The plan was simple: Be pathetic. Break the narrative logic. Win by confusing the enemy.
Elara had mumbled her line about the housing market. The Red Ranger was frozen, his helmet tilting in confusion. It was working.
"Aldren!" Elara whispered, nudging the Vampire Lord. "Your turn! Cry about the bagel! Make it really ugly!"
Aldren Vance stood trembling in his torn "Night Mammal Man" t-shirt. The plastic Color Timer on his chest was screaming BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP. He looked at The Bastard (Black Ranger), who was currently tuning his Nu-Metal guitar sword.
Aldren opened his mouth to sob. He thought about the bagel. It was a poppy seed bagel. It fell cream-cheese side down. It was tragic.
But then, The Bastard laughed.
It was a cool, raspy, studio-produced chuckle.
"Look at you," The Bastard scoffed, pointing his sword. "You're not even a villain. You're a blooper reel. You have no aesthetic. You have no edge."
Something inside Aldren snapped. It wasn't his mind. It was his patience.
"A blooper reel?" Aldren whispered. The sound wasn't a whine. It was a low, subterranean rumble that vibrated the plastic of his Color Timer.
"Aldren, no!" Elara warned. "Stick to the cringe!"
"I am done with cringe," Aldren snarled. He reached up and ripped the plastic Color Timer off his chest.
CRACK.
The beeping stopped.
"Hey!" The Red Ranger shouted. "You can't do that! That is your narrative limiter! Without it, you will overheat!"
"I do not overheat," Aldren said, straightening his spine. The "Night Mammal" t-shirt dissolved, not into mist, but into a shadow so deep it looked like a hole in the monitor. "I consume."
On the other side of the platform, Li Wusheng was looking at the banana peel The Fool had placed for him.
"Tech support..." Li muttered. "Did you try... turning it off..."
The Fool honked his rubber chicken. HONK. The laugh track played. HAHAHAHA.
Li's eye twitched.
"I am the General of the Five Storms," Li said, his voice dropping the "Bucket Effect" distortion. "I have marched across continents. I have debated gods. And I..."
He reached behind his back. He found the zipper of his foam-rubber suit.
He didn't unzip it. He flexed.
RRRRAAAAGH!
The foam suit exploded. Yellow chunks of sponge rained down like confetti.
Underneath, Li Wusheng wasn't wearing his robes. He was wearing his spirit. His body glowed with a golden, translucent light—the "Avatar of the Dao."
"I AM NOT A MASCOT!" Li roared, the sound wave knocking The Fool's rubber chicken into the void.
"New plan," Elara sighed, dropping the receipt. "We're going off-script."
"Budget Team!" Aldren shouted, his eyes burning with actual, terrifying red light (no heart shapes this time). "We are cancelling them."
The Rainbow Family hesitated. Their AI wasn't programmed for this. They were built to fight monsters in rubber suits, not Eldritch Horrors and Ascended Immortals.
"Rangers!" The Red Ranger commanded. "Formation Delta! Execute the Merchandise Finisher!"
The Rainbow Family combined their weapons. They formed a massive, glowing "Bazooka of Friendship."
"Fire!"
A beam of pure, multi-colored marketing energy shot toward Aldren and Li.
"Li," Aldren said, not even looking at the beam. "Shall we show them the difference between a 'Special Effect' and 'Reality'?"
"Indeed, old friend," Li agreed, floating in a lotus position. "They rely on pixels. We rely on the Soul."
Aldren raised one hand. He didn't use a "Spacium Thingy." He summoned The Blood Moon.
It shouldn't have been possible. The Critic's budget didn't allow for a Blood Moon. But Aldren forced it. The sky above the platform turned a bruised, violent crimson. The "One-Star" sun was blotted out.
"That's not in the budget!" The Brain shrieked, checking his datapad. "Rendering error! Too many particle effects!"
"I am the budget," Aldren hissed.
He caught the Friendship Beam in his bare hand. The energy sizzled against his skin, but he didn't flinch. He crushed it.
"My turn."
Aldren waved his hand. Shadows—real, hungry, non-CGI shadows—erupted from the floor. They looked like jagged teeth.
"AHHH! THE LIGHTING ENGINE IS BREAKING!" The Bastard screamed as the shadows swallowed his Nu-Metal guitar. "I can't brood in total darkness! I need rim lighting!"
"Brood in the void," Aldren said, tossing The Bastard into a pool of ink.
"Li! The Fool is yours!" Aldren called out. "Don't let him slip away!"
"I do not slip," Li said. He flew forward.
The Fool tried to throw a pie. "Pie in the face! Classic comedy!"
Li didn't dodge. He caught the pie. He looked at it.
"This pastry... has no Qi," Li judged.
He slapped The Fool.
It wasn't a slapstick slap. It was the Palm of the Mountain.
CRACK.
The sound barrier broke. The Fool flew backward so fast that he clipped through the "invisible wall" of the level boundary.
GAME OVER, the air whispered.
"Two down!" Elara cheered. "Jen! Rex! Take the Brain!"
"On it!" Jen yelled. She wasn't using a water pistol anymore. She had grabbed a fallen piece of The Fool's armor—a "Comically Large Hammer." "I'm going to smash his hard drive!"
"I'll provide the soundtrack!" Rex shredded on his ukulele, but this time, he wasn't playing background music. He was playing Thrash Metal.
The Brain tried to calculate a counter-strategy. "Probability of defeat... increasing? This makes no sense! Their power levels are fluctuating wildly! The Vampire is oscillating between 'Gothic Horror' and 'Sassy Roommate'! The Monk is mixing 'Xianxia' with 'Boomer Humor'! I can't predict the tone!"
Jen smashed the hammer into The Brain's datapad. SMASH.
"Tone this!" Jen shouted.
The Brain malfunctioned, spinning in circles reciting trivia about llamas until he fell over.
That left The Red Ranger and The Pink Ranger.
The Pink Ranger looked at Aldren, who was currently floating in a cloud of bats, and Li, who was glowing like a supernova.
"Umm..." The Pink Ranger squeaked. "Tee-hee?"
"Spare me," Aldren said. He glared at her.
The Pink Ranger fainted. Not a trope faint. A real faint from sheer terror.
The Red Ranger stood alone. His armor was dented. His visor was cracked.
"You..." The Red Ranger pointed a shaking finger. "You are ruining the franchise! You are destroying the IP! Do you know how much money went into this reboot?"
"You can't reboot us," Elara said, stepping forward. She didn't have her calculator, but she had her team. "Because we're not a franchise. We're a mess. And messes are hard to clean up."
"I am the Leader!" The Red Ranger screamed. "I have the toy sales!"
He charged at Elara.
"Aldren! Li! Combo move!" Elara yelled. "The 'We-Don't-Get-Along-But-We-Work-Together' Attack!"
"I hate that name," Aldren noted.
"It is wordy," Li agreed.
But they moved together.
Aldren unleashed a swarm of bats that swirled into a tornado. Li infused the tornado with golden Qi lightning.
It was a Vampiric-Taoist Storm of Snark.
It hit The Red Ranger.
"MY MARKETABILITYYYY!" The Red Ranger screamed as he was blasted off the platform, dissolving into a cloud of unbought merchandise.
The platform fell silent. The smoke cleared.
Aldren dusted off his suit (which had miraculously regenerated from the shadows). "That was cathartic."
"Indeed," Li nodded, his golden glow fading to reveal he was wearing... well, nothing but his thermal underwear. "Although, I appear to be underdressed for the victory pose."
"Don't look," Jen said, covering Rex's eyes.
Elara laughed. They had done it. They had broken the Replacement Cast not by being "Worse," but by being so aggressively themselves that the polish couldn't handle the grit.
But the laughter died as the platform shook violently.
The "One-Star" sun overhead turned black.
THE CRITIC rose from his chair of Deleted Scenes. He wasn't shifting faces anymore. He was one face. A face of pure, white-hot rage.
"You," The Critic whispered. His voice wasn't an audio mix. It was the sound of a server farm crashing.
"You rejected the notes. You destroyed the replacements. You refused to be standardized."
The Critic raised both hands. The Red Pen snapped in half.
"Fine. If I can't fix you... I'll cancel the network."
The sky ripped open. Not a Red Line. Not a Red X.
THE BLACKOUT.
A wave of absolute nothingness began to descend. It wasn't erasing things one by one. It was turning off the universe. The stars winked out. The platform began to dissolve.
"He's pulling the plug," Elara whispered. "Total Cancellation."
"We can't fight nothingness," Aldren said, his bravado slipping. "I can fight light. I can fight monsters. But I cannot fight the Off Switch."
"We don't fight it," Elara said, her mind racing. She looked at the dissolving world. She looked at the "Passionate Fanbase" of Seattle that was currently being overwritten by the void.
"We need to make him listen," Elara said. "We need to leave a comment."
"A comment?" Rex asked.
"The Author's Note," Elara said. "The one thing that exists outside the story. The one thing the Critic has to read before he closes the book."
She looked at the spot where her Prime Input had been destroyed. "I don't have a keyboard."
"Use the sky," Li said, pointing up. "You are the Editor. The sky is your page."
Elara looked up at the encroaching Blackout.
"Team," Elara said. "Buy me time. Keep the void back. I'm going to write a letter to management."