The sky of Neo-Trope City was not a sky. It was a backdrop.
It shimmered with a permanent, sunset-colored gradient that looked suspiciously like an airbrushed van from the 1980s. Three moons hung in the atmosphere, arranged purely for aesthetic balance rather than orbital mechanics, and the clouds drifted by in the shape of perfect, fluffy sheep.
Elara Vance stood on the synthetic turf of the central plaza, watching a squadron of flying filing cabinets descend from the heavens.
"This dimension," Elara muttered, adjusting her new tactical-editor goggles—which were now sleek, wrap-around shades that displayed power levels in neon green—"is incredibly loud."
"It is an assault on the senses," Li Wusheng agreed.
The former Immortal General was currently rebooting. His new form—a Cyber-Monk with neon circuitry woven into his saffron robes—was flickering. A holographic progress bar hovered over his bald head: INSTALLING: IRON_PALM_V2.0 (34%).
"My connection to the Dao is... buffering," Li grumbled, tapping the side of his head. "I attempted to summon the wind, and I received a '404 Error: Element Not Found' message. This reality runs on a very unstable operating system."
"At least you don't look like a traffic cone wrapped in spandex," a voice snarled from beside them.
Elara turned to look at Aldren. The Vampire Lord, once the epitome of Gothic elegance and terrifying grace, was now... The Crimson Cape.
He was encased in a skin-tight red and blue bodysuit that highlighted muscles he didn't even know he had. A bright yellow lightning bolt was emblazoned on his chest, and a cape—a truly massive, impractical cape—fluttered behind him in a wind that didn't exist.
"It's tight," Aldren hissed, tugging at the collar. "It rides up in places that are scientifically impossible. And I feel... cheerful. Elara, I feel a distinct, nauseating urge to help an old lady cross the street."
"Embrace the cringe, Aldren," Elara said, pulling out her Prime Input datapad. "We need to blend in until we figure out the rules."
"I cannot blend in!" Aldren shouted. "I am glowing! Look at my teeth! They are sparkling! Vampires do not sparkle! It is a defamation of my species!"
As if to prove his point, Aldren tried to scowl. Instead, his suit projected a lens flare off his perfect white teeth, accompanied by a ding! sound effect.
"Focus!" Rex Chord shouted. The cyborg-cowboy Space-Bard slid his hover-bike to a halt in front of them, unlimbering a guitar that was also a flamethrower. "The Suits are closing in! Omni-Draft doesn't care about your fashion crisis. They're here to demonetize the whole sector!"
The fleet of grey, boxy ships—the Omni-Draft Recovery Squadron—hovered over the city. A loudspeaker crackled to life, the voice projected with the damp, bureaucratic echo of a conference room.
"ATTENTION, UNREGISTERED ASSETS," the voice droned. "THIS IS A NOTICE OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY VIOLATION. YOUR AESTHETIC IS UNAUTHORIZED. PREPARE FOR STANDARDIZATION."
From the lead ship, a beam of dull, grey light shot down. It didn't burn; it bored.
The beam hit a nearby building—a magnificent structure shaped like a giant electric guitar. Instantly, the neon lights died. The chrome turned to matte concrete. The unique, jagged architecture smoothed out until the building was nothing more than a rectangular, grey office block.
"They're gentrifying the genre!" Jen screamed. She was strapped into the cockpit of a mech that looked like a giant cat, her hands flying over controls she shouldn't know how to use. "My mech! The paint job is peeling! I'm losing my decals!"
"They're using Copyright Beams," Elara realized, reading the data on her shades. "They strip the 'Style' metadata from objects. If they hit us, we won't just die—we'll become Generic NPCs."
"Not on my watch!" Rex Chord slammed a power chord on his guitar. A wave of sonic fire erupted from the neck, blasting toward the ships. "Listen up, newbies! Physics here doesn't work on math! It works on the Rule of Cool!"
"The Rule of... what?" Li asked, still frozen at 56%.
"If it looks awesome, it works!" Rex shouted. "Don't calculate the trajectory! Just look cool doing it! Style is substance here!"
"Style is substance," Elara repeated. She looked at her datapad. In Seattle, she had been an Editor, correcting mistakes. But here? There were no mistakes. There were only choices.
"Aldren!" Elara barked. "Attack the lead ship!"
"I cannot fly!" Aldren protested. "I usually turn into bats, but—"
"Don't turn into bats!" Elara yelled. "Do a superhero landing! Then jump! Just believe that gravity is afraid of your justice!"
Aldren looked at the ships. He looked at his ridiculous red boots. He groaned, a sound of profound existential despair.
"For the record," Aldren muttered, crouching down, "I hate this timeline."
He leaped.
He didn't just jump; he launched. The suit took over. A triumphant brass fanfare—BUM-BUM-BUUUUM—erupted from hidden speakers in his belt. Trails of red and blue light streamed from his cape.
"JUSTICE NEVER SLEEPS!" Aldren screamed involuntarily, his voice amplified by the suit to a heroic baritone.
"I did not say that!" Aldren yelled immediately after, panicking mid-air. "That was the suit! I sleep all day! I am nocturnal!"
He smashed into the lead filing cabinet ship. Logic dictated he should have broken his hand against the hull. The Rule of Cool dictated that a superhero punch creates a massive shockwave.
KA-POW!
A literal comic-book text bubble appeared in the air as the ship crumpled inwards.
"It worked," Elara marveled. She looked at the Prime Input. She wasn't typing code anymore. She was adjusting sliders: EXPLOSION_SIZE, DRAMATIC_TENSION, SLOW_MOTION_FACTOR.
"Li! You're up!" Elara commanded.
"I am still buffering!" Li shouted, waving his neon-lit staff frantically. "The bandwidth in this city is terrible! I am at 89%!"
A grey Omni-Draft drone swooped down, firing a beam of red tape—literal red adhesive tape that wrapped around Li's legs.
"Warning," Li's internal OS stated monotonously. "Mobility compromised. Initiating emergency counter-measure: Glitch-Fu."
"Glitch-Fu?" Li blinked.
Suddenly, Li didn't move. He teleported. He clipped through the ground, vibrating intensely, and reappeared instantly behind the drone. His arm snapped out in a T-pose animation frame, clipping through the drone's chassis.
"SYSTEM ERROR," the drone shrieked.
Li's staff spun rapidly, detaching from his hand and hovering in the air like a helicopter blade.
"I am not doing this!" Li yelled as his body ragdolled into a series of impossible kicks. "My body is governed by lag! I am fighting with high ping!"
The drone exploded into a shower of paperclips.
"Excellent!" Rex Chord cheered, riding his hover-bike up the side of a building. "You guys are naturals! Now, Elara! Direct the scene! We need a climax!"
Elara looked up. The lead ship, though dented by Aldren's reluctance, was opening its main bay doors. A massive cannon, shaped like a giant rubber stamp, was extending.
[PREPARING FINAL JUDGMENT: VOID STAMP]
"That stamp will flatten the whole plaza," Elara realized. "We need something big. Something that fits the genre."
She looked at Jen's cat-mech. She looked at Rex's guitar. She looked at Aldren, who was currently trying to pry himself out of the ship's hull while shouting, "EVILDOERS BEWARE!" against his will.
"We need a Team Attack," Elara decided. "A Crossover Combo."
She swiped her finger across the datapad.
DIRECTOR_MODE: ENGAGED.CUE: SYNERGY.SOUNDTRACK: EPIC_METAL_COVER_OF_CLASSICAL_MUSIC.
"Jen!" Elara shouted into her comms. "Throw Li at the cannon! Li, when you get close, unleash your firewall!"
"I am a monk, not a projectile!" Li argued, finally hitting 100% DOWNLOAD COMPLETE. "Oh. Wait. I know Kung Fu again."
Jen's mech grabbed Li. "Yeet!" she screamed, a word she definitely didn't know five minutes ago.
She hurled the Cyber-Monk into the air. Li spun, his neon robes turning into a buzzsaw of golden light.
"Palm of the Digital Buddha!" Li roared, striking the Void Stamp cannon.
The cannon crackled, but the grey armor held.
"It's too thick!" Li shouted. "It has Corporate Immunity!"
"Aldren!" Elara directed. "Laser eyes! Now!"
"I do not have laser eyes!" Aldren screamed from the ship's hull. "I have never had—"
His mask suddenly grew warm. His eyes turned a burning, incandescent red.
"Oh no," Aldren whimpered. "Not the heat vision."
ZZZZAAP!
Two beams of pure, concentrated heat shot from his eyes. But because of the genre, they weren't just lasers; they were shaped like hearts.
"Why are they hearts?!" Aldren wailed as the beams struck the cannon, melting the armor. "I am a creature of darkness! This is humiliating!"
"Rex! Finish it!" Elara yelled.
Rex Chord drifted his bike off the roof, shredding a solo so intense that the air around him caught fire. "Eat riffs, corporate scum!"
The sonic wave hit the weakened cannon. The combination of Digital Palm, Heart-Lasers, and Rock-and-Roll was too much for the Omni-Draft logic to process.
The ship didn't just explode. It imploded, then turned into a giant confetti cannon, showering the city in colorful slips of paper that read REJECTED.
The remaining filing cabinet ships turned and fled, their "Standardization" protocols overwhelmed by the sheer stupidity of the counter-attack.
"And cut!" Elara breathed, lowering her datapad. Her heart was pounding. She hadn't just edited a sentence; she had choreographed madness. And it felt... amazing.
The team regrouped in the plaza. The sheep-clouds were clapping. The moons were glowing brighter.
Aldren landed, his cape settling perfectly around his shoulders. He ripped the mask off, his face pale and furious.
"I shot hearts," Aldren whispered, staring at the ground. "From my eyes. Hearts. If any of my ancestors saw that, they would stake themselves out of shame."
"You were effective," Li said, bowing. He was glowing steadily now, his download complete. "Though I admit, your catchphrases lack the subtlety of the Tao. 'Justice never sleeps' is factually incorrect. Everyone requires sleep."
"It was the suit!" Aldren snapped. "It... it squeezes my vocal cords!"
Rex Chord rode up, slapping Elara on the back. "That was legendary! You guys have serious Main Character Energy. Omni-Draft won't know what hit 'em."
He gestured to a massive, glowing spire in the center of the city—a tower that looked like a stack of glowing VHS tapes.
"Come on," Rex said. "You earned a look at the Core. That's what they're after, you know."
They followed Rex into the Tower of Tropes. The interior was a museum of everything cool: walls lined with katanas, hoverboards, and leather trench coats.
In the center of the room, floating in a containment field, was the Core of Potential.
It looked like a swirling ball of liquid starlight. It changed color every second—one moment it was the grit of a noir film, the next the sparkle of a romance anime, the next the chrome of a cyberpunk thriller.
"The Core," Rex said reverently. "It's pure, unrefined creativity. It's the leftovers from the Author's table. It powers this whole dimension."
Elara walked up to it. She could feel the Prime Input vibrating in her bag. The Core wanted to be written. It begged for structure.
"If Omni-Draft gets this," Elara said, "they can copyright imagination itself."
"Exactly," Rex said. "But here's the kicker. You have that datapad. You're an Editor."
Rex turned to look at her, his cyber-eye whirring.
"You could fix this place, Elara. This dimension is a mess. Glitches, plot holes, retcons... it's dangerous. People die here because a writer forgot to give them a parachute. But with that Core... you could stabilize it. You could write a new Prime Thread. You could be the God of the Uncanonical."
Elara looked at the Core. She saw the temptation. She could fix Li's glitching. She could give Aldren his dignity back. She could make sure Jen never had to fight a filing cabinet again.
She reached out her hand. The Core pulsed, reaching back.
WRITE IT, the Core whispered in her mind. MAKE IT MAKE SENSE.
"Elara," Aldren said softly. He wasn't looking at the Core. He was looking at her. "Your eyes. They are turning silver."
Elara froze. Silver. The color of the 12th Life. The color of the Tyrant.
She pulled her hand back as if burned.
"No," Elara whispered. "I'm not a God. And I'm not a Tyrant."
She looked at Rex. "If I stabilize it, I kill the freedom. I turn it into another script. Maybe a better script, but still... a cage."
"So what do we do?" Jen asked, climbing out of her mech. "We can't just leave it open for Omni-Draft."
"We keep it messy," Elara said, turning away from the Core. "We keep it so wild, so weird, and so unmarketable that Omni-Draft chokes on it."
She tapped her datapad.
DIRECTOR_NOTE: INCREASE ENTROPY.GENRE_SETTING: CHAOTIC_GOOD.
The Core flared, spinning faster. The sheep-clouds outside turned into dragons made of cotton candy. The gravity shifted slightly to the left.
"You're crazy," Rex grinned. "I like it."
"We're staying," Elara said. "But we have a problem. Aldren is about to explode from embarrassment, Li is trying to download 'Godhood.exe', and Jen thinks she's a space marine."
She looked at her team. The "Rule of Cool" was fun, but it was eating their identities.
"We need to fix our Character Sheets," Elara said. "Before we forget who we actually are."
"I would appreciate that," Aldren said through gritted teeth as his cape involuntarily fluttered in a heroic breeze. "Before I start adopting orphans."