulders? When you were the one making me do everything? I’m starting to hate you for it.”

"My bad. I'm sorry." And then he shrugged.

And that set me off.

“Sorry? You’re sorry? You could have done something else, you could have done anything else! But here you sat and jerked us along on a string, going through so many worlds and fighting so many people. What’s the point of all this? Why are you even doing this?”

"In a word?" he said, not looking me in the eye, "Entertainment."

“Entertainment?”

"A distraction. Call it whatever you like. People eat it up."

My hands balled into fists. “So what, are we just a bunch of trained monkeys doing tricks for you? Just pawns in some sick, twisted game? I don’t believe it. I refuse to believe that the only reason I’m here is because I’m some show pony, to be trotted out whenever you please! I have a life! Everyone here has their own lives, you maniac! And you’re sitting there acting like there’s nothing you can do about it!”

"Blame it on them. I just give the people what they want."

And I couldn’t stop myself. I ran up, grabbed him by the collar, and yanked him to his feet. “You don’t control me!”

I pulled my fist back, slammed it into where his face would be, and he wasn’t there anymore.

"Down here."

A swift blow to the crotch left me down, reeling, while he collected himself and sat back down. I reached for the Red, for the life-web, and my connections were completely gone.

The man behind it all sighed. "I’m doing this for you. The comic panels."

All I could groan out was a pained “Whyyy?”

“It’s easier this way.” he said, wheeling the chair around and typing with a click-clacking I could hear. “I'll let you in on a little secret. There's more.”

I forced myself back to a standing position. “Haven’t you already done enough? You and your ‘story’ have ruined the lives of so many now. How many worlds did you kill, just to populate Hell? To force us into scenarios where we had to keep pressing on? Their blood is on your hands.”

He didn’t respond. Not to that. “You were going to become something like me. A backup, but your services are no longer needed.”

“Someone… who could control people?” I spoke. The screen of the computer was blinding white, and I couldn’t make out what was on it. The headache picked that moment to spike back up, driving an iron spike through my frontal lobe.

“Here's the idea. everything I'm capable of, you can learn to do it too.” he explained. “It’s too late now.”

“How? How can it be too late, you’re the one writing everything, you’re the one that’s in control!” I argued. “Can’t you write that I’m suddenly able to do what you need me to do? That’s all it would take.”

He sighed, and pushed away from the computer. “I’m already the fake one. Against all odds.”

That phrase- “Against all odds! That’s it! You brought me here to fix things, didn’t you? That’s how I’m supposed to save all the worlds, by finishing what you started!”

“That was a joke.” he deadpanned. “The shape of the world.”

“The shape? What are you saying?” I replied, looking him dead in the eyes.

“You saw it.Come, come, try to remember.”

I stepped back. The headache, it was getting worse… and I realized. I remembered. “The world, it’s shaped like a comic book.”

“Maybe your world is.” came the reply.

The shock and the thrumming in my head made thinking almost unbearable. “I don’t. I don’t understand anything.”

I’ll say it, then. The Medium is the Message

My heart skipped a beat. The headache… disappeared. Instead, every part of my body felt wrong at the same time. My body, was fading away before my eyes. “But if that’s true, then… then… then what am I?”

Just words on a page. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

And I fell

Down, down, down

Into the abyss.

And the one who did this to me just scoffed, and turned to his computer.

Back to work.

---

[u/OddDirective → u/OddDirective]

I fell for ages as the weight of everything I was and everything that I thought broke away from me. There were no organs in my body, there were no muscles or blood or bones or me. I was nothing in the physical world. According to the world, I didn’t exist.

That was the worst part. Fighting a losing battle against dissolving away.

Maybe it would be easier, to just not be anymore

And fade away

and fall

down

“I’ve got you!”

I blinked- and I had eyes. There was a set of hands around my waist- that connected my legs to the rest of my body. I breathed in- my lungs filled, my heart beat, and I was alive again, dangling over the edge of the void.

I looked down, down at my body, in that familiar orange and blue, and saw those hands holding me up were covered in heavy gauntlets. Lancelot!

“What are you doing here?” I asked, calling over my shoulder while still looking down.

“Saving you from this,” he replied, “and remembering a few things that we should have realized from the start. You’ve got people who care about you, for one.”

I tried to crane my neck to look back without moving too much, and I saw that over through the great expanse of white, there was a space looking like it had been cut out of paper, with the backdrop of Treasure Planet behind. And in that cutout, there were two figures.

“We caught him!” said Gwen, sounding equally shocked and excited. “We caught him!”

Steeljack held firm, gritting his teeth, and pulled back on the rope- that pink rope- in his hands. He called out “Hang on, you giant birdbrain! We’re bringing you back!”

And the fact that they're there, the fact that they were willing to go this far, for me? It brings tears to my eyes, ones I don't blink away.

"Listen," says Lancelot, "there's a lot to talk about, and not so much room to do it. Talk through your doubts and fears."

I was stunned at first. But then my brain caught up to his words, and I asked "Why did you even come back for me?"

"After what we've been through, we could not allow this to pass without doing something." Came the reply.

"But- why do things even matter?" I say, "Especially if we're being written to not care, written by someone who doesn't think they can do anything."

"What matters is not something that can be decreed from on high. If something is important to you, be it a friend or a pet or an inanimate object or even something from fiction, then it matters to you. And you are the only one who can choose what is important."

I just nodded. "Then, what are we? Are we real, or are we just-"

"Who you are is not just whatever you have been told that you are, it never is." Lancelot replied. "Every time you take an action, it reflects who you are. Your life is shaped not only by what happens to you, but also by your reaction to those things. And moments both small and large can show one's true colors. That is the way we prove ourselves against the world."

I snorted. Fancy words, but… they were true. Nobody is just what people call them. Actions prove character. Even something as small as feeding birds says a whole lot about someone.

"Now, when did you get so good at being our moral compass?" I said, a smile on my face.

Lancelot must have smiled at that. "The truth is… I met some of my fellow knights in the afterlife, and saw my own deeds reflected before me. What being violent means, if it has no greater meaning behind it. I do not wish to be that way."

I couldn't think of anything to say to that, so I said nothing. And foot by foot, hand length by hand length, we were pulled back up, and the closer I got, the more my connection to the life web returned. Finally, with one mighty heave, Steeljack hauled us up and back into the world where everything happened.

Gwen looked up at the sky, although she probably wasn’t looking at the clouds or the birds. “Funny, isn’t it? We do all we can to pull you back up, but we end up all the way down here.”

It took a bit for all of us to recover. Not just physically, but emotionally as well. Or maybe I'm projecting, and the only one who got so worn down was me.

Either way.

I stood up, brushed myself off, and turned to Gwen. She turned back, a bit, and said "So, do you understand why you're here, now?"

"Yeah," I say. "We're here to do what we've been doing. We're fighting to prove a point."

"And that point is?" Gwen said.

Lancelot takes this one. "That even as we are now, there are things we can do. That there is always more to be done."

"Who are you going to be fighting against?"

"The Stitcher, the one writing all this down," Steeljack replied. "He's every negative thought the writer's had, all rolled into one."

"How can you fight him, and what are you stopping?"

"We fight to win, not just for us but for his sake too," Lancelot replies. "The reason we can fight is simple. It is who we are. We fight against injustice, in whatever way we can."

"And where is the Stitcher now?" Gwen spoke.

"He's where he's always been," Steeljack replies. "Right below our feet."

Gwen smiles. "Good. That's everything. Everything you've been doing, it's been leading up to this."

She pulls her mask down, and that smile turns into a grin. "Let's get in there and show the world what we're made of. Ready?"

We all nod. I channel the powers of a mole, and start burrowing down. Down to meet our maker.

---

[u/OddDirective → u/OddDirective]

“Got any fives?”

Hale scratched his head underneath his hat, staring at the cards in his hand. Finally, after thinking long and hard, he replied “Go fish.”

“Seriously?!” shouted Chuuya indignantly. “How can you not have anything I’ve asked for?! It’s not that hard, either! Haven’t you ever played cards before?!”

“Well, I’ve not played this game!” shouted Hale back.

“Oi, Chuuya. Calm down,” Gentaro called over his shoulder. “It’s just a game.”

The three of them, with nothing better to do but wait, had set up a makeshift table and chairs, and were now passing the time via a deck of cards Chuuya found in his pocket. That being said, it was grinding Chuuya's nerves to dust.

"Yeah, yeah, but games are supposed to be- gghk!" Chuuya said, drawing and interrupting himself once he saw the face of the card.

"You okay, mate?" his opponent asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine." Chuuya growled, setting the pair of fives in front of him to join the two other pairs he'd made. It still left him with eight cards in his hands.

Hale smiled. "It's good you're getting on the board! Though, it's still my go, yeah?"

Hale had six different pairs in front of him, and as he began the laborious process of figuring out which of the four cards he had in hand he'd ask for, Chuuya scowled. What the hell did they teach in Australia?

"How about fours?" Hale asked. Chuuya threw the card across the table, and Hale set down his seventh. Then, mercifully, he called to Gentaro "Say, these pictures are confusing me. Can you take a look?"

Gentaro came around the table, and a strange expression crossed his face. "W-Well, those two are both the same, so you should have put them down already…"

"Really? But he hasn’t got a beard! A proper match should have them both have beards, or at least a mustache. Has there been some alliance I haven’t heard of?"

"They're both Kings, can't you see?"

Chuuya could almost feel the veins popping out of his forehead. Hale laid down his pair of kings, and looked at the final card in his hand. Surely, surely this couldn't take long to end.

"Alright, have you got any fives?"

Chuuya flipped the table onto Hale.

“Ahhhh, I’m sick of this!” Chuuya said, marching away from the others. “How long has that asshole been gone? We’re in a vault the size of a city and we can’t do anything but sit here and never learn how to play cards!”

“Hey, that was uncalled for!” Gentaro said, sticking up for a Hale who largely didn’t seem bothered by what Chuuya did. “Apologize!”

“I’m sorry,” sighed Chuuya. “It’s just all this damn waiting. It’s been hours since that Stitcher guy disappeared, we haven’t seen anything alive that isn’t each other, and even if there is someone to look out for, they could be miles away! If something doesn’t happen in the next five minutes, I’m gonna lose my freaking mind!”

It was at that moment that the ceiling broke open.

Off in the distance, not too far out, but still a fair bit away, a blue and orange blob, no, a man, swooped around in lazy circles near the hole that had just been made in the ceiling. Chuuya strained to look, and it seemed like the flying one was checking for something. And in the hole, there were more than just the one flying around.

A thunderous clap on the back nearly knocked Chuuya over. “Well, that looks like your wish come true, doesn’t it? Let’s see what they’re up to.” Hale said, before squaring up, and leaping thirty feet towards the new arrival.

Chuuya fixed his hat back onto his head. “Well, time to do what we’ve been brought here to do. Kisaragi. Who do you think these guys are?”

“Who knows?” he replied. “Hopefully, these guys can be reasonable, and nothing big happens.”

And that’s when the tremor hit.

---

[u/OddDirective → u/OddDirective]

Animal Man flew around the cavern, and seeing no one, returned to the tunnel he had dug, and the teammates he had left there. "Looks like we're clear to go."

He held a hand out to Steeljack, but Steeljack waved him off. "What do you think that is, a hundred feet?"

Animal Man nodded, and so Steeljack stepped up to the edge of the hole.

"I can take it," he added. He leaned forwards… and fell straight down.

Animal Man tried to catch and catch up with him, but all he could do was watch as Steeljack hit the layer of gold and kept going down, sending a shock through the cavern and a splash of coins and gems back up at him. After a moment, Steeljack surfaced, and he had a smile on his face as he did.

"You ever seen so much loot in one place? Haha! I feel like Scrooge McDuck!"

A metal hook and line shot out to a stalactite, and it pulled taut connected to a gun in Gwenpool's hands. "Found my grapple gun, guys!"

Both Gwen and Lancelot swung down from that perch, and spiraled around safely while the gun let out slack. Finally, just as it ran out, the pair leapt the five or so feet down safely to the ground, meeting the metal man who had just pulled himself from the sea of treasure.

Animal Man touched down, making the group whole, and turned to Gwenpool. “So, which way should we get going?”

Gwen surveyed the area. “Well, he’s not here right now. But he has a real annoying habit of suddenly appearing when he needs to in a place people aren’t looking. So stay sharp, and I’ll try and keep my eye on everything.”

“So, where do we go from here?” asked Steeljack.

The answer to a different question came leaping over a mountain of gold, and gave Lancelot barely enough time to raise his shield before a fist imposed itself into it rather than his chest. His heels dug two trenches in the ground as he was sent back fifteen feet from the impact.

“Well well well! You’re still standing!” said the new arrival, a towering shirtless man with chiseled muscles, a face that resembled Tom Selleck's, and a smattering of chest hair that if you looked at it right, resembled the continent of Australia in all its glory. "That means you're made of the right stuff. So, what do you want from here and how do you think I should turn this into another issue of one of my Thrilling Tales?"

“Wh- Who the hell do you think you are?” Animal Man shouted back at him.

“The name’s Saxton Hale, CEO of Mann Co. ‘We sell products and get into fights’!" Hale said with a smile. "So, looking to buy some solid-gold bullets, or would you prefer the second option?"

"Hold iiiiiiiit!" came a calling voice from behind Hale. The heroes looked, and saw two more people approaching from behind the hill. The closer one appeared to be rocketing around the plain of gold on his own two feet, while the further one was bouncing like he was under moon gravity. And of course, the one on the ground made it there first.

He surfed down the hill with the greatest of ease, before leaping up and planting a heel kick into the back of Hale's head. Hale barely staggered from it, but it certainly got his attention as the man landed in front of him. He had a stylish hat and coat on, and beneath that hat came a mess of red hair. But now, all the fury in his much-smaller frame was aimed at the towering CEO. "What the hell did you run up and punch them for?!"

"Hey, don't blame me," Hale said, leaning back up to his full height. "I thought these guys were thieves."

"What kind of thieves show up wearing full plate armor?!"

"Haven't you ever heard of the Crusades?" Gwen said as an aside.

Finally, the moon walker arrived just as Lancelot returned. He looked to be in the middle of their heights, with his black hair in a styled pompadour and his clothes a similar shade- even if his jacket looked much too small for him. "Oi, you two! Quit it! Don't you know the proper way to introduce yourself to a person?"

"Of course I know! He's the one who forgot!" complained the red-haired one, before taking a deep breath and rubbing the bridge of his nose.

"Look, we clearly got off on the wrong foot, here," Animal Man chimed in. "Let's just talk about stuff right now, okay?"

"Alright," said the man in the suit. "Did you guys make that rumble happen?"

Animal Man raised a brow, and turned back. "Did we make it?"

Steeljack raised his hand. "That was me. Turns out, there’s ground below all this."

"Good to know. Now that that's cleared up," said the red-haired man, dusting off his hands, “My name is Chuuya Nakahara. Port Mafia executive. The gorilla's name is Saxton Hale, and the delinquent is Gentaro Kisaragi. You?”

“Animal Man. Justice League Europe," replied Animal Man, before pointing to his allies in turn. "Steeljack, Lancelot, and Gwenpool.”

Chuuya sneered. “Grand. Pleasure meeting with you.”

“You must be the people the Stitcher hired,” Animal Man said.

“‘Hired’ is a strong word. You must be the people he’s worried will steal his treasure.”

“We’re not here to steal his treasure, really. We want to talk to him.”

Chuuya shrugged. "Well, he's not here right now, but when he gets back, I'll let you try. But we can't just let you walk around, checking things out, you know?"

“And what if it turns out the Stitcher is hiding somewhere past you guys?” Animal Man pointed out

“Well, then, it seems like we’re at an impasse,” concluded Chuuya.

The two sides stared each other down, not moving, for a few tense moments.

"Hey. Metal guy," Gentaro suddenly said. "You look like you've seen some rough stuff in your day. Is that right?"

Steeljack looked back at him, and just said “Maybe I have. Why do you care?”

“The name’s Gentaro Kisaragi! And I’ve made my decision!” said Gentaro, pointing directly at Steeljack. “I’m going to become friends with you!”

A silence hung in the air.

Steeljack looked to the others on Gentaro’s side. “He get dropped on his head as a kid or something?”

“That’s my theory,” Chuuya said.

“I’m being serious!” Gentaro rebutted. “I made a pledge that I’d make friends with anyone I could. That’s why, I’ll make you see that we can be friends yet!”

“The world doesn't work that way, kid,” Steeljack replied. “Even the angels can’t do everythin’. And if you keep openin’ yourself up like that, you’re just gonna get used up by somebody and thrown away. I would know.”

Gentaro reached into his pocket, and drew out a device with one bold motion. “I’ll show you the strength of my convictions!”

As he strapped it to his waist, Steeljack’s eyes went wide. Gentaro flipped four switches in turn, each powering up his belt, before staring his new friend dead in the eyes and pushing a lever on his belt. ”3… 2… 1!” it sounded off.

“Henshin!”

“No way,” said Steeljack under his breath.

A ring of holographic light and white smoke surrounded Gentaro, and when it dissipated- he had transformed completely. Now, the person standing where he had been looked like someone took the space shuttle and turned it into an outfit. Four bulky cylinders protected the forearms and shins of the wearer, while the rest was a thin sleek cover of white armor. Finally, the head itself looked like a squat rocket, tail fins at the bottom and a nose-cone at the top, while a pair of orange eyes were the only indication it was a mask.

Gentaro crouched down, then thrust his fists to the sky. “SPACE IS HERE!”

“This isn’t possible,” said Steeljack. “Every last one of you, you all were on the train- all of you were from dead worlds! Who the hell are you?”

Gentaro pointed a fist at the metal man. “Kamen Rider Fourze. Let’s settle this one-on-one, okay? And if I win, you’ve gotta become my friend!”

Seeing this, Hale uncrossed his arms. “Well, it seems diplomacy has failed. Good thing there’s still the simplest form of problem-solving. With action!”

“Hey, hey!” said Animal Man, holding his hands up. “Why are you so eager to fight? We don’t need to be your enemies.”

Gwen turned away from the conversation, a hand on her chin. “Hang on. No thoughts, only actions. No perspective dominating the scene. There hasn’t even been motivations spelled out. That’s… third party objective. And that means-”

The words caught in her throat. She scanned everywhere, searching for something desperately- and there it was.

“He’s here!” Gwen shouted over the growing hostility.

And a slow clap rang out over the assembled fighters. On an abandoned throne on top of a hill, the Stitcher smiled from ear to ear.

“So, you’ve finally arrived.I’m so glad you could make it.”

[u/OddDirective → u/OddDirective]

“Tch. Took you long enough,” complained Chuuya.

“I’m a very busy man.” the Stitcher said.

“So then,” Hale said, turning back to face him, “what are you not-paying us to do here, huh?”

“You were supposed to protect me.” came the reply.

Chuuya did a double take at this “Ehhhhhh? Seriously? You’re even stronger than we are, aren’t you? I can’t believe this.”

The Stitcher raised an eyebrow at him, and so Chuuya continued. “You overpowered us in order to bring us here, and now we’re just supposed to fight off some guys that want to fight you? To hell with that!”

Chuuya turned his back to the Stitcher, and spat “Go find your own bodyguards. We won’t fight for you.”

“Very well.”

WHACK

That was the sound of a thick string stabbing into the back of Hale’s head, knocking him forwards. Before he could truly fall, more white strings rushed in and looped around his forearms, his shoulders, his chest, and pulled him up to a standing position. They went up into the shadows over the ceiling, but not before all saw what the other ends connected to.

One on each finger, the Stitcher pulled the strings.

Hale’s eyes reopened, and he spoke. “I am self-indulgent.”

“You asshole!” Chuuya shouted, conjuring up a ball of his ability and whipping around. But the strings were faster than he was.

The impact threw him flying, but after a few short moments, he stood up, and put his hat back on his head. “I can never finish what I start.”

Animal Man shook off whatever hesitation he had, and kicked off the ground, flying straight for the Stitcher. But before he reached, Lancelot leapt up and tackled him down.

“What the hell are you-”

A line of white wires- no, not wires. Threads burst from the ground, stretching up high to the ceiling, and from the ceiling fell down to the ground. They bent around one another, formed into a fence of ‘X’es, and blocked the heroes from getting any closer. And it isolated the last remaining one the Stitcher had not captured.

Fourze wheeled around, and ran towards the Stitcher. The Stitcher simply raised his hand, and the threads fired towards Fourze, the ones that would make him like the rest of his team.

“Like hell I’ll let you!” he shouted, and pressed a button on his belt.

“Scissors, On!” the belt called, and on his left arm, a pair of giant scissors appeared. The threads bunched up, then scattered out, each aiming for a different part of Fourze’s body, but the Kamen Rider was fast. He cut two threads going for his right, then spun and got one going for his head.

But the final two went through, wrapping around his weapon arm and pulling it tight away from his body. Fourze grunted, then bellowed “I can still fight!”

His right arm slammed another switch- ”Chainsaw, On!”, and a chainsaw sprouted from his right leg, just in time for the Stitcher to send another set of threads his way. This time, he stayed grounded, whirled around on one leg, and severed each and every one.

He spun and severed the next package, and the next, and the next… but he couldn’t go on forever.

A white thread stabbed into Fourze’s leg, holding it back, and then another went into his left. Another thread into the right arm, another into the small of his back. Left shoulder. Right shoulder.

And finally, the head.

The threads spun Fourze back around, and marched him in line with the others. “I put too much work on myself.”

From the other side of the wall, Animal Man howled. “You monster! They had lives! They had feelings! You can’t just take control of them like they’re nothing but puppets to dance for your amusement!”

Hale spoke. “But I already was, wasn’t I?”

“These three represent who I am perfectly,” added Chuuya.

“You’ll have to get through them if you want to face me,” finished Fourze.

“You coward.” Steeljack scowled. “Why not talk in your own voice, and fight us on your own terms?”

The Stitcher just sneered back. “Let the games begin.”

The wall fell, and the fighters on strings leapt to the fray.

---

Hey, it's me, Gwenpool. Yeah, you're probably wondering why I haven't been talking much since we got here. Well, two things happened.

First off, I was looking for where the Stitcher would pop up, which kept my focus away from the rest of the situation. And second-

I grabbed five bags of gold before this started.

Hey, can you blame me? I have to look out for myself, and also have more than myself to look out for. If I can get out of this with enough cash to pay for a trip to the Bahamas (and, y'know, don't get dropped from reality because we lost), I'll consider that a complete win.

Anyways, where were we? Right, the fight.

Steeljack blocked a punch from Hale that still sent him reeling, but at least I didn’t have to worry about that side of the fight. The same couldn’t be said for the stuff on the other one, though. Lancelot got hit by a ball Chuuya threw, and that sent him pinned to the ground. I shot at him a bit, but Fourze blocked for him, kept his concentration. Speaking of, where was he?

“Gwen, behind you!” Lancelot shouted.

I tucked and rolled just as a spiked ball whizzed through the air where my head was. Fourze appeared out of nowhere, the ball on his left arm, and reared back for another shot-

But then Animal Man kicked him in the back of the head, sending him flying back toward Chuuya. He’d been trying to target the strings that controlled them, but the bits that were even visible anymore weren’t coming out.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

I dusted myself off. “Yeah fine, but I’ll be right back! Try and knock the short guy off his feet!”

“Wait, hang on-” but I was already gone.

It’s easy to get places when you’re outside the world. If you know where you want to go, you can walk there just by remembering where it is, in relation to everywhere else. But now wasn’t the time to walk, it was the time to run all the way back to the base. So I did.

I leapt down into the control room, tucked, rolled and said “Alright people, it’s showtime!”

“Wh- Really?” asked the animal.

“Yeah, it’s a round earlier than we thought,” I replied, “but it turns out we’re fighting right now!”

The other girl smiled. “Well, took you long enough. Let’s get a move on, people!”

All five quickly got into places, and I led them out, back into the space between stories.

“Alright, the plan is, you three help out Steeljack,” I explained on the run, “you bring all of your guys to help fight the big guy, and you-”

“I already know who I’m fighting,” said the hero.

“Allllright cool!” I said, turning and running the last few yards to the thread I’d left. “I’m gonna look down, make sure the coast is clear, and when I call for you-”

Then I actually looked.

The Stitcher smiled back up at me.

“Let’s make it a little more interesting.”

“Oh, &$@%.”

I dove, launching myself into the world just as the Stitcher turned back to face the rest of the fight. He raised a hand, pointed it at all six fighters, and spoke.

“Divide."

---

[u/OddDirective → u/OddDirective]

Lancelot watched the Stitcher cast his arms upward, and before his eyes a set of walls sprang forth from the ground, isolating him from his allies. But Lancelot could still see the Stitcher before him, and there was no wall in the way. The only thing that stood between them was Kamen Rider Fourze.

The Rider pressed a button on his belt, and a rocket launcher attached itself to his right foot. He stomped, and the missiles fired their way towards Lancelot. But he was not going to let another one hit him again. He raised his shield and charged, sidestepping one, blocking another and using the momentum to spin back around and keep on going. Nothing else was on target.

There was but five feet between them when Fourze first spoke. “The truth is, this is all my fault.”

Lancelot quickly became confused by this. “What could you possibly have done to invite that one to take over your body?!”

“You don’t understand,” Fourze replied, and stomped once more. Now, at this range, the only thing Lancelot could do was block, and even so, one exploded at his feet and knocked him to the ground. “Do you not recognize who you’re talking to?”

And then he knew. “You foul Stitcher! Why would you take over his body and force him to say your words? Wretched thief!”

“It’s easier to talk this way,” was the reply.

Lancelot returned to his feet and swiftly closed the distance before another salvo could fire. He swung down, and Fourze launched back, hand once more going to the belt. ”Shield, On!”

The second strike came just as swift as the first, and clanged against a shield that would not yield, attached to Fourze’s right arm. “As I was saying, this is my fault. I’m just lazy.”

“Explain your words, sorcerer,” said Lancelot, continuing to push on his blade. If he could force the arm down, thought he, then there may be the chance to score a decisive hit.

“I put too much work on myself, didn’t you hear me before?” the-Stitcher-through-Fourze said. “And the reason that all happens is because I’m lazy. I get distracted all the time.”

Lancelot redoubled his efforts, but they were all in vain. The shield withstood even the mightiest of blows. Fourze pressed another switch, and the voice called out “Chain Array, On!” A spiked flail emerged, and Fourze went on the offensive, slamming it into Lancelot’s own shield and throwing him from the clash.

A second switch, ”Spike, On!” coated Fourze’s left leg in vicious spines, and he swung it into Lancelot’s unprotected flank. The spikes pierced into his armor and side, but that was not enough to deter the Knight of the Round. He spoke, “It matters not what punishment you inflict. I will free this one from your clutches!”

Fourze simply removed his shield and swung the Chain Array in one motion, sending Lancelot away. “You talk too much. You keep coming at me like that, I’ll put you in an early grave.”

Lancelot did not reply with words. Instead, he merely challenged the Rider again, ducking between strikes of spikes and trying to land a hit. He became so involved in this avenue of the engagement that he could not hear the call come out from above his head.

You’re not the only one with secret weapons! Everyone, get in there!

“Pull! Pull!” came an electric voice from behind Lancelot. He knew what it meant, and he could not believe it. But no matter whether it was real or not, he had to move out of the way because of it. And in a turn of good fortune, it was.

The new arrival swung the blade of the Beat Crosser down, and a soundwave blast of energy rocketed straight towards Fourze. “MILLION HIT!”

And hit, it did true. The strike pushed Fourze back, even though he managed to block it with one arm, and as he fell to a leg, he gazed back up at the one who had done this to him.

“Cross-Z! Banjou! Where in the worlds have you been?” asked Lancelot.

The dragon-themed Rider replied. “I haven’t been in the worlds! I got pulled into a group that was made for just this moment. To destroy the Stitcher and save everyone from his power.”

“Well, it is a pleasure to fight once more by your side, my friend,” replied Lancelot, holding his own blade aloft.

”Gatling, On!”

From the right leg of Fourze, a chaingun emerged and blasted down the confined battlefield. Cross-Z charged, his armor absorbing the brunt of the bullets, and returned fire with the Twin Breaker on his offhand. Even though it threw off the aim, it dealt no significant blow to the enemy.

“You know, you’d think I’d be motivated to get everything done,” said Fourze, standing and dodging a strike from Cross-Z, “but the truth is, motivation is fickle. When you have it, everything is fantastic, everything goes well. But when you get to writing, that motivation flies away, and you’re stuck staring at the screen wishing for words to jump out from your head.”

“What the hell is he talking about?” Cross-Z called back over his shoulder.

“I know not,” Lancelot replied.

Both fighters raised their swords, but Fourze dodged each and every strike, rolling and ducking away from them each time they went in solo. A combination slash finally took him from his feet, but the space they’d knocked him away to was too distant to follow up.

“Hmph. Two good swords deserve another,” said Fourze’s voice as he stood, and he switched the Switches in his belt once more. ”Elec, On!”

An electric blade formed in his hand, and holograms surrounded him, turning what was once white and orange into golden and black. Fourze pulled a plug from the blade and pressed it into a slot, before charging and swinging straight out at his foes. From the blade, crescents of electricity fired into Lancelot and Cross-Z, and both felt the current painfully travel through everything they wore and their bodies.

Lancelot planted his sword for a moment, and took in a breath. His ally did so alongside. Fourze called out to them. “Say, you know why they call it a deadline, when you have to submit your work? It’s because people like me die just before we reach it. How about you?”

The hand holding Lancelot’s sword tightened. “I swear this now. No matter what punishment you put me through, I will not yield to you, knave!”

“Oi, come on,” the Stitcher groaned through Fourze. “You don’t even know what I’m talking about, and you think either of us can win? The truth is, I am why you cannot win.”

“Shut the hell up!” Cross-Z shouted, loading his Twin Breaker with draconic energy. “Lancelot, stand back!”

And Lancelot did, but he looked past Fourze one more time. At the source of all this turmoil and strife, the one who had taken over those other fighters. And the Stitcher looked past Lancelot in turn, seeing more and less all at once. And the Stitcher did not like what he saw.

"This isn’t working."

Fourze said nothing about this. Instead, he pulled his switch out and inserted it into the base of his blade. “I shall show you what I really am.”

A lever on the belt of Fourze was pulled, and Cross-Z launched his fist forwards.

”LIMIT BREAK.” ”LET’S BREAK!”

Blue draconic flame and yellow electricity met in the middle of the plain and exploded outwards, scorching those insects unlucky enough to be closer than either fighter to the blast. Both finishers dissipated, and the three fighters stared one another down once more.

Fourze was the one to speak. “I am my own enemy. The reason why I force myself to be buried in so much work is that I cannot heed my own commands. When I know I must write, I procrastinate. When I set aside time to write, I fail and become distracted. And so I end up at the end of my rope at the end of the time I have left, forced to work until the worst hours of morning to get something done.”

“That is why this will end in disappointment.”

The Stitcher raised his hand once more, and gave a command for the world to do his bidding.

"Come back."

---

[u/OddDirective → u/OddDirective]

And suddenly, the walls came down, and we were all back together again. The Stitcher’s puppets didn’t move, and no one on our side did, either. At least, not to begin with.

"Enough!" shouted the Stitcher. "This has gone on long enough."

The Stitcher held his hand out, and a tangle of threads appeared, wrapping and twisting in on itself like a ball of glowing twine. Finally, I snapped to my senses, and I saw Lancelot and Steeljack do the same.

As the tangle in the Stitcher’s hands grew, I grabbed as much speed as I could and ran like a bullet at him, wanting to stop whatever that was. But I couldn’t get there. Hale reacted at the last second, leapt and slammed into me with a forearm that laid me out and sent me straight back to where I was.

Lancelot and Steeljack rushed up too, but they got blasted back by the other fighters too. That was enough for the others, the ones Gwen brought in, to get the memo… but there wasn’t enough time to do anything about it.

The tangled threads near the Stitcher’s hand had grown as large as his torso, so he held it out behind him, with the arm “holding” it shaking from the energy. All at once, the threads glowing white became black, and the wind in the room started being drawn towards the swirling mass.

"There's no saving it. There can be no hope.", he said, with his eyes closed from it all. "Time to clean up this mess."

“Scatter!” Steeljack shouted.

The Stitcher launched his attack.

Black threads surged into the ground all around us, hitting indiscriminately and obliterating anything the threads touched. Gold, gems, artwork- nothing was spared from being wiped off the face of existence.

The first volley hit the three who were helping Steeljack. They never stood a chance. I saw Steeljack sink down to his knees.

And through it all, he kept talking. “Delete.Scatter.Wipe the slate clean.”

“It would appear that the Stitcher is killing the guest characters. I must be on my way, then, tata!” said Robotnik, speeding away from the destruction. He only got twenty feet before he was unmade.

And then Banjou…

A black thread raced to his location. There wasn’t enough time to dodge.

But at the last second, it veered away and buried itself in the ground.

…He had a chance.

And as long as there was a chance, we had to keep going. I stood back up, locked eyes with Lancelot, and flew.

“You… you BASTAAARD!!” Banjou shouted, and ran for the Stitcher. Lancelot charged with him, on a separate angle of attack, and I was the third, coming in from above. Each and every one of us had our sights on breaking through and landing a hit- a single hit- on the Stitcher.

But when I dove, Chuuya was there to meet me. A use of his ability crushed me into the ground like a cockroach under a flyswatter. I could barely crane my neck up, just to see Hale plant both of his feet into Lancelot’s unprotected side, and send him away.

Banjou had a clear shot. What must have been the greatest rage he felt in his life fueled him as he yelled out and slammed a lever on his belt.

“SCRAP BREAK!”

A pair of dragon wings formed over his shoulders, and a glowing blue energy surrounded him as he leapt high into the air, and aimed his kick straight down at the Stitcher. There wazs nothing in the way. Nothing that looked like it could stop him.

Fourze reached down and swapped things in his belt. ”Rocket, Drill, On!”

A rocket emerged from his left arm and he soared, up, even higher than the heights Banjou had reached. From above, he pulled a lever on his belt.

”Rocket-Drill LIMIT BREAK.”

They both hung in the air for a second.

Then it all came crashing back down.

Fourze hit Banjou square in the chest, blasting through and knocking Banjou away, skidding along the ground, and his armor dissolved into nothing along the way. As he rolled to a stop, I looked back at the Stitcher. “Stop this! Stop doing this!”

He didn’t look up.

“Kill your darlings.”

One more thread fired out from the nexus of black, and sailed through the air, right on target. I watched it fly, watched it arc down towards him-

Lancelot leapt up. He held his shield out, stood over Banjou’s fallen form-

The thread curved around him. It turned golden, picked up Banjou by the neck, and hauled him up into the sky, right where everybody could see.

One final thread pierced his heart, and his body never hit the ground.

Lancelot fell to the ground.

And we all lost any hope we had. How foolish were we, to think that we could fight against the one who controlled everything we did? The one that writes all the wrongs done to us, that doesn’t want to continue on this path. He was right.

There was no chance of winning.

Two shots rang out, then three more. The Stitcher raised two fingers, and the bullets were split apart by a lattice of threads.

“Ugh, how come everyone gets to be a bullet timer? It’s not fair! Some of us only have guns, you know!”

Gwen stood behind the Stitcher, a ways off, with a single pistol in her hands. The Stitcher turned, and spoke. “And then, there was one.”

The gravity stopped pressing on my back as the other fighters turned back towards Gwen, but I couldn’t muster the strength to get back up.

“Come on!” said Gwen, eyes flicking from one to the other. “You’re not so tough.”

Chuuya smirked. “We’ll still be enough for you,” he said, before raising a hand and cratering the ground just in front of her.

Gwen leapt back, kept Hale from jumping at her with a few well-placed shots. They didn’t hurt him, but it staggered him enough for her to dun back and duck behind a pillar. She reloaded, turned, and ducked another spiked-ball swing from Fourze that broke the pillar’s top.

She ran, dodging some gravity balls with luck more than skill. She looked back, and called to all of us on the ground. “Steeljack! Animal Man! Lancelot! Anybody, do something! You can’t just let it end like this!”

But none of us did anything. Gwen ducked behind a throne, switched out the gun in her hands- and got caught around the throat by a red-colored metal arm. Fourze hauled the Magic Arm back, and brought her eye to eye with the Stitcher.

The Stitcher reached out and replaced the hand around her neck with his own. Gwen kicked, struggled, but whatever strength she had wasn’t enough. “Shame. I had such high hopes for you.”

“Oh, really? Cause it looked to me like you didn’t have any hope left at all,” Gwen shot back.

The Stitcher’s face turned serious. “Any last words?”

“Heh, yeah, just one question,” Gwen said, finally stopping her struggle. “What do you call someone who’s never been published, but has already made a dozen fanfics?”

The Stitcher cocked his head, as if to invite the response.

“A writer.”

The grip around Gwen’s windpipe tightened. “Goodbye.”

The Stitcher wrapped threads around his other arm, in the shape of a blade coming from his wrist. He held Gwen up, pulled his arm back, and

“Stop right there.”

Lancelot stood a good twenty feet away, with his sword leveled at the Stitcher. “You will not kill her on my watch.”

“[Oh?]” said the Stitcher, almost sounding amused. “What are you gonna do about it?”

Lancelot addressed the one in the Stitcher’s grasp next. “Gwen, you were watching when I fought the shadow of Adolin, yes?”

“Yeah, why,” Gwen choked out.

“I understand what must be done, now. It is not enough to win the fight with might alone; or rather, might alone is not enough to win the fight,” Lancelot continued. “We must defeat him through using his flaws, by showing him that even though they may be true, they are no death sentence. We must show him what his eyes have not seen.”

“What?” said the Stitcher, but before he could offer some other remark, Lancelot spoke again.

“That we are here speaking to you is enough to know. You are worthy as a creator. If it were not so, then we would be in that void, lost to the knowledge of the world. Your existence proves that you cannot be correct! That victory can be won this day!”

The Stitcher didn’t respond to that. But it provided the opening Gwen needed. She swung her katanas down, and severed his hand completely, before she ran back towards us.

Yeah. Us.

Slowly, I picked myself up from the ground. If we could use what Lancelot said we could, if we could turn everything around by proving to this guy that he was worth something, that his creations- that our story was something everyone wanted to see.

We had to take the chance.

I looked over at Steeljack. He looked back at me, and smirked. “Never thought I’d be fightin’ to save the whole world before this.”

“Guess it’s just one of those things superheroes do,” I replied.

A sound like a measuring tape contracting reached our ears. The Stitcher reattached his hand onto the frayed edge where it was left, looking no worse for wear. “That means nothing.” he declared.

He swept forwards with his hand, and Hale marched forward to meet us. “But if you want a fight, you’ve got one.”

---

[u/OddDirective → u/OddDirective]

The mountain of muscle looks up to the sky, an' before I know it, he's launching himself up to come back down on top of us.

"Scatter!" Gwen calls out, an' there's no need to tell me twice. I take the straight way forward, but I look back an' see that Lancelot didn't scatter so far. He must have some kind of death wish.

Lancelot ducks the fist Hale tried to put through his head, and swings into him- and of all the things that coulda happened, it bounces off. "Ha!" laughed Hale. "This is the wall you will not break down. This is self-indulgence on a whole new level."

Animal Man swoops in, slaps him across the face, and that lets Lancelot get back. But against a guy like this, there is no safe distance. Hale promptly proves my point by reaching up and nearly grabbing Animal Man out of the sky.

I have to get in there.

"This is the sin of the writer," Hale rumbles, "who only wants to make impressive things happen. Who sees one character or another and wants to elevate them above all the rest. This self-indulgence turns the rules into paper-thin suggestions, and breaks open the doors to the absurd. Indulging destroys the realistic world."

"Do you even hear yourself?" I say, crashing bodily into the bodybuilder. Absurd is right when it comes to this guy's strength, but anybody my size and my weight runs into something that ain't tied down, it's going flying. Hale staggers three steps forward.

Gwen pulls out a pair of pistols, and fires wildly at Hale to pull his focus. It does, because he starts punching the bullets down into the ground. "He's like a bear! He's like a big shaved bear that hates people!"

"And there is the other side of self-indulgence," Hale says, before wheeling around and cleaning my clock out of nowhere. "No matter if it fits, no matter if it is to something completely removed from the tone, the references jam themselves in wherever they can. Writing simply to regurgitate the things which have already been done, in the hopes anyone else will recognize it. And in doing so, you turn away those who don't get it. No one can 'get' everything. Putting in those self-indulgent moments doesn't add a thing."

"You're wrong," I say, still a bit punch drunk. Hale looks to add more, but Lancelot slashes him in the side, keeping him off me for a few.

Animal Man picks up where I left off, both in the striking department and the speaking one. "Over all this time, I've seen and remembered so many things. Including the Red, including comic book limbo- those can't have been mistakes. And I won't let you say that they don't matter!"

Hale shakes off the hit, and swings his whole arm at Lancelot, forcing him to duck. "They can't matter that much," he says.

I run in and grab him around the torso, keep him from goin' anywhere. Lancelot replies. "You must give yourself more credit. You brought about my meeting with so many knights that so few would know. That cannot just be self-indulgence, for it shows a commitment to your work."

"And you had me talk about the beer I drank," I add. "An' I thought about Izzy right before. You wouldn't know about either of those if you were just lookin' from the outside in."

Hale flexes, an' my hold on him breaks. He boots Lancelot away, an' turns back around to me. "What does that matter, anyway?"

I put up my dukes. "It means you care enough to get the little things right."

That hits harder than any punch I coulda thrown, but I add in a cross to the body just to make it sting that little bit more. Buddy flies in and stings him in the back again, too.

Hale stomps, and that shockwave knocks me back a foot just by itself. "Then how about the DenLiner, and the Admiral Zheng He? The Shadows in the Andes and the Reaper girl slashing the canvas? Only one person could understand all of those, and it's me!"

"That may be so," Buddy responds, "but there's another side to it you haven't talked about. Sure, if you don't get a reference, things get confusing. But when you see something you do get, when you recognize what a writer is going for, it makes everything around it better!"

Hale pulls back his fist, and I see the string connecting it to the ceiling. I can see all the strings, now. That means- he's losing his grip on him. "We're getting there, keep goin'!" I shout.

All of a sudden, he looks up at the sky. Does he see them too?

…It turns out it ain't that. Hale crouches down, pushes off, an' just the wind of it nearly blows me over. But he's up in the shadows on the ceiling now, and when he comes down, you don't want to be under him. So we spread out.

And after a few more seconds, we get impact. A tidal wave of coins and jewels ripples out from the crater he just made, which washes over every one of us but can't carry me away. That leaves me a front-row seat to the ground breaking up and throwing chunks of rock into the air big enough for an elephant to stand on. Hale looked between each for a second, and then took off, using 'em as platforms to hit whoever and whatever was still in the air.

Then he went right back to standin' there, his fist still smoking from the hits. "This is the indulgence of battleboarders. Those who value feats over all else. It is a curse."

"Bull $#@!" said Gwen, popping out from behind a boulder. "You want to know what that was? That was the coolest thing anyone's done yet in this whole story."

Off in the distance, Lancelot hits the ground. I figure he will be back up in a minute, but I've got to get the here and now. So I step out.

"You gotta give the people what they want," I say to him. "And things like that jump, things like takin' an entire machine gun blast to the chest, like beatin' down a whole horde of soldiers? That's the stuff that they all eat up. Because everyone knows how strong you've gotta be to do it!"

Hale dropped to a knee. He was on the ropes. And with both of our friends getting back up, it's time to end things.

Gwen starts the ball rolling. "Okay, so let's get things straight. Including references to small details, references to outside media, and characters doing cool things beyond their normal limits is self-indulgent, according to you."

Hale nodded, and stood back up with his head turned towards her.

Buddy picks up what she's saying. "If that's really the case, then what's wrong with doing it in a story like this?"

"It destroys things from the inside. It alienates the audience-"

"There isn't a reader in the world that doesn't want to see things breaking apart and smashing into each other at some point." Gwen countered.

I step into the fight, and land a hit square onto Hale's chest. "An' if they see what they like, whether it's somebody strong or somethin' they know, they're gonna come back for more!"

Hale staggered back.

I swing again, and Gwen brings the truth. "And the truth is, you're not nearly the first one to make something thus full of references. The battle of Helm's Deep is just one extended way of Tolkien saying 'Shakespeare couldn't handle it'!"

Hale blocked with a forearm, and the string on it went slack for a second.

Animal Man stood up, and added his two cents. "There's a line of authors stretching back centuries, all living and creating what they wanted without a care in the world, and they succeeded! So how is it any different from now?"

"I don't- know!" Hale said.

"It ain't!" I conclude, winding my fist back. "That's why we're telling you all this- so you can let it go, snap out of it, and write what everybody wants to see!"

I wind back and hit him clean in the jaw, and the strings shatter to pieces as he flies through the air. Out of the corner of my eye, I spot the Stitcher recoiling like he got hit, too. I smile.

Somehow after all that, Hale gets up in no time flat. He walks over, and tips his hat. "Fine work saving me from that, it was awful havin' to listen to him speak those words with my voice. Now, erm, how are we supposed to do the same with the others?"

"We're using what we know to counter the doubts the Stitcher is made of," Buddy says, "so if you can talk any sort of sense about what they say into them, that's good."

"Ah, and if I can't?"

"Well, when all else fails, sometimes you just have to hit it hard," I say.

Hale hits his fist against his palm. "Now that's what I wanted to hear."

“Alright, fine!”, the Stitcher shouts. “In that case, I’m gonna go all out!”

Threads sprout from the Stitcher’s back, and lift him up like the legs of a monster. He pulls some more white threads into his hand, and then chucks them all at us. “Die!”

[u/OddDirective → u/OddDirective]

The attacks come at us fast, but they’re not targeted. He must be blind with rage. Good. Means he’s not thinkin’ straight. Only problem is, he ain’t the only one we have to worry about.

Chuuya jumps into the fray, throwin' more gravity orbs and tryin' to take Animal Man out of the sky. Animal Man dodges a thread, an orb, and catches the side of another thread. He recovers before he hits the ground, though.

Meanwhile, Lancelot shows back up, like I knew he would, an' swings like he's about to split Chuuya down the middle. He slides around, grabs onto Lancelot's collar and jumps- before turning the gravity on and hammering him down to the ground.

“Well, well, well,” Chuuya says, smug. “Look where we are. It’s almost like I said this exact thing was going to happen!”

“I cannot understand…” Lancelot said, trying to fight back up.

Chuuya stomps him one more time. "Then I’ll repeat it for the class. I’m awfully good at starting things up. The problem is, I can’t finish any of them.”

I’m the one that’s heard this before. But I can’t think of what to say, so I have to just let him continue.

“Doesn’t matter if it’s something I need to finish. Doesn’t matter if I want to finish it, more than anything in the world. Things come up, things get left behind, and hey presto! I have to serve up some garbage! Or worse yet, I have to give up and concede completely, leave what I have for the rest of time. Sure hope that doesn’t happen here!”

“It won’t happen,” I say, planting my feet. “We ain’t gonna let you just drop out.”

“What, am I gonna have to snap some poor side character’s neck to get you to lose hope again?” Chuuya sneered.

Gwen fires an assault rifle at Chuuya, knocking him off his game and forcing his hands up to block the bullets. That lets Lancelot get back up, and it lets me and Animal Man that much closer in. And it’s Animal Man that speaks up. “You can finish stories. You’ve already proven that you can, here and elsewhere.”

That gets Chuuya to grit his teeth, and after swaying away from Lancelot’s strikes, he thrust his hands down and crushed all of us with the same weight.

I’m ready for it, though. I take another step and belt out “Look at us, you see this? The fact thta we’re even here means you’ve gotten things done. And that you can get things done! So stop talking about how you can’t, and start listenin’ about how you can!”

I see Chuuya’s eyes flicker for a second, he breaks eye contact and looks at the ground. Somethin’ in there recognizes where this is going.

Then he gets launched back fifty feet from his teammate’s punch. I stare a hole into him like only a villain can.

“What? I wanted to help,” Hale says.

“Heheh, you did help, Hale. Helped me realize this ain’t even close to dealt with.”

Chuuya gets back up, shaky, but with a smile on his face. All five of us turn to face him, and I’m getting ready for the worst.

“So yeah, I managed to finish up things with you guys, or so you think.” he says. “But look closer at those endings, spot where the cracks begin to show. And that’s just with you. I’ve got a whole closet full of rotting ones, and I’m just talking about writing, here. What should I do with them?”

“Bear with me on this one, guys,” Gwen says under her breath.

We just nod.

“Well, it seems to me like the solution is simple,” Gwen calls out. “You finish what’s ahead of you right now, and then get to those ones you have left when you’ve got the time to get them done.”

Chuuya does a double take. “Nehhhhhhhh?”

Animal Man steps up. “She’s right. Those things can wait, and if you ever feel like you can, you can go back and finish it without pressure.”

“You really think that I can just finish things whenever, even if it’s been years? Come on! That’s not how the world works!” Chuuya shouts in indignation.

Lancelot is the next one up. “There are matters where the actions that one takes to get to an end are much less important than the end itself. Though it is not always the case, it certainly seems to be so here. The amount of time it takes matters not, so long as it is done.”

Chuuya scoffs. “As long as it gets done, huh? You’re crazy.”

Despite what Chuuya said, I see those strings appear coming out of his back. Everyone else sees them too, and now they all know what they mean. The guy in charge realizes too, so he switches the conversation.

And he rushes us.

“You still haven’t dealt with this ‘talent’ I’ve got. And if it’s going to stick around, why should I ever start anything again? After all, I know I’m never going to finish it. Better to let anyone who would’ve wanted to see go be fans of someone else.”

Hale stays still, dumbfounded, and says “Well, how could you do anything, then?”

That means he eats a projectile, and gets locked into place. “Don’t start anything you can’t finish. That’s how the saying goes, doesn’t it?” Chuuya taunts, “Guess you’re right, in a sense.”

He’s movin’ so fast now, I don’t know who he’s gonna hit. Might as well make it me. “That ain’t how life is. You gotta start doin’ something before you know what it’s gonna be like! Before you know if it’s somethin’ you’re even gonna like! Otherwise, you’ll never know what you like and you don’t.”

The heel kick that lands on my temple tells me I’m right on the money. “You’re not getting it. I can’t finish anything. I can’t finish shows, I can’t finish games, and I certainly can’t finish a story.”

He gets away before I can do anything, keepin’ a distance between all four of us. We look between each other, but we know he can outmaneuver us if he’s on top of things. Somebody’s gotta keep him busy.

Lucky us, it seems like Gwen knows how to run her mouth more than anythin’. “You’re worried this ending you’ll make, that it won’t be able to live up to everything that’s come before it, right?”

“Of course,” Chuuya replies, shooting me a glare, “How the hell is something I make here at the end going to live up to the start I made?”

Lancelot lowers his sword. “You’ve got it reversed. The ending is not created to lead from the start. The start is created so it can lead into the ending. And you already know how this will end, do you not?”

“I’ve got a plan for it, but it can’t work the way I want it. Not with this time.”

I look Animal Man in the eye, nod, and speak my mind. “As long as you get that ending you’re lookin’ for, it doesn’t matter if you feel like it’s crap. People don’t see the lives behind the curtain, they see the supervillains makin’ off with a bank vault full of cash. Even if you got gassed going in and the cops had your number the whole way through town, if you got out with cash, that’s gonna be good enough.”

The mafia man got the memo. “Even here? Even now? I’m just putting words down in a panic, how the hell can that be good enough?”

Animal Man takes his shot. He launches forward, flying high in an arc to come down on top of Chuuya. “Because it’s the ending you’ve been building up to!”

Of course, Chuuya scouted it. He takes his hand and slams it into Animal Man, who crumples. But still, Buddy’s got the answer. “You can’t know how well the story will end just from its beginning. Sometimes, the ending is worse. But that means it can also be better! That’s why-”

Gwen comes around from behind, and slashes down with her two swords. “Every ending you make is the good ending!”

The threads get cut to pieces, an’ Chuuya staggers forward once they do. He takes a couple deep breaths… and we all feel the hate comin’ off of him.

The Stitcher yells out in pain, then says, from up above, “This isn’t happening!”

Chuuya sees the Stitcher. Then, without a word, he makes the biggest gravity ball I’ve seen him make yet, and hurls it straight for the bastard.

The Stitcher uses those threads on his back to try an’ run, but the orb follows his movements, so all he can do is make a ball of threads and brace for the impact in 3, 2, 1-

It burns like a meteor into the ground, sending another shockwave and making another crater. And it ain’t aftershocks I’m feeling, I know. He’s not stopping with the crushing weight.

“That guy’s head is absolutely toxic,” Chuuya said, crushing the sphere again. “I’ll keep this guy down, but you better take him out, you hear me?”

Of course, as he says it, a thread fires out from the ball an’ nearly takes his head off. I set him back on his feet as the Stitcher crawls out of his hole, six threads keepin’ him up and his arms folded behind his back.

“How do you like these apples, Mr. ‘I had high hopes’?” Gwen taunts.

“A minor setback.I'm not done yet!” he says.

His four upper threads go on the attack. He’s lookin’ around this time, picking and choosing his targets carefully. I run up and get in the way of the one aimed Chuuya’s way, and it stings like nothing else, but I’ll live.

Lancelot dodges, as does Gwen, while Hale… well, does what he does, an’ takes it across the front of his chest. Two more swings keep the rest of us at bay while also pushin’ Buddy back toward us, keeping him out of the airspace.

Then he pulls back, an’ shouts “Dodge this!”

Gwen spies the guy readying an attack, an’ calls out to us. “Everyone, on my mark, jump!”

“God Thread…

---

[u/OddDirective → u/OddDirective]

---

Ripper!”

“Now!”

I flew up when Gwen called it out, and watched as the threads swept through the gold underneath our feet, turning up the rocks beneath even that- and doing even more damage, damage that the others wouldn’t know about.

The Stitcher struck out at me again, but I wasn’t concerned about his hits. I was concerned for the last one he controlled, who was moving into position to try and do something about all of us.

And then, right on schedule, he did.

"Alright, you've had your fun," Fourze said, menacingly. "It's over, now."

Fourze pulled out a new set of switches, larger ones, and slammed them down into place. "N+S Magnet, On!"

His suit changed again, now a heavy metallic suit with two turrets sticking out from it. Fourze reached down, and pulled that lever again, and the two guns separated and combined.

I should’ve seen it coming. He created a giant magnet.

“You can’t understand how much I’ve had to struggle to work like I have. So I won’t even give you the chance.” said the Rider.

The magnet turned on, and my two teammates were forced towards it. Steeljack tried to stand strong, like it was just a storm he was caught in, while Lancelot turned and planted his sword in the ground. Gwenpool, meanwhile, was chasing after her shark backpack, the place where she kept all her guns.

That meant the only ones who could do something were the two we saved… and me.

For his part, Chuuya tried to do what he could. He lobbed balls of his power into the maelstrom that was forming. But when it hit, it didn’t seem to do much. “What the hell is this?”

“Sorry, Chuuya,” said Fourze, “but gravity is a weaker force than electromagnetism. You’re not going to get through that easily!”

So it was up to me. I swooped down, and asked “How does it happen?”

Fourze turned to me. “What?”

“I heard you before, at the start,” I replied. “How ‘You put too much work on yourself’. How does it happen?

"It happens the same way every time. My laziness and my inability to stick to a schedule pushes more and more work onto my future self,” came the reply, the magnet still pulling my friends towards us. “Then, when the time comes, what I think I can do and what I can actually do run straight into each other. And I torture myself, overwork myself to the point of passing out and going until night becomes day. And it never. Works. Out. I'm not even creating anything worth this kind of suffering!"

“You’re wrong!” Gwen shouted with both hands on her bag.

Fourze just hauled back on the magnets in response, jolting everyone it was pulling along.

“Gwen is right,” I said. “It might not be what you want from this, but you’re making something. That’s what this is all about.”

“Like it even does anything for me,” Fourze said, looking off and down.

My mind raced for options of what to say, and settled on “What motivates you to get things done?”

That was not my smartest possible move.

"That’s just it! I can't motivate- I can't freaking move or type even when I know I have to! Even when there is no other option! I seriously can’t stop myself from pulling myself away from my work. What the hell am I supposed to do when my brain can't do the only thing it's good for? When it comes down to the wire and nothing is being created?!"

I looked back. Hale had Lancelot in his arms, and was keeping him from coming any closer, while Chuuya had managed to weigh Steeljack down enough that the magnet was pulling him inches at best. Gwen was still being dragged in, though.

“I know this is no solution," I began, "but how about you make some space where there us no distractions, and then do your work there when you have to."

Fourze scoffed. "Even that's not enough. I'll find a distraction, make one myself."

"Then- planning," I said the first thing that came to mind. "Make your plans to do things in advance, and then follow through."

"Great, just already do things before- are you even listening to me?! How is that supposed to help me now?!" he raged.

I needed to get things back on track. I needed something to help, and there wasn't an animal alive that could help me now. Just Buddy Baker, the man.

"Then break it down. Don't do a chapter, go page by page, paragraph by paragraph if you have to," I recited. "Leave and come back with fresh eyes if something is escaping you. Pace yourself, and pace around if it helps you."

And somehow, middle school essay prep became useful in the real world. Guess there's a first time for everything.

Fourze hung his head, after nodding along to my writing advice. "Right. Right. But there's only so much any one of those things can do. At the end of the day, words have to end up on the page. And I leave too many of those off."

I frowned. “You’re being too hard on yourself. It doesn’t matter how things get done. What matters is that they get done. And you’ve gotten us here. So use what I said, and get this done.”

Fourze finally shut the magnets off, but they returned to being the turrets in the suit. More than that, now Fourze turned to face me. "Even if, if that works. How do I stop this? How do I stop falling for the same problems, the same pains, the same situation every single time?!"

“You’ve gotta know your limits,” Hale piped up.

That set him off. The Rider turned and blasted indiscriminately, saying “I know where my limit is! I’ve run into the wall too many times by now!”

The others scrambled for cover, and I flew around to the front side. “Even so, you can’t give up now! I know you can get there without breaking down! You can reach and surpass your limit!” I ate a shot to the chest for it, but it was worth it. It gave the others a chance to regroup, and it gave Fourze a chance to think about what I said.

“An’ when you beat your head against that wall again and again and again, you can break all the way through!” shouted Steeljack. “That’s called improvement! And that’s what winnin’ is!”

Fourze stopped firing. And the threads appeared from his body.

“Tell me the truth.” he said, quietly.

No one replied. He raised his voice back up.

“What am I doing that’s making this happen? What is going on that makes me push everything until the last second? I won’t accept any cop-out, I won’t accept anything that says I can’t do anything about it! Tell me!”

And I looked, looked past him, and saw what was really going on. So I spoke back up.

“The reason there’s so much work… is because you have so many big ideas.”

“So, what do I do about it?” he asked in return

“I can tell you what you shouldn’t do,” Hale jumped in. “You shouldn’t give up on those ideas.”

Fourze seemed confused. “But then what-”

“You hold yourself to a higher standard, kid,” Chuuya said, looking off into the distance. “Live up to your own expectations, and you’ll have a masterpiece. And even if you can’t get there, you’ll have something you can work with.”

“The goal cannot be to be perfect, else you never shall reach it” Lancelot added. “You must do all that you can to work towards your goals, and what that goal is, or how you put your all into it, looks different for every man.”

I could feel that he was ready. So I gave him one last push in the right direction. “You’re better than you know. You’ve got the experience with this. And that’s why… you can get this work done.”

Fourze’s arm twitched… and then fell onto the lever. “LIMIT BREAK.”

The cannons charged, we braced for the attack-

And then each string pulled itself out, one by one, and Fourze spun straight back around. “Rider Electromagnet Bomber!”

The Stitcher’s eyes went wide, and his threads quickly leapt in front of him, weaving in and out in the seconds it traveled to create an intricate shield of threads. It buckled inward, blocking the attack.

“I saw what was happening while I was being controlled. Well done with all of that.” Gentaro said. “Now, let’s finish this!”

When the shield came down, the Stitcher did not lash out. In fact, he was eerily quiet. “I'm going to kill all of you.” he vowed.

[u/OddDirective → u/OddDirective]

He raised his arm up, and a volley of threads arced upwards. They twisted at angles and fell down upon all of us, knocking us all far away. And he didn’t stop there. More threads fired from his off hand, and his back threads traced seeking paths at all of us. “[I’m tired of this.]”

“You don’t have to keep fighting us!” Gwen shouted. “We’re not your enemy!”

“Why can’t you accept it?”

I met his eyes, and spoke from my heart. “You’re the one who we’re doing this for.”

“I’m not strong enough. Plain and simple.”

Lancelot scoffed. “There is naught plain and simple about you. You have made that clear.”

“SHUT UP!”

He swept his hand and struck a cat-of-nine-tails blow to Lancelot, but it wasn’t going to stop us. Fourze flew, and the both of us tangled with the threads on his back. Steeljack raced forward, but a bundle of threads pushed him away. Chuuya cratered the ground, but the threads held him up. Hale and Gwen, they were running his way.

Finally, the Stitcher bellowed, and he slammed everything into the ground below. “I'm through with you!LAST ONE!”

“Oi, that one was mine!” Fourze complained.

All around us, and around the entire vault, threads sprung up and connected to a singular point up in the sky. The threads converged into a wall, just like the wall that Lancelot saved me from before, but with even more threads. Now, the gaps are barely the size of my finger. And with the light glinting off of them, I know they’re sharp.

Cat’s Cradle! A single thread Over and over again,Leaving no space where there is not a thread!

The dome started converging inwards, and it moved at a steady pace in at us. We all knew that if it closed on us completely, it was the end of the line. But there wasn’t any way through.

Steeljack stood up. He raced towards the cage, and rammed his shoulder into the lattice. He yelled in pain, but stood firm anyways, trying to stop the inevitable advance.

“What the hell are you doing?” I shouted down at him.

He looked back at me, and I saw the resolve in his eyes. “If there isn’t a gap, then you gotta make one yourself!”

Slowly, but surely a gap opened up, just wide enough for a person to slip through.

“Come on! Everybody through!” Steeljack yelled.

We all flew through, and I reached back, grabbed him as he nearly fell back. It fully contracted, and exploded into a cloud of dust.

“Hey,” said Gwen quietly. “Look at him.”

I looked. After that massive attack, the Stitcher wasn’t even standing up. Whether it was our words getting to him, or just the recoil of it, he’d fallen back to a seated position, the threads coming from his back holding him up. He was looking down, off to the side, and of all the things, he just looked despondent.

“I don’t belong here.” he said quietly. “Look at them. I’m way out of my league here.”

Slowly, we all approached. “Who’s he talking about?” asked Hale.

“The people he looks up to,” replied Gwen.

“I am the biggest nobody of them all.” he said, still not looking up. “How am I supposed to win?”

I spoke up first. “You have to believe you can. That’s the most important thing.”

The Stitcher looked up, and met my eyes. “What are you talking about?”

“At this moment, your greatest obstacle is doubt,” replied Lancelot. “However, if you banish those doubts, have faith, have courage, and believe in your own ability, then take that belief and act upon it- there will be nothing more in your way.”

“It won’t be enough.” The stitcher said, and stood up. “We can't just hope for the best.”

“You’re right, it ain’t all of it. But take it from someone who didn’t believe in himself, didn’t believe I could amount to a damn thing. If you haven’t got that belief, you can’t get it done.” Steeljack said, firmly.

“And you have reasons to believe,” Hale added. “Even I can see that.”

“Like what?” the Stitcher asked incredulously.

“Well, like they said back when they were getting me out of your mess, you wouldn’t have brought half the things they noticed out if you didn’t care about ‘em,” Hale commented.

The Stitcher’s demeanor faltered. "How do I win?"

Gwen smiled, and spoke. “You write the best story you can, you include all of your grand ideas, and you put your all into it.”

"How am I supposed to know?"

“Know what?” Steeljack asked.

“I’ve putmy heart and soul into it. How do I know it'll work?” the Stitcher asked, almost sounding timid at this point.

“You can’t know,” Fourze said, approaching the Stitcher directly. “But, if you do put all of yourself into something, use every last ounce of skill you have, and create something you can be proud of? It doesn’t matter if you don’t win the contest. You’ll have truly accomplished something.”

The Stitcher took a deep breath, and sighed. “Do you really think I can do it?”

It was my turn to smile at him. “We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t.”

He took a look at his own hands, for just a moment.

Then, the threads at his back curled in, covered him, and lashed out, blowing us all back. But despite it all, no one hit the ground in frustration or disappointment.

“We’re getting through to him!” Gwen said, “Now, let’s finish this off!”

The Stitcher lashed out with his threads, swinging wildly at us to keep everyone at bay. He wasn’t even looking at us.

“Steeljack, Hale! Clear a path!” Gwen commanded.

“On it!” Hale replied, and they both charged into the fray.

The next attack headed straight for Steeljack, but before it could reach, Hale swung a fist and knocked it completely off course. Then he turned to the Stitcher. “Now then, you’ve got plenty of skill with your words. Plenty of folks couldn’t string together one real conversation if their life depended on it. You’ve got the words, you can do this!”

The Stitcher let out a grunt, and aimed the next attack to swipe Hale in half. But Steeljack returned the favor, and rammed his side into the whip attack. And before the Stitcher could pull back, he grabbed it under his arm and shouted “You’ve got more than just that, too! Everythin’ you do, you do it for a reason! The details, the worlds, it all makes sense, and it’s cause you care about this!”

“Stop that.” the Stitcher said, not angry, not even coldly. “Stop getting my hopes up.”

“Sorry, but I can’t let that happen!” Chuuya shouted, vaulting over Steeljack’s head and tapping his fingers to the thread. Instantly the Stitcher’s hand slammed down to the ground, the threads connecting it becoming a hundred times heavier than simple string.

“There’s more to a fight than just words and skill,” Chuuya continued, pointing straight at the Stitcher. “You’ve got to have the momentum to keep yourself going and keep everyone else’s eyes on you. And the simple fact of the matter is, you’ve got that. You’ve built up so much energy that the only thing you can do is keep things rolling!”

The Stitcher pulled his hand up slowly, fighting against Chuuya’s power all the way- but just as he pulled his hand all the way back up, Arondight slashed straight through the taut lines. A second slash at him met the threads from the back, and clashed.

“Though I may not be from a time with so many stories to hear,” Lancelot said, in the clash, “your ideas stand out as utterly unparalleled. To follow even one of us down this path would be more adventure than many lifetimes, and you have done so for all three of us and more. There is a reason you are luminant above the others. No one else can have the ideas in your head.”

The Stitcher responded to that by pushing him off, and pummeling the knight with strikes from the six threads from his back. Blow after blow after blow, but Lancelot stood firm, even as the Stitcher finally kicked him back with his leg. The Stitcher looked at his hand, from which Lancelot had severed the strings, and cursed.

But he did not have the time to spare. From the side he wasn’t looking came an ”Elec, On!”

The shocking sword came inches from his body, as the Stitcher formed a shield from the one good hand he had remaining, and grunted in pain.

Fourze just pushed onwards. “Listen up! Anyone can do anything they set their mind to! We’re here to show you that you can! You can believe in yourself, you can pour your heart and soul into completing it, and you can win this time! So grit those teeth, and do everything you can do to get things done!”

The clash of sword and shield finally erupted, and both involved staggered. The Stitcher panted in and out, sweat covering his brow, and the shaking in his hands showed that this was getting to him, one way or the other.

And that means it’s my turn.

Gwen pointed up at me. “Bring it on home, Animal Man!”

The Stitcher whirled around with an attack, but I wasn’t where he thought I’d be. I was somewhere he couldn’t touch. And I was going to use that.

A simple feint with my body sent all of his remaining weapons my way, or more specifically, the wrong way to get to me. Then, I ducked behind the scene, went around the back, and grabbed a hold of the Stitcher from behind.

“There’s one more thing I want to show you,” I said, and took off. We climbed up, up, and away from the flat world below. Because there was only one place I could take him to show him what he needed to see.

---

[u/OddDirective → u/OddDirective]

A space with two characters, up above the narrative world. A space with only the world below, and the world above. Animal Man let go of who he was carrying, and they both floated around to see each other.

“Why did you bring me here?” the Stitcher asked.

“Look out there,” Animal Man said. “You can see them too, can’t you?”

The Stitcher could. "How many of you are there?"

Animal Man smiled. “Enough.”

"So what." said the Stitcher.

“You know, belief in yourself isn’t the only place belief comes from." Animal Man said, gesturing to the world outside. "They believe in you, too. They believe in your words, your story, and everything in between. They believe you can win this whole damn thing.”

"Is that really true?" the Stitcher said, turning his head away from both worlds.

“Maybe not all of them. But like I said before, there’s enough. And if you really want to know… you can talk to them, can't you?”

The Stitcher turned back to Animal Man, and then… hesitated. Upon seeing that, Animal Man turned outwards, to look out towards the world that was more than he knew.

“Well, how about it? Do you guys like what you see? Come on, let him hear it! Let him know you’re there! You’re the reason this is all happening, so it’s time to turn some of that back around!”

And through the wall that separated worlds, the Stitcher felt it. "What is this?"

“It’s their true feelings. Everyone who has read these words and believed in the story they tell. Anyone reading this now, who wants you to see this through.”

“So it’s like that, huh.” the Stitcher said, closing his eyes. “I've been a fool.”

“I knew that if you could see what they were like, see what they really wanted, you could really believe that you can get this done.” Animal Man commented. “All you need to do is believe in yourself, and take the ideas from your brain and make them a reality.”

A sigh escaped the Stitcher’s mouth, and then he smiled. “Well played. You win.”

Animal Man smiled back. “No. We win. I don’t know anything you don’t know. You knew that too.”

And at that revelation, the Stitcher laughed.

Finally, he looked back down to the world below him. “So now what do I do?”

“What you’ve been meaning to do this whole time,” Animal Man replied. “Finish the story.”

“Alright.”

And so the Stitcher closed his eyes, breathed in, and got to work. He typed into his phone, and his computer, and formed every word of every sentence that made up the worlds that Animal Man and everyone went through. Everything from his head made it onto the page. That was the only thing he had to do, and the only thing he wanted to do.

And finally, he leaned back, stood up, and let out a deep breath. “It is done. It’s out of my hands now.”

Animal Man gave him a pat on the back. “You did good work. Hold your head high. If it were up to me, you’d be sailing free and clear, but it’s not. It’s up to them. So believe in them, because they believe in you.”

The Stitcher surveyed the world he created, and his eyes went down to the place where he’d been taken from. “There is nothing more I can do. It’s time to face the music.”

And with that, the Stitcher fell down, down, down back to the planet below.

---

What took hours for the Stitcher and Animal Man passed by as seconds for the ones in the world below. Only a few moments after the two of them went up, only one plummeted down, threads coming not just from his back but from everywhere upon his body. He landed and kicked up a cloud of dust and gold, and created a crater in which to lay.

At the edge of the crater, the fighters stood, before one took it upon themself to slide down the sides and meet the Stitcher head-on. Slowly, with his hands and feet, the Stitcher climbed back up to a standing position.

The fighter grabbed the Stitcher’s shoulder, and leveled his blade at his heart. “You have been defeated,” spoke Lancelot du Lac.

The Stitcher simply closed his eyes.

Lancelot stabbed forward, and with his blade inside the chest, sliced down, and tore open the Stitcher’s body, who did not bleed, but split in two much like a tapestry would. Arondight was withdrawn, and its wielder pushed the fallen creator down to the ground.

And so it was that the Stitcher came apart at the seams.

---

[u/OddDirective → u/OddDirective]

A pair of walls made from white thread sprang up suddenly, cutting me off from the rest of my teammates. And right down the newly-made alleyway, the towering body of Hale stared me down.

“Do you know what self-indulgence means?” he- or, the Stitcher pretending to be him- said. “Let me show you.”

Hale punched forward, then pulled his fist right back. I didn’t understand what he did, not until the wind hit me and nearly blew me off my feet. But that was the first gale, and the second, the one that sucked me in towards Hale, was so strong that I couldn’t stay standing.

“What?” I exclaimed, before ending up in a bear hug I knew I couldn’t escape from. Hale simply lifted up, threw us both backwards, and buried my neck into the golden floor. And he didn’t stop there, no, he flipped over my body and pulled back one more time, throwing me across the room.

Hale stood up, and dusted his hands off. “Self-indulgence is making references that only you can know. And self indulgence is breaking the rules, just for the sake of doing what you want with a character.”

I grabbed as much pain resistance as I could, but even still, those hits had done major damage. If he got his hands on me a couple more times like that, I wouldn’t be able to confront the Stitcher again, on account of being a smear on the ground.

That meant I had to use everything I could. Not just flight, but getting away from this guy and away from these walls. I kicked off the ground, flew up and around-

“Nice trick.” Hale said.

Then, he leapt up and grabbed me around the waist, bringing me with as he fell back down. I pushed every ounce of strength, rhinos, bulls, anything I could think of, into getting out of the lock, but we fell too fast. We smashed into the ground and I swear I bounced off before coming to a stop.

“You see what I mean?” Hale said. “You can’t fight self-indulgence. I’ve already made so many indulgent jokes and references. I could make a list a thousand words long and it still wouldn’t cover it all! It is everything, everywhere, all at once. And it will drag this story to its end.”

I dragged myself back to my feet. As much as I should’ve cared about his words, I cared more about the fists that could probably knock my head off my body and he’d barely even registered a hit. What could I even do against a guy like this?

Luckily, it was at that point that somebody up above heard my plight.

You’re not the only one with secret weapons! Everyone, get in there!

And then the last person I would’ve expected dropped in from above.

“Yes, yes! The great Doctorrr Rrrrobotnik has returned!” he said, flying down in his hovering machine. “I appear today to- drop the historic beat!”

Then he slapped himself, and pointed down at us. “You!”

I kept my mouth shut, and luckily, he wasn’t talking about me. “Your little ‘self-indulgence’ plot cost me an unfettered existence! I will not be shackled to these memes and you-tube poops! So now, my all-new animal-cruelty-free Badniks will shatter this cocksure illusion you’ve created!”

True to his word, an army of robots descended from the space above our heads, crowding out the corridor that the walls of wire had created. There must have been twenty or thirty of them, each one looking more dangerous than anything I’d seen from Robotnik before.

“Behold! Wired Earp!”

Hale punched its head off.

“Ehm, Blockbeard!”

Hale swept its legs out from under it.

“Team Sprocket!”

Hale chucked another bot’s head through all three.

“ROMulus Imperius Augustus!”

You get it by now. One by one, each of Robotnik’s robots was destroyed before it could even scratch Hale’s body. In fact, he even laughed off some of the attacks that did manage to reach him. “What’s the next step in your master plan, Eggman?”

“Such insults do not faze me, brute!” Robotnik sneered. “I am just merely… recalculating my options for how to destroy you.”

“And another thing,” Hale added. “You’re ugly.”

“THAT DOES IT!” Robotnik replied, and leapt down from his hovercar to face Hale head-on.

Hale was ready, and caught him coming down, but the fist sank into Robotnik’s prodigious gut, and he seemed to absorb the blow.

I, on the other hand, was sneaking around the back, and once I saw the hit land, I knew I had my chance. I pulled the box jellyfish again, and slammed my hand against Hale’s back, feeling my power transfer the sting to his body- and all he did was flinch.

Hale spun his head around, and looked back at me. Smiling. “Well, now you’ve made this interesting.”

Hale spun his whole body around, and I flew back as fast as I could as his fist connected with the wall the Stitcher put up. The sound reverberated around like he’d slammed his fist into a gong.

Robotnik, however, wasn’t discouraged. He wound back, and clocked Hale across the face, which didn’t stagger him, but gave me an opening to fly back in and land a blow of my own to his ribs. Even enhanced by the sting, Hale still shrugged it off.

I took a look back as I came around for another pass. The Stitcher was behind a wall, so I couldn’t see much of him. But I saw his face, and it didn’t look happy.

"No."

“When one indulges themself, they eliminate their audience one by one.” Hale said, as he blocked another of Robotnik’s strikes. “Everyone who can’t get a reference, or thinks a reference doesn’t work? They’re never going to see things the same. And as that keeps going, the truth is, you’ll end up writing a story with an audience of only yourself.”

He dodges a high kick from me, and continues. “The final part of this whole ruck is that by becoming a self-indulgent writer, you start to miss the forest for the trees. The story stops being one long tale and becomes a series of moments, one into another into another, with nothing connecting them all. And a story like that won’t ever be a winner.”

Robotnik flung a buzzsaw-hand into Hale, but Hale just grabbed him, picked him up, and launched him dead-on, knocking me out of the sky and putting both of us on the ground.

“That is why I am unbeatable.”

"Reassemble."

---

[u/OddDirective → u/OddDirective]

When the walls go up, I’m busy runnin’ at the Chuuya kid, tryin’ to throw him off his game and make him slip up with his attacks. I don’t get a good look at them, but I know they’re the Stitcher’s doing. He’s boxin’ us all into our own fights.

“You want to know a secret?” the mafioso says, as he dances around my jabs and hooks. “I’ve got some awful habits.”

“I’ll turn runnin’ your mouth into one,” I say, feinting and swinging an uppercut his way.

But I ain’t fast enough. The fist just misses his chin as he leans back, then launches forward with his hand. One touch, and I’m down to the weight of a milk jug. He follows it up with a jumping knee that sends me up, and a spinning kick that launches me thirty feet.

“No, but seriously, I can never finish the things I start,” Chuuya continues. “It’s a pattern I can’t break out of. I see something interesting, I give it a try, I say I’ll get around to it, and then it sits there unfinished ‘til the sun goes supernova.”

I try an’ get back up, but suddenly, it’s like doin’ push-ups with a semi on my back. He’s got gravity powers, so now he must be turnin’ it up rather than turnin’ it down. Worse, I weigh more than the gold now, so my hands and feet are sinking down like it’s quicksand.

“But honestly, life gets busy for me, so much,” he prattles on, “Things like promises to myself and deadlines, they get lost in the shuffle, really. So even when people would love to see more, even when it’s something I want to do- well, I could give you a list of things I’ve left rotting, but we don’t have all day.”

While he’s doin’ that, I square myself up and push. Every muscle in my body cries out at the same time, but I keep going, push back to my feet, and take a couple more steps to get used to the added weight. That’s when he notices me, but I’m up and moving, rushing towards him while pushing coins out of the way like fallen leaves.

I close the gap in about fifteen seconds, and take a swing. Of course, he ain’t gonna be hit while I’m so slow, but it keeps going and brings me to a knee as it hits the ground. “Oh, what was that?”

“The first step,” I shoot back, and haul my new fistful of coins up, sprayin’ ‘em out to try and catch him off guard. The only thing I can do that adds to it is a full body tackle, and so I leap forward, try to grab this kid and keep him in one place.

It’s no use. I crash to the ground and he stops the coins from ever reaching him with his power. “Aw, don’t feel too bad. Seems like we both have a problem with finishing the job.”

Then he slams the heel of his shoe into my back. He keeps rainin’ blows down, an’ even though I’m still made of steel, he’s leaving some real dents. But even with the ringin’ in my ears, and the xylophone solo he’s playin’ on my back, I can’t miss Gwen’s voice calling out from somewhere I can’t see.

You’re not the only one with secret weapons! Everyone, get in there!

Chuuya jumps off my back, an’ a second later I feel the heat of a fireball cross above it as I can move my regular weight around. I get up, turn, an’ just manage to get out of the way of a cloaked guy with one eye ridin’ a reindeer straight at Chuuya.

“Hey, metalhead,” comes a girl’s voice at me. “Get out of the way, you’re blocking my shot.”

She’s wearin’ armor an’ red clothes, and somethin’ in me says I know her, but I have no idea where from. But I do as she says, an’ she fires another fireball at Chuuya. Doesn’t hit, but it does open him up to a kick from the reindeer.

“Who are you, exactly?” I ask.

She hmphs before she replies. “I am Azula, Princess of the Fire Nation. You gave me a black eye back in Ancient China.”

I don’t remember hittin’ a single person when I was there. “Oh. Sorry, I guess.”

“You’re lucky I didn’t send a million volts through your body.”

Charming. “So who are they?”

The cloaked guy swings a huge sword down at Chuuya, who kicks him back after dodging. The reindeer, meanwhile, had turned from a regular deer into some sort of furry monster, like the sasquatch, an’ he punches and scores a hit.

“The reindeer’s name is Chopper. Normally he’s cute, but when he needs to fight, well- It is what it is.”

Chuuya counters by craterin’ Chopper with his ability, an’ he’s raisin’ his foot when the cloak guy swings that sword again an’ he has to jump back. I see his hand, an’ it’s not really a hand- it’s a glove, connected to a wooden stick. I’ve seen this before.

“An’ what about the scarecrow?”

“His name is Rathraq. He’s got a cat.” Azula says as she fires another fireball, apparently not worried about him catchin’ fire.

“So, what are you doin’ here exactly?”

“Helping you, you big lunk. Now get in there or protect me, I don’t care which.”

At that moment, Chuuya leaps up into the air, and Chopper follows him up.

“Man, what a pain,” the mafioso complains, and he plants his foot between the deer’s eyes, kicking off an’ landing on the wall. He stands there, parallel to the ground for a second while the rest of us catch up. “When you’re just starting something, you can’t really know where it’s going to go. Doubly so if you’re the one who’s making it go places. You can think of cool ideas, think up cool plans, but who’s to say when you get there that it lives up to it?”

He runs across, comes down toward us, an’ I jump in front to meet his kick. It hits like a hammer, but I’ve got experience bein’ an anvil. Only problem is, before I can do somethin’ about it, he throws his hand out and puts us both in a crater.

“That’s why it’s just easier to never start things!” he says as he hops over to the other wall. “If you give up before the going gets tough, there aren’t any expectations on you to let down! And really, who cares about a reputation?”

Rathraq gets launched up to meet Chuuya, and he can barely block the broadsword with his foot. The mafioso grimaces, an’ the weight lifts off my shoulders as he chucks the scarecrow down. More importantly, that lets Azula aim up an’ fire a bolt of lightning which knocks him back into the sky.

I get ready to catch him on the way down, but it never happens. His hand finds the wall, an’ he’s stuck to it again. “You guys are pissing me off. You wanna know why I know we can’t be stopped?”

“Enlighten us,” Azula deadpans.

Out of the corner of my eye, through the wall, I see the Stitcher. His face ain’t turned my way, instead he’s lookin’ at the other three, but I can see the body language. It ain’t good.

"This is all a big mistake."

“It has to do with my friend back there,” Chuuya says, angling his head back towards another fight. “When I get an idea for a story, I’m pumped, I explore everything I can in my head. But that’s the thing- it’s only in my head. When it comes time to write, I write what I know, and then sit there forever. And since I start at the start, that means I get to the end and collapse. I’ve never finished a story strong in my life.”

An’ then he drops, chucking a whole barrage of gravity balls at us. Dodgin’ only helps so much when you’re an 800-pound tank, an’ I get hit with one of ‘em. But even though I ain't the only one who gets hit, I'm the one who eats the kick. Rathraq swipes over my head, an' I get a clean shave as the gravity disappears.

Chuuya lands a bit away, and just dusts off his slacks. “That’s how I know- this story isn’t going to get finished.”

Return.

---