The elevator inside the Tower of Tropes didn't have music. Instead, it played a looped recording of a breathy, dramatic voice whispering things like "In a world…" and "One man…" and "She never saw it coming…"
Aldren leaned his forehead against the cool metal of the elevator wall, his massive red cape billowing majestically despite the lack of air currents.
"I cannot do this," Aldren mumbled. "My suit... it is vibrating. It wants me to pose. It is detecting a 'Quiet Moment of Reflection' and trying to maximize the camera angle."
"Have you tried purging your cache?" Li Wusheng asked. The Cyber-Monk was currently sitting cross-legged in mid-air, his neon-lit robes pulsing with a soft, rhythmic blue light. "When my inner peace glitches, I simply run a diagnostic on my chakras. Usually, it is just a fragmentation of the ego."
"I do not have a cache, Li!" Aldren snapped, spinning around. His chest emblem flashed blindingly bright. "I have a soul! A dark, tortured soul that is currently being suffocated by spandex!"
"Soul.exe not found," Li replied automatically, his eyes scrolling with green data. "Perhaps you need a patch."
"I will patch your face with my fist," Aldren hissed.
"Guys, cut the chatter," Jen interrupted. She was standing by the doors, checking the charge on her laser blaster. Her posture was rigid, military-grade. She wasn't slouching like the barista who used to sneak naps behind the espresso machine. "We're approaching the Narrative Junction. Keep your heads on a swivel. If we get ambushed by a Plot Twist, I want suppressive fire on my mark."
Elara looked at Jen. The "Ace Gunner" persona was taking hold fast. Jen's eyes weren't warm anymore; they were scanning for threats, target-locking on dust motes.
"Jen," Elara said gently. "Do you remember the cafe? The blueberry muffins?"
Jen blinked, a momentary confusion crossing her face. "Muffins? That sounds like civilian rations. We ate protein paste at the Academy. Keeps the reflexes sharp."
Elara's grip on her datapad tightened. "We're running out of time. The genre is rewriting their memories. If we don't find the Server Room soon, Jen is going to forget she ever owned a cat."
"And I," Aldren despaired, "will likely start a podcast about justice."
The elevator chimed—a sound like a sword being unsheathed—and the doors slid open.
Rex Chord, who was leaning against the back wall tuning his flamethrower-guitar, whistled. "Welcome to Level 15: The Hall of Tragic Backstories. Watch your step. The angst is thick enough to drown in."
They stepped out into a corridor that was comprised entirely of shadows and fog. It was raining indoors—a cold, solitary drizzle that fell only on specific spots, creating perfect circles of gloom. Somewhere in the distance, a cello was playing a mournful melody in a minor key.
"This looks promising," Aldren said, perking up. He stepped into a spotlight of rain. "Finally. An atmosphere conducive to my nature."
He took a deep breath, ready to brood.
DING!
A holographic projection materialized next to him. It was a floating text box styled like a comic book panel.
[ORIGIN STORY DETECTED: THE ORPHANED HERO.][TRAIT ADDED: INSPIRING SPEECH.]
"No!" Aldren shouted, trying to swat the text box away. "I am not an orphan hero! I am an undead lord! My parents died of the plague in 1452! It was tragic, yes, but very historically accurate!"
But the tower didn't care about history. It cared about Tropes.
Aldren's mouth opened against his will. His voice dropped an octave, becoming rich and resonant. "Citizens," he boomed, staring into the middle distance. "The pain of the past is the forge of the future! We must rise, not for ourselves, but for those who cannot!"
"Make it stop!" Aldren wheezed between sentences. "Li! Help me!"
Li floated over, his neon staff glowing. "Detecting unauthorized monologue. Initiating Interrupt Protocol."
Li poked Aldren in the ribs with his staff. BZZZT.
"Ouch!" Aldren yelped, the heroic posture breaking. "Thank you. I think."
"We need to move," Elara said, checking the map on her datapad. "The Server Room is on the penthouse level. We have to get through the 'Training Montage Gym' and the 'Romantic Subplot Balcony' to get there."
"Romantic Subplot?" Rex Chord grinned, adjusting his cowboy hat. "Sounds dangerous. Don't look anyone in the eyes for more than three seconds, or slow-motion wind will start blowing through your hair."
They sprinted through the fog, dodging holographic projections of crying children and burning villages. The Tower was trying to hook them, to drag them into a story loop that would keep them trapped as NPCs forever.
They reached the stairwell. Elara kicked the door open, revealing a flight of stairs that spiraled up into infinity.
"Why are there so many stairs?" Jen groaned, checking her blaster.
"Because," Rex explained, "heroes have to earn their elevation. Cardio is a moral virtue in this dimension."
They climbed.
Level 20: The Training Montage.
The moment they stepped onto the landing, time sped up. A driving synth-rock beat kicked in. Elara felt a sudden urge to do push-ups. Li Wusheng actually started punching a side of beef that appeared out of nowhere.
"Focus!" Elara yelled, dragging Li away from the meat. "We don't need to level up! We need to break in!"
"But my gains!" Li shouted, looking at his cyber-biceps. "I was about to unlock the 'Tiger Drop'!"
They pushed through the distortion field, their movements jerky and fast-forwarded until they reached the next door.
Level 50: The Romantic Subplot.
The air smelled of roses and vanilla. The lighting was soft, golden, and terrifyingly flattering.
"Eyes down," Elara commanded. "Nobody look at Rex. He's a Space-Bard. He's a walking romance trap."
"I can't help it if I'm irresistible," Rex winked.
A gust of wind blew through the hallway. Aldren's cape fluttered. He locked eyes with a potted plant.
Careless Whisper began to play on a saxophone.
"I... I feel a connection," Aldren whispered, reaching for the fern. "It understands my loneliness."
"Aldren, it's a plant!" Elara grabbed his cape and yanked him backward. "Don't you dare fall in love with the scenery!"
"But it listens!" Aldren wailed as they dragged him into the final elevator.
The Penthouse Level. The Server Room.
The doors opened, and the chaos of the lower levels vanished. The room was stark, white, and silent. In the center stood a massive console made of shifting crystal shards—the physical manifestation of the Character Sheets.
"There," Elara said, her breath catching. "That's the core database. If we can hack into that, we can rewrite your metadata. We can strip the 'Hero' skin off Aldren and put the 'Vampire' skin back on."
"And delete this 'Ace Gunner' nonsense?" Jen asked, rubbing her temples. "I... I'm starting to remember the smell of coffee. But it feels like a dream. Like something from a previous season."
Elara stepped toward the console. She raised her Prime Input datapad.
TARGET: [SERVER_CORE]ACTION: [OPEN_EDITOR]
[ACCESS DENIED.]
A voice echoed through the room. It wasn't the Omni-Draft bureaucratic drone. It was a voice that sounded like every main character ever written, blended into one perfect, annoying tone.
"Who dares interrupt the Canon?"
From behind the crystal console, a figure emerged.
He was... everything. He had spiky anime hair, a rugged cowboy stubble, a wizard's staff, a laser sword, and a detective's trench coat. He was the ultimate amalgam.
"I am Protagon," the figure declared, posing dramatically. "Guardian of the Sheets. Keeper of the Mary Sue Protocol. You are unauthorized NPCs. Prepare to be retconned."
"He's a genre abomination," Li noted, his eyes scanning the figure. "He has too many power sets. His build is unbalanced."
"I have all the powers!" Protagon shouted. He raised his laser sword. "I have the tragic past of an orphan, the destiny of a king, and the luck of a rogue! I am invincible because the plot demands it!"
He swung the sword. A wave of "Plot Armor" energy rippled out, knocking the team back.
"My blaster!" Jen yelled, firing a shot. The laser hit Protagon's chest but bounced off harmlessly.
"Ha!" Protagon laughed. "I have a secret force field that was never mentioned until this exact moment! It is a convenient plot device!"
"He's cheating!" Aldren roared. "That is lazy writing!"
"It's effective writing!" Protagon countered. He pointed his wizard staff. "Lightning Bolt of Convenient Timing!"
A bolt of lightning struck the ground between them, forcing them to scatter.
"Elara, we can't fight him!" Rex shouted, dodging a fireball. "He's a Mary Sue! The universe bends to make him look cool! If we attack him, he'll just reveal a new power he 'trained for off-screen'!"
Elara looked at her datapad. Rex was right. You couldn't beat a Mary Sue with force. The narrative was rigged in his favor.
"Then we don't fight him," Elara said. "We edit him."
She looked at her team. "Li! Aldren! He's got too many tropes. We need to overload his character sheet. Make him so complex that he crashes!"
"How?" Li asked, dodging a shuriken.
"Give him your tropes!" Elara yelled. "Aldren, hit him with the angst! Li, hit him with the technical jargon! Jen, give him the military discipline! If he wants to be everything, let's make him everything!"
Aldren understood immediately. He stood up, threw his cape back, and projected his "Heroic Voice" directly at Protagon.
"BUT WHAT OF THE COST?" Aldren bellowed. "THE DARKNESS INSIDE? CAN YOU TRULY SAVE THEM IF YOU CANNOT SAVE YOURSELF?"
The Trope Energy hit Protagon. He stumbled. "I... I feel sad. Why do I feel sad? I'm supposed to be cool!"
"Injecting System Update!" Li shouted, leaping into the air. He slammed his neon staff into the ground. "Downloading: Driver_Update_Dao_v4.5! Installation mandatory!"
A beam of blue data hit Protagon.
"Wait!" Protagon twitched. "My... my chakras need defragging! I have a kernel panic in my spirit!"
"Drop and give me twenty!" Jen screamed, channeling her Academy Drill Sergeant persona. "You call that a stance, soldier? My grandmother pilots a mech better than that!"
Protagon dropped to his knees, confused. "I... I need to train? But I'm already the best! Why am I crying? Why am I rebooting?!"
"Elara, now!" Rex shouted.
Elara sprinted to the crystal console. Protagon was writhing on the floor, caught in a loop of conflicting character motivations. He was trying to be a brooding, enlightened, disciplined, unbeatable hero all at once, and his narrative logic was fracturing.
Elara jammed the Prime Input connector into the console.
ACCESS GRANTED.OPENING: [CHARACTER_SHEET_EDITOR]
The screen filled with data. There they were.
ID: ALDREN_VANCECURRENT_SKIN: [SUPERHERO_GENERIC_01]ORIGINAL_SKIN: [VAMPIRE_LORD_CLASSIC]
ID: LI_WUSHENGCURRENT_SKIN: [CYBER_MONK_NEON]ORIGINAL_SKIN: [IMMORTAL_GENERAL]
ID: JEN_DOICURRENT_SKIN: [SPACE_MARINE_ACE]ORIGINAL_SKIN: [BARISTA_CHAOS]
"I found them!" Elara yelled. "Reverting to factory settings!"
She tapped the [RESTORE] button.
A wave of white light swept through the room.
Protagon vanished, unable to exist in a room of grounded reality.
Aldren gasped. The spandex dissolved. The cape disintegrated into mist. In its place, his sharp, tailored black suit returned. His skin paled. His fangs descended.
"Oh, thank the darkness," Aldren whispered, running his hands over his suit. "Silk. Actual silk. And silence. The music... it is gone."
Li Wusheng dropped to the floor. The neon circuitry faded from his robes, replaced by tatters and ancient cloth. The "Buffering" bar above his head vanished.
"My Qi," Li breathed, inhaling deeply. "It flows like a river, not a packet stream. I am whole."
Jen blinked, shaking her head. The silver jumpsuit melted away, replaced by her apron and cat-ear headband. The laser blaster in her hand turned back into a broom.
"Whoa," Jen said, looking around. "Did I just try to court-martial a wizard?"
"You did," Elara smiled, disconnecting the datapad. "And it was terrifying."
"We're back," Rex grinned, though he kept his cyborg parts because that was his actual skin. "Nice work, Editor. You de-glitched the squad."
Suddenly, the room turned red. Not the Critic's red, but a flashing, alarm-style red.
[WARNING: UNAUTHORIZED EDIT DETECTED.][LEGAL TEAM DISPATCHED.][ETA: IMMEDIATE.]
"Legal team?" Aldren asked, adjusting his cufflinks. "Omni-Draft?"
"Worse," Rex said, looking at a monitor on the console. "It's the IP Lawyers. They aren't corporate. They're... inter-dimensional."
Through the windows of the penthouse, they saw them.
They didn't come in ships. They descended from the sky on briefcases that acted like gliders. There were dozens of them. They wore suits that were so sharp they cut the air. Their faces were blurred, pixelated to protect their identity.
And in their hands, they held not weapons, but glowing white envelopes.
CEASE AND DESIST.
"If those papers touch you," Rex warned, "you get frozen. Litigation Stasis. It takes a thousand years to process the appeal."
"They're targeting us based on likeness," Elara realized, looking at the data stream. "They're scanning for 'Copyright Infringement.' Aldren, you look like a generic vampire IP. Li, you look like a generic Kung Fu master."
"I am the original Kung Fu master!" Li protested.
"The law doesn't care about truth!" Rex shouted. "It cares about resemblance!"
"We need a disguise," Elara said. "Quickly."
"Disguise?" Aldren scoffed. "I will not wear spandex again."
"No," Elara said, her fingers flying over the Prime Input. "Not spandex. Parody."
She looked at the approaching lawyers.
"We have to change our 'Brand' enough to fall under Fair Use. We have to look... cheap. Knock-off. Bootleg."
"Bootleg?" Aldren's eyes widened in horror.
Elara hit [EXECUTE].
Aldren's bespoke suit rippled. It didn't turn into a superhero costume. It turned into a cheap, plastic Halloween costume that was two sizes too small. On the chest, written in marker, it said: NIGHT MAMMAL MAN.
Li's robes turned into a potato sack labeled: KICKING GUY.
"I look like a discount bin!" Aldren screamed, looking at his reflection in the crystal console. "This is worse than the cape! This is undignified!"
"It's legal protection!" Elara yelled. "Now run! Before they serve the papers!"
They sprinted toward the emergency exit as the windows shattered, and the swarm of pixelated lawyers poured in, waving their Cease and Desist orders at the retreating "Store Brand" heroes.