The penthouse of the Tower of Tropes was no longer a sanctuary of clichés. It was a courtroom of violence.
The windows had shattered inward, raining glass upon the polished floor. Through the jagged gaps, the IP Lawyers swarmed like angry, pixelated wasps. They didn't fly with jetpacks or wings; they glided on the sheer force of Litigation, their briefcases acting as stabilizers. Their faces were blurred out—a censor bar of static where eyes and mouths should be—and they emitted a low, terrifying hum that sounded like a dial-up modem connecting to hell.
"Halt!" the lead Lawyer droned, his voice distorted to protect his identity. He held up a glowing white envelope. "You are in violation of Section 8, Paragraph 4 of the Narrative Copyright Act! Resemblance to 'Dark Knight' Archetype detected! Prepare for immediate asset freezing!"
Aldren Vance stood his ground. Or rather, he squeaked his ground.
His "Night Mammal Man" costume was a travesty of plastic and polyester. The chest plate, drawn on with permanent marker, was peeling. The cape was a garbage bag stapled to his shoulders. Every time he moved, the suit made a sound like two balloons rubbing together.
"I am not a Knight!" Aldren shouted, the plastic mask muffling his voice into a nasal whine. "I am a nocturnal enthusiast! I like... bats! And justice! But legally distinct justice!"
He threw a punch.
In his previous form, this blow would have shattered bone. In his "Bootleg" form, his fist made a comical BONK sound as it hit the Lawyer's briefcase. The Lawyer didn't flinch.
"Assault with a non-canonical weapon," the Lawyer stated. "Adding 'Battery' to the docket."
The Lawyer swung the briefcase. It hit Aldren with the force of a falling safe.
WHAM.
Aldren flew backward, crashing into the crystal console. "It... it hurts!" he wheezed, clutching his plastic ribs. "Why does it hurt? I am an undead lord!"
"You're a knock-off!" Elara yelled, ducking under a flying subpoena. "You don't have 'Vampire Durability' anymore! You have 'Cheap Plastic Durability'! You have to fight like a cartoon, Aldren! Use the slapstick!"
"I refuse!" Aldren squeaked, trying to stand up with dignity while his cape stuck to his leg. "I have standards!"
"Standards get you sued!" Rex Chord shouted.
Rex had also transformed. He was no longer the "Space-Bard." He was now "Galaxy Guitar Guy." His flamethrower-guitar had been replaced by a kazoo and a ukulele taped together. He blew into the kazoo, creating a sonic wave of pure annoyance that pushed a Lawyer back.
"See?" Rex yelled. "Annoyance is Fair Use! Parody protects us, but only if we look stupid doing it!"
Li Wusheng—now "Kicking Guy"—was having his own crisis. His "Low-Poly" form meant he was moving at 15 frames per second. He looked like a character from a 1990s fighting game running on a scratched disc.
"My hitboxes are misaligned!" Li shouted, his voice compressed and tinny. He tried to sweep the leg of a Lawyer, but his foot clipped through the enemy's shins without connecting. "I am phasing through the opponent! This physics engine is garbage!"
"Li! Spam the low kick!" Elara commanded, sliding behind the console. "It's a glitch exploit!"
Li grunted—a sound file that sounded like OOF.WAV—and began to crouch-kick repeatedly. Kick. Kick. Kick. The sheer repetition confused the Lawyer's AI.
"Pattern recognition failing," the Lawyer buzzed, twitching. "Cannot... compute... infinite... low... kick..."
The Lawyer froze, turning into a grey statue.
"Litigation Stasis!" Elara cheered. "It works both ways! If we confuse them, they crash!"
She looked at her datapad. It was no longer the sleek obsidian Prime Input. It was a bulky, beige "Calcul-8-or" with a monochrome screen.
"We need to get out of here," Elara said. "The elevator is blocked. We need a vehicle."
"A vehicle?" Aldren asked, pulling a suction-cup dart off his forehead where a Lawyer had shot him. "I usually summon a carriage of shadows. Or a sleek black car."
"Too expensive," Elara said, typing frantically on the rubber buttons. "We need something Public Domain. Something so generic nobody claims it."
SPAWN: [GENERIC_GETAWAY_VAN_01]
The air in the penthouse rippled. With a sound like a wet cardboard box hitting the floor, a vehicle appeared.
It was grey. It had four wheels (one was a spare donut). It had "VAN" written on the side in block letters. It smelled of old carpet and despair.
"Behold," Elara said. "The Escape Box."
"I am not getting in that," Aldren said.
A swarm of new Lawyers smashed through the ceiling, rappelling down on red tape. They began to chant in unison: "CLASS ACTION! CLASS ACTION! CLASS ACTION!"
"Get in the box!" Aldren shrieked, diving into the sliding door.
Rex jumped into the driver's seat. "Buckle up, bootlegs! We're going off-road!"
He slammed the gas pedal. The generic van sputtered, backfired—POW—and then slowly accelerated through the shattered window.
"Gravity!" Jen shouted. She was now "Space Soldier #4," wearing a bucket on her head and holding a water pistol. "We're going to fall!"
"Not if I activate 'Cartoon Physics'!" Elara yelled.
She hit a button on the calculator.
The van didn't fall. It hovered in the air for a second, looked down, realized it wasn't standing on anything, and then fell.
"WAAAAAAHHHH!" the team screamed in unison.
They plummeted down the side of the Tower of Tropes. The wind tore at Aldren's garbage-bag cape. Li's low-poly body stuttered as the rendering engine struggled to keep up with the velocity.
"Rex! Do something!" Elara yelled.
"I'm trying!" Rex shouted, playing a frantic solo on his ukulele. "But this thing has no horsepower! It has Hamster Power!"
Below them, the streets of Neo-Trope City were rushing up fast.
"Aldren!" Elara grabbed the vampire's plastic shoulder pad. "Use your cape! It's a parachute!"
"It is a garbage bag!" Aldren argued.
"Exactly! It has high drag!"
Aldren grabbed the corners of his cape and spread his arms. The plastic caught the wind. The van jerked, slowing down just enough to not turn into a pancake. They slammed onto the pavement with a bounce, the suspension groaning like a dying whale.
"We're alive," Jen gasped, checking her water pistol. "I think."
"Movement detected," Li's tinny voice warned.
Elara looked back. The Tower of Tropes was glowing. The hole they had escaped from was swarming with pixelated figures.
But they weren't chasing. They were merging.
Hundreds of IP Lawyers were flying out of the tower and colliding in mid-air. They clumped together, their grey suits fusing, their briefcases interlocking like bricks.
"What are they doing?" Aldren whispered.
The mass of lawyers grew legs. Massive, pillar-like legs made of paperwork. It grew a torso made of binding arbitration agreements. It grew a head made of a giant, glowing gavel.
It stood fifty stories tall. It blocked out the three moons.
"It's a Class Action Golem," Rex said, his ukulele dropping from his hands. "The ultimate legal weapon. If that thing steps on us, we don't just die. We get settled out of court for pennies on the dollar."
The Golem roared. It wasn't a biological sound. It was the sound of a million gavels banging at once.
ORDER IN THE COURT.
The voice shattered windows for ten blocks.
The Golem raised its foot—a massive loafer size 5,000—and took a step. The ground shook.
"Drive!" Elara screamed.
Rex slammed the gas. The generic van puttered forward at its top speed of 40 miles per hour.
"Faster!" Aldren yelled, watching the giant shoe descend behind them.
"I can't!" Rex shouted. "It's a generic van! It's designed to be overtaken!"
Elara looked at her beige calculator. She needed a boost. She needed a 'Turbo'. But 'Turbo' was a trademarked concept of racing games.
"Li!" Elara turned to the low-poly monk. "You're glitchy! Can you clip us through traffic?"
"I can attempt a 'Speed-Run Skip'," Li nodded. "But it requires precise frame-perfect inputs."
"Do it!"
Li grabbed the steering wheel from Rex. He began to jerk the wheel left and right violently while stomping on the brake and gas simultaneously.
"What is he doing?" Aldren screamed, clutching the dashboard.
"He's manipulating the physics engine!" Elara yelled.
Suddenly, the van vibrated violently. It clipped into the asphalt, sank halfway down, and then shot forward at Mach 2.
They streaked through the city, passing through buildings, cars, and terrified pedestrians. The world outside became a blur of neon streaks.
"We are breaking the game!" Li shouted, his polygon count dropping even lower. "I am a genius!"
Behind them, the Class Action Golem roared in frustration. It raised its gavel-hand and slammed it onto the street. A shockwave of red tape exploded outward, chasing the van.
"The tape is faster than the glitch!" Jen warned, looking out the back window.
The red tape surged like a tsunami. It caught the back bumper of the van.
SCREECH.
The glitch stopped. The van was yanked backward violently. The sudden deceleration threw them all against the windshield.
The van was lifted into the air. The Golem had caught them. It held the tiny grey vehicle in its massive paper-hand, bringing it up to its gavel-face.
DEFENDANTS APPREHENDED.
The Golem's voice vibrated their bones.
CHARGE: UNAUTHORIZED EXISTENCE. VERDICT: SUMMARY JUDGMENT.
The Golem squeezed. The metal of the van groaned.
"Elara!" Aldren cried, his plastic mask cracking. "Do something! Edit it!"
Elara frantically typed on the calculator. DELETE. ESCAPE. UNDO.
[ERROR: SYSTEM LOCKED BY ADMINISTRATOR.]
A holographic projection appeared in front of the van, hovering in the Golem's palm. It was Silas Vane, the Omni-Draft Executive. He looked crisp, high-definition, and smug.
"Did you really think 'Parody' would save you, Ms. Vance?" Silas smiled. "Parody requires an audience. And right now... nobody is watching."
"Let us go, Silas!" Elara shouted.
"I'm afraid I can't do that," Silas said. "You see, we've found a buyer for your 'Core of Potential.' But the contract requires a clean title. No liens. No rogue editors."
He nodded to the Golem.
"Crush them. File the remains under 'Lost Assets'."
The Golem's grip tightened. The windows of the van shattered. The roof began to buckle. Elara felt the pressure crushing her chest. She looked at Aldren, Li, Jen, and Rex. They were helpless. "Bootleg" characters with no power, trapped in the fist of the law.
She looked at the calculator.
BATTERY LOW.
"I'm sorry," Elara whispered.
The Golem raised its other hand—the massive gavel. It prepared to strike the van, flattening them into oblivion.
SENTENCING: IMMEDIATE.
The gavel began to fall.
But just before impact, the sky above Neo-Trope City ripped open.
It wasn't a Plot Hole. It wasn't a portal.
It was a blade.
A colossal, shimmering sword made of pure diamond, miles long, sliced through the clouds. It descended with the grace of a guillotine.
SCHLICK.
The Golem's arm—the one holding the gavel—was severed cleanly at the elbow.
The Golem roared in confusion, dropping the gavel. The massive paper-limb dissolved into confetti.
The van, still held in the other hand, shook violently.
"Who... who did that?" Silas Vane's hologram stuttered, looking up.
A ship descended through the tear in the sky. But it wasn't a spaceship. It was a castle. A floating, white-and-gold castle with turrets, flags, and a prow shaped like a unicorn. It radiated an aura of such intense, blinding perfection that the "Bootleg" textures on Elara's team began to sizzle.
A figure stood on the balcony of the castle. She wore a gown of starlight. Her hair was a waterfall of gold. Her eyes were violet pools of infinite empathy.
She was Flawless. She was Majestic. She was... boringly perfect.
Princess Perfecta.
"Unhand them, vile construct!" the Princess commanded. Her voice had a built-in reverb. "For they are... uh..."
She squinted at the van, at the plastic Batman costume and the potato-sack monk.
"...they are my noble guests! Probably!"
The Golem, confused by the sheer "Canon" energy radiating from the Princess, hesitated.
"Now!" Elara yelled. "Li! Kick the hand!"
Li Wusheng, seizing the momentary distraction, unleashed a flurry of 15fps kicks against the Golem's thumb.
Kick. Kick. Kick.
The grip loosened. The van dropped.
They fell through the air, tumbling away from the Golem and the Princess.
"We're falling again!" Aldren screamed.
"Aim for the castle!" Elara commanded.
But they didn't hit the castle. They missed the landing deck by inches.
They plummeted past the shining white towers, down into the dark, smog-choked underbelly of the city that lay beneath the Princess's domain.
As they fell into the darkness, Elara saw Silas Vane's hologram looking down at them, his face twisted in a snarl.
"You can't hide in the sewers, Vance!" Silas shouted. "The lawsuit follows you! It follows you forever!"
The darkness swallowed them.