Fanon Fodder (13 & 14/14)
OMFG.
That's right, after 16 months (almost to the day), Fanon Fodder is complete.
Previous parts are located here
Marty Stu
Xander slowly circled his doppelganger, who just kind of smirked.
He had to be clenching. Nobody had an ass that inviting. Certainly not Xander. And Xander certainly didn't think about other guys asses. No way, no how.
Still, that was a damned fine ass. . . .
"Manny, I'm thinking there's some kind of mistake." Xander tore his gaze away from the other Xander's ass to look to the Man. "That is NOT me."
"No kidding. You're way too . . . puffy."
Xander turned to glare at . . . himself. "I'm not puffy! I just might have hit the Chinese take out a bit too hard after breaking things off with Anya, that's all! And what about you? That tan is so fake. You look like you're made of bronze. No one is that color."
"You are correct, in fact, Alexander Lavelle Harris." Manny adjusted his glasses again. "And about more than the Chinese take out, or the unnatural nature of his skin tone. That is not, in fact, you. Well, it is, but it isn't. Do you understand?"
"Not even a little."
The other Xander huffed. "It's not that difficult. . . ."
"You shut up!" Xander pointed a shaky finger at him, then turned back to Manny. "You! Explain!"
"This," Manny gestured to the doppelganger. "Is Alexander Lavelle Harris. As are you. However, you are the Alexander Lavelle Harris that was created by Joss Whedon and presented in the television series ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer'. He, however, is the Alexander Lavelle Harris that lives in the hearts and minds of the viewers of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer', or, at least, the hearts and minds of the viewers who write stories and post them online. Well. The ones that write fiction that is read by the creators of the challenge, at the very least."
"Oooooookay," Xander turned to look at the other Xander. "So you're telling me that the people who watched the show think I'm like THAT? He's . . . kind of grotesquely epic."
The other Xander grunted slightly and seemed to pose. "Am not,"
"You are correct in your assessment, I believe. In fact, I do have a few statistics on him, if you would like to listen."
"Hit me."
"I will not."
"With the DETAILS, Manny,"
"Oh." The Man perused his clipboard. "Very well. The man standing before you is to be described in the following manner: ‘despite the physical, emotional, and at times sexual abuse in his childhood at the hands of one of his numerous fathers'--"
"Numerous fathers? ABUSE?" Xander shook his head. "Okay, I'll be the first to say that Tony was no ‘Father Knows Best'--and I know that for a fact now, because I met the guy last . . . weekish or so ago, but he wasn't THAT bad,"
The other Xander shuddered. And seemed to shrink at the very idea, looking broken and confused and Xander was NOT going to hug him and make him feel better with smooches, no matter how strangely tempting it suddenly was to do so.
"Your Anthony Harris was not. His, on the other hand, was a monster. Mostly. You need only read the fiction to know it's a fact, for him." The Man raised an eyebrow. "May I go on?"
The other Xander whimpered softly. Xander shoved his hands in his pockets. "Yes. Okay."
"As I was saying, despite that fact, THIS Alexander Lavelle Harris grew up to be a generally upstanding individual. He is caring, naturally, since he is in fact a powerful empath--"
"Oh come on! I don't HAVE any powers."
"You don't. He does. Thousands of them, in fact, due to something called YAHF."
"Yoff?"
"Close enough. He also maintains a piece of the hyena spirit that possessed you both shortly after you made the acquaintance of Buffy Anne Summers. This piece has developed greatly over the years until
it is almost a second personality for him. The same may be said for the soldier memories, which he maintains in full."
"That's dumb," Xander muttered, beginning to feel rather . . . jealous of his fictional half.
"He also has heightened, near vampiric senses thanks to a 'blood-claim bond' that he shares with. . . ." Manny flipped one page on his clip board. Then another. Then another, and another, and another. "Quite a few vampires of his acquaintance, actually. It's a small miracle that he has not been turned in fact--oh." Manny looked up and adjusted his glasses. "He has. A few times."
Xander turned slowly to look at his doppelganger, which looked back at him with a smirk and a full game face.
And a golden tan.
This was getting just a little bit ridiculous.
"Wait, you're telling me this guy has been turned by vampires MORE THAN ONCE? Manny, that doesn't make any sense."
"And yet it remains the truth. It is also of note that Alexander Lavelle Harris can transform himself into a multitude of creatures, is familiar with any type of explosive device or ballistic weaponry you put in front of him, knows multiple styles of martial arts, has alien DNA, is part-demon, has had affairs of varying steaminess with every member of the cast of characters of the series, and several other series as well. He is nigh-indestructable, militantly straight, and ‘oh-so-very gay'."
The faux-Xander grinned saucily. Xander scowled.
"Manny, stop oggling the fake me. Fake me, for god's sake, stop flirting with the Man!"
The faux-Xander shrugged. "I can't help it. He's just so . . . attractive. A character created with minimal development, cast to float free in this corner of the creative ether, to sink or swim without help from his creator. He's had to essentially create himself, and he's done a very good job of it, no matter how lonely the existence is. Look at him, Xander. So melancholy but loyal to his position. He's called the Man, but it would be more accurate to dub him ‘the Middle-Man', or ‘the Lackey'. Perhaps ‘the Figurehead. Or ‘the Scapegoat'. Of all the original characters in this corner of the ether, he is the most compassionate."
Xander blinked, and turned to look at the Man again, as if in a whole new light. The Man sniffed slightly, looking down.
"He is also extremely perceptive." Manny took a deep breath and looked back up at the two Xanders. "Thank you, Alexander Lavelle Harris."
The faux-Xander's cocky expression returned. "Of course, he's also dweeby beyond belief."
The Man's face closed off. "And at times entirely callous."
Xander was beginning to get a handle on this situation. "So you want me to fight . . . an idealised version of myself?"
"Yes."
"To the death?"
"Yes."
". . . Is that considered suicide?"
"I am sure I do not know."
Xander turned to face his doppelganger. "But how can you even exist? There's so many parts of you that don't make sense. How can you be militantly straight, but also completely gay? I mean, you've had sex with Spike, haven't you?"
The faux-Xander nodded. "A bunch of times. Top and bottom. Mostly bottom, though."
"But you hate Spike."
The faux-Xander scowled. "I hate all vampires. Every last one of them. What they did to Jesse is completely unforgivable, and I refuse to even consider that not every single vampire on the face of the planet isn't entirely responsible for that and therefore has to be eliminated."
Xander shook his head. "But . . . you've had sex with vampires. You are a vampire, sort of. You've got blood claims with them and fight along side them. How do you explain that?"
The scowl deepened. "Are we here to fight or not."
"I'd rather not, actually, if you're going to give the option," Xander stepped closer. "But I hit a nerve, didn't I? You're supposed to be, what, a combination of all the different Xanders in different fanfiction stories, right? So you've got the conflicting opinions of thousands of different writers in your head."
"What the hell does that matter? I'm almost indestructible." The faux-Xander grinned. It was a predatory expression, right down to the slightly elongated and pointed eye teeth. "No, wait, I AM indestructible. That was established in at least one of the stories."
"You're ridiculous."
"You calling me a clown?"
Xander shuddered. "We're afraid of clowns, remember? I'm not afraid of you."
"Oh, I think you are. You're terrified that I'm better than you. That I've accomplished things you couldn't even imagine doing. I'm everything you've always wished you were and more."
"You're not even real."
"I'm as real as you are. More. I'm the Xander of the fan mentality. There's a whole lot more of them than of YOUR writers."
"You're a walking contradiction. I've read some of those stories. How about Angel? You hate him. So do I. But you're also sleeping with him. You're terrified of Faith, pissed off at Faith, never even met Faith, and having hot, kinky affairs with Faith. All at the same time. You're a natural magician with no magic ability at all. A highly skilled fighter who no one has ever bothered to train. You're obsessed with guns, or never touch them. Immortal, but dead hundreds of times over."
"You're weak."
Xander turned to glance over his shoulder at the window out onto the Arena. "I'm in charge of an army of good guys. Without having to suddenly get new powers because of a costume or a random new father, without having kung fu downloaded into my brain, and generally without killing anything. I'm pretty sure that means that I'm not weak."
"You think you can beat me?"
"In a fight? Not at all. You'd kick my ass in a matter of moments, if for no other reason than because you've got seven guns within easy reach and a sword strapped to your back and know how to use all of them, while I've just got an axe. Plus, you have two eyes." Xander stepped closer again. "Or do you? Sometimes, and this might be because of my own lack of depth perception, it looks like you've got an eyepatch. And sometimes your left eye is a different color. You've got so many parts all smashed together that I'm not even sure how you can move."
On a whim, Xander reached out a finger and poked at his double's chest.
His finger sank in about half an inch, as though his double were merely an illusion cast over a much smaller person.
"Now that's interesting,"
The other Xander backed up and smacked at Xander's hand. "Stop that."
"No, wait, I think I'm onto something here." Xander pushed again, with his whole hand this time, then dragged it downwards, opening a rip in the other Xander's shirt. It tore easily.
"Hey! Stop! Let go!"
"You're, like, some kid wearing an uber-Xander suit. What do you think you're playing at?" Xander kept stepping in as his double kept backing up, ripping the shirt further, revealing something dark and empty underneath. He cast a glance towards the Man, who watched impassively.
"You know what? I take it back. I don't think you can beat me. I think I just." He started pulling the torn bits of Xander costume away. "Might," He reached up to pull off the face, which he really, really hoped was some sort of metaphysical mask. "Win."
As the last of the form that made up the fanon!Xander pulled away, a swirling, colorful mist in the shape of a man was revealed. It spiraled into a dizzying fractal, then expanded and seemed to explode.
As it blew past him, Xander closed his eyes. It was cold and smelled slightly of cinnamon buns.
"Congratulations, Alexander Lavelle Harris," the Man said softly from somewhere to his left. "You've just won your final Masters of the Multi-verse Challenge."
Xander shook his head. "There's still the battle. Good vs. Evil, remember?"
"Open your eyes. Take a look."
Xander did.
Epilogue: Are we there, yet?
He was back on the bus out of hell. He sat up straighter and looked around. Everything was as it had been when the colorful mist had first descended on him when Mike, Frank, and Steve pulled him into the "real world".
Had that even happened?
Most of the surviving mini-slayers were sleeping, or staring out the windows, still recovering from the fight in the high school.
"Pull over," someone called, from about midway up the bus. "Pull the fuck over right NOW."
The bus screeched to a halt on the desert road and Giles spun about in his seat behind the wheel. "Faith, what--"
But Faith had jumped to her feet and was running for the front of the bus by the door, her hand over her mouth in the universal gesture for "I'm going to spew". Xander pushed himself to his feet to follow, as did the rest of the Scoobies.
Faith knelt by the side of the road, her hands gripping her biceps tightly. Giles managed to get to her side first. Xander stopped just to the side of the door to the bus. "Faith,"
She shook her head. "Don't know. Maybe a side-effect of Red's spell. Felt like I was being ripped apart."
"Seems that twenty- seven different teams all tried to summon her at the same time. The moderators of the Masters challenge had to disqualify her to keep her from being ripped apart and eradicated by the energies."
It was real, alright.
Faith let go of her own arms and stood. "Fine now, though. Let's get going."
Xander nodded slightly, then looked over to the rest of his friends.
Giles was cleaning his glasses. With rather furious intensity. There was soft *snap*, and then Giles was cursing softly. He'd snapped the bridge. He looked up and caught Xander's eye. "That was . . . most strange."
"So cool you mean!" That was Andrew. He was practically vibrating. "I met James Bond!"
He went on, but Xander stopped listening. Instead, he turned to look for Buffy.
She was standing off from the group again, staring off into the desert with that small, half-smile, like she was relieved that something was over and looking forward to what might happen next.
"Guess she didn't feel like fighting. Said something about having done this twice before."
Three times, now. Xander couldn't help but wonder if letting herself die in the first battle had been really smart, or really, really foolish.
Then again, he could say that about a lot of the things she'd done, lately.
A hand landed on his arm, and Xander turned. Willow looked up at him with a slightly mournful expression.
"What happened?"
They both asked it at the same time. Then they both shrugged.
"You disappeared from the field. I thought you'd died."
Xander shook his head. "I won. They dragged me out to . . . meet myself."
"You mean, like a Toth way?"
"Kind of. He was kind of a prick, though. What happened? On the field? Who won?"
Willow smiled slightly. "No one. Once SMG Teacozy was told to stop, we all just kind of realized that the whole thing was really, really dumb. Good guys and bad guys. Then this weird color-storm kind of swept over everything, and we were here."
"It's over."
"Seems that way."
". . . and Wolverine," said Andrew, as they piled back onto the bus. "And Luke and Leia and Spiderman and. . . ."
And they drove off, into the sunset, and a giant sign reading
The End
Ye gods. I'm almost . . . numb.
That's right, after 16 months (almost to the day), Fanon Fodder is complete.
Previous parts are located here
Marty Stu
Xander slowly circled his doppelganger, who just kind of smirked.
He had to be clenching. Nobody had an ass that inviting. Certainly not Xander. And Xander certainly didn't think about other guys asses. No way, no how.
Still, that was a damned fine ass. . . .
"Manny, I'm thinking there's some kind of mistake." Xander tore his gaze away from the other Xander's ass to look to the Man. "That is NOT me."
"No kidding. You're way too . . . puffy."
Xander turned to glare at . . . himself. "I'm not puffy! I just might have hit the Chinese take out a bit too hard after breaking things off with Anya, that's all! And what about you? That tan is so fake. You look like you're made of bronze. No one is that color."
"You are correct, in fact, Alexander Lavelle Harris." Manny adjusted his glasses again. "And about more than the Chinese take out, or the unnatural nature of his skin tone. That is not, in fact, you. Well, it is, but it isn't. Do you understand?"
"Not even a little."
The other Xander huffed. "It's not that difficult. . . ."
"You shut up!" Xander pointed a shaky finger at him, then turned back to Manny. "You! Explain!"
"This," Manny gestured to the doppelganger. "Is Alexander Lavelle Harris. As are you. However, you are the Alexander Lavelle Harris that was created by Joss Whedon and presented in the television series ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer'. He, however, is the Alexander Lavelle Harris that lives in the hearts and minds of the viewers of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer', or, at least, the hearts and minds of the viewers who write stories and post them online. Well. The ones that write fiction that is read by the creators of the challenge, at the very least."
"Oooooookay," Xander turned to look at the other Xander. "So you're telling me that the people who watched the show think I'm like THAT? He's . . . kind of grotesquely epic."
The other Xander grunted slightly and seemed to pose. "Am not,"
"You are correct in your assessment, I believe. In fact, I do have a few statistics on him, if you would like to listen."
"Hit me."
"I will not."
"With the DETAILS, Manny,"
"Oh." The Man perused his clipboard. "Very well. The man standing before you is to be described in the following manner: ‘despite the physical, emotional, and at times sexual abuse in his childhood at the hands of one of his numerous fathers'--"
"Numerous fathers? ABUSE?" Xander shook his head. "Okay, I'll be the first to say that Tony was no ‘Father Knows Best'--and I know that for a fact now, because I met the guy last . . . weekish or so ago, but he wasn't THAT bad,"
The other Xander shuddered. And seemed to shrink at the very idea, looking broken and confused and Xander was NOT going to hug him and make him feel better with smooches, no matter how strangely tempting it suddenly was to do so.
"Your Anthony Harris was not. His, on the other hand, was a monster. Mostly. You need only read the fiction to know it's a fact, for him." The Man raised an eyebrow. "May I go on?"
The other Xander whimpered softly. Xander shoved his hands in his pockets. "Yes. Okay."
"As I was saying, despite that fact, THIS Alexander Lavelle Harris grew up to be a generally upstanding individual. He is caring, naturally, since he is in fact a powerful empath--"
"Oh come on! I don't HAVE any powers."
"You don't. He does. Thousands of them, in fact, due to something called YAHF."
"Yoff?"
"Close enough. He also maintains a piece of the hyena spirit that possessed you both shortly after you made the acquaintance of Buffy Anne Summers. This piece has developed greatly over the years until
it is almost a second personality for him. The same may be said for the soldier memories, which he maintains in full."
"That's dumb," Xander muttered, beginning to feel rather . . . jealous of his fictional half.
"He also has heightened, near vampiric senses thanks to a 'blood-claim bond' that he shares with. . . ." Manny flipped one page on his clip board. Then another. Then another, and another, and another. "Quite a few vampires of his acquaintance, actually. It's a small miracle that he has not been turned in fact--oh." Manny looked up and adjusted his glasses. "He has. A few times."
Xander turned slowly to look at his doppelganger, which looked back at him with a smirk and a full game face.
And a golden tan.
This was getting just a little bit ridiculous.
"Wait, you're telling me this guy has been turned by vampires MORE THAN ONCE? Manny, that doesn't make any sense."
"And yet it remains the truth. It is also of note that Alexander Lavelle Harris can transform himself into a multitude of creatures, is familiar with any type of explosive device or ballistic weaponry you put in front of him, knows multiple styles of martial arts, has alien DNA, is part-demon, has had affairs of varying steaminess with every member of the cast of characters of the series, and several other series as well. He is nigh-indestructable, militantly straight, and ‘oh-so-very gay'."
The faux-Xander grinned saucily. Xander scowled.
"Manny, stop oggling the fake me. Fake me, for god's sake, stop flirting with the Man!"
The faux-Xander shrugged. "I can't help it. He's just so . . . attractive. A character created with minimal development, cast to float free in this corner of the creative ether, to sink or swim without help from his creator. He's had to essentially create himself, and he's done a very good job of it, no matter how lonely the existence is. Look at him, Xander. So melancholy but loyal to his position. He's called the Man, but it would be more accurate to dub him ‘the Middle-Man', or ‘the Lackey'. Perhaps ‘the Figurehead. Or ‘the Scapegoat'. Of all the original characters in this corner of the ether, he is the most compassionate."
Xander blinked, and turned to look at the Man again, as if in a whole new light. The Man sniffed slightly, looking down.
"He is also extremely perceptive." Manny took a deep breath and looked back up at the two Xanders. "Thank you, Alexander Lavelle Harris."
The faux-Xander's cocky expression returned. "Of course, he's also dweeby beyond belief."
The Man's face closed off. "And at times entirely callous."
Xander was beginning to get a handle on this situation. "So you want me to fight . . . an idealised version of myself?"
"Yes."
"To the death?"
"Yes."
". . . Is that considered suicide?"
"I am sure I do not know."
Xander turned to face his doppelganger. "But how can you even exist? There's so many parts of you that don't make sense. How can you be militantly straight, but also completely gay? I mean, you've had sex with Spike, haven't you?"
The faux-Xander nodded. "A bunch of times. Top and bottom. Mostly bottom, though."
"But you hate Spike."
The faux-Xander scowled. "I hate all vampires. Every last one of them. What they did to Jesse is completely unforgivable, and I refuse to even consider that not every single vampire on the face of the planet isn't entirely responsible for that and therefore has to be eliminated."
Xander shook his head. "But . . . you've had sex with vampires. You are a vampire, sort of. You've got blood claims with them and fight along side them. How do you explain that?"
The scowl deepened. "Are we here to fight or not."
"I'd rather not, actually, if you're going to give the option," Xander stepped closer. "But I hit a nerve, didn't I? You're supposed to be, what, a combination of all the different Xanders in different fanfiction stories, right? So you've got the conflicting opinions of thousands of different writers in your head."
"What the hell does that matter? I'm almost indestructible." The faux-Xander grinned. It was a predatory expression, right down to the slightly elongated and pointed eye teeth. "No, wait, I AM indestructible. That was established in at least one of the stories."
"You're ridiculous."
"You calling me a clown?"
Xander shuddered. "We're afraid of clowns, remember? I'm not afraid of you."
"Oh, I think you are. You're terrified that I'm better than you. That I've accomplished things you couldn't even imagine doing. I'm everything you've always wished you were and more."
"You're not even real."
"I'm as real as you are. More. I'm the Xander of the fan mentality. There's a whole lot more of them than of YOUR writers."
"You're a walking contradiction. I've read some of those stories. How about Angel? You hate him. So do I. But you're also sleeping with him. You're terrified of Faith, pissed off at Faith, never even met Faith, and having hot, kinky affairs with Faith. All at the same time. You're a natural magician with no magic ability at all. A highly skilled fighter who no one has ever bothered to train. You're obsessed with guns, or never touch them. Immortal, but dead hundreds of times over."
"You're weak."
Xander turned to glance over his shoulder at the window out onto the Arena. "I'm in charge of an army of good guys. Without having to suddenly get new powers because of a costume or a random new father, without having kung fu downloaded into my brain, and generally without killing anything. I'm pretty sure that means that I'm not weak."
"You think you can beat me?"
"In a fight? Not at all. You'd kick my ass in a matter of moments, if for no other reason than because you've got seven guns within easy reach and a sword strapped to your back and know how to use all of them, while I've just got an axe. Plus, you have two eyes." Xander stepped closer again. "Or do you? Sometimes, and this might be because of my own lack of depth perception, it looks like you've got an eyepatch. And sometimes your left eye is a different color. You've got so many parts all smashed together that I'm not even sure how you can move."
On a whim, Xander reached out a finger and poked at his double's chest.
His finger sank in about half an inch, as though his double were merely an illusion cast over a much smaller person.
"Now that's interesting,"
The other Xander backed up and smacked at Xander's hand. "Stop that."
"No, wait, I think I'm onto something here." Xander pushed again, with his whole hand this time, then dragged it downwards, opening a rip in the other Xander's shirt. It tore easily.
"Hey! Stop! Let go!"
"You're, like, some kid wearing an uber-Xander suit. What do you think you're playing at?" Xander kept stepping in as his double kept backing up, ripping the shirt further, revealing something dark and empty underneath. He cast a glance towards the Man, who watched impassively.
"You know what? I take it back. I don't think you can beat me. I think I just." He started pulling the torn bits of Xander costume away. "Might," He reached up to pull off the face, which he really, really hoped was some sort of metaphysical mask. "Win."
As the last of the form that made up the fanon!Xander pulled away, a swirling, colorful mist in the shape of a man was revealed. It spiraled into a dizzying fractal, then expanded and seemed to explode.
As it blew past him, Xander closed his eyes. It was cold and smelled slightly of cinnamon buns.
"Congratulations, Alexander Lavelle Harris," the Man said softly from somewhere to his left. "You've just won your final Masters of the Multi-verse Challenge."
Xander shook his head. "There's still the battle. Good vs. Evil, remember?"
"Open your eyes. Take a look."
Xander did.
Epilogue: Are we there, yet?
He was back on the bus out of hell. He sat up straighter and looked around. Everything was as it had been when the colorful mist had first descended on him when Mike, Frank, and Steve pulled him into the "real world".
Had that even happened?
Most of the surviving mini-slayers were sleeping, or staring out the windows, still recovering from the fight in the high school.
"Pull over," someone called, from about midway up the bus. "Pull the fuck over right NOW."
The bus screeched to a halt on the desert road and Giles spun about in his seat behind the wheel. "Faith, what--"
But Faith had jumped to her feet and was running for the front of the bus by the door, her hand over her mouth in the universal gesture for "I'm going to spew". Xander pushed himself to his feet to follow, as did the rest of the Scoobies.
Faith knelt by the side of the road, her hands gripping her biceps tightly. Giles managed to get to her side first. Xander stopped just to the side of the door to the bus. "Faith,"
She shook her head. "Don't know. Maybe a side-effect of Red's spell. Felt like I was being ripped apart."
"Seems that twenty- seven different teams all tried to summon her at the same time. The moderators of the Masters challenge had to disqualify her to keep her from being ripped apart and eradicated by the energies."
It was real, alright.
Faith let go of her own arms and stood. "Fine now, though. Let's get going."
Xander nodded slightly, then looked over to the rest of his friends.
Giles was cleaning his glasses. With rather furious intensity. There was soft *snap*, and then Giles was cursing softly. He'd snapped the bridge. He looked up and caught Xander's eye. "That was . . . most strange."
"So cool you mean!" That was Andrew. He was practically vibrating. "I met James Bond!"
He went on, but Xander stopped listening. Instead, he turned to look for Buffy.
She was standing off from the group again, staring off into the desert with that small, half-smile, like she was relieved that something was over and looking forward to what might happen next.
"Guess she didn't feel like fighting. Said something about having done this twice before."
Three times, now. Xander couldn't help but wonder if letting herself die in the first battle had been really smart, or really, really foolish.
Then again, he could say that about a lot of the things she'd done, lately.
A hand landed on his arm, and Xander turned. Willow looked up at him with a slightly mournful expression.
"What happened?"
They both asked it at the same time. Then they both shrugged.
"You disappeared from the field. I thought you'd died."
Xander shook his head. "I won. They dragged me out to . . . meet myself."
"You mean, like a Toth way?"
"Kind of. He was kind of a prick, though. What happened? On the field? Who won?"
Willow smiled slightly. "No one. Once SMG Teacozy was told to stop, we all just kind of realized that the whole thing was really, really dumb. Good guys and bad guys. Then this weird color-storm kind of swept over everything, and we were here."
"It's over."
"Seems that way."
". . . and Wolverine," said Andrew, as they piled back onto the bus. "And Luke and Leia and Spiderman and. . . ."
And they drove off, into the sunset, and a giant sign reading
The End
Ye gods. I'm almost . . . numb.