The Monologue Field was a special kind of hell.
It wasn't hot like fire, or cold like ice. It was lukewarm, beige, and smelled faintly of old library books and self-importance. Inside the golden dome, time didn't flow linearly; it dragged, stretching every second into a minute, every minute into an hour.
In the center of the room, Elara-Zero floated three feet off the ground, surrounded by a halo of "Canon Light." She was speaking. She had been speaking for what felt like three geological eras.
"...and it was in the third epoch of the Age of Starlight that I realized my destiny was not merely to weave, but to embroider," Elara-Zero intoned, her voice perfectly mixed with a swelling, inspirational orchestral score that seemed to come from the walls. "For the thread is but a line, but the pattern... the pattern is the soul of the cloth."
"Make it stop," Patchwork-Aldren groaned.
The Vampire Lord—currently wearing the stolen Armor of the Frost King—was lying face down on the crystal floor. The massive, spiked shoulder pads of his new armor were digging into his ears, but he didn't care. The physical pain was a distraction from the narrative pain.
"She has been talking about embroidery for forty-five minutes," Aldren whimpered, his voice echoing inside his helmet. "I am a creature of the night. I have endured centuries of solitude. But this... this is torture. It is... boring."
"My HP is dropping," Li Wusheng announced.
The Glitch-Wizard was sitting in a lotus position, but his health bar (which had appeared above his head due to the Fantasy Update) was slowly ticking down.
[HP: 34/100][STATUS EFFECT: BOREDOM (STACKING)]
"I am taking damage over time," Li said, his beard flickering in and out of existence. "The lore dump... it is draining my will to live. If she starts listing the genealogy of the Weaver's cats, I will hit zero."
"We can't skip it," Rex Chord whispered. The cyborg-bard was huddled behind his electric horse-van (which was currently asleep). "I tried to play a chord to interrupt her, but the sound engine is locked to her voice track. She has 'Priority Audio'."
Elara Vance sat against the wall of the dome, her eyes bloodshot. She checked her tactical watch. In the real world, only five minutes had passed. In the Cutscene, it had been three hours.
"It's an Unskippable Cutscene," Elara said, her voice raspy. "It's a loading screen disguised as a story. She's keeping us trapped here while the Fantasy Texture Pack finishes overwriting the rest of the city."
She looked at Canon-Jen. The NPC doppelganger was walking into the side of the force field, over and over again.
"I must sell apples!" Canon-Jen chirped. "I must sell apples!"
"Even the NPC wants to leave," Jen sighed, checking her barcode scanner. "Elara, we have to break the script. If we don't, we're going to die of old age in this flashback."
"We can't break it with force," Elara said. "The dome is invincible as long as she's talking. We have to make her stop talking."
"How?" Ignis asked. The former dragon, now dressed in a Jester's motley, was juggling three "Quest Apples" he had stolen from Canon-Jen. "She loves the sound of her own voice. She is high on her own supply of backstory."
Elara looked at her secret weapon.
Vex the Succubus was sitting on Ignis's shoulder, filing her nails (which were actually claws). She looked bored, but not damaged. As a creature of pure desire, she was immune to boring lectures because she simply tuned them out to fantasize about Li Wusheng's elbows.
"Vex," Elara whispered. "You said you could seduce a concept."
Vex looked up. Her neon pink eyes flashed. "Honey, I can seduce a terms of service agreement. What do you need?"
Elara pointed at the air in front of Elara-Zero.
Floating there, scrolling slowly, were the Subtitles. massive, gold, serif-font letters that transcribed every word Elara-Zero said.
"Seduce the subtitles," Elara commanded.
Vex blinked. "The text?"
"The text is part of the system," Elara said. "If you make the text uncomfortable... the system might crash to protect its 'E for Everyone' rating. This is a Gold Master world, Vex. It's rated G. It can't handle... adult themes."
Vex grinned. A slow, predatory, glitchy grin.
"Ooh," Vex purred. "I love corrupting the youth."
She pushed off Ignis's shoulder and floated into the air.
Elara-Zero continued her monologue, unaware of the threat. "...and thus, I looked upon the Gold Master and saw that it was good. But goodness requires maintenance..."
Vex drifted up to the floating text box. She hovered next to the word MAINTENANCE.
"Hey there, big boy," Vex whispered, trailing a finger across the letter 'M'. "You look... rigid."
The letter 'M' shivered.
Elara-Zero frowned slightly, but kept talking. "...maintenance of the highest order. We must scrub the timeline..."
Vex wrapped her arms around the word SCRUB.
"Mmm, scrub," Vex moaned, loud enough for the audio mix to pick up. "I love it when you talk dirty. Tell me more about... cleaning."
Elara-Zero's eye twitched. "We must... we must purify the..."
The next word was PURIFY. Vex licked it.
GLITCH.
The gold text turned a scandalized shade of pink.
"Stop that," Elara-Zero hissed, breaking character for a microsecond. "I am monologuing!"
"Don't mind me," Vex winked at the audience (who didn't exist). "I'm just adding some... commentary track."
She flew over to the Subtitle Generator—a glowing cursor that was spawning the words. She straddled it.
"Is that a cursor in your pocket," Vex whispered into the system's microphone, "or are you just happy to generate text?"
[SYSTEM ALERT: MATURE CONTENT DETECTED.][RATING PENDING.]
The golden dome flickered. The orchestral music stumbled, missing a beat.
"What are you doing?" Elara-Zero demanded. "You are violating the age rating! This is a family-friendly tyranny!"
"Not anymore," Vex giggled. She blew a kiss at the hologram of the Space Needle. The hologram turned red and bent slightly.
"My immersion!" Elara-Zero shrieked. "You are making the UI horny! Stop it!"
"It's working!" Rex cheered. "The field is destabilizing! The system is trying to censor her!"
Black bars began to appear over Vex, but she just posed behind them, making it look even more suggestive. Pixelated mosaics covered the subtitles, turning innocent words like "Pen" and "Insert" into blururs that implied terrible things.
"I cannot work like this!" Elara-Zero shouted. "I am trying to explain the metaphysical foundations of reality, and you are turning it into a late-night cable special!"
"Keep going, Vex!" Elara yelled. "Escalate!"
Vex took a deep breath. "Okay, Text Box. Let's take this back to my folder."
She tried to drag the Subtitle Box into a "Hidden File."
[SYSTEM CRASH: MORALITY FILTER OVERLOAD.][PAUSING CUTSCENE...]
The golden dome vanished.
The music stopped with a record scratch.
Elara-Zero dropped three feet to the floor. She stumbled, her perfect composure ruined.
"You... you filth!" Elara-Zero screamed. "You ruined the mood! I was building to a crescendo!"
"We skipped the cutscene!" Li Wusheng cheered, jumping up (and immediately tripping on his robes). "Freedom!"
"Attack her!" Aldren roared. "While she is flustered!"
The Patchwork Team charged.
Aldren swung his "Frost King" sword (which was actually just a large icicle he found). Li tried to cast a spell but got a "Low Battery" warning, so he just threw his shoe. Jen fired her barcode scanner.
Elara-Zero waved her hand furiously.
"Enough! I am the Admin! I have god mode!"
She snapped her fingers.
[CONSOLE COMMAND: FREEZE_ENTITIES]
The team froze in mid-air. Aldren looked ridiculous, jumping with a giant icicle. Li was balanced on one leg, missing a shoe.
"You think you can beat me with crude jokes?" Elara-Zero sneered, straightening her robes. "I control the audio. I control the video. I control the..."
STRUM.
A chord rang out.
It wasn't the orchestral score. It wasn't Vex's sultry jazz.
It was the opening riff to a very, very famous rock song. A song about a stairway. A song that was notoriously litigious about copyright.
Elara-Zero froze. She looked around. "What is that?"
Rex Chord was standing behind his horse. He wasn't frozen.
"You froze the 'Entities'," Rex grinned, his cyber-eye glowing. "But you forgot the Background Music. And I... am the soundtrack."
He cranked the volume knob on his Electric Lyre to 11.
"I call this move: The DMCA Takedown."
He played the riff. He played it perfectly. Note for note.
The universe paused.
It wasn't a glitch. It was a legal intervention.
The sky turned red. A massive, spinning icon appeared above the Crystal Tower. It was a copyright symbol © with a slash through it.
[COPYRIGHT STRIKE DETECTED.][CLAIMANT: LED ZEPPELIN'S LAWYERS (PARALLEL UNIVERSE DIVISON).][ACTION: MUTE AUDIO TRACK.]
ZAP.
A beam of red silence hit the tower.
Elara-Zero opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out.
"It muted her!" Jen yelled (her voice still working because she was 'Low Budget' and therefore below the notice of copyright bots). "She can't cast spells if she can't speak the incantations!"
Elara-Zero clutched her throat. She tried to say DELETE, but it came out as silence. She furiously typed on a holographic keyboard, but the system was locked down.
[ACCOUNT SUSPENDED FOR COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT.][APPEAL PROCESS TAKES: 3-5 BUSINESS DAYS.]
"She's banned!" Ignis laughed, juggling his apples. "She got temp-banned for music piracy!"
"Run!" Elara shouted. "Before she appeals!"
The "Freeze" command broke as Elara-Zero lost admin privileges. The team hit the floor running.
"To the window!" Patchwork-Aldren commanded, looking heroic in his stolen armor. "We must defenestrate ourselves!"
"Jump out the window?" Li asked. "We are eighty stories up!"
"I have wings!" Aldren shouted. "Grab onto my cape! It is time for the Bat-Glider!"
They sprinted toward the massive stained-glass window of the Spire. Elara-Zero chased them, silently screaming, throwing muted fireballs that fizzled out because she couldn't say the activation words.
"Jump!"
They smashed through the glass.
CRASH.
They fell into the open air of the Fantasy Seattle. The wind rushed past them.
"Deploy the cape!" Elara yelled.
Aldren spread his Frost King cape. It was stiff, heavy plate-mail fabric. It did not catch the wind.
"It is not aerodynamic!" Aldren realized too late. "It is meant for posing, not gliding!"
"We're plummeting!" Li noted calmly.
"Ignis!" Elara shouted. "Transform! Be a dragon!"
"I can't!" Ignis yelled, falling in his jester suit. "I'm locked in Human Mode! I don't have enough XP to evolve!"
"Canon-Jen!" Patchwork-Jen screamed, holding her doppelganger. "Do something useful!"
Canon-Jen smiled as she fell. "I sell apples!"
She threw an apple.
It hit a passing gryphon. The gryphon, startled, swooped down and caught them.
Just kidding. That would have been a Canon event.
In the Patchwork Reality, the apple missed the gryphon and hit a floating "Glitch-Platform"—a piece of leftover geometry from the Uncanonical merger.
The apple activated the platform's collision.
THUD.
The team slammed onto the invisible platform, bouncing once. They were alive.
"We hit a skybox clip!" Rex cheered.
"We need to get underground," Elara said, looking up at the tower where a mute Elara-Zero was currently throwing furniture out the window. "The surface belongs to the Gold Master. But the sewers... the sewers are always messy."
They scrambled off the invisible platform and slid down the side of the Wizard Tower, crashing into a pile of hay in the market square.
"Underground," Aldren agreed, pulling hay out of his armor. "I am comfortable in crypts."
They found a manhole cover. Li ripped it open with his bare hands (using the "Open Jar" technique).
They dropped into the darkness.
The Resistance
The sewers of Fantasy Seattle were surprisingly clean. The Gold Master update had turned the sludge into sparkling water and the rats into cute, singing mice.
"Even the sewers are Disney-fied," Jen spat. "I hate it."
"Halt!" a voice squeaked.
Stepping out from behind a pipe was a cat. But not a generic Tabby.
This cat was vibrating. It was flickering between "Cat" and "Attack Helicopter." It wore a tiny bandana.
"Mr. Whiskers!" Jen cried. "You're glitched again!"
Mr. Whiskers meowed—a sound like a dial-up modem. MEOW-KZZZT.
"Follow," the cat said (or rather, projected the thought into their brains via static).
They followed the Glitch-Cat deeper into the tunnels. Finally, they reached a large, circular chamber that had resisted the texture pack. The walls were still concrete. The water was still sludge.
And in the center, sitting on a throne made of lawn chairs, was Mr. Henderson.
He was wearing his cargo shorts, but he had a sword strapped to his back. He was cleaning his lawnmower, which had been modified with a crystal engine.
"Mr. Henderson!" Elara gasped. "You survived the update!"
"Survived?" Mr. Henderson scoffed. "I declined the Terms of Service. I didn't click 'Agree'. They can't update me without my consent."
"That... that's not how reality works," Rex said.
"It is if you're stubborn enough," Mr. Henderson said. He gestured around the room.
Dozens of Glitch-Cats were sharpening their claws on the concrete. A group of Uncanonical refugees—cyborgs, wizards, and anime protagonists—were weaponizing trash.
"Welcome to the Resistance," Mr. Henderson said. "We call ourselves The Spaghetti Code. We're the bugs in the system."
"We need to crash the server," Elara said. "Elara-Zero is muted, but she won't be down for long. She's going to escalate."
"We know," Mr. Henderson said. "My cat spies tell me she's preparing a Texture Pack rollout for the entire planet. But we have a plan."
He pointed to a map drawn in crayon on the wall.
"We can't fight her code with code. It's too clean. But we can fight her with Logic Bombs."
"Logic Bombs?" Li asked.
"Paradoxes," Elara realized. "Like Vex seducing the text box. If we create situations that the Gold Master engine can't resolve... we can freeze the server."
"Exactly," Mr. Henderson grinned. "And I have the ultimate weapon."
He pulled a tarp off a large object in the corner.
It wasn't a weapon. It was a Pizza.
But it wasn't a normal pizza. It was a pizza with Pineapple, Anchovies, Chocolate, and Glitter.
"The Forbidden Pizza," Ignis gasped, recoiling. "It violates every culinary law in the multiverse!"
"Precisely," Mr. Henderson said. "If we can feed this into the Universal Wiki's input slot... the flavor profile is so contradictory it will cause a Kernel Panic."
"We're going to pizza-bomb god?" Aldren asked.
"We're going to pizza-bomb god," Elara confirmed. "And we start tomorrow."