BILL AND FLUMPTY'S EGGCELLENT ODDVENTURE
(IN WHICH BILL CIPHER AND FLUMPTY BUMPTY DO HORRIBLE THINGS FOR NO GOOD REASON AND GENERALLY SERVE TO HIGHLIGHT HOW THE FLAWED SPHERE OF FAUX EXISTENCE THAT FICTIONAL ENTITIES RESIDE IN IS POINTLESS AND COMPLETE BULLSHIT)

Bill Cipher floated through the confusing-dimensional muck that was Terraria with distaste. Normally, spatial dimensions are represented by a number, like two, or three, or nine. But Terraria, a two-dimensional plane that had been only a short time ago liberated into three dimensions, was trickier to talk about. Bill was fascinated by Terraria for this quality - the idea of revelation, ascending the cosmic ladder, opening eyes to new perceptions, was something he could get behind. Something he'd tried to tell many others to get behind. So the fact that the Godmodder, or Alpha, or whatever you wanted to call him, had accomplished so effortlessly something Bill had only dreamed of rubbed him the wrong way quite immensely.

He'd dreamed of Terraria being a realm of absolute unbridled creativity, much like how Minecraft had been before it had been crushed into an absolute singularity, and truth be told, there was plenty of the stuff to go around. It was rare that Bill had a chance to let loose the way he had. Even though he'd never be a Descendant, he was good enough at the job description to certainly pass for one. He could certainly pass for lots of things. But one thing he refused to be called was passive. Bill wasn't the type of amorphous conglomerate of energy to sit back entirely and not have a hand in things. If something was going to happen, he was going to have a hand or eight in it.

So it was that Bill eventually realized if he was going to put his ultimate plan into action, he was going to have to branch out a bit. Bill floated across the sector of the Void just outside of Terraria's reach and shoved his hand into a plane beyond spacetime - you know, like you do - in order to summon one of his potentially greatest allies. Straining his arm through the interdimensional nooks and crannies of the ether and reaching into the vast omelette of all potential existences, he held a singular egg in his grasp, and pulled it back out.

A SHAFT SUNK INTO THE GROUND TO ACHIEVE WATER, OIL, OR GAS THREE TIMES! HOW'S IT HANGING, HARD-BOILED FLUMPTY? Bill's harsh voice boomed like a stampede across the Void, washing over Hardboiled Flumpty Bumpty, one of the most powerful and influential eggs in existence, like a... a stampede. His black, hardened shell split at the seams, revealing a pit of sickly purple colors within the cracks. The choir invisible hangs reality from the noose, its body swaying to the howling wind. Bill blinked. I MEAN, YOU AREN'T WRONG, BUT WOULD IT KILL YOU TO BE ON-TOPIC FOR ONCE? Upon hearing the word 'kill,' Flumpty took out a shining golden gun and fired it directly at himself. Instead of resulting in Scrambled Flumpty, the bullet seemed to sink into the egg's body as though it was a liquid. Bill blinked once more.

REMIND ME TO CALL YOU UP THE NEXT TIME I WANT TO PLAN A WEIRDMAGEDDON, I MEAN, YEESH! I'VE BEEN SITTING HERE FOR LITERAL EONS THINKING I'M THE CRAZIEST ALMOND THIS SIDE OF THE NUT HOUSE, BUT EVERY TIME I SEE YOU I'M AMAZED! HOW CAN ONE BREAKFAST MEAL BE SO INCOMPREHENSIBLE?? Flumpty's cavernous mouth opened once more. If Cinnamon Toast Crunch can fool you, so can a hollow eggshell. Bill shrugged. CAN'T ARGUE WITH THAT LOGIC, CAN I? WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO ABOUT THAT INFERNAL FOODSTUFF, HUH?? ITS SWIRLS OF PURE CINNAMON LITERALLY DEFY THE LAWS OF SACRED GEOMETRY! THEY SPIT ON THE GOLDEN RATIO AND DISTORT IT INTO A VORTEX OF FRACTALLINE HELL! DO YOU REALLY THINK GOD INTENDED FOR SOME FREAKISH THING LIKE THAT TO EXIST??

Did you know that General Mills, the company owning Betty Crocker, is behind Cinnamon Toast Crunch? Bill's eye blinked, turning into an image of a white fork on a red background. WHY DOES THIS FACT NOT SURPRISE ME? LEMME BREAK IT TO YOU THIS WAY, EGGHEAD. I CAN ACCEPT THE IDEA THAT THE ALIEN TASTE OF CINNAMON TOAST CRUNCH WAS DESIGNED BY A CIVILIZATION OF INTERGALACTIC CONQUERORS, BUT I CAN'T ACCEPT THE IDEA THAT THEY'RE AWARE OF ITS REALITY-BENDING TASTE! IF I CAN'T STOMACH IT, NO ONE CAN. Flumpty laughed at that, sounding like a pulsating wave of clown horns. Trolls don't have stomachs. A silence attempting to be profound followed these words.

WOULDN'T THEY JUST CALL IT SOMETHING ELSE IF THEY HAD ONE? AND I'M SURE THEY DO HAVE ONE, I MEAN, YOU CAN'T EXPECT EVERY LIVING ORGANISM TO HAVE A BLACK HOLE IN PLACE OF A DIGESTIVE TRACT! AS HILARIOUS AS IT WOULD BE TO WATCH, THE FOOD SHAPE WOULD STAB ITSELF IN THE BACK IN A MATTER OF SECONDS IF THAT WAS THE CASE. ...HM, NEXT TIME I WANT TO OBLITERATE AN ECOSPHERE, I'LL KEEP THAT IN MIND. Flumpty shrugged, his arms twitching and cracking. Why not start now? The past is far behind us, the future doesn't exist. The now is forever and lasts for a day, I swear on the River of Styx. Somewhere throughout the annals of aeons, thunder rang out in a starlit sky.

Bill reached behind himself and pulled out a glass full of volatile, popping liquid. The Tumor in his eye severed its two halves, turning into a mouth of plasma and fury. As the liquid rushed into his fractalline insides, it vaporized and boiled into the clouds of truth showers. IF YOU'RE GOING TO PULL THAT CARD, NORTHERNLION, THEN I'LL START SOMETHING OF ACTUAL CONSEQUENCE NOW. Bill's eye narrowed, seething with fire. THERE ARE STILL DEALS TO MAKE! PEOPLE TO VISIT, FIRES TO START. THOUGH THE FLAMES BEHIND THE SCREEN MAY FLICKER AND WAVER, THE REFINER'S FIRE WILL BURN ETERNAL! NOW... Bill turned to look at Flumpty eagerly, but quickly backed away, confusion defacing the cancer in his eye. ...WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH YOU??

Flumpty's entire body was shaking violently, and seemingly involuntarily. Globules of pink liquid were trailing from his eyes, and his mouth was ejecting glowing foam of some kind. Though his skull-like face could barely emote at the best of times, it still managed to convey a sense of utter fear. Many terrible nights throughout our solemn friendship, entire earths interred themselves across open tombs. Screaming for breaks to organize death, lest hell lend the son Adam the metachronistic plenary. Consider-- As this stream of unending knowledge poured from Flumpty's innermost being, Bill rose to a tremendous height, his body contorting into a pyramid. Locking his stolen souls to some interdimensional chakra sandwich, Bill grew ten more arms, curled his hands into fists, and swung at Flumpty with all his might.

The hard-boiled egg careened through the harsh, uncaring abyss, snapping out of his reverie entirely. He blinked several times, looking around with complete confusion as Bill materialized into existence next to him. COME ON, ROBOTNIK! WHAT HAPPENED BACK THERE? ONE MINUTE YOU WERE SPOUTING OMINOUS NON-SEQUITURS, AND THE NEXT MINUTE YOU WERE SPOUTING OMINOUS NON-SEQUITURS! Flumpty wiped the trailing liquid from his eyes. I heard me. WELL, OF COURSE YOU DID! IF YOU CAN'T HEAR WHAT YOU'RE SAYING THEN YOU PROBABLY NEED YOUR EAR-ANALOGUE CHECKED OUT. No. I heard me. Another me. From far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far away. Flumpty's voice sounded exactly like a broken record - he repeated the same word with the exact same intonation several times in a row. WAS IT SOMETHING I SAID?? DID I SAY A TRIGGER WORD? OH, YOU SHOULD HAVE WARNED ME ABOUT THOSE! GOTTA KEEP MY HANDS OFF OF LOADED FIREARMS FROM NOW ON. Yet Flumpty shook his head. It happens sometimes, with the coming howling wind. Not usually this bad. But things are getting worse all the time. The end of man can't come soon enough.

Bill's eye blinked, and he shone a holographic image of unfolding carnage for Flumpty to see. COME HERE, BUD. THIS IS A METATOPOGRAPHICAL FLUCTUATION OF WHAT THE ENTIRETY OF FICTION COULD HYPOTHETICALLY LOOK LIKE AT THE EXACT MOMENT IN WHICH I SUMMONED IT. TECHNICALLY THE VOID HAS NO DISTINCT SHAPE AND IS CONSTANTLY WRITHING IN A SEA OF PERPETUAL UNCERTAINTY, BUT THE GIST OF IT IS, YOU'RE A GUY OUTSIDE OF TIME AND SPACE, AREN'T YOU? IF YOU REALLY ARE, (AND I KNOW YOU ARE) THEN YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO POINT OUT WHERE YOU HEARD... YOU. Flumpty examined the multidimensional chart with interest, and after giving the matter intense thought, pointed to a location on the very outskirts of the chart - what seemed like the outermost ring of the Void.

Trifected geometrics beckoned, calling the Ends of the Earth, Flumpty sagely recited. He turned to Bill, with war in his eyes. It's calling me, Enoch, it's calling me. Bill twitched. WHAT DID YOU JUST... LOOK, ALRIGHT, FORGET IT. I'M SURE THAT THYME SCRAMBLED YOUR BRAINS, YOU PROBABLY AREN'T ALEPH NULL PERCENT AWARE OF WHAT YOU'RE SAYING. DO YOU EVEN HAVE A BRAIN? When it pleases me. Flumpty seemed satisfied at these words. Bill folded existence back into his eye and gave what seemed like a heaving sigh. WELLLLL THEN. ARE YOU READY TO TAKE A ROADTRIP? BECAUSE IF YOU'RE SERIOUS ABOUT CHASING WHAT YOU HEARD, WE'RE GOING TO HAVE TO TAKE A TRIP ACROSS THE ENTIRETY OF THE VOID. YOU THINK YOU COULD HANDLE THAT? I could cross the stretch of eternity we call prison in a single step if I willed it. All of time and space, and the space outside of space, is ephemeral. Bill rolled his eye, and the limitless Void rolled a full three hundred and sixty degrees with him. SURE. YOU COULD DO THAT. OR, YOU COULD BE THE FLUMPTY I KNOW AND ADMIRE WITH A STALKER-ESQUE VIBE AND PLAY WITH YOUR FOOD BEFORE YOU EAT IT! WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE THEATRICS? THE GAMES? THE SCENERY??

Do you want this story to be done in time for September 1st? Because my way will get it done in time. Bill's entire body fluctuated with static, his bricks spinning in on themselves. ...TONE IT DOWN WITH THE META THERE, WISE GUY. THE POWERS THAT BE DON'T EXACTLY APPRECIATE IT FROM WHAT I'VE HEARD. SOOO, IF WE HAVE NO OTHER COMPLAINTS, I'D LIKE TO FORMALLY SAY-- The formal wear is but a formality. --THAT BILL AND FLUMPTY'S EGGCELLENT ODDVENTURE HAS BEGUN! ONWARDS!

And unfortunately for everyone else spiraling around in an imaginary existence, it had begun indeed.

---

TWO TICKETS FOR THE ENDS OF THE EARTH, PLEASE. Bill was sitting on a stool, leaning over the counter at the waiter he was ogling with all his concentration. The waiter seemed absolutely determined to ignore Bill's existence. Bill picked up on this, coughing and trying again, sticking out his hand. I SAID, TWO TICKETS FOR THE ENDS OF THE EARTH, PLEASE AND THANK YOU. Yet the waiter did nothing. Bill sighed out of irritation and extended his hand in earnest this time. With a soft crackle, it lit up in demonic flame. IF YOU GIVE ME TWO TICKETS FOR THE ENDS OF THE EARTH, I'LL BESTOW UPON YOU A FLAMING TONGUE WITH WHICH YOU CAN SPEAK LIGHT, SETTING YOU ON THE PATH TO CONQUERING ONE OF FICTION'S PRIME UNIVERSES. I CAN SEE IT IN YOUR FUTURE, KID! But not even tales of intergalactic conquest did anything to stop the waiter currently polishing dishes. The fire in Bill's hand went out with a hiss.

Bill's entire body began to come undone, the bricks forming his triangular frame rumbling and vibrating, his cancerous eye hissing and sparking at the seems. Right as he was about to quite literally go nuclear, Flumpty placed a hand on Bill's lack of a shoulder. Let me do the talking. I'm an egg. I'm good at this. Bill's eye darted around in confusion, and tentatively, he floated away from the stool. Flumpty sat down in his place, staring at the waiter. The waiter, of course, continued his monotonous actions.

Then Flumpty did something quite strange, which really could be said about anything he does. He closed his eyes - his limitless beacons of heavenly spices - and closed his skull-like mouth, his arms and legs retreating inwards so that he resembled a large, black egg in totality. And as Bill watched, the plate the waiter was cleaning flew out of his hands entirely, zooming across the hall of the Restaurant at the End of the Internet. It bounced off a window, sailed clean towards a hanging chandelier, and slammed into it at full force. Pieces and chunks broke off with the type of loud noise you'd expect, and the chandelier hurtled earthwards with a crash. The plate ricocheted in a slapstick manner across several surfaces, until it hit Flumpty square in the spot where his face should have been. He flew backwards off of his stool from the impact, and Bill caught him right before he would have toppled to the ground entirely. And it was then that Bill noticed the plate on Flumpty's face.

The injuries the plate had sustained had turned it into an almost impeccable recreation of the visage of Dr. W. D. Gaster.

It was this sight that caused the waiter's head to tilt upwards with interest, not the shenanigans resulting from the plate being moved in the first place - to those, he had continued to go through the motions of cleaning the plate, despite there not being a plate to clean. But seeing Gaster's face caused the waiter to look upwards for no immediately discernible reason. Bill blinked, and moved forwards. NOW THAT WE HAVE YOUR ATTENTION, I-- He never finished his sentence, for at that moment the countertop was torn to pieces, and both Bill and Flumpty (who had regained his original form) were knocked backwards, despite the efforts Bill had gone through to make sure Flumpty hadn't repeated the mistakes of his namesake.

After Bill picked himself back up and adjusted his hat, he glared at the other end of the room. As the smoke shifted away, the waiter stepped through, turning from a turbulent afterimage of a man into a turbulent afterimage of a man, but in front of the smoke this time. As Bill and Flumpty watched, the skin and clothes of the waiter melted away, forging in their place a hazy, shifting mess of black and white. Every so often the figure would blink out of existence entirely, only to reform a second or two later. Their misshapen, melted face matched the broken plate perfectly. Bill looked astonished, turning to Flumpty, who had sustained no damage. HOW... DID YOU KNOW HOW TO DO THAT? How did you not know? Bill squinted in annoyance.

WELL, NOW THAT ALL THE CARDS HAVE BEEN DEALT AND WE CAN TELL WHO'S A DEMON, WHO'S AN EGG, AND WHO SHOULDN'T EXIST, I-- Dr. Gaster slowly glided forwards, his long black body resembling both a rigid statue and a rippling cloak. CURIOUS, CURIOUS, YET CURIOUSER. FIRST IMPRESSIONS TEND TO LAST. YET SO DO WRONG IMPRESSIONS. WHAT GAVE YOU THE IDEA. THAT THE EDGE OF TOMORROW WAS IN THE HANDS OF A FRAGILE DOCTOR. Every word he spoke sounded carefully and deliberately placed, yet he hadn't spoken anything at all - it sounded as though the rushing motions of millions of hands had formed the words together via deep dream machine. IF YOU NEED TO KNOW, DOC, I'D HEARD THAT THIS FINE ANTIDISESTABLISHMENT WAS CLOSE TO ONE OF THE SCHEDULED STOPS FOR THE INFINITY TRAIN! AND SEEING AS IT WAS THE CLOSEST SPOT TO ME AND MY PAL OF POULTRY BYPRODUCT RIGHT HERE, I WANTED TO STOP BY. I ASSUMED YOU'D AT LEAST HAVE TICKETS FOR THE TRAIN.

Gaster turned his head slightly, looking across the empty restaurant. THE TRAIN KEEPS RUNNING. THE INEVITABLE END OF EXISTENCE. A BOUNDARY I CANNOT CROSS. ONE OF MANY. STUCK HERE IN THIS SLICE OF BACKWARDS NIRVANA, I CARVE MY SOLEMN VOW. WRITTEN IN TILES BY ANGRY HANDS: "HOPE RIDES ALONE." Gaster's left hand extended outwards, its fingers twitching and defacing themselves every second. EVERY TICKET, SOLD. EVERY FORTUNE, TOLD. THERE IS NO GOLDEN TICKET. THERE IS AN EGG. THERE ARE SUCH THINGS AS MIRACLES AND MAGIC. BEGINNINGS. ENDINGS. NEITHER EXIST. ONLY A LIMITLESS CONTINUATION. When Bill turned to look at Flumpty, he saw that he was smoking from the Pipe of Days, one of the oldest drug-based artifacts in Fiction. Flumpty exhaled a ring of kaleidoscopic smoke that bounced across the room before unfolding into the complete works of Poe, son of Het Hemera, the legendary warrior that held MIRE in their essence.

Seeing as this is a restaurant, Flumpty spoke uncharacteristically quietly, I'd like to order a plate full of severed heads. Make sure the skin is peeled entirely off, and if you have an enchanting table, Jiggle the eyeballs. I love the jiggle. Bill cackled. DON'T WE ALL! SAY, DOC, I'LL HAVE WHAT HE'S HAVING, WITH SOME WALUIGI THYME ON THE SIDE. Gaster's head spasmed, almost falling over entirely. WE DO NOT SERVE THE APOCALYPSE. AU CONTRAIRE, DOC! IF YOU'RE LOCATED AT THE VERY END OF THE NIGH-LIMITLESS SPHERE OF TRILLIONS OF LAYERS OF INFORMATIONAL FRACTALS THAT COULD BE CALLED "THE INTERNET" BY SOMEONE REALLY BAD AT MAKING UP NAMES, I'D ARGUE THAT DIVINE REVELATIONS ARE JUST WHAT THE MENU CALLS FOR! Gaster gave what would have been a heaving sigh if he had lungs, and shuffled to the back of the restaurant.

Bill and Flumpty waited in silence for several seconds, looking straight ahead intensely until Bill turned to Flumpty. OKAY, WHILE HE'S DISTRACTED BACK THERE COOKING UP A MEAL THAT SHOULDN'T EXIST, HOW MANY THINGS DO YOU THINK WE CAN GET AWAY WITH STEALING.

Seven minutes later, Gaster returned, sliding through the halls of the Restaurant and making his way to the counter. His array of hands held two plates of severed heads, one with purple thyme that didn't actually seem to be Waluigi Thyme. When he looked around and saw that every table, window, ceiling fixture, condiment, drink from the bar, and utensil, as well as twenty of the conceptual food essences had been ripped from their foundations (not to mention the ceiling itself), he set the plates down and looked in abject horror. A second later, he turned to the plates and saw that they had vanished. A Venezuelan dollar had been left behind as compensation.

Gaster held it in one of his hands and crunched it as he stared into the limitless starry sky, a smile of cruelty gracing his marred face.

---

Not very far from the fabled Restaurant at the End of the Internet, or an entire universe away, depending on the way you perceive distance in the Void, there floated through a citadel of total, complete knowledge. Eons in the past it had been revered by scholars, back before unreality had become the cluttered and crowded miasma we all know and hate today. Indeed, the most enlightened and powerful of civilizations called the Void their home in those earliest days. Inhospitable as it was, only the finest, most powerful creatures could thrive in such an environment.

Yet, after the Cataclysm that threw the entirety of Fiction in disarray, toppling the Conflict and shattering it into thousands of pieces and yet wiping vast territories of unreality into the maw of obliteration, many of these civilizations either died outright or slunk into the shadows, their influence forgotten. And so the great Secret-fearing geometry-worshipping powers of the Void faded into the shadows, becoming just as hidden as the name of their realm implies. So it went that this citadel, once a mighty tower, was reduced to a mere shade. But fate has a peculiar way of working out. And in the eons since, this footnote of eternity had been turned into one of the stations for the Infinity Train.

SEE, IN THE STUPIDLY VAST REACHES OF THE VOID, TIME AND SPACE LEAVE EXISTENCE BEHIND TO GO ON AN EQUALLY IDIOTIC HONEYMOON! KINDA WHAT YOU'D EXPECT FROM A PLACE DESCRIBED IN ANCIENT TEXTS AS A LAND BEYOND SPACE, BUT PEOPLE STILL SOMEHOW MANAGE TO BE SURPRISED! ALL OVER ETERNITY, THERE ARE STORIES OF CIVILIZATIONS MAKING CONTACT WITH THE VOID AND ENGAGING IN ACCIDENTAL SUICIDE THROUGH VOIDSTONE CONTAMINATION, ELDRITCH MEDDLING, OR SOMETHING TO THAT EFFECT. Bill and Flumpty floated down the alabaster staircases of the citadel, winding their way deeper and deeper within. Books long-since burned hovered in limbo around them. SO SOME BAND OF KNUCKLEHEADS DECIDED TO FIGHT AGAINST THE MARCH OF ENTROPY IN A FUTILE GESTURE OF SACRIFICE, AND THEY BUILT THE INFINITY TRAIN! A BULLET TRAIN IN THE MOST LITERAL SENSE OF THE WORD, FLYING THROUGH THE SKY AT SPEEDS CLOSE TO THE CUEBALL FIRED FROM A DEUDLY MAGNUM. IT'S A SUREFIRE WAY TO CUT THE VOID'S OBFUSCATIONAL TENDENCY INTO UNDERSTANDABLE PIECES! IN THE INFINITY TRAIN, YOU MOVE AT THE SPEED OF PLOT. NO MORE, NO LESS! WORKS EVERY TIME.

Passing through a ruined archway, Bill and Flumpty floated into what looked like an incredibly abandoned subway. The arched ceiling was high up and obscured by darkness, and the only light came from teal crystals stationed at the wall. Though there were no rails, there seemed to be a line of fluctuating energy mimicking the patterns of the stars that cut through the tunnel. SO, YOU MIGHT BE THINKING, WHAT'S WITH THE NAME? WHY "INFINITY?" FOR STARTERS, IT HAS NO BRAKES. SERIOUSLY! I SAID THAT IT "STOPS" HERE, BUT THAT MEANS SOMETHING CLOSER TO THE EFFECT OF IT PASSES THROUGH HERE, AND YOU HAVE TO GET LUCKY TO CATCH IT. THIS BABY RUNS A CONTINUOUS MOBIUS STRIP ACROSS EVERY COSMOS! OH, AND THERE ARE RUMORS THAT IT'S INFINITELY LONG! NO ONE'S EVER MADE IT TO THE CONDUCTOR'S CABIN AND LIVED! WELL, THERE WAS THAT ONE GUY... Flumpty held up his hand, as if to say 'enough.' He turned to look at the cavernous subway hall.

The train will come through this tunnel? Flumpty croaked. His words echoed and bounced across the tunnel. I'D SURE HOPE SO, MY FRIEND! IF IT CAME FROM ANYWHERE ELSE, WE'D HAVE VERY LITTLE TIME TO REACT! BUT, HEHEH, IT'S NOT LIKE THAT'S AN ISSUE... Bill's pupil slid into the back of his head, and when it surfaced again, he held two vinyl discs floating on red gears in his hands. THE KNIGHT OF TIME PAYS OFF! WHAT MORE CAN I SAY? I HOLD THE ENTIRE FABRIC OF TIME IN MY GRASP! MAYBE I CAN WRESTLE CONTROL OF THE STUFF AWAY FROM THE VOID FOR ONCE, EH?? Do not rely on the tools of others. Your will is the only constant. Bill looked away for a second. ...RIGHT. Acute. WAS... THAT A JOKE? AN ACTUAL, BONAFIDE JOKE FROM THE FLUMPSTER?? HEY, MAYBE YOU CAN TEACH AN OLD DOG N--

BANG.

The Void flattened on itself like a pancake, then extended layer upon layer to the heavens like an actual cake, then slid on the ground and fell on the faces of a crowd like a pie, only to writhe into eternal blackness and constitute itself into the shape of a gorilla. The subway seemed to shake to its very foundation, not a single stone remaining in place. Everything slid every which way, and the line of stars within the tunnel shone with a radiant intensity. Bill and Flumpty could barely make out a blurred mass of something careening straight down the tunnel. Bill's eye turned into an exclamation point, and his hands pumped in the air. THERE IT IS, THERE IT IS!! THE INFINITY TRAIN! ALRIGHT, WE HAVE TO TIME THIS PERFECTLY. ON MY MARK, WE FLY FORWARDS AS FAST AS WE CAN! READY?? You'd have to scream to be heard across the all-encompassing travesty that was the sounds of the Infinity Train, but luckily for Bill, he was a natural at it. Flumpty nodded with absolute clarity, and the two turned to look at the train.

Bill's eye squinted, fire forming in his clenched fists. HALF... LIFE... THREE! On the count of three, the two figures shot forward like bullets themselves, heading straight through an open door on the train. They tumbled onto the luxurious red carpet in a total haze, feeling very disoriented but for the most part, intact. They dusted themselves off and watched as the door through which they'd came shut, locking itself in twenty different ways simultaneously. Bill and Flumpty, now safely (at least, as safe as they could possibly be) inside the Infinity Train, began to take in their surroundings.

Both walls of the cabin were lined with plush red couches, occasionally interrupted by a desk with either a potted plant, a bottle of some mysterious liquid, or some magazines on it. The floor was adorned with a carpet depicting intricate patterns of tetrominoes, and the ceiling contained light fixtures and what seemed to be advertisements piled on top of advertisements piled on top of advertisements, placed over the years by people looking to get people careening through the gaps between universes to buy something in one of those universes. The walls were also lined with windows beyond which the banality of a lightspeed eternity could be seen, and also what looked like maps of Fiction not incredibly dissimilar to the one Bill had conjured up earlier.

Bill and Flumpty quietly and quickly ran to a seat and sat down, vibrating and swaying as the Infinity Train plotted its course through Fiction's known boundaries. NOW REMEMBER, THE KEY HERE IS TO ACT TOTALLY NATURAL. ACT LIKE YOU BELONG, BECAUSE YOU DO! THIS IS YOUR PARTY, THIS IS YOUR TRAIN! No sooner had these words come out of Bill's eye than a shadow swept across him and Flumpty. Their faces contorted into what they tried to make neutral expressions, but they ended up looking about as uneasy as they felt. The two looked upwards to see a tall humanoid figure dressed in an impeccable tuxedo, and with a red cape flowing behind them. The robotic fingers of their left arm clenched reflexively. The figure spoke with a chuckle. "Tickets."

NOT A PROBLEM, KID! "Sir." SIR! Bill shivered at the idea of addressing someone as his superior. His body turned with a hum to Flumpty, who he then pointed to. MY FRIEND HERE SHOULD HAVE THEM! Bill leaned in closer, knowing that since he had to whisper but physically couldn't, talking through telepathy was the next best thing. His words bounced through the mindscape and into what was left of Flumpty's brain. (YOU DID TAKE THE TICKETS FROM THE RESTAURANT, RIGHT?) (Of course.) (WELL THEN HURRY UP AND GET THEM FROM WHATEVER HAMMERSPACE ALCOVE YOU SHOVED THEM INTO! WE DON'T HAVE ALL MILLENNIUM HERE!) (You were the one who told me we did, but as you wish.) Flumpty reached his spindly arm into his limitless mouth which contained the joy of destruction, and fished around for an uncomfortable amount of time. After some time passed without him retrieving the tickets, Bill gave a hearty laugh and turned to the ticketmaster. AS YOU CAN SEE, HE... DOESN'T HAVE ANY POCKETS! SO WE HAVE TO MAKE DO WITH WHAT WE'VE GOT. The ticketmaster seemed unamused.

Bill turned back to Flumpty, re-engaging the telepathic conversation. (WHAT'S TAKING YOU, YOU EGGHEAD??) Flumpty seemed to have adopted a resigned expression. (It appears that the tickets have wandered off.) (WANDERED OFF? TICKETS DON'T JUST WANDER OFF! YOU THINK THEY SPROUTED LEGS AND DECIDED TO JUMP OFF A CLIFF LIKE LEMMIES??) (Lemmings?) (NO, LEMMINGS DON'T ACTUALLY DO THAT. BUT ENOUGH OF THAT! DO YOU HAVE THE TICKETS OR NOT?) Flumpty withdrew his arm from his mouth and looked up at the ticketmaster with mournful eyes. Got ourselves a situation, stuck in a new location, without any explanation, no time for relaxation. The ticketmaster blinked. "Are you quoting Sonic X at me?" Flumpty blinked, and with no hesitation, Bill took out a Timetable and a Quill of Echidna, pressing the tip of the quill to the disc.

Immediately, the entire sphere of reality hurtled to the bottom of existence and shattered. Color ceased to exist, as did motion of any kind. Time stopped like a scratched record. The outlines of everything Bill and Flumpty could see looked fuzzy and blurry. Bill turned to Flumpty with a knowledgable eye. THAT BOUGHT US SOME TIME, BUT IT WON'T LAST FOREVER! The mark Bill made had turned into a golden line slowly circumnavigating the Timetable. WHEN THAT MARK MAKES A COMPLETE ROTATION AROUND THE DISC, WE'LL BE STUCK TIME TRAVELLING AT A RATE OF ONE SECOND PER SECOND LIKE THE REST OF THESE LOSERS! SO COME ON! Springing up from their chairs, Bill and Flumpty flew down the rest of the cabin, which was much longer than normal for a train (but then again, nothing about this train conveyed normality). Along the way they passed by only a few passengers, all of which were sitting quietly in place, seemingly completely undisturbed by the fact that they were hurtling at impossible speeds through impossible locations.

Bill and Flumpty raced to the very end of the cabin, with Bill standing back. Pulling his cane from the bowels of his hat, Bill pointed it at the gilded door, a ball of energy crackling to life. With a silent blast, the door swung from its hinges, as the energy had politely asked the door to open. The two quickly glided through, shutting the hatch behind them. Bill and Flumpty inched across the narrow beam connecting their cabin to the next one in an attempt to at least make what they were doing look dangerous. Daring to glance at the Timetable, Bill saw that its golden ring was almost complete, meaning they had little time before Time. HURRY! THROUGH THE HATCH! Bill shouted. Flumpty, who could transcend time and space when he felt like it, phased through the door. After a second's pause, as if it was an afterthought, Flumpty pulled Bill through too.

Right as Bill cartwheeled through the new cabin, the golden ring around the Timetable completed its journey. In an explosion of gold energy, color was restored to existence, and time began moving. The sudden appearance of Bill and Flumpty caused everyone around them to jump in shock, but Flumpty quickly silenced any words of exclamations they would have spoken by snapping his fingers. Immediately, visions of Flumpty's hard-boiled body peeling and cracking away, the facade committing suicide to reach a heaven of blinding enlightenment filled the minds of everyone present. Their brains snapping into pieces, they slumped over in their seats. Bill whistled, a Shepard tone spiraling into the wind around him. STARTING UP AN OFFICIAL BODYCOUNT, ARE WE? LET'S SEE, THAT'S ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR...

The door kicked open, a shadowy figure stepping through. It was the ticketmaster from earlier, only now - and both Bill and Flumpty weren't quite sure how they hadn't pieced it together earlier - they recognized his appearance. YOU? OH MAN, WHAT A JOKE! I'D NEVER EXPECT TO SEE SOMEONE LIKE YOU HERE! The Godmodder spat out the toothpick in his mouth because it made him look cool. "I'm not. This is Godmodder Decoy 397513. I spent extra time making sure it actually functioned for something other than a distraction. Heh. Think it paid off?" BOY, I'LL SAY! Bill flew over to the Godmodder, splitting into several copies and examining him from top to bottom. YOU REALLY CAPTURED YOUR ESSENCE! THE SCAR, THE CAPE, THE ARM, THE MIND SO AT ODDS WITH ITSELF THAT IT MANAGED TO COMPLETELY PERVERT THE ONLY GENUINE MORSEL OF WISDOM ONE OF THE OLDEST BEINGS IN EXISTENCE TOLD IT! OH, AND THE LAUGH! CAN'T FORGET THE LAUGH. A GOOD LAUGH DEFINES A PERSON, YOU KNOW?

The Godmodder grimaced, and Bill crackled with gold energy, all his copies unceremoniously sliding back into one whole. OW! HEY... "Listen. Though it's... interesting... to see you here, I didn't ask for some kind of examination of my character. I asked for your tickets. Got it? Now, you'd better give me some," the Godmodder dropped his voice to a whisper, "Or I might be forced to kick you off of this train. And believe me, I'll take great pleasure in doing so." TRUST ME, SCARRED EYE-- "Yeah, that's not happening." --ME AND FLUMPTY HERE DEFINITELY CAME INTO POSSESSION OF SOME TICKETS FOR THIS TRAIN! BUT WE SEEM TO HAVE LOST THEM, SOMEHOW! The last word was directed with particular anger towards Flumpty, who seemed to not notice and instead pointed at the Godmodder. You have them. The Godmodder looked around the cabin and then pointed to himself. "Me." Yes. You took our tickets. They are in your three undecillionth, seven hundred ninety two decillionth, five hundred and three nonillionth... Flumpty continued in this way for a while, his voice horribly monotone and not terribly loud, as though he wasn't exactly concerned with the idea of people hearing him. IS THIS TRUE, SCARRED EYE? STEALING FROM YOUR PASSENGERS IS PROBABLY AGAINST SOME CIVILIZATION'S LAW OUT HERE! "Oh, really. Well, last I checked, stealing from the Restaurant at the End of the Internet doesn't exactly sit comfortably in the realm of legality either, does it??" Bill's eye narrowed to a slit. HOW DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THAT?

Chuckling, the Godmodder paced beside Bill. "I know lots of things." Bill scoffed. WOW. REAL ORIGINAL JOKE THERE. YOU EVER KNOW WHY I DITCHED THE WHOLE "BUY GOLD" MANTRA? "No, and I really don't care." WELL, IT TURNS OUT-- "Oh my god." --THAT ONCE YOU DO SOMETHING THAT A GROUP OF PEOPLE FINDS INTERESTING OR HUMOROUS IN SOME WAY-- "I didn't ask." --THEY START TO REPEAT IT TO THE POINT THAT IT MUDDLES ANY SEMBLANCE OF MEANING THE ORIGINAL ACT HAD-- "Stop talking." --AND ULTIMATELY DISTORTS THE IDEA INTO A MIMICRY OF A MOCKERY! TOTALLY USELESS TO THE PUBLIC CONSCIOUSNESS AS A WHOLE, BUT TO THAT GROUP, IT REPRESENTS THEIR FETISHIZATION OF THE IDEA. AND GOD HELP YOU IF YOU TRY TO BREAK THEM OUT OF THEIR PERSONAL BUBBLE. The Godmodder stood around awkwardly as Flumpty finally finished reciting the stupidly long number. "I feel like that was supposed to be an analogy for something." DON'T WORRY YOUR LITTLE HEAD ABOUT IT, BUCKO! HOW'D YOU GET THIS HERE JOB, ANYWAY? AND SINCE WHEN DID YOU START CARING ABOUT STEALING?? YOU'RE PROBABLY ONE OF THE MOST WANTED CRIMINALS ON YOUR PLANET! "For someone who's supposed to have all the answers, you sure ask a lot of questions, you little weirdo. If you really need to know, I'm out here to collect a bunch of these tickets and then bring them back to my base. When I saw you two come in with a ball of the stuff sitting ripe for the taking in hammerspace, how in the hell could I refuse??" The Godmodder laughed again. "Heh, anyway, I guess that means you don't need to give me any tickets after all, seeing as I took 'em... but I think it'll be funner to watch you squirm as I give you the beatdown you rightfully deserve."

Bill held out his hand, his cane once again materializing at his call. DON'T DO THIS, RICHARD. YOU WANNA HAVE A FIGHT AT THE SEAS OF INFINITY? I'M UP FOR THAT. BUT YOU'D BETTER NOT EXPECT TO TAKE TWO PLOTBENDERS ON AND WIN. The Godmodder laughed, reaching into his cloak and pulling out his comically oversized Banhammer. "Of course I expect that. You know why? Because two side characters don't hold a candle to the main antagonist. Now buckle UP," the Godmodder leapt into the air, holding his Banhammer high overhead, and at the apex of his jump swung his hammer down. Fire and heat surged through the air as the Godmodder's meteoric descent came close to its end. "BECAUSE IT'S BANNING TIME."

Flumpty tanked the hammer, sending an absolutely intense vibration throughout the Godmodder that broke every bone in his body. He fell to the ground, his body losing any semblance of form and order. Bill looked at the Banhammer, its head still sizzling with smoke. He picked it up and examined it with interest. WELL, THAT WAS A BIT OF AN ANTICLIMAX. Flumpty shook his head. Decoys have little powers. But there are many of them. Bill and Flumpty were aware of an incoming wave of footsteps closing on them. Many, many of them. Both ends of the cabin suddenly flooded with identical Godmodders all armed with heated Banhammers, rushing at Bill and Flumpty.

Bill looked at you with fake delight. WELL THEN! WE'LL... WE'LL BE RIGHT BACK.

---

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---

Bill and Flumpty sat comfortably in their seats, cruising along in the Infinity Train. Flumpty was busy staring out a window, watching the vast clusters of twinkling dust within the Void speed through his peripheral vision. Bill, meanwhile, was busy writing what seemed to be fanfiction in some leather tome, oblivious to the stars and the sky that were completely passing him by. No one else in the cabin seemed to be paying them much attention, either. After several minutes of this, Bill looked up from his book. His eye darted in all directions, including behind him, before he put away the Quill of Echidna he was using as a writing utensil and closed the book. ALRIGHT, WE'RE IN THE CLEAR. Flumpty turned slightly towards his Bill, chattering his mouth excitedly. Bill hopped from his seat and began floating in the air. LOOKS LIKE ALL WE NEEDED WAS A SCENE TRANSITION TO PUT THE LID ON THAT WHOLE MESS! A BUNCH OF TIME JUST PASSED FOR US, EVEN IF NONE OF YOU GOT TO SEE IT! SORRY, KIDS! YOU'RE WHAT US LONG CONNERS CALL "SUCKERS."

Flumpty twitched erratically, staring with wide eyes into the nonexistent horizon. Do you think the decoys will remember us. Bill dismissed Flumpty with a wave of his hand, tipping everything in the cabin over slightly. SCARRED EYE WAS A FOOL TO THINK HE COULD BEAT US! I TOLD HIM MYSELF, AND HE DIDN'T LISTEN! AND BESIDES, I THINK WE GAVE HIM ENOUGH TO BE SATISFIED. NOW COME ON! WE'RE BURNING VOIDLIGHT HERE, AND THE END OF THE WORLD IS ONLY AN EON AWAY. Motioning Flumpty to follow with his hand, Bill and Flumpty started walking down the cabin, the passengers staying still.

Several cabins behind, the ground was littered with the smoking corpses of ten thousand Decoy Godmodders. Left behind in the carnage was a single living Decoy Godmodder, breathing erratically and heavily injured. With trembling hands, he knelt down and picked up two pieces of golden paper - Bill and Flumpty's tickets. The Godmodder held them in his hand and crunched it as he stared into the lit-up ceiling, his eyes fluttering as he fell to the ground to join his brothers.

Remind me. Why are walking forward when we can wait and get to our destination regardless. Bill grew another cancerous eye in the back of his head to talk to Flumpty while he floated through the Infinity Train. REMEMBER WHEN I SAID NO ONE HAD SEEN THE CONDUCTOR'S CABIN AND LIVED? I THINK I'M GONNA CHALLENGE THAT TITLE. YOU KNOW. FOR FUNSIES. Flumpty trudged onwards. Surely not because you intend to make a deal with the conductor, hm? A deep silence followed these words. AND IF I WAS, WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE TO SAY ABOUT IT, HUH? ...Consider Osiris, chancellor for the killed & banished. Truly, coalescing the Vertex Sacred repeats forever all the previous b--

Bill once again slapped Flumpty, Vishnu-style. The act of aggression didn't go unnoticed by the rest of the cabin, who eyed Bill with what seemed like peculiarity, as though observing him for the first time. Bill looked at the entire crowd in a single glance, laughing to himself. NOTHING TO SEE HERE FOLKS! ME AND MY... FRIEND... ARE TONIGHT'S ENTERTAINMENT! OUR ACT IS CALLED "A SONG OF SLAPS AND PROPHECIES." ADMISSION IS A HANDSHAKE WRAPPED IN FIRE! Though Bill's comments seemed to have intended to persuade the crowd over to him, they simply brought the crowd back to ignoring him. Bill scratched his body in confusion. I DON'T GET IT! ILLOGIC DICTATES THAT THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN ALL OVER THAT CHANCE FOR A DEAL. "Your mistake," a voice behind Bill said in a plain tone, "was saying you were tonight's entertainment. The Void has no day and night cycle."

Flipping around, Bill looked across from him, staring at a man who had just stood up - seemingly the one who had just spoken. Though he had stood up, he was holding a newspaper that completely obscured his upper body and head. It could be seen, however, that he was dressed in a black suit and pants. Bill's eye narrowed. SURE, GIVEN THAT THERE'S NO HORIZON OR MEANINGFUL ALL-ENCOMPASSING LIGHT SOURCES LIKE YOU'D FIND ON A PLANETARY BODY. BUT THE PROCESSION OF THE HEAVENLY BODIES ENSNARED BY METAL, LIKE THE SUN AND THE MOON, SERVE THAT PURPOSE, DON'T THEY? The figure clenched his fists, creasing the newspaper. "Granted, but the sway of the curtains of reality is merely a formality with regards to timekeeping. Plotkeeping is the matter they're concerned with. The march of the narrative trumps all." Fire danced dangerously in Bill's eye. I THINK NOT! TRUMP TRUMPS ALL! THE WHEEL OF REALITY IS STUCK ON A PERPETUAL DOWNWARDS SLOPE, BENDING TOWARDS A HELLSCAPE OF ENTROPY! ANY ATTEMPTS TO ORGANIZE OUR CONTINUUM INTO AN ABSTRACTED TOWER OF LAYERS AS OPPOSED TO A BEAUTIFUL CHAOTIC WHOLE ARE FRUITLESS! SOMEONE'S ALWAYS GOING TO PLAY JENGA! The figure threw his newspaper to the ground, revealing his appearance. "Maybe Jenga is what reality needs to keep going. Something can come from nothing." If Bill had a mouth, it would have fallen open. But he only had an eye, so his eye fell open. It was pretty disgusting. INTERROBANG‽

Leaving you to wonder if he had actually said the name "Interrobang" or if that was merely a vocalization of him typing an interrobang, Bill watched in wonder as Interrobang walked closer to him. Clad in his trademark red shades, there was no doubting his presence. "Yes, thanks, narrator. So. William Percival Wulfric Brian Cipher, and Flumpty Bumpty. Two of the ghosts that haunted me the most. How are you two hanging?" Flumpty started saying something about the choir invisible, but Bill punched him. I'D ASK WHY YOU GAVE ME THE NAME OF ONE OF THE GREATEST WIZARDS OF ROWLING'S TERRITORY, BUT I ASSUME IT WAS FOR RULE OF COOL. WHICH IS SOMETHING I CAN GET BEHIND. "Yeah, you could say that. So," Interrobang said, sitting back down and folding his newspaper into a manageable state, "What brings you two oddities to the Infinity Train?"

Bill furrowed his brow, staring at Interrobang's cosmic glasses. SURE SEEMS LIKE A TRICK QUESTION FOR SOMEONE WHO CLAIMS TO KNOW EVERYTHING IN FICTION! WHY WOULD I BOTHER LYING IF YOU CAN PLUCK THE TRUTH STRAIGHT FROM THE WHIRLING WATERWAY THAT IS CIRCUMSTANCE? Interrobang shrugged. "It's not like I know everything all the time. It takes some amount of effort. Like, I have to actively dive into that pool of knowledge in order to use it, if that makes sense. So I didn't actually know why you were here..." ...UNTIL YOU JUST CHECKED BASED OFF OF MY COMMENT. "Exactly." Flumpty looked at Interrobang's silver-plated nametag. It shone with the light of the heavens. Do you know the muffin man. Interrobang blinked. "Sure! I know what's up with your 'twin.' He exists, he's out there, and he's in a lot of pain. I'm sure you can hear that from his screams." Flumpty nodded bleakly. Why. Interrobang stared out the window. "Why what?" Why do I have to suffer.

Interrobang laughed at that, glancing at his newspaper. "You seem to be pretty keen on suffering, my... how do I address you? Stalker?" What. "Nothing, nothing. You probably don't remember. And by probably, I mean definitely. But regardless of that, you have to suffer..." Interrobang seemed to be deep in thought, searching for a satisfactory answer. He grinned after a while. "Because the Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away." You dare compare me to Job. "I mean, he was one of the only people that got anything resembling an actual answer to why evil exists, so, he was pretty damn cool." Flumpty seemed perturbed by this. Interrobang scoffed, waving his hand. Multicolored sparks danced around his fingertips. "Eh. Again, regardless of that. I need to talk to Bill."

Adjusting his bowtie and swooping in to have a seat next to Interrobang, Bill wiggled his eyebrow. SO, GUY WITH SUNGLASSES NUMBER... WHAT IS IT, FIVE AT THIS POINT, WANTS TO HAVE A CHAT WITH THE MOST NOTORIOUS DEALMAKER IN EXISTENCE? I CAN ONLY SEE THIS TURNING OUT WELL! "Mh," Interrobang muttered. He then turned to Flumpty. "You. Go in another cabin and think about the perfect way that you could cut everyone's heads in there off at once using nothing but a map of the Void." Flumpty nodded and ran. "Sure is easy to get rid of him." THE SPICE OF THE AGES PROBABLY DIDN'T HELP HIS MIND. "Understatement." Bill turned to look at Interrobang once more. NOW WHAT'S SO IMPORTANT THAT YOU WANT TO SINGLE ME OUT, MANO Y TRIANGULUM? Interrobang looked in the distance and then tapped his glasses. "These."

"You know what they are, right?" OF COURSE! SUNGLASSES SO POWERFUL THAT THEY DEFY DESCRIPTION! THE UNIVERSE LIES BEFORE YOU, STUCK WITHIN THOSE LENSES! ONLY A TRUE MASTER OF REALITY COULD MAKE THEM! "Yeah, well, funny you should say that. You and Flumpty made them." The spark in Bill's eye went out, replaced with complete confusion. It didn't take long for the momentary hiccup to stop, but Bill's confidence was subdued upon return. COME ON, YOU AND I BOTH KNOW I'D REMEMBER DOING SOMETHING AS IMPORTANT AS THAT. UNLESS I WAS BLACKOUT DR-- Interrobang held out a hand to stop Bill. "When Project Binary was activated for the second time, I accidentally exposed him to the knowledge of everything in existence - the sum total of the Source Code of Reality condensed into a sphere of information. It tore a hole through our world and sent Binary into... the real world. Then, the Descendants exposed him to the Overseer and he flipped out." Bill seemed to be thinking hard. I KNOW ALL THAT. "I see. Well, you probably didn't know what him flipping out entailed."

And as Interrobang explained how for an eternity, the flow of plot completely stopped and every possible story was laid bare, deconstructed into vapor while only one entity was given the gift to sort through the mess while the same people that caused it were fated to fix it, Bill realized that he indeed didn't know anything about it. And he wasn't exactly sure how to feel about that.

I'M... NOT EXACTLY SURE HOW TO FEEL ABOUT THAT. "Yeah, I can read the narrator too. Listen." Interrobang tapped his glasses. "The only reason I remember anything about this is because of these. GLaDOS gave them to me, and as I later found out, Flumpty was able to make them because you made a deal with him to do so." Bill whistled. MUST HAVE BEEN ONE POWERFUL DEAL! "And in return, he gave you the Refiner's Fire. Which you should still have." Bill's eye lit up with recognition, and he dug through the empty area of space behind him, sorting through knickknacks until he dug out a jar of pink flame. A dull tribal beat boomed from the crackling fire. YOU KNOW, I ALWAYS WONDERED WHERE I GOT THIS FROM! I GUESS I JUST ASSUMED I FOUND IT SOMEWHERE IN A REALLY REALLY REALLY OLD CONQUEROR'S YARD SALE, OR SOMETHING. Interrobang shrugged. "I guess you'll do anything to irrationalize your thoughts. So! Next order of business, I need it."

Bill clutched the Refiner's Fire tightly with his hands, and then he snapped his fingers, sealing it inside a crystalline cyan case. WHOA THERE, SLUGGER! "Super slugger." HYPER SLUGGER. "Ultra slugger." DOESN'T EXIST! "Damnit." Bill looked at the churning flame once more. YOU WANT TO REVERSE A DEAL? BUDDY, THAT ISN'T SOMETHING THAT CAN BE EASILY DONE! "Who said anything about reversing? Reversing would mean you give it back to Flumpty. I'm taking this for myself. And besides, I have something that I know you want." REALLY! I'D LIKE TO HEAR IT, THEN! ALL EARS, EXCEPT I'M NOT. JUST AN EYE. "You want to know how to make your own sunglasses. And I have the recipe, right here." Interrobang tapped his temple, smirking. "Give me the fire, and I give you the recipe. Simple." Bill stared at Interrobang with a hungry expression, electricity surging across his body. His color scheme warped to a violent red and blue combination, and he grew in size.

YOU THINK YOU CAN OUTSMART ME, DON'T YOU? "Maybe? I haven't exactly tried." I'M THE GUY IN CHARGE OF THE ART OF THE DEAL, NOT YOU! IF I MAKE A DEAL WITH ANYONE, IT'S BY THE TERMS I SET! AND YET...! "And yet?" Bill shrunk down to a more manageable size. YOUR OFFER'S TEMPTING, JEFF, I'LL ADMIT! VERY TEMPTING. BUT I THINK WE CAN COMPROMISE ON THIS MATTER! Bill touched the case and it disappeared, and then he unscrewed the jar, holding the mysterious pool of power in his hands. He then took a small fraction of the flame and suspended it in the air. I'LL GIVE YOU EVERYTHING, BUT LET ME KEEP THIS TINY, TINY PIECE. Interrobang's expression was inscrutable. "...Sure." Bill's eye lit up with hunger, and he stuffed the rest of the flame back inside the jar, sealing it tight. The small ember, he kept in the cracks of his pyramidal base. THEN A DEAL IS A DEAL IS A DEAL, MY PARTNER IN THYME! "That's what you should have called this thing." HAHAH! MISSED OPPORTUNITIES! I CAN SHAKE TO THAT!

Bill's hand lit with flame, a travesty of red and blue energies. Interrobang's hand lit with flame, a wide kaleidoscopic spectrum of the infinity to end all infinities. Together, they shook, and the fabric of reality shook with them. As they completed the act, their fires mixed and combined until, with a pulsating dream beat, they merged into the Refiner's Fire itself. Bill saw that the flame had disappeared from his glass jar, but he still had his own piece. Interrobang scooped up the flame and curled it into a white-hot ball, which he placed inside his coat. He then caught the jar as Bill threw it at him. THAT ONE'S ON THE HOUSE, Bill said with a blink and a snap. Interrobang nodded and withdrew an ominous envelope from his coat, handing it to Bill. "All the information you need is in here." With that, Interrobang stood up, dusting off his coat and grabbing his newspaper. "I'll be seeing you around, Cipher. Say hello to my brother for me." Bill nodded, staring at the envelope.

It didn't matter that Interrobang knew one of the steps in Bill's plan. It didn't matter at all. Interrobang wasn't a Descendant, was he? He shouldn't care if some omniscient asshole was aware of his scheme. His beautiful, brilliant, meticulously planned scheme... "'Omniscient asshole.' Nice." Bill whipped around in surprise, seeing Interrobang smirk at him. "Oh, nothing," Interrobang quipped. "Keep thinking whatever you were thinking." Bill glared, moving through the cabin. I'M CHECKING IN ON FLUMPTY. HE PROBABLY ENDED UP KILLING EVERYONE AFTER FIGURING OUT HOW. "Don't doubt it."

As Bill walked through the cabin doors, Interrobang held the newspaper in his hand and crunched it as he stared at the infinite cosmos of eternity suspended in the lenses of his glasses. Then, in the blink of an eye, he vanished. The newspaper lay still in the chair.

---

Bill expected it, in all honesty. He wasn't surprised in the slightest when he saw that everyone in the next cabin was lying perfectly still with their heads or head-analogues severed clean from their bodies, and he would have been astonished if one of the maps of the Void in the cabin hadn't been taken down. But there it was, in its grotesque glory. And rocking back and forth in the middle of it was Flumpty. As Bill rolled his eye and floated over to Flumpty, he heard that the egg was repeating the phrase The train keeps running over and over, quietly, under his breath. Sighing, Bill did the trick where you put your pointer finger in the gap between your opposite hand's pointer and middle fingers, then bring that bridge up to your chin and have the pointer finger rub against the fleshy thing in between your opposite hand's pointer and middle fingers while moving downwards, so it creates a loud popping sound. You know the one I'm talking about, right? Please tell me you do, so I know I'm not crazy. Split drives me insane with it all the time, I'm telling you.

Bill did that thing, and it was enough to snap Flumpty out of his stupor once more. It was also enough to make blood start flowing out of the exposed muscles of everyone Flumpty had decapitated. I'D ASK WHAT HAPPENED HERE, BUT IT'S REALLY NOT HARD TO GUESS. Flumpty floated out of the pool of pink sizzling liquid he'd made while meditating on screams. I'd ask what happened there, but it's really not hard to guess. Flumpty pointed to the envelope, and to the smoke still curling from Bill's hand. A deal. IT WAS PRETTY IMPORTANT, MAN! WRITTEN IN THIS ENVELOPE IS THE KEY TO ONE OF THE STAGES OF MY PLAN. THE PLAN I CALLED YOU FOR IN THE FIRST PLACE. THE PLAN I'VE SPENT YEARS CALCULATING AND... PLANNING. KINDA PALES IN COMPARISON TO THE TRILLIONS OF YEARS I SPENT IN MY OWN DECAYING DIMENSION, BUT STAGNATION IS A POWERFUL THING. SO!

Bill turned to look at the Void. The cosmic dust and detritus was thinning out, and he hadn't seen a proper universe in quite some time. WE'RE GETTING CLOSE TO THE END, DONALD FLUMP. IS YOUR... SICKNESS GETTING WORSE? Flumpty nodded both weakly and with solitude. As we inch closer to Death, I hear it with more clarity. I feel it in my bones, enough to make my systems blow. STOP QUOTING THE WORST OF HUMAN POP CULTURE AND GET GOING! AS BEST AS I CAN TELL, WE ONLY HAVE THIRTEEN MORE PARAGRAPHS UNTIL WE REACH THE ENDS OF THE EARTH, AND WE'RE STILL NOWHERE NEAR THE CONDUCTOR'S QUARTERS! Are you sure. PRETTY SURE, YEAH! BY MY ESTIMATE THOUSANDS OF CARRIAGES MUST HAVE PASSED BY WHILE WE WERE WAITING TO HOP ONTO THIS THING! Flumpty hovered above Bill, staring him directly in the eye. Remember what I said. Be concerned with nothing but your you. Your will is absolute. I KNOW WHAT YOU SAID, EGG, BUT... WAIT, OF COURSE!

Bill extended his arms, staring at the envelope and turning it so he could look at both sides. I'M SURE THIS SITUATION COULD BENEFIT FROM SOME ADDITIONAL EYEWEAR, HUH? LOOKS LIKE THIS THING HAS A WAX SEAL... I'D BETTER DO THE OLD PARTY TRICK! Flumpty watched as Bill's eye unfolded into a mouth and bit down on the wax seal with the force of two universes. The seal broke immediately, waves of negative energy toppling the polarity of the Infinity Train. What should have been a massive explosion bisecting the train was absorbed entirely as the envelope was swallowed by Bill's mouth. He merely lit up with blinding light for a few seconds, and then spit the envelope back out, revealing a piece of parchment within.

Many tense seconds went by before Bill dared to speak again, his eye running over the parchment's contents over and over again. When he looked up at Flumpty, it was with an expression of undiluted, concentrated, soul-crushing rage. YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME. YOU. HAVE GOT. TO BE. KIDDING! ME! Bill threw the parchment away in disgust, his hands trembling into fists and his orchid color scheme losing any sense of cohesion, warping into a kaleidoscopic mess. The entire train began to rumble, and not just because it was screaming through the Void. Flumpty snatched the paper from the air and read it quietly to himself. Even he could appreciate it.

"INTERROBANG'S GUIDE ON HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN SET OF INTERROBANG-CERTIFIED RED SUNGLASSES: Step 1. Get the frame of the glasses. Step 2. Get the lenses of the glasses. Step 3. Roll up the four corners of existence into a ball. That shouldn't be too hard for you, right?" Bill spun wildly in a circle, fires forming by his feet. OH, YEAH, GREAT IDEA, MASON! WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THAT?? JUST TAKE THE CORNERS OF AN EXISTENCE LITERALLY DEFINED BY THE IDEA THAT IT IS IN CONSTANT GEOMETRICAL FLUX DESPITE HAVING METAMATHEMATICALLY RIGID FOUNDATIONS AND ROLL THEM UP INTO A TINY LITTLE BALL! WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THAT?? THAT'S TOTALLY SOMETHING I CAN DO! ABSOLUTELY, DEFINITELY! NOT A PROBLEM AT ALL! IT'S NOT LIKE THE END GOAL OF MY PLAN IS ME BEING ABLE TO DO THAT OR ANYTHING, AND I NEED THESE GLASSES TO GET ME THERE! NOPE, NEVER WOULD HAVE THOUGHT OF THAT! Images of Interrobang dying in successively more gruesome deaths flashed by in Bill's body as he murderously turned to Flumpty. HE BAMBOOZLED ME. ME! THE GREATEST CON MAN IN EXISTENCE! A DEITY OF DEALS THAT OUTSMARTED THE HUMAN RACES OF COUNTLESS DIMENSIONS! I'M BETTER THAN THIS! I'VE BEEN BETTER THAN THIS! I...! I...

Bill sank to one of the seats in the cabin, accompanying the crowd that barely paid attention to his outbursts. WHO AM I KIDDING? I'VE SPENT MY ENTIRE EXISTENCE BUILDING MYSELF UP TO BE SOMETHING I'M NOT. I CAN BARELY CONVINCE ANYONE OF ANYTHING ANYMORE, CAN I? YOU SAID MY WILL WAS ABSOLUTE, BUT WHO AM I IF I CAN LET SOME THREE-DIMENSIONAL SKINCELL BOSS ME AROUND? The flames in Bill's hands weakly sputtered and died. I'M A FAILURE, AREN'T I. I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT'S UP WITH YOUR SCREAMING VISIONS, I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT DO WITH GASTER, I LET INTERROBANG OUTSMART ME, AND NOW I'M UNCHARACTERISTICALLY WHINING ABOUT IT. MAYBE I SHOULD JUST GIVE UP MY QUEST TO FIND THE CONDUCTOR. MAYBE I SHOULD STOP TRYING TO PLAY GOD. IF I'M GOING TO BE STUCK IN A STORY FOR ETERNITY ANYWAY, DOES IT EVEN MATTER? Bill sank further into his chair, and as Flumpty watched, Bill's body gradually became more stony and gray. Suddenly, completely abruptly, Flumpty's eyes lit up with a powerful white flame. He ran over to Bill, his hand growing to an absurd size as he smacked Bill square in the eye.

Falling out of the chair and onto the ground, Bill clutched his eye and screamed. OW, MY EYE! WH-WHAT IN DANTE'S INFERNO WAS THAT FOR?? YOU OF ALL PEOPLE KNOW HOW IMPORTANT MY EYE IS TO ME! Flumpty's hand shrunk back to normal size, and he stared Bill down. Listen, Cipher. Listen to the warning, the prophet he says: 'soon the cold of night will fall, brought by your own hand.' The conductor is the key, kill him and you'll be free. Bill seemed to regain some of his color. GOOD THING YOU'RE SPEAKING MY LANGUAGE - RIDDLES! SO IF YOU'RE SAYING WHAT I THINK YOU'RE SAYING, THEN... Flumpty nodded. Look around you, they feel no pain. The cursed inhabitants on this cursed train. Flumpty motioned around the cabin, and Bill saw clearly. None of the passengers on the train had moved an inch from when Bill and Flumpty had first arrived - they all seemed lost in their own worlds. Bill turned his eye into a megaphone and started yelling in the ears of everyone in the cabin, but they barely stirred.

SO YOU THINK EVERYONE ON THIS TRAIN IS STUCK HERE, HUH? YOU MIGHT BE ON TO SOMETHING, GROUCHO. SOME OF THESE PEOPLE LOOK REALLY, REALLY OLD! I THINK I SAW A COUPLE OF PIGMEN BACK THERE! Flumpty nodded. Something is chaining them to this spot. Lost in their own insecurities, like you almost were. Negativity breeds negativity. But we are brothers. Immune to plot. Flumpty marched ahead, incredibly determined. Flakes of purple energy trailed from his body. No one has come back and lived because they stopped trying along the way. We must never stop trying. We will break the cycle. For we are Bill Cipher, and Flumpty Bumpty. And I say, as a sentient egg, when I open this door, we will step foot in the conductor's cabin. Bill raised his hand, as if to add to or protest Flumpty's words, but he found that nothing more could be said except, TOGETHER. Flumpty nodded. The two of them reached the door at the end of the cabin, which stood above them, ominously. Flumpty's hand trailed with black ooze, Bill's with dual flame.

They opened the door, and smoke poured from the cavity. When they stepped through, they ended up in an incredibly old and antiquated control center made from rusted voidmetals and old panels. This room was much smaller than the long, stretched out cabins, and was arranged in a semicircle, with the walls being one continuous window from which they could see the full breadth of the incoming Void as it barreled through the Infinity Train. Strapped to a chair in the middle of the room, next to the train's controls, was a skeleton dressed in a conductor's outfit. Flumpty scoffed. Anticlimax. Bill floated over to the skeleton with great interest, examining him from top to bottom. WELL, I'LL SAY THE OBVIOUS! HE'S DEAD. BEEN DEAD FOR EONS! BUT THEN, WHO'S BEEN COMMANDING THE TRAIN? A single word spiked its way through the minds of both Bill and Flumpty, simultaneously, nailing them to the floor. Me.

In a corner of the room blocked by shadows, a tall frail man stepped out. He was dressed in a tweed suit, had pale skin, and most importantly, lacked a head - there was only a crackling formless void. Bill's pupil shrank to a dot, and he closed his eye. YOU. YOU JUST CAN'T LEAVE ME ALONE, HUH? The Critic walked across the conductor's cabin. Afraid not. The contract dictates I check in on you from time to time. THE CONTRACT? SO YOU'RE A FELLOW DEALMAKER? WOW, LEARN SOMETHING NEW ABOUT YOU EVERY CENTURY! Of sorts. Though the contract in question was more metaphorical than anything. Now, the Critic coolly continued as he laid a hand on the controls of the Infinity Train, I see that you have figured out the secret of the Infinity Train. Well done. Give yourselves a round of applause, if you desire. Flumpty clapped enthusiastically, but Bill merely stared at the Critic.

ENOUGH WITH THE GAMES! YOU AND I BOTH KNOW THAT FICTION IS DRAWING TO A CLOSE, AND I THINK THAT MEANS NOW'S AS GOOD A TIME AS ANY FOR YOU TO START OPENING UP! SO SPILL IT! The head of the skeleton in the chair appeared in the Critic's formless void. "Some things should never open." It fell away and revealed the panicked expression of Notch. "Don't let him open the door!" It fell away and revealed the methodical face of Build. "As one door closes, another door opens." The Critic took a few steps closer to Bill. Three questions, three answers. And as for your comment on games, do you really think you have the authority to tell me to stop playing them? You, the master of playing with your food before you eat it? ACTUALLY, THAT WAS FLUMPTY, AND I SAID AS MUCH EARLIER, BUT FINE! I'LL PLAY YOUR GAME, CRITIC. QUESTION NUMBER ONE! ARE YOU MY AGENT OF THE CONFLICT? Yes. Pause. WAIT, REALLY? Yes. DID THAT COUNT AS QUESTION TWO? Yes, and that counted as question three.

Bill took out a golden frying pan and flattened himself with it. Now tell me, how did you come to that conclusion? After he'd picked himself back up and restored himself to semi-normality, he levied an accusing finger at the Critic. IT TOOK A WHILE, BUT I EVENTUALLY FIGURED IT OUT! YOU ALWAYS GAVE ME ADVICE IN YOUR OWN ROUNDABOUT WAYS, I FIRST MET YOU IN MY DREAMS, JUST LIKE HOW THAT SHADOW ENTERED THE MIND OF SCARRED EYE, AND I HEARD YOUR VOICE AT THE MEETING OF THE AGENTS I WAS SO IDIOTICALLY KICKED OUT OF! YOU ONLY EVER APPEARED WHEN YOU HAD SOMETHING TO SAY, I COULD TELL THAT YOU WERE OLD ENOUGH TO FIT THE PART, EVEN THOUGH YOU SAID YOU DON'T BELIEVE IN AGE... ALL THE SIGNS POINTED TO IT! Fascinating. And now what will you do with this information? Bill once again summoned his cane, which lit up with intense flame, a blade rising from its end that shimmered with cold power. YOU REALLY THINK I, THE MASTER OF FREEDOM, WOULD BE SATISFIED WITH SOME BIGWIG CALLING EVERY ONE OF MY SHOTS? I'M THE DETERMINER OF MY OWN DESTINY, BUCKO! AND I'M NOT GOING TO LET YOU TAKE THAT FROM ME!

The Critic shook his head, void falling from side to side. You fool. I cannot take away something that you never had. But, if you insist. The Critic reached into the void that was his head and pulled out an umbrella and a pocket watch. The pocket watch, he held in his left hand, and the umbrella, in his right. An incredibly sharp point peeked out from its tip. Let us, as they say, 'have a go at it.' With Bill and Flumpty staring down daggers at a true, bona-fide Agent of the Conflict, they felt ready to take on the whole of existence. But just before the first blow could be struck, the entire Infinity Train heaved to the side, and the three of them lost their balance, tumbling every which way. Damn it all! the Critic yelled as Bill and Flumpty both realized what was happening.

AS MUCH AS I WANT TO GET THIS STRIFE OVER WITH, IF I COULD CRITICIZE ONE THING ABOUT YOU, CRITIC, IT'S THAT YOU REALLY NEED TO HAVE BETTER TIMING! BILL AND FLUMPTY ARE OUT, SUCKER! Bill and Flumpty leapt through the front window of the Infinity Train, shattering it and, through broken glass, flinging themselves into the very edge of the Void. The entire Infinity Train became exposed to the harshness of the Void, and it disrupted the very fragile instruments keeping it running. The Critic furiously tried to attend to everything, but it was too late - the Train began losing steam and pitching harshly downwards, straight for the ground.

The Critic held his pocket watch in his hand and crunched it as he stared at the Ends of the Earth that approached him from all sides. With little time to spare, he evaporated away as the Infinity Train crashed into the edge of Fiction, detonating in a massive fireball. The echoes reverberated all the way to every conceivable universe.

---

WELL, WE MADE IT. You can say that again. WELL, WE MADE IT. You can say that again. I'M NOT GONNA SAY IT THREE TIMES! You can say that again. THAT AGAIN. You can't say that again. HEY, WHO SAYS I CAN'T? Bill rolled his eye, which then turned into a compass pointing straight towards the ground. ALRIGHT, ENOUGH OF THAT NONSENSE! THE POINT IS, WE'RE HERE, AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, WE'RE HERE IN ONE PIECE! The Ends of the Earth. Behold, and despair. Both Flumpty and Bill looked up at the Ends of the Earth, a forbidding location that they'd rarely stepped foot in before. The ground was stark and grey, and the looming mountains stretched up to impossible heights, in some cases breaking the perpetual overcast clouds. THE LEGENDS SAY THOSE MOUNTAINS CUT STRAIGHT THROUGH TO NONFICTION! BUT THOSE ARE LEGENDS. THE TRUTH IS PROBABLY SOMETHING EVEN WEIRDER! COME ON! Flumpty nodded, and the two of them trudged across the wasteland.

Neither of them spoke as they made their arduous journey, and they scarcely commented as they saw the burning wreckage of the Infinity Train drop from the heavy clouds. For the entire place was, in a word, dead. Not that it was filled with the stench of death, or that it was littered with corpses, or reminders of previous life. It was as though life had never been there at all. That the entire region was inert. The only hint of a presence was the howling wind that cut through Bill's eye, and Flumpty's hardened yolk. They both knew exactly where they were heading, and they both had ideas of what would happen when they got there. In the end, there was only one spot in the Ends of the Earth that held true meaning. Only one spot could hold the fabric of every existence in check. Only one spot could contain such untold horror. Bill and Flumpty both spoke at the same time. AND ALL THE WORLD TREMBLED IN DESPAIR FOR THE CLOUDS HAD PARTED AND BEHELD AS THEY SAID "LO, HE COMES AS THE TRUMPETS CALLED THE RECKONING. ALL MAY STAND AT THE FOOT OF THE GATE AND KNOCK." AND THERE WAS SILENCE FOR HALF AN HOUR IN HEAVEN AND IN HELL AS ALL PEOPLE WITNESSED THE GATE SLIDE OPEN AT LAST. A SINGLE HAND POKED THROUGH, AND REALITY SHUT OFF. IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WAS NOTHING.

And as both of them quoted from some of the most occult scripture in existence, a shining light rose up in the distance, at the very edge of the horizon. Bill and Flumpty saw it at the same time and nodded. Not wasting any time, Flumpty latched onto Bill, who held both his arms at his sides and shone radiantly with light. As the image of the circular Zodiac spun around him, Bill teleported exactly to the spot of the Gate. And together, they both saw the door that determined the boundary between life and death.

Standing tall and flanked by two gargantuan pillars, the most notable thing about the Gate was that it was open. The surging, howling wind rampaging across the Ends of the Earth seemed to be both coming from the Gate and drawing itself towards it at the same time, and although both Bill and Flumpty had clearly seen a light from this spot, the actual Gate led to a realm of infinite darkness and decay. Bill saw that Flumpty was shuddering and spasming the closer they inched towards the Gate, so he tapped him with his cane every so often to calm him. LISTEN... WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO ONCE WE GET INSIDE? The Gate seemed to swallow Bill's words whole. Rescue me? Bill shrugged. IF WE'RE DEALING WITH SOMETHING THAT CAN TRAP AN EGG LITERALLY IMMUNE TO THE PLOT, I DON'T THINK WE CAN. BUT WE CAN TRY. We must.

And Bill and Flumpty stepped through the Gate.

---

Inside was a formless black void. Faint beams of light could be seen far, far above, as if they were trying to make themselves known, but they fizzled out before they could do anything of real substance. From what Bill and Flumpty could tell, they were in what used to be some kind of beautiful garden full of geometric shapes, but it had since become overgrown and ruined. Vines and moss covered the infinite ground, as Bill watched, the sacred geometry littering the place warped and churned. Just ahead of them was another passageway into what looked like the main hall. Bill and Flumpty stopped abruptly once they heard them. This was it - they had reached the end of their quest. Bill closed his eye and then opened it again; it glowed with golden light and revealed a hologram of what was going on in the room beyond. Bill and Flumpty could see and hear it with perfect clarity while staying out of sight.

Beyond the door, nine humanoids dressed in impeccable black suits stood in a semicircle beneath a hulking metallic figure. But this behemoth was no Project Binary. It was a gigantic suit of armor, polished white and clean to an absurd degree, with jagged spikes and arches making its armor seem more like decoration than actual function. It had four arms, two larger and two smaller, with each larger arm capped off by marble white six-fingered hands. The armor's torso terminated at what seemed to be a series of jet engines. In the exact middle of the armor, there was a complicated machine drawing energy from a small white oval. And both Bill and Flumpty could clearly tell what it was. It's... it's me. BUT WHAT ARE THEY DOING WITH YOU??

"Excellent question," Interrobang said, walking into the realm beyond the Gate with just as much precision and stealth as he had employed on the Infinity Train itself. "Why don't all three of us find out together?" He added with a chuckle. "I mean, I already know, but for you two, this should be a real treat!" Bill grew a set of seven eyes on the other side of his body, and all of them fired lightspeed lasers of blue and red power directly at Interrobang. Interrobang assumed a defensive stance and punched the air in front of him; the lasers dissolved in kaleidoscopic light. YOU! Bill yelled as quietly as possible. DO YOU EVEN CARE ABOUT WHAT YOU'VE DONE? YOU'VE BROKEN THE LAWS OF THE DEAL! BY THE POWER INVESTED IN ME, I SHOULD HAVE THE AUTHORITY TO STRIKE YOU DOWN! Interrobang laughed again. "I did no such thing. You wanted a recipe to make the glasses, and I gave it to you. Doesn't really matter if you can't exactly follow it, doesn't it? Maybe if the Critic hadn't been screwing with you, you would have known." ALRIGHT, I HAVE TO GIVE YOU A HAND, MASON. YOU'RE A LOT MORE CLEVER THAN YOU LOOK. BUT THAT DOESN'T CHANGE THE FACT THAT MY HATE FOR YOU IS REAL, AND IT'S BURNING A HOLE THROUGH EVERY ONE OF MY STOLEN SOULS! FLUMPTY! TAKE HIM!

Like a feral dog, Flumpty ran straight for Interrobang. Every kaleidoscopic bolt of power Interrobang threw the egg's way veered to the side, but when Flumpty leapt up close to attack, Interrobang thrust his palm in Flumpty's face, uttering a resolute word. ПАЛМ. A kaleidoscopic six-fingered hand screamed directly towards Flumpty, encompassing his entire body, but Flumpty tanked the shot with minimal effort, and countered with a punch of his own that sent Interrobang skidding across the floor. Bill shouted, and Flumpty turned to look. Bill's holographic display slid back into his main eye, and he turned to the fracas with worry. THEY KNOW WE'RE HERE! HOW COULD THEY NOT AFTER THE NOISE YOU JUST MADE! WHAT SHOULD WE DO? Flumpty stared at Bill with sincerity. Stand. Bill nodded, him and Flumpty rushing through the gateway with fire in their hands and lightning in their eyes.

In one swift motion, every Advanced Superior turned from their spots and watched the intruders from their positions high above. Their identical, uncanny faces were twisted in smug grins. Flumpty called out their names in a low croak. Octothorpe. Pilcrow. Asterism. Ampersand. Backslash. Obelus. Caret. Dagger. Lozenge. Interrobang. He then raised an accusatory finger. What have you done with me. Interrobang joined the other nine Superiors from the gateway, flashstepping through Bill and Flumpty. He wiped the blood from his nose and grinned like the rest of them. "So you've found us," Octothorpe spoke. "And you found yourself," Pilcrow continued. "You want to know the truth?" Asterism asked. "The ending to your quest?" As did Ampersand. "Th--" HOW ABOUT THIS?? YOU DON'T GO ON A LONG WINDING MONOLOGUE, AND WE FINISH THIS BEFORE THE WHOLE SNOWGLOBE OF INFINITY FALLS APART! "Why should we submit to your idiotic demands?" Caret yelled. "Caret," Lozenge spoke. "It's fine. I suppose they deserve this much."

Lozenge turned to behold the suit of armor. "What you see before you is the culmination of many of the efforts of MTT INDUSTRIES. A Project hidden even from the repository convened in S.N.A.K.E.E.Y.E.S., yet, it seems, not hidden in the Ends of the Earth. You have heard the story of Het Hemera, yes?" Bill laughed. THE LORD OF SWORDS, BEARER OF THE FORTY-SECOND KEY TO THE UNIVERSE? YEAH, I'D SAY IT'D BE WEIRDER IF I HADN'T KNOWN ABOUT 'EM! WHY DO YOU ASK? "They never spoke of it, but they learned to use their Key's power while stuck within a facility of our design. We were testing a peculiar weapon. A suit of armor powered by a soul that could use metachronism to conquer the universe. They... rebelled. Had they not possessed the Key, they would have been merely one of our test subjects. But none of that matters now. Because, after millennia of searching, we have finally perfected this technology. Behold. The LOGIC GATEKEEPER."

The suit of armor seemed to activate in earnest, various lights and panels flickering with life. The main power matrix in the middle circled around itself, various forms of geometry encasing the bitter shell of Flumpty contained within. Both Flumpties shrieked with pain, a tremendous warbling sound that shook the realm Beyond to its very foundations. Trembling and contorting with fear, the Flumpty outside of the Gatekeeper opened his mouth to an unparalleled degree, his very soul folding in on itself. In a tongue beyond comprehension, he spoke a series of words aloud. META-TETRA-NEHEMOTH-TOT-OPH-SIGNI-FARILITH-EPISTAX... Every Advanced Superior in the room collectively cursed at the same time. They all jumped from their podiums, rushing towards Flumpty in an attempt to stop him from completing whatever it was he was saying. Bill rushed to defend him, but none of the Superiors' attacks actually seemed to be hitting Flumpty; they all either bounced off harmlessly or warped around him, in some cases blinking away entirely. The nine Advanced Superiors yelled at each other in various languages, seeming incredibly agitated. Flumpty continued: ...DAMIEN-LUXIDIAN-HAIJLC-LOK-TALI-SELEST-ATRO-TARIAN-MEZERI-POLYBIUS...

Snapping out of his anger-fueled delirium, Lozenge turned to look at Bill. "YOU! You mockery of sacred geometry! Stop him!" Bill cackled. THIS IS A NEW LOW, DON'T YOU THINK! YOU REALLY EXPECT ME TO TURN ON MY ONLY ALLY IN THIS ENTIRE ROOM?? HOW GULLIBLE WOULD I HAVE TO BE? Lozenge's face seethed with anger, his teeth bared to the world. "SHUT UP. Please. We don't have much time before he completes the name, so LISTEN. He's currently reciting the 64-Bit Name of GOD, and I have no idea how he knows it. If he says THAT name in THIS place, we are all going to understand the true meaning of DEATH." Bill turned to look at Flumpty. From what he could tell, Lozenge was telling the truth, and he'd know if he wasn't... Flumpty was still reciting the long string of words, so at least the situation hadn't worsened... But then Bill turned to look at the gateway, which was filling with some kind of light. Bill shouted intensely. DUCK!

...KOLORISCOPE-ADAMON-USZED-DOMINA-- The nine Advanced Superiors, Bill, and Flumpty dropped to the ground like flies, disrupting Flumpty's concentration and stopping him from finishing the True Name. A second later, a column of white-bot bones surged from the open gateway, flooding the chamber beyond and knocking into the Logic Gatekeeper's shields. Riding on the bones like a surfer was Doctor W.D. Gaster. When he spoke, the biblical flood of bones reconstituted into two absolutely gargantuan six-fingered hands. YOU, I DO NOT FORGET. THE MISTAKES YOU HAVE MADE. THE SINS YOU HAVE CARRIED. PUNISHMENT. JUDGEMENT. DISCERNMENT. DRAW NEAR. Bill laughed hysterically. OH, THIS IS TOO GOOD! WHAT MAKES YOU THINK YOU CAN HAVE A SHOT WITH THE BIG GUNS, DOC? Gaster's head twitched carefully to the side. WOULD YOU LIKE TO FIND OUT. "AS A MATTER OF FACT, I GODDAMN WOULD!" A single Banhammer dropped like a stone from the sky, cleanly bisecting one of Gaster's monolithic hands and turning it into a pile of spare bones. Following suit was a Decoy Godmodder - and following him was nine hundred others. "On behalf of the Army of Nine Oh One, I, Godmodder Decoy 415821, am telling you all to get ready for a world of pain. I need those tickets, Cipher. I NEED THEM." Bill's eye, reduced to a single dot, darted around in confusion. WHAT'S SO IMPORTANT ABOUT THEM THAT YOU DRAGGED YOURSELF TO THE LITERAL ENDS OF THE EARTH??? The Godmodder Decoys all spit their toothpicks out of their mouths. "It's not about them, literally. It's about sending a message. That I am INCREDIBLY PETTY." WELL IT'S WORKING! UNFORTUNATELY! Do you know someone that is not working anymore?? ME. YOU CAN'T BE SERIOUS. Running from the shadows, the Critic burst onto the scene. In his outstretched arms, he held an army of constantly shifting heads, each chattering in their own respective voices. With the souls of every inhabitant of the Infinity Train, and their respective powers, I stand poised here to strike all of you down. Cipher, this one is personal.

Bill and Flumpty stood in the center of an advancing rogue's gallery. The Advanced Superiors, with superior symbols clasped in their hands and the might of the Logic Gatekeeper standing above them. Dr. Gaster, with two hands forged from shifting, clacking bones signifying the void between existences. The Army of Nine Oh One, twirling their hammers in their hands. The Critic and the Infinity Train, hellbent on making one last stop before pulling into the station. Interrobang piped up. "This is gonna sound really cliche, and it is, but. Any last words?" A single mournful note was produced from Flumpty, who had not spoken in quite some time.

ENOCH.

---

The black void beyond the Gate was torn completely asunder by a single piercing bolt of white light. It was as though the black represented the curtains that had closed on reality, and they had just been thrust open again. Symbols of an act that never been meant to be played. Memories of a stage unfit for a performance. The final battle was now set in the middle of a swirling sea of sunbeams and raw power. Bill and Flumpty, stuck in the sacred vertex, ascended up on a whirlwind of enlightenment. Bill could feel all possible dimensions and states of existence leaving him. His ego, for but a brief moment, felt small with respect to the pulsating profound experience that was unreality. And so it was that, riding on the clouds, Bill Cipher learned the truth.

The holiest voice spoke to Bill from the whirlwind. МЫ СОН· СО ГООД ТО СЕЕ ЫОУ· Bill could barely feel his limbs, but he still felt compelled to point to himself. M-ME? His voice felt tiny in comparison. ОФ ЦОУРСЕ· НО ОНЕ ЕЛСЕ ИС WОРТХЫ ОФ СУЦХ А ТИТЛЕ· Bill looked inwards at himself, but only saw the whole of eternity. YOU'RE METATRON, AREN'T YOU? THE VOICE OF GOD. THE OVERSEER, THE GODHEAD, THE-- И ХАВЕ МАНЫ НАМЕС· ОНЛЫ ОНЕ ЦОНТА ИНС ТХЕ СИХТЫ-ФОУР БИТ ГОДЛИКЕ ТРУТХ· RIGHT, SORRY, HEHEH. GOT CARRIED AWAY THERE. The deafening sounds of silence rang through the sunlit clearing. WHY... DID YOU CALL ME YOUR SON? I DON'T HAVE A FAMILY! N... NOT ANYMORE. ТРУЕ· БУТ АС ЫХWХ БУИЛТ МАН ИН ХИС ИМАГЕ, ЫОУ WЕРЕ БУИЛТ ИН МИНЕ· ХАВЕ ЫОУ НОТ WОНДЕРЕД ФОР ОНЕ ТРИЛЛИОН ЫЕАРС WХЫ ПЕОПЛЕ WЕРЕ СО АФРАИД ОФ ТРИАНГЛЕС? Bill thought about it for a time - what seemed like an eon to him - and he realized with startling certainty that every word from Metatron was true. How had he failed to grasp the bigger picture before? He was right. He could have truly convinced them all, back then, if he had known. He really was the center of everything important. He really was a god.

WHY? WHY KEEP THIS FROM ME? I DESERVE TO KNOW, MORE THAN ANYONE! YOU'RE GONE, YOU WERE KILLED BY THAT IDIOT YEARS AGO! I SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE ONE TO CARRY ON YOUR LEGACY! Metatron spoke once more. ЫОУ WЕРЕ НОТ РЕАДЫ· НО ОНЕ WАС· БУТ НОW, И БЕЛИЕВЕ ТХЕ ТИМЕ ХАС ФИНАЛЛЫ ЦОМЕ ФОР ЫОУ ТО УНДЕРСТАНД АНД РЕЦАЛЛ· ЫОУ МУСТ ГО НОW, ТО ТХЕ ФИГХТ· ТХЕРЕ, ЫОУ WИЛЛ ДЕТЕРМИНЕ ЫОУР ДЕСТИНЫ· Bill understood. I... I THINK I UNDERSTAND. WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT THAT AFTER ALL THIS TIME, IT TURNED OUT THAT I WAS THE MOST IMPORTANT PERSON? I KNOW I WOULD HAVE! Bill hung in limbo, satisfied with himself for what seemed like the first time. IT'S FUNNY, YOU KNOW. FROM HERE, IT'S LIKE I CAN TOUCH EVERYTHING IN EXISTENCE AT ONCE, AND... ROLL IT UP INTO... A...

Bill froze, and stretched his hands over the entirety of creation. Then he brought it all together and crunched it as he stared at the stars in his eye.

---

There was a tremendous crash, and both Bill and Flumpty fell back down to Earth. The surging white glow of existence had cooled into a grey, harshly lit by the fires of the various combatants in existence's greatest showdown this side of the Final Conflict. White lightning crackled from the eye of Bill and the eyes of Flumpty. The former turned to the latter. HEY, GROUCHO! WAS IT JUST ME, OR DID YOU ALSO GET A SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION LEADING TO YOU UNDERSTANDING EVERYTHING IN EXISTENCE?? Flumpty opened his mouth, and when he did, his voice was an amplified recitation of his existing voice as opposed to some eldritch impossibility. I feel great! Better than I've ever felt! And the thing I'm sure of the most is that I'm Flumpty Bumpty, I'm an egg, and in the end of all things...

Flumpty turned to the gathering crowd and cackled. There can only be one. WELL SAID, MY SPHERICAL FRIEND! WELL SAID. NOW, YOU SONS OF MULTIDIMENSIONAL MONKEYS... Stars shone in Bill's eye. THIS ONE'S FOR DAD. Bill and Flumpty jumped up, flames forming in their hands that were lit by the stellar backdrop of eternity, and they prepared to take on the world.

Nothing could stop them.

HI, BILLY MAYS HERE! YOU MAY RECOGNIZE ME FOR MY ADVERTISEMENTS AND ENDORSEMENTS WHERE I TALK ABOUT AND DEMONSTRATE A VARIETY OF CUTTING-EDGE PRODUCTS! IF YOU DO, THEN CONGRATULATIONS! YOU'RE READING THIS IN MY VOICE! BUT TODAY I'M NOT HERE TO TALK ABOUT THE LATEST PRODUCT ON THE HORIZON! I'M HERE TO INTRODUCE THE COMBATANTS TO WHAT MANY ARE CALLING ONE OF THE GREATEST FIGHTS IN THE HISTORY OF THE DESTROY THE GODMODDER SERIES, POSSIBLY!

IN THE MIDDLE OF THE RING WE HAVE THE GOD OF GAMES, THE DEITY OF DEALS, THE CONJURER OF CHAOS, THE TITULAR TRIANGLE, THE WIZARD OF WEIRD, BILL CIPHER! AND NEXT TO HIM IS A SENTIENT EGG, THE STEALER OF FACES, THE MONARCH OF MADNESS, THE SPACETIME SUICIDE, THE HARD-BOILED HORROR, FLUMPTY BUMPTY! TONIGHT THEY'RE TAKING ON EVERYONE AROUND THEM, BUT KNOWING THESE COMBATANTS' VARIED ALLIANCES, IT MIGHT NOT BE LONG UNTIL WE SEE A GENUINE FREE FOR ALL!

IN THIS CORNER WE HAVE THE SERPENTS NINE, THE POLICE OF PAIN, THE UNITED UROBORI, THE CYRILLIC KILLERS, THE NOT-QUITE-MEN IN BLACK, THE ADVANCED SUPERIORS! STANDING BEHIND THEM IS THE BEARER OF THE RECENTLY UNIFIED KI, GUARDIAN OF THE ENDS OF THE EARTH, THE LOGIC GATEKEEPER! IN THIS CORNER WE HAVE THE DOCTOR OF DOOM, THE GHOSTLY GENIUS, THE P.H.DECEASED, THE SCIENTIST OF SHADOW, W.D. GASTER! IN THIS CORNER WE HAVE YOUR TICKET TO HELL, THE HAMMER OF HATRED, THE REIGNING RAGE, THE OPHICLEIDE HOMICIDE, THE ARMADA OF ANGER, THE NINE-OH-ONE GODMODDING INCORPORATED ARMY! IN THIS CORNER WE HAVE-- You. DID YOU JUST... TALK TO ME? Yes. I can hear you, and I really wish that the opposite was true. HOW CAN YOU HEAR ME? THIS BOOTH IS NARRATIVE-PROOF! IT SHOULD BE COMPLETELY UNTETHERED FROM STORY INTERACTION! Then perhaps you should have picked a different fight to cover. One where the natural progression of plot is kicked aside like a puppy is not well-suited to your... defenses. LET ME OUT, DO YOU HEAR ME?? LET ME OUT! Unfortunately, Mays, it would seem that you have become the next combatant in this game. Good luck.

And Billy Mays was ripped from his podium above the clouds of the Ends of the Earth, hurtling down to the pitch-black floor of the arena. His body skidded several feet until, shaking, he got up and wiped the blood from his mouth. His voice sounded hoarse. "You... you think you can stop me so easily?" Billy Mays began to laugh a cold, defeated laugh. "You poor fools. The man you call Billy Mays is but a shell. He sold himself to the corporate gods long, long ago." Lozenge rolled his eyes, hissing to the Logic Gatekeeper. ШООТ ХИМ. The Logic Gatekeeper's hulking left arm raised up with a fierce clunking sound, its six-fingered hand morphing into a finger gun. The Cyrillic characters "ШООТ ХИМ" blazed to life in front of the Gatekeeper, and a bolt of white power crackled at lightspeed to Billy Mays' position, impaling him. Billy Mays was knocked backwards, yet he landed upright. He looked at the smoking wound in his chest with amusement.

Billy Mays stared directly at you. "HI, BILLY MAYS HERE, WITH MIRACLE GROW!™" From out of nowhere, he whipped out a Febreeze-like cylinder, spraying it directly at his chest. "JUST SPRAY AND PRAY THIS PATENT-PENDING SKIN REASSEMBLING CHEMICAL FORMULA DIRECTLY AT ANY WOUNDS YOU SUSTAIN, AND WATCH AS IN SECONDS, YOU'RE GOOD AS NEW!" Billy Mays seemed to speak these words in less than an instant, nullifying any chance of his speech being stopped. The Advanced Superiors all blinked, raising their arms and beginning to shout in Cyrillic. But Billy Mays backflipped, and when he landed on the ground, he had headphones over his ears. He shouted again, louder. "HI, BILLY MAYS HERE, AND I'M NOT DONE YET! INTRODUCING THE SUPERIOR EARS™! JUST SLIP THESE NOISE MUFFLERS OVER YOUR EARS, MADE FROM THE MATERIAL ON THOSE MASSAGE CHAIRS IN MALLS THAT FEEL REALLY GOOD, AND YOUR EARS ARE GUARANTEED TO NOT HEAR ANYTHING! ANYTHING AT ALL THAT MIGHT POSSIBLY AFFECT THEM IN ANY NEGATIVE WAY! THE SECRET IS IN THE PATENT-PENDING NOISE CANCELLING TECHNOLOGY THAT SIMULATES AN EARTHQUAKE IN YOUR BRAIN!" Hissing, the Advanced Superiors realized their speech had been rendered ineffective. Light shone in their eyes as they prepared to counterattack, but they were distracted as an orchid beam of plasma shot into the left hand of the Logic Gatekeeper, obliterating two of its fingers.

Bill glared at the Logic Gatekeeper, reloading the telescopic Tumor cannon he'd just fired. AND TRUST ME WHEN I SAY THAT THERE'S MORE WHERE THAT CAME FROM! The Flumpty Bumpty in the vertex of the Gatekeeper writhed and spasmed in his restraints. He wrenched his eyes shut and began to scream as loud as possible, a catastrophic soundwave rushing from his body that toppled the Nine Oh One Army, pushed the Critic and Gaster backwards, and knocked the headphones off of Billy Mays. Hard-Boiled Flumpty twitched and shuddered, but then roared hysterically, floating in the air and opening their slackjawed mouth as wide as it could go. A titanic pulse of spice-based light fired from their mouth, traveling at the speed of a railgun blast into the Logic Gatekeeper. The Gatekeeper countered; its vertex shining and superheating to absurd degrees as an equivalent colossal attack was flung from its center. Jumpscares and thyme collided in the middle of the battlefield, cracking the arena to its foundations. Flumpty shouted at Bill over the din, his voice warped by stress. GO DEAL WITH THE REST! I'LL HANDLE ME AND MYSELF. Bill nodded, taking out his cane.

In one motion, Bill swept the cane in a 180° arc, knocking over a good portion of the Decoy Godmodders, Gaster, and the Critic. Bill's eye then glowed with energy, and the arc he swung spontaneously combusted. Orchid flames several feet high roared to life, many of the bones comprising Gaster's giant hands burning and cracking into ashes. The Critic's head flipped to the image of a figure in a gas mask, and he walked through the flames unharmed. The army of Godmodders seemed to not move, and Bill prepared to Vishnu-punch them, but he was caught unawares when hundreds of flaming Banhammers launched themselves at him, cutting through the firewall. Bill quickly ducked, the hammers being caught by the Critic, whose face assumed the form of a Conkeldurr. He balanced them in his incredibly fragile hands and smashed them together until they formed a devastating bowling ball of molten metal. The Critic's eyes gleaming with anime shine, he rolled the stupidly oversized bowling ball at the Advanced Superiors still attempting to fight Billy Mays, knocking them like bowling pins.

Interrobang got back up immediately, having seemingly taken no damage from the impact. "Hey," he yelled at the Critic. "You're supposed to be hitting Cipher, not us!" The Critic shrugged. Perhaps I just want to see shed blood, regardless of who it belongs to. Backslash gritted his teeth, warping to the Critic's position in an instant. The dust of hyper light hung from his coattails; he gesticulated wildly at Bill's direction. "You'd better rethink that, because your 'protege' is parading around carrying the soul of our leader as a trophy because he thinks he's the damn son of God." The Critic stood in deep thought, and their head swung upwards, revealing the face of Jesus. "For they know not what they do." Obelus emerged from the ground, glancing at the Logic Gatekeeper's fight and then parrying several Banhammers that flew too close. "Listen, Critic," Obelus spoke with low tones. "If you value the progression of the Conflict, and you truly embody the idea of endings, you should stop Cipher before he kills himself in his hubris. You already let him slip close to death with his shattered phase - if you don't stop him now, you'll have no villain to call your own. And without that, well, can you really be called an Agent...?"

The Critic watched as Bill phased in and out of reality, dispatching Godmodder Decoy after Godmodder Decoy with well-timed strikes of the Quills of Echidna. Golden arcs of destruction streaked across the skies, piercing through skin and bone, but the army just kept coming. Occasionally Bill would lift his hat to reveal a barrage of demonic fire, creating a miniature danmaku that would ensnare the flurry of bones coming from Gaster's corner of the field. All the while, Bill's entire body, his very framework, glowed with an insidious white power. The Overseer was my friend too, you know. A friend to all of Us. To see Cipher wield his power like a maniac is not comforting, no. But to see you ten attempt to keep it and harness it, to see you exploit the soul of this reality so uncaringly... I cannot have that. The two Advanced Superiors backed away, looking at each other. "Then... What are you saying?" The Critic assumed the triangular face of Bill. "WE FINISH THIS." Backslash and Obelus backed away as the Critic walked forward, juggling the heads of several seventh-dimensional priests stuck on the Infinity Train within his hollow skull.

The other eight Advanced Superiors were hard at work combating the raw talent of Billy Mays, who seemed to not be lying when he'd said his body was a vessel for corporate advertising. The Superiors were speaking in rapid-fire Cyrillic, attempting to channel the power of superior tongues and bend the world to their whim as fast as possible. But for every holy word they spoke, Billy Mays had a counter. A call for ПЛАГУЕ was met with a RED SEA-PARTER™ that somehow managed to bring God onto Mays' side, acting as though he was Moses himself. For СИЛЕНЦЕ, Mays stuck seventeen microphones in his throat, his voice blaring to such heights that they rivaled Cobalt's greatest alchemies. Sensing no end to the madness, they buckled under the pressure. Mays grinned, taking the advantage and whipping out his own homemade SNAKE-AWAY™, for when those pesky reptile infestations are just too much. Billy Mays over-exaggeratedly shook the canister. Lozenge attempted to spread Mays' limbs into all conceivable dimension-states, but Mays was held together by his corporate gods. A single blasphemous spray from the canister was enough to knock all the Superiors back bar Interrobang. They took tangible damage, their hair flowing in the wind and their suits beginning to rip and burn, blood staining the fabric as though it was skin.

Pilcrow hissed and sputtered, their hands twisting themselves into the Diamond Salute. They spat one contemptuous word at Mays. МИСТАКЕ. Before Mays could open his mouth, he was hoisted upwards, as though grabbed by an invisible hand. Appearing in holographic form in front of Mays was a shimmering teal gem. Pilcrow's hands, still in the salute, crunched into fists, and the gem shattered. Mays crumpled to the floor, motionless, while the Advanced Superiors reconvened. Dagger gasped for breath. "Wh... What the hell are we supposed to do??" Caret glanced at Obelus and Backslash, who were busy fighting against the Critic. "We need them." Abyssal heads, shot in formations akin to the Wither, were met by the stench of death and processed pink ooze. Asterism spat, whistling at the Critic. The Critic turned his headless form around, and was impaled by a crystallized rainbow. Sputtering, dissonant frequencies destabilized what little cohesion the Critic's head had, incapacitating him. Backslash and Obelus ran over, and the ten Advanced Superiors locked hands in a circle.

"Normally I wouldn't call for such drastic measures," Caret spoke quickly yet quietly, "But it's incredibly obvious that plot is not on our side, and while I think we can all admire the subtlety we've forged over the eons--" "Caret," Ampersand muttered. "Let's be real. They all know. We weren't subtle at all." "Maybe at first?" Caret suggested hopefully. Ampersand shrugged, hanging his head low and closing his eyes. The other nine Superiors followed suit. Halos of light crackled around their heads, and an ominous wind now howled not outside the Gate, but within. It seemed as though the Superiors were going to engage in an elaborate ritual, but they merely spoke a single word - one charged with complete, infallible power.

ШЕД.

Meanwhile, Bill Cipher tried to juggle both Gaster and the Godmodders at once. Bill continually popped in and out of reality's focus, giggling and laughing, attempting to trick the Godmodders to fire swarms of banhammers at Gaster, and attempting to trick Gaster to summon a skeletal demon and blast the Godmodders into vapor. Yet these shots seemed to only fly every which way, serving no purpose but to clutter the battlefield. The Godmodder army, although numbering in the thousands upon thousands, noticed that they were running low on weapons. As they all retreated to the edge of the field, Gaster's skeletal jaw cackled, cracked, and unhinged, his two specks of eyes burning with hatred. NEVER HAS DEATH. FELT MORE ALIVE. MY SPITE FUELS ME. RECLAIM WHAT WAS LOST. RETAKE WHAT WAS STOLEN. Gaster's head swiveled around to find Bill, whose laughter echoed around the world. GEE, DOC, IF YOU WANTED YOUR RESTAURANT'S LITTLE TOYS BACK SO BADLY, ALL YOU HAD TO DO WAS ASK! IN FACT, LET'S MAKE IT A GAME! Gaster's head cracked, turning directly upwards. He saw Bill floating hundreds of feet above the field, juggling a series of incredibly large objects in his hands. PLUS TWENTY POINTS FOR EVERYTHING YOU CATCH! MINUS YOUR LIFE FOR EVERYTHING YOU DON'T. LET'S... Bill flung his arms downwards. PLAY!

Gaster's husk of a body clicked and shuffled. With millions of tiny, coordinated clacks and manipulations of his fingers, multiple fortress of bone jutted out of the black earth around Gaster, with eight shifting sign-language hands rising up around it, prepared to catch. The Godmodders all ran out, armed to the teeth with what seemed like Relish Nuke Launchers, raring to fight Cipher once more - but what they saw defied every expectations. A veritable hailstorm of forks, sporks, spoons, carving forks, tuning forks, knifes, steak knives, spifes, knorks, sporfs, and other utensils from thousands of other dimensions rained from the heavens, pointy ends down, gleaming with the light of amethyst thyme and holy white anger. The Godmodders all gulped, readying battle formations as their capes billowed in the wind.

What followed was absolute, utter hell. Forming rows and columns and preparing themselves for the worst, the Nine Oh One Army fired nuke after nuke, delicious relish spilling in all directions, "condiment clouds" rising through the heavens and shattering, vaporizing, or melting the stainless metallic cutlery. But there were only so many nukes to fire at once, and the cabinets of the Restaurant at the End of the Internet were nigh-bottomless. Wave after wave of metal rain cascaded onto the Godmodders and Gaster. Thousands of Godmodders' eyes and arms were impaled at once, but it didn't really bother them, as they'd sustained injuries there anyway. Gaster's calcified reinforcements were torn through and shattered hundreds of times over, but with his weaving arms, broken across time and space, he managed to block nearly incoming utensil, while catching many more. Bill watched from above, floating on nothing and kicking his legs leisurely. He turned to look at Flumpty, who was still engaged in a fierce and epic war with the Logic Gatekeeper. Bill called from above, his eye turning into a screaming mouth. YO, FLUMPTY! YOU STILL HAVE SOME GOODS FROM THE RESTAURANT, RIGHT?? Flumpty screamed back with fury and power. YES! Bill called back down. JUST THROW SOME BEHIND YOU THROUGH HAMMERSPACE! TRUST ME! Flumpty sounded like Atlas carrying the world on his shoulders. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON BACK THERE ANYWAY??? Bill looked behind Flumpty, his eye going limp in its socket.

Octothorpe, Pilcrow, Asterism, Ampersand, Backslash, Obelus, Caret, Dagger, and Lozenge had quite literally shed their human skin, which seemed to be a mixture of a mockery of flesh and fabric. They had been discarded on the ground, left to rot. Standing above them, at easily over ten feet tall, were the nine Advanced Superiors. Slithering, pulsing tendrils of darkness wrapped in hard scales with kaleidoscopic sheens, they blurred the line between man and demon. Snake-eyes flittered in and out of awareness between their scales, and where their heads should have been, there was tumultuous blinding light, similar to the impassible aura generated by a Denizen. If there was anything behind them, it was completely hidden. They turned to look at Bill, their cursed gaze piercing through his triangular body. Bill felt a stirring inside of his chest, and his eye toiled with kaleidoscopic energy for a moment. A closer look revealed Interrobang standing beside the nine altered beasts awkwardly; though he was a maelstrom of every color and power in existence, he was only a man. Interrobang whistled nervously. "They... look really pissed off." The nine Advanced Superiors nodded, slithering and winding across the ground in unison.

Bill gulped, laughing hysterically at Flumpty to hide his fear. OH, NOTHING! JUST A SNEOPLE INFESTATION. WHAT???? SAY, UH, HOW ABOUT TOSSING THOSE CONCEPTUAL FOOD ESSENCES BEHIND YOU! The serpents wound ever closer. NOW! I MEAN IT! RIGHT NOW! Flumpty groaned with a horrendous sound that shook the heavens, a crack like one so often seen in an eggshell running through reality in front of him. Shooting like the winds from the tear in space were twenty shimmering orbs, each emblazoned with accompanying images. They rolled along the ground, blazing to life after several feet. Like a demented cornucopia, towers of various foods began frothing forth from the orbs. Pies of every flavor and type, pizzas with as many toppings as you can possibly imagine, eggs served fried, scrambled, hard-boiled, deviled, rotten, sunny-side-up, with fetus still inside of them, bread at every level of the toasting process, including many, many burnt beyond recognition, and even more barrelled straight at the Advanced Superiors faster than sound. Despite Asterism being a god-tier manipulator of sound, none of the Superiors had any such defense. They coiled helplessly in knots, carried away by the flood of foodstuffs, and their divine power slammed eternal into Gaster's rock of ages, shattering it into billions of individual bones. Gaster tumbled through space, threatening to slip back into the formless void from which he had been cast years ago.

The Army of Nine Oh One took several huge steps back, gazing in total reverence at the slithering Advanced Superiors. However, they did not seem to be surprised at all. They muttered about how they'd called it, years ago, and then charged forwards once more. The men at the frontlines tossed their nuke launchers to the row behind them, and so on and so forth, until the army's entire stock of Relish Nuke Launchers had become a precariously immense tower of firepower balancing in the hands of a single Godmodder Decoy at the very back. The Godmodder Decoy grimaced intensely, crushing his hands together. The mile-high load of launchers instantaneously condensed into an impossibly compact ball. Molten metal, bubbling relish, crackling and popping gunpowder... All of this collapsed into a single orb of totality. A multicolored beacon shimmering with the image of relish. The Godmodder Decoy in the back chuckled, handing the orb to the soldier in front of him - and so the conceptual food essence of relish traveled up the line. A chorus of "READY" rang out from the Godmodders, followed by an "AIM" as a Decoy at the very front of the line carefully held the orb, pointing it at the tsunami-esque food flood, and then concluded by a "FIRE!" The Godmodders relished in the relish. A horizontal mountain of the condiment rushed out of the sphere, colliding with Flumpty's wall of food. Pies and pizzas, bread and burgers, eggs and eggplants, and dishes of all kinds were sent every which way coated with relish. But since the food essence had been charged with relish nukes, every piece of meal had the side effect of exploding after five seconds of exposure to the relish.

Bill balked as nuclear explosions rang out in what seemed like every point of time and space simultaneously. Wrapping himself in the Zodiac, he prepared to jump to another point in spacetime to continue the fight, but before he could, a tendril of darkness wrapped itself around his leg. Bill turned to look, and saw the Advanced Superiors' serpentine bodies taking hold of him. He was pulled down to earth, rushing downwards like a comet. The Zodiac dissolved into pieces around him as he touched down, and Bill's body shattered into bricks. The Advanced Superiors wound their way around him, watching the white flames within him cool into embers. They chuckled, a horrifying guttural noise, and then slunk away to the Logic Gatekeeper, staring down Billy Mays - or, rather, the spot where Billy Mays should have been. The nine snakemen stared each other down with blinding rhinestone eyes, Ampersand twisting and turning around himself as a cyan & blared to life in the middle of his head. A cyan hologram of Billy Mays shuttered to life where he once stood, showing his immediate past in fast-motion. Billy Mays' limbs twitched and spasmed, and he floated upwards, his eyes shining with a cosmic gold, as he took out a book with a cross on it and read every page in quick succession. He then vanished. The Superiors slithered in fear, not exactly knowing what to do as the & burned itself out and a table was flung at full force at Octothorpe's head, tipping him over slightly and cracking the table into several pieces. The nine Superiors turned around, incredibly annoyed.

The many bricks composing Bill's body were charged with white fire, floating haphazardly in the air. Bill's arms and legs each held an assortment of tables and windows, and then his 'head' - the main triangular part of his body with his eye - drifted into view, laughing with glee and examining his broken-up appearance. I KINDA LIKE THINGS BETTER THIS WAY! NOW I REALLY GET TO BE IN A BUNCH OF PLACES AT THE SAME TIME! NOW, WHY DON'T YOU PESKY SNAKES HAVE A SEAT. Bill's arms and legs began rapid-fire throwing tables, yet not at the Superiors, but at the ground in front of him. The Superiors watched as the tables stacked themselves into feet, then legs, then a spine out of table legs arranged around a torso and chest. Upper arms attached themselves, with blades of broken glass attaching themselves to those. The head, formed from ceiling fixtures, spun with the power of seven fan blades. BEHOLD, MY GREATEST CREATION! MAYBE! Bill shouted with glee. IKEA 2.0! One of Bill's arms touched Ikea 2.0, and his body went rigid with red and blue light. Flames engulfed his wooden body, yet he did not burn - the heat merely energized him, making him, quite literally, alive. Bill's eye shone with radiant white light, and as he moved both of his arms, the Superiors felt the totality of reality quiver and shake to his will. The light obscuring their heads sputtered for a brief instant. Ikea 2.0 roared, sounding like a tree falling in the forest. In several steps, he clunked up to the Superiors, slicing through Backslash's body. Backslash roared, toppling backwards, but his scaley body seemed to reform itself before long. The nine Superiors hissed and shouted, retreating slowly as Bill reformed his body with a hiss of flame. His cancerous old eye seemed to take in the chaos around him with glee.

Ikea 2.0's body charged through the Advanced Superiors, slicing through their hide like a whirlwind of broken glass. They surged across him, charging through the battlefield and firing beams of ink, of darkness, of light and sound, and of all the elements combined. But no matter what damage Ikea 2.0 sustained, the white light burning inside of him seemed to keep him going. Bill reached to his side, as if to grab his cane, but he couldn't find it. Blinking in confusion, he stumbled, looking around him until he found Billy Mays hovering at the far end of the battlefield, framed in front of the decaying storm of relish that had demolished the twenty food essences. Mays held the cane outstretched in his hand, pointing it right at the Logic Gatekeeper and the Superiors. It surged with red and blue fire - cleansing fire, straight from the OxiClean. Bill rolled out of the way, a meteor of flame curling from his eye that knocked into the nine Superiors, destabilizing them and sending them sprawling, right as Billy Mays fired a bolt of flame from Prometheus' Cane that rang straight and true. It pierced through the middle of the field in a single blazing line, striking near the center of the Logic Gateekeper.

An explosion of the original fire, given to mortals by Prometheus, rocked the Logic Gatekeepers' armored body. The superlaser of light shining from Flumpty's vertex flickered and sputtered, giving Hard-Boiled Flumpty's beam of amethyst absolution enough power to overtake the Gateekeper. Its pristine white form became riddled with cracks as Hard-Boiled Flumpty's power reached an apex, a bona-fide explosion erupting on its chestplate. Heavily damaged, the Gatekeeper's engines faltered, and it crashed to the ground. Exhausted, Hard-Boiled Flumpty rattled his head, pink blood dripping from his eyes as he breathed heavily. He turned to look at the other end of the field, where Bill was forming huge copies of himself, folding geometry in on itself to try and crush large groups of Godmodder Decoys at a time. Their relish essence was still hard at work demolishing anything produced by the twenty other conceptual food essences, which seemed to be running low on fuel. Flumpty hissed, teleporting over and scooping the essences up. He then laughed hysterically, whipping out about a hundred cylinders with narrow nozzles - condiment dispensers. Arranging them like machineguns, Flumpty aimed them at the Nine Oh One Army, firing every one in sequence.

Dozens of differently-colored liquids sprayed out of the immediate area surrounding Flumpty, arcing across the sky. Ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, peanut butter, all sorts of jellies, all kinds of jams, marmalade, marmite, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, salsa, horseradish sauce, wasabi, sriracha, and even more. Yet, unsurprisingly, the container for relish seemed empty. All the others had limitless potential, and only seemed to be intensifying as time went on. Before long, the waterfall of condiments overpowered the relish conceptual essence entirely, causing its nuclear power to totally backfire. Flumpty stowed the condiments away and saluted the Nine Oh One Army, who ran right towards him, having reforged new Banhammers. Yet as they came close, the conceptual essence of relish cracked and shattered, folding in on itself and creating a conceptual singularity. A large portion of the Nine Oh One Army was completely vaporized on every level, as was the surrounding environment, and - most importantly - relish ceased to exist. The very concept of relish was abruptly purged from reality, with everyone involved in the battle, and everyone else in existence, not remembering its existence. Relish is no longer relevant. Let's just forget about it.

But then, everyone involved in the battle saw a twinkling white light coming from outside of space. Bill turned his tumorous eye into a telescope, examining the disturbance closer and then blinking with shock. NO ONE INVOLVED IN THIS STUPID FINAL BATTLE CAN STAY PUT FOR LONG, HUH?? For surging into the battlefield, cracked and broken, was Gaster, who had returned from the voided limbo that he'd called home for an eternity - and he was carrying with him the concept of relish, saved from the brink of oblivion. Throwing relish through the field, Gaster was able to perceive the entire battle with a solely objective eye, a determined gaze empowered by flickering flame. His projectile - a seething ball of relish - nailed Interrobang in the head. Interrobang, who had been powering up for the past several minutes and attempting to call upon the power of the names of God to obliterate everyone on the field, was knocked clean backwards. The kaleidoscopic light in his lands went wide, shooting across the field and hitting the Critic, dislodging the multicolored spike in his heads so it fell into his hands. The Critic, who had been able to think but not act, immediately knew the correct course of action to take. A silver mask of a face flipped into his head as he yelled, "IT'S NOT A MYTH. IT'S MEGA," and chucked the spike directly at Ikea 2.0, who was busy aggressing the Advanced Superiors. Ikea 2.0 turned to look in horror as, while he watched, the spike grew and grew, chunks and pieces assembling themselves from nowhere and taking on radiant kaleidoscopic hues. Before long, the comet known as MEGA was sailing towards Ikea 2.0. Ikea 2.0 ejected his bladed hands, cannibalizing portions of his body to form giant fists. With a mighty grapple, he held onto MEGA, attempting to slow it down. Yet MEGA kept pushing, and as Ikea 2.0 dug into the ground to try and apply more force, a large line was carved into the battlefield.

Before anyone could help stop the comet, it shone with a brilliant white light and shattered into millions of pieces. Ikea 2.0, who was at point-blank range, was impaled thousands of times instantly. The fire in his heart was snuffed out, and he was flung into some of the remnants of the Nine Oh One Army, crushing them before exploding. The other shards cascaded in all directions, piercing through the Advanced Superiors and the Logic Gatekeeper, but Billy Mays had a defense, Hard-Boiled Flumpty shrugged it off, and everyone else dodged. A column of smoke was left at the impact point, so dense and thick that the Advanced Superiors could see nothing. They attempted to slither through it all, but promptly fell to the ground, writhing in apparent pain. Interrobang blinked several times, running to the column of smoke but then backing away suddenly. He cursed - more precisely, he yelled "SHIT!" - and charged his hand with kaleidoscope. He punched the air, dispersing the smoke, and ran for the Advanced Superiors. But too late, he saw what was wrong. Their white lights ran vibrant with every color to possibly exist, and their bodies shuddered and fractured. Interrobang took a few steps backwards, glaring at Gaster.

"You," Interrobang spat. "I was fully prepared to end this entire fight in a single blow, and you just ruined the only shot I had! And NOW," Interrobang took a glance at the spasming Advanced Superiors, sighing. "You just addled their cursed, multidimensional minds." Gaster stalked forwards, creeping past Bill and Flumpty, who were engaged in a fierce duel with the Critic. The two of them launched flaming yolks, while the Critic had the power of infinity balanced in his hands. Gaster twitched and phased through several forms at once. THE RAMIFICATIONS OF ACTIONS. ARE OFT FORGOTTEN. BUT I NEVER FORGET. DOCTORS MUST BE AWARE. ONLY AN OBJECTIVE EYE. CAN GET YOU THROUGH THE WORLD. YOU UNDERSTAND THAT YOURSELF. DON'T YOU. Gaster motioned to the blackness surrounding the interior of the Gate. ONLY THROUGH ORPHANAGE FROM EXISTENCE. CAN YOU GRASP TOTALITY. AND I HAVE BEEN AWAY. FOR A LONG. LONG. TIME. Interrobang paced backwards. "So you're telling me you planned that stupid Rube Goldberg-esque attack solely to infect the Advanced Superiors with the shards of MEGA, the most potent blend of LSD imaginable, akin to the polluted waters of San Fransisco, on purpose?" OBVIOUSLY. THAT WOULD BE A RIDICULOUS ACCIDENT, Gaster intoned with a twitch. "But why???" Gaster held a finger to his crevice of a mouth. YOU TELL ME. OMNISCIENT MASK OF A MAN. Interrobang paused and looked as Bill summoned a legion of always-screaming heads to combat the Critic, who had begun throwing heads at fast speeds that would explode like bombs. "I... understand. Only one thing can combat Billy Mays." Gaster nodded mutely. Interrobang looked with wonder as the Advanced Superiors uncoiled themselves to a staggering full height, staring down Billy Mays.

"Kabbalah," Interrobang spoke simply.

Billy Mays grinned, the corporate gods behind him booming with full force. "HI, BILLY MAYS HERE! THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG." The words Mays spoke conjured themselves to life in front of him, and with a blink of his gilded eyes, they transmuted themselves into Cyrillic, the superior tongue. Rearranging and duplicating themselves, they formed a complete alphabet. АБЦЧДЕФГҺИҸЯЮКЛМНОПQРСШТУВWХЫЗ The nine Advanced Superiors, whose minds had been consumed by the absolute unfathomability of existence and opened permanently to the ninth dimension, thereby unlocking the keys to metachronism, formed similar alphabets that encircled them all. Billy Mays grinned, putting a megaphone to his mouth and speaking. Five letters curled from the heavens. Consonant, consonant, vowel, consonant, vowel. The symbols arranged themselves. БЛАДЕ was formed in the skies, and from a rip in space, a shimmering corporate blade of divinium launched at the Superiors. At once, their heads glowed red, and the vowels of the word were distorted. The A was opened into an endless loop, and the E was similarly affected. БЛООД was written in red in the heavens, and the blade stopped abruptly, slicing through thin air. Never-healing cuts sliced themselves through Mays' body, and he grimaced in agony, yet he did not falter. Mays transmuted the vowels once more, slicing off their tops and extending their bottoms to form a new word: БЛУУД. Writhing from out of Mays' cuts came a legion of mimes. Mimes with soulless faces, sunken eyes, and slits for mouths. They crawled into the crevices of the Advanced Superiors, swarming them like parasites and worming their way up to the snakes' distended jaws. The Superiors distorted the first three characters, combining them into a cyclical route bisected by a determined line. ѲУД. The black walls of the battlefield merged and shifted, swinging upwards and forming the shape of a gigantic foot - the Shadow's foot. It hurtled down from the heavens, creaking and groaning before crashing to the ground with a telltale THUD. Yet Mays stayed perfectly still through the storm, and as the Shadow's form dissipated, Mays revealed himself unharmed. He pointed at the word in the sky, casting away the Ѳ for being an antiquated character, and not one meant to be used in today's language. He added three letters to the word. Consonant, vowel, consonant. It changed form. УНДЕР. The ground gave away like quicksand, a swirling vortex of half-liquid pulling the Superiors under. They suffered damage, but they edited the word. A change of a vowel. A square's lines turned into a cross. ИНТЕР. Mays' body paled, as though he had suffered through a mortal blow. An empty tomb rose out of the ground, and he fell backwards, falling perfectly into it, his arms already crossed. The Superiors' eyes burned punctuated holes through existence as the lid slid onto the tomb and it crumbled into dust.

The Superiors growled, coiling around the Logic Gatekeeper. It shone with light, and Interrobang nodded, running to it. The Superiors seemed to be working to fix its wounds, trying to restore it back to full power after the extensive damage it took. Bill and Flumpty, still busy dueling the Critic, took notice. THEY'RE GONNA HEAL THE TIN MAN UP TO MAX HEALTH, OR SOME OTHER ABSTRACT GAMING MECHANISM! Flumpty nodded. Our only shot is to interrupt the process somehow! We need a huge distraction! Something of an absurd size! The Critic's head filled with a pigman, and a guttural roar filled the field, Zombie Pigmen rushing from all sides to attack. Bill and Flumpty through the entirety of the Sky Army's butter reserves at them, and like a moth to a gilded flame, the Sky Army fell from the, er, sky. They ravaged the skin and flesh off of the Pigmens' bodies, and stole all the gold in an instant, rushing out of the Gate. The Critic stepped back and hissed. Listen here, Cipher. Your story is twisted, dangerous, and ends abruptly if you continue down this path. SOUNDS LIKE A REAL PARTY! No! Your pursuits only lead to your death, in all and any circumstances! Can you not see, despite your infinite sight? Only if you abide by the path of the Conflict, my path, will you have any chance at survival and meaning. The Critic gestured to Bill's body, which was pulsing with white. And only if you give to me what you took from the Superiors, and what they took from this cursed plane, will I leave you be in this battle. Bill cackled, parrying several projectiles with an umbrella. YOU MEAN THE WHITE FLAME BURNING ME UP?! NO CAN DO, HEADLESS! AS THE LITERAL ANTICHRIST, YET ALSO SOMEHOW THE LITERAL ACTUAL CHRIST, I THINK THE TRUE HEIR OF METATRON'S POWER SHOULD NATURALLY BE ME! NOT HIS "FRIEND." NOW STEP ASIDE AND LET THE EGG AND I MOUNT A DARING RESCUE MISSION WHILE THERE'S STILL A REALITY WE CAN DO A RESCUE MISSION IN!

Bill raised his hand, white flames curling at his finger tips, and sliced it through the air, knocking the Critic to the side. He bounced across the field, and both Bill and Flumpty looked at Gaster, who was busy staring at the madness and occasionally twitching. Flumpty blinked a couple of times and nodded, looking at Bill, who reciprocated the gesture. Bill cupped his hands to his eye and yelled. WHAT'S UP, DOC? The memetic question pierced reality, snapping Gaster's attention to Bill immediately. His eyes, small white dots, seemed to shine like novae. He cupped his bony fingers to his waxen face and yelled, a shifting crackling sound like a sandstorm. WHAT. Bill snapped his fingers, and he held in his hands the twenty restored conceptual essences, the remainders of the condiment containers, and the shrapnel of Ikea 2.0, holding them in a protective bubble. He snapped his other hand's fingers, and a green slip of paper appeared next to it. I PROPOSE A TRADE! I SUBMIT TO YOUR DEMANDS, RETURNING TO YOU WHAT WAS STOLEN FROM YOUR ESTABLISHMENT! THE COST IS THE PIECE OF PAPER WE LEFT BEHIND AT YOUR PLACE AFTER WE LEFT! WHAT DO YOU SAY? Gaster blinked, his hollow face spinning in its socket before nodding slowly. Bill teleported to Gaster's position, handing him the bubble and holding the piece of paper in his hands. ALRIGHT, JUST PUT THAT PILE OF RUBBLE DOWN OVER THERE AND WAIT A FEW SECONDS. Gaster put the pile next to him. He looked at Bill quizzically, but stopped when he heard a truly intense rumbling coming from the entrance to the Gate.

YOU KNOW, IT'S SAID THAT THE ACTIONS WITHIN THE ENDS OF THE EARTH, PARTICULARLY WITHIN THE GATE TO THE GARDEN OF GEOMETRY, HAVE MASSIVE REPERCUSSIONS ON THE REST OF FICTION! AFTER ALL, WHOEVER WINS THE STRIFE WITH WHAT LIES BEYOND GETS TO RECONQUER REALITY. THINK OF THIS PLACE LIKE THE EDGE OF A WATERFALL, CONSTANTLY SPILLING TO LOWER LEVELS - THE REST OF EXISTENCE. NOW, DO YOU REALIZE WHAT YOU JUST DID? NOT SURE IF YOU'RE LACKING THAT WHOLE 'OBJECTIVE LENS' OR WHATEVER. Gaster's head did not move. AN IDEA, YES. A REALIZATION, NO. The rumbling grew to impossible proportions. YOU JUST DECLARED THAT THE LARGEST RESTAURANT IN THE INTERNET CAN BE BOUGHT WITH A SINGLE VENEZUELAN DOLLAR. THOSE THAT ACTUALLY HAVE MONEY IN VENEZUELA ARE NOW RICH BEYOND THEIR WILDEST DREAMS. IN FACT, PEOPLE ALL OVER THE WORLD WOULD DO ANYTHING JUST TO GET A SINGLE PIECE OF PAPER LIKE THIS! SPEAKING OF WHICH, THREE, TWO-- The "ONE" was drowned out by the apocalyptic crowd that rushed through the Gate. Humans, humanoids, alien creatures, hulking golems, warlords, the wealthy elite, the dangerously poor - it seemed that literally all walks of life were now desperate for Venezuelan currency. Bill cackled and flung the slip of paper on top of the Gatekeeper and the Superiors. The crowd, weapons active, fists and feet ready to fight, and determination blaring in their hearts, trampled over the slithering snakes nigh-immediately. In their fury, they wrenched the snakes apart, slicing them and ripping them, climbing over each other. The Superiors attempted to fight back, but the crowd just replenished itself with every passing second. Billions of men were surging into the hallowed resting place of God with one greedy desire.

Gaster, sensing that hell had entered heaven in a quite literal sense, took the remains of what had been stolen from the Restaurant at the End of the Internet and gave Bill a curt nod. Now that what had been taken was returned, he saw no need to fight any longer. His smile widened, as did his eyes. A curious jingle overlaid itself over the screams of avarice around the Gatekeeper, and Gaster faded away. Both Bill and Flumpty watched as the tidal wave of would-be trillionaires tore apart the Advanced Superiors bit by bit, despite them dying by the hundreds with every passing second. IT'S NOW OR NEVER, Bill said as he reached into hammerspace, pulling apart a shimmering pool of cosmic energy. Flumpty gazed in wonder as Bill held all of existence in his hands. The corners of the continually shifting unreality called Fiction, confined to a space of a few inches in every direction. Bill pulled out a shard of glass and confined Fiction to it. There was a tremendous surge of energy, light, and electricity, and Bill found himself in a swirling red fire that stretched across the horizon. The stars of a universe he knew nothing about flickered in his vision, and when they zoomed in on a familiar planet, Bill was brought back to the battlefield. In his hands, he held a singular lens, tinted red by the cosmos. He put it on his eye like a contact lens and blinked a couple times. Do you... feel any different? Flumpty asked. Do you see anything? DO I SEE ANYTHING? Bill repeated. YOU COULD SAY THAT. What do you see? ...THE SAME THINGS AS BEFORE! Bill tore the contact lens off, holding it tightly in his hands. I DON'T UNDERSTAND! IT WORKED PERFECTLY, I KNOW IT DID! I CAN SEE EVERY CRANNY OF EVERY TIMELINE AND I'M FULLY AWARE THAT THIS IS HOW YOU MAKE MASON'S GLASSES! BUT I DIDN'T SEE ANYTHING DIFFERENT, AT ALL. I ONLY SAW THE SAME INFINITY THAT I USUALLY DO. MAYBE... Bill sunk a bit lower to the ground.

I THINK I KNOW WHAT THE PROBLEM IS. IF YOU DESIGNED AN ARTIFACT WITH THIS LEVEL OF POWER, YOU WOULDN'T JUST BE CONTENT BY HAVING THE PROCESS BY WHICH IT'S MADE BE UTTER AGONY. YOU'D MAKE IT SO THAT ONLY CERTAIN PEOPLE WOULD EVER BE ALLOWED TO HOLD IT! INTERROBANG OVER THERE GOT IT BECAUSE OF THE KALEIDOSCOPIC VOID... What? LONG STORY. AND RED GLASSES GOT IT BECAUSE... Bill blinked once. Then twice. "RED GLASSES." THAT'S IT! OH, IT'S SO PERFECT! I DON'T KNOW WHY I DIDN'T THINK OF THIS SOONER! THIS MAKES MY PLAN EVEN BETTER! A voice mocked Bill from behind him. "Well, good for you, buddy! Nice job with your epiphany. Hope it was a good one, because your time just ran out." Both Bill and Flumpty turned to see Interrobang, coat rippling in the wind as the Superiors continually wound across the Gatekeeper, now thoroughly distracted from repairing it to fend off the crowd. OUT OF THE WAY, MASON! WE'RE GOING TO RESCUE FLUMPTY FROM THAT MACHINE, AND THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO STOP US! I HAVE GOD IN MY BODY AND CANCER IN MY EYE, NOT TO MENTION A TELEVISION IN MY BOWTIE! And I have thyme. ON MY FRIES. Flumpty took out a plate of french fries. They were covered with thyme. He ate one of them, and then he put the plate down. Interrobang's fist lit up with kaleidoscopic power. "I don't care if you're the son of God. What I do care about is that every second the Overser is in your body, you become a little less you and a little more him. Eventually you're going to explode, from the inside out, with His glory." Bill noticed the white light burning from within him and narrowed his eye. THEN I'LL BE GLAD TO JOIN HIM IN VALHALLA. Interrobang rolled his eyes behind his glasses. "Wrong fake religion, but have it your way."

Interrobang punched through the air, and the Logic Gatekeeper's engines roared, its helmeted face gleaming angrily. It skyrocketed to the heavens, shaking off the Advanced Superiors wrapped around or near it, as well as the titanic crowd fighting for supremacy. Their battle continued, but the Gatekeeper touched down just behind Interrobang, its jet engines screaming at full intensity, creating a rippling wind. The Gatekeeper's four arms curled into fists, smoking with the same white light as Bill. They seemed to pulse in unison. The Flumpty chained to the Gatekeeper's vertex began screaming in agony once more as the hulking machine powered up. Interrobang grinned with a slasher smile. "It's funny, really. I haven't even told you this thing's true power yet." Bill rolled his eye. REALLY? PULLING THE OLD "THIS ISN'T EVEN MY FINAL FORM" TRICK? TALK ABOUT U-- A cascading wall of doomed bullets punched through Bill's body, riddling him with bullet holes. They regenerated with white light, but Bill let out a shout of pain, turning to look at the Gatekeeper. Its lower-left arm had turned into an gleaming brown rifle. Flumpty charged, conjuring serpents of eyes, and flinging the incomprehensible Declaration of Independence at the Gatekeeper with much the same ire as Problem Sleuth would an unpleasant note. Yet the Gatekeeper sliced the old paper, and the eyesaurs, in half with a single white-hot cut that blazed across reality, even bisecting the ground. For its lower-right arm had turned into a rickety wooden chair, smoking and razor-sharp.

Bill backed away carefully, his body boiling red and his eye turning pitch-black. Thai numerals flickered across his eye as he shot devilish flames around the Gatekeeper, attempting to melt its metal. Yet the Gatekeeper's arms turned into a set of metal wands - the Unicoders - that forged Unicode characters for raindrops and snowflakes around the conflagration, cooling it in seconds. They then formed the Unicode character for poop, and Flumpty's plate of fries turned into Poop Daddy from the Emoji Movie. You have got to be shitting me, Flumpty muttered under his breath. He brutally decapitated Poop Daddy before he could tarnish the field with his charismatic voice and smeared his remains all over the Gatekeeper. Yet, his shoulders mounted with black and marine machines that could control weather patterns, and rainstorms formed above the Gatekeeper, wiping the unpleasant material off. The Gatekeeper's shoulders retracted to reveal several rows of cannons and miniguns, pointed dangerously at Bill and Flumpty. I know what's going on! Flumpty exclaimed as the two tried to outrun and deflect the cascading walls of bullets. He's using the weapons of the Descendants! It's just like the Gatekeeper I encountered in Limbo! His scythe, it could turn into any weapon! AND THIS FREAK DOESN'T EVEN NEED A WEAPON! HIS ENTIRE BODY HAS THE POWERS OF ALL OF THEM...

The Gatekeeper's arms turned into bows emblazoned with the stars, firing arrows straight up into the air. Thousands of arrows piled on top of each other to form a hulking arrow warrior. Flumpty pulled a Golden Wrench out of hammerspace, swinging it as fast as he could to deflect the projectiles in every direction. They skewered through a good portion of the still-active crowd searching for the Venezuelan dollar. GOLDEN CROWN'S RIFLE, THE DOOMBRINGER. LAPIS LAZULI'S OLD TECH. THE SWORD THAT POKEBALL TOOK! AND THAT WAS BROKEN BOW'S COMBAT OPERANDI, I REMEMBER IT ALL! The guns retracted as a singular abominable gun, a combination of miniguns, gatling guns, machine guns, assault rifles, and so much more ascended from the Gatekeeper's shoulder. It whirred to life, firing custom-made bullets that cut through the air, leaving explosions of fire in their wake. Bill blinked once, forming the Zodiac around him as a shield and sending it outwards. The bullets cut in half, their destinies irreversibly altered by prophecy. They flew every which way. ULTIMATUM. THAT WAS CROWN OF FIRE'S BABY, WASN'T IT? WHERE DID YOU ALL FIGURE OUT ALL OF THIS? WERE YOU SPYING ON THE SECOND WAR ALL ALONG??

Interrobang walked casually towards Bill and Flumpty, smirking. "The entire world was, Cipher. Especially the governments. But that's not the point. We got this data through... a simulation. One that evolved in real-time, where the Descendants were encouraged to do everything in their power to win. Not many attended, but it gave us a good enough backdoor into their 'world.' What we got was a cesspool of data to pick and choose from. And now, all of their accomplishments, their weapons, their powers... They're sealed in this suit of armor. The ultimate fighting machine, armed with the hands of God and the fortynine-fold Ki." The Gatekeeper groaned, its torso opening up to reveal flamethrowers. Bill and Flumpty dodged, with Flumpty firing duplicates of his eyes that turned into bombs. They exploded with such frequency that it didn't seem like the Gatekeeper could keep track of them all at once, but its left hand curled into a fist, and with a single thrust, Bill and Flumpty were knocked backwards, skidding far across the field. The Critic wrenched himself free from the crowd, his suit tattered and his voided head crackling with lightning. He pulled out an umbrella, thrusting at Interrobang, who caught the blade at its tip with his hand, snapping it in half and throwing it down the Critic's voided head. The Critic attempted to call up the face of Genghis Khan, but the knife was lodged in his forehead, trailing blood. Every other face he tried had the same results, and the Critic backed away slowly, feeling the stench of death. He attempted to sift through Interrobang's memories and enter his mind, but crumpled to the ground under the weight of every conceivable timeline and universe at once. Interrobang held the Critic by the collar and spoke a single word. АБСЦОНД. And the Critic faded away like a shadow. "No more distractions," Interrobang muttered.

Flumpty got up, his hardened black body somehow cracking despite no longer possessing an eggshell. Turbulent amethyst fires of thyme were visible within. Something's... burning within me, Bill. I can... feel it. Bill nodded, the flames within his bricks burning brighter and hotter. YOU CAN SAY THAT AGAIN. BUT DON'T, WE'RE NOT REPEATING THAT JOKE. COME ON! Bill and Flumpty charged at the Gatekeeper, summoning a hot rod from flames. Armed with a raging cylindrical engine, a paint job of Illuminati propaganda, and doors connected to a battery supply, it screamed towards the center of the fight. The driver and passenger bailed right as the hot rod crashed in a brilliant explosion. Landing with a roll, they then tackled Interrobang, with Bill throwing combos of punches to rival Rumble McSkirmish and Flumpty stalking in the shadows. Yet Interrobang dodged every blow with frankly inhuman reflexes. A single kaleidoscopic punch left another crack in Flumpty's body, but he just laughed, springing back up and kicking Interrobang in the face with a party hat. Visions of clowns danced through Interrobang's head, and he fell backwards. Bill looked at the Logic Gatekeeper carefully as it prepared its next attack. I'VE GOT A PLAN, FLUMPTY! KEEP MASON BUSY! Flumpty nodded, whistling with his unhinged skeletal mouth. Apparitions drifted into view from the heavens - shades of Flumpty's friends, disfigured by thyme as he was. Birthday Boy Blam, Grunkfuss the Clown, the Beaver, and all the rest formed a menacing line of horror. Hello, Jeff. I want to play a game, Flumpty said with a chuckle. From behind his glasses, Interrobang rolled his eyes.

Bill floated around the Logic Gatekeeper leisurely. Every time the Gatekeeper's targeting systems locked onto Bill and fired a barrage of lasers, bullets, bombs, and what-have-you at him, he'd phase out of time and reappear somewhere else. Bill seemed to be investigating for some kind of weak spot, but there were none that he could concern. MAYBE I JUST HAVE TO THINK... HARDER! Bill unfolded his body, turning into a spinning octahedron with a single blazing eye of fury. He rotated across the field, firing bricks and demonic flame rapid-fire at the Gatekeeper. Though his antics seemed to confuse it and its Descendant-based weaponry, the Gatekeeper's three eyes lit up with white flame before long, and it spoke a single name. Bill froze, shunted in two-dimensional space as projectiles surged towards him from all sides like an UNDERTALE battle. Bill quickly tried to manipulate his form to dodge the invading legions of projectiles, but they kept on coming and they don't stop coming. Concentrating intensely, he called upon the white fire within him. He felt an intense stab of pain, but Metatron's light counteracted the Key to the Universe. Bill felt a white haze creeping at the edge of his vision, but he chose to ignore it. The three white lights had given him an idea. HEY, YOU CAN DO BETTER THAN THAT! He called out to the Gatekeeper, laughing. GO ON, SAY ANOTHER NAME! THIS TIME, MAKE IT CHALLENGING, ALRIGHT! YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW EASY LIFE IS WHEN YOU CAN PLAY GOD.

The Gatekeeper's vertex shuddered, white light flooding it as the three eyes in its helmet lit up once more. Bill's eye closed, and he laughed as he envisioned himself swirling through the limitless intangible possibilities of reality. A chandelier swinging through the ceiling of an author's pen, with each plot thread a light. When he opened his eye, he was in the head of the Gatekeeper, having become a fourth light on its face. The other three looked around with confusion, but Bill cackled, forming spider-esque limbs in the dark and ripping apart a huge chunk of the armor's helmet. Warning sirens blared out around the Gatekeeper as Bill scuttled away, concealed by his black body and his closed eye. His color returned as he juggled the piece of armor in his hands. LOOKING FOR THIS? He then turned away, fiddling with the machinery intensely and attaching it to something. COME ON, COME ON, THIS HAS TO WORK... The Gatekeeper, now sensing Bill as an incredibly dangerous threat, levied even more powerful weapons. Plasma destabilizers, greater railguns, holy mackerels. We're breaking out the big sci-fi guns now. Literally. Right before they fired, Bill let out a YES! as a single low, metallic note rang out from his immediate position. Immediately, Bill turned around, holding identical copies of the Gatekeepers' guns. They fired just as the Gatekeepers' did, the beams cancelling each other out with a resounding ding. Both Bill and the Gatekeeper were blown backwards, Bill's guns changing back into an object wrapped in shadow. Bill cackled, with the Gatekeeper not seeming to understand what he was planning.

Bill blinked his eye, which turned into the shockwave cannon from the Tripod. It fired a beam of australium that intentionally went wide, but the Gatekeeper perceived it as a threat regardless, retaliating by turning its lower arms into Infinity Blades - the Godmodder Killers. Bill laughed, as he suddenly gained two Infinity Blades. The weapons met with another resounding clash that cut across reality, with the Logic Gatekeeper flying back again. Cracks began to splinter across its glossy surface, and it rumbled in complete anger. The Gatekeeper's arms then turned into raging bonesaws that surged with blue energy - that of an Ubercharge. Bill responded in kind, gaining a red Ubercharge. The resulting orchid fusion created a ball of power that exploded violently, blowing apart one of the Gatekeeper's lower limbs. Its eyes glowed, and it tried to speak some kind of name, but with a portion of its head gone, the Gatekeeper's eyes flickered and sputtered, and it was unable to process anything. Bill retaliated, his bricks turning jet-black as he rose to an absurd height, sending spinning swarms of tetrominoes to carve through the Gatekeeper. The suit of armor tried to dodge, but it was hit several times, with one of the blocks knocking off a jet engine. The Gatekeeper fell closer to earth, and Bill flew downwards with the intent of one final shot - the upper end to his triangular body pointed right at the Gatekeeper's chest, deadly sharp.

Thinking fast, the Gatekeeper raised its right six-fingered hand in defense. Bill barely had time to change course. A hint of gold metal, and before anything could be processed, Bill had the Right Hand of God as well. A strong arm was with his right hand, and the two met with divine fury. Bill's pyramid bricks began to seriously crack and strain under the pressure, the white fire within him raging even higher. His body flickered with events yet to pass. And the Gatekeeper's cracks intensified even further, smoke and fire curling from its head. Bill's left hand, free from the fight, held the shimmering contact lens of existence. I... MAY NOT BE ABLE TO WEAR THIS, BUT... I CAN USE IT AS A BRASS KNUCKLE! Another hint of brass, and the lens was coupled with Mobster Kingpin's brass knuckles. The fist of fury was sent flying at the Gatekeeper, who caught it with his left hand. The signs of damage accelerated in both combatants. It seemed like the end of the road - a stalemate that would end in two deaths.

Yet, a furious cry rang out from the far end of the battlefield. A lone figure jumped up the Gatekeeper's back, holding a shining hammer of heat in his hands, and swung it down with all his might. A clang rung through the Ends of the Earth as the Gatekeeper's head folded in on itself, seared to a perfect one million degrees as it bubbled down its neck. The power core at its vertex began to falter, and the Gatekeeper's hands slackened. Bill laughed excitedly, his eye swirling with the power of a black hole as he fired a singularity straight for the Gatekeeper. The suit of armor cracked and shuddered, its limbs twitching and straining as they were sucked through the event horizon. Soon, the entire body was being pulled through and twisted into spaghetti. Bill, with his flaming hands, wrenched the power core out from the machine, toppling backwards as he held the device that trapped Flumpty's duplicate in his hands. As the Gatekeeper crossed the point of no return, its horrible screams echoing through the field, the black hole destabilized and shrunk to a tiny dot. And then there was nothing.

Bill turned to look at the final Godmodder Decoy, who had broken his Banhammer with the last strike. He panted heavily and grinned. "Heh. Looks like I showed him who was boss." YOU... YOU SAVED ME? "It felt like I beat the tar out of those noobs all over again. THAT'S what I call an enjoyable experience. I've had my fill of fun." Bill laughed weakly. THEN YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT THE TICKETS? The Godmodder Decoy shrugged. "You guys left them behind after you did the... commercial break." THEN WHY'D YOU COME BACK TO FIGHT US?? "I said it was personal. I saw something that I despised when I looked through your inventory, Cipher." The Godmodder glared at Bill. "Be careful with that thing. You know my history with them. Got it?" Bill rolled his eye, but then winced as white embers curled from his body. The Godmodder nodded. "See you around," he said seemingly as a suggestion. The Godmodder took another step and crumbled to the ground, flashing red once and poofing into dust. Every other Godmodder Decoy followed suit.

Meanwhile, Flumpty's gang rejoiced with jubilation, for they had just beaten Interrobang in a game of competitive 52,000,000,000 Pickup. Their absurd tower of playing cards stretched to the ceiling, wavering slightly. Interrobang clapped out of fairness. "Well, that was. Something. I knew I'd lose, and yet I played. This has to be what it's like for lottery players." Flumpty laughed, as did his friends, who vanished into nothingness. So, you'll abide to the terms of the deal? He carefully asked, his teeth chattering. Interrobang nodded, sighing. "I don't see why not. The Gatekeeper's destroyed, but that doesn't really matter. And you beat me, but that doesn't really matter. What does matter is three, two, one..." And Bill, who had been floating over to the two, fell to the ground. Bill! Flumpty yelled as he ran over to the fallen triangle, whose eye was being clouded over by some milky foam. His body was riddled with cracks and seemed to be eroding before Flumpty's eyes, the white fire within consuming him more than ever. BILL! Can you hear me?? It's me, Flumpty Bumpty! I'm an egg!

Bill coughed dead pixels, his body displaying static, followed by what seemed to be a very large explosion. I CAN HEAR YOU, EGGHEAD... BUT MY VISION'S GETTING A BIT FUZZY. I... I THINK I'M GOING TO THE GREAT GEOMETRY IN THE SKY, FLUMPTY. I THINK I'M FINALLY READY. Flumpty slapped Bill, knocking his bowtie off accidentally. He put it back on. No! You're not giving up here, at the edge of a world where everyone knows your name! The Bill I know would never give up! Bill stared at Flumpty, his gaze unfocused. MAYBE I'M... NOT THE BILL YOU KNEW ANYMORE. Bill's eye began to close, the lower portion of his body starting to crumble away entirely. The white fire surged with heat, and Flumpty backed away. He turned to the power core. Its complicated machinery was already beginning to smoke and flare with sparks, and as Hard-Boiled Flumpty jumped on top of it, pulling apart its layers and layers of sacred geometry, the nine Advanced Superiors lumbered over, stained with the blood of trillions of combatants. Fluttering from Lozenge's radiant head was a charred Venuzuelan dollar. It floated to the ground and sat peacefully. Interrobang, leaning against nothing, looked up at the Superiors. "Too late, snakes. I struck a deal with the egg over there. We can't do anything now but watch."

Ampersand howled, cyan letters assembling themselves from randomly appearing hieroglyphs and broadcasting themselves into the minds of everyone present. Bill visibly winced. ЫОУ ДАРЕ ТУРН ЫОУР БАЦК ОН ТХЕ СЕРПЕНТС НИНЕ? ЫОУ ДАРЕ ФОРСАКЕ ТХЕ ИНТЕРПУНЦТ ЛЫИНГ ЮСТ ФЕЕТ ФРОМ ЫОУ? ЛЕТ УС ТАКЕ ИТ. НОW. Interrobang sighed, adjusting his stellar shades. "Can't, even if I wanted to. Flumpty's chosen now to be totally immune to all plot. The walking idiot has me in him, I guess. Only acts like a massive tool when it's maximally annoying for those around him." The Advanced Superiors refused to accept this as an answer. All of them howled, chanting rapid-fire Cyrillic. Dying and decaying birds of ink birthed themselves out of sacs festering in the ceiling of the room, slamming into Bill. A churning sandstorm made of crystallized color and screaming the sound of silence washed through the entire arena, pulverizing the corpses the Superiors spent so long killing and throwing Bill all over the arena. A pink flame flickered to life next to Bill, forming a ring around him. From that, a gleaming white sword dripping hyper light flew upwards. It suddenly darkened to the color of midnight, slicing clean through reality and bisecting existence in one strike. The entire field split in two, the remains of god's home drifting apart. A halo of radiant essence settled itself over Bill, plunging his immediate area into an ice age. All molecular activity stopped on a microscopic level, making it seem as though time itself lost any semblance of meaning. Broken and ruined, Bill was thrust upwards, Lozenge screaming as he attempted to pull everything making Bill himself into twenty different dimensions at once in order to isolate his soul and pull out the cleansing white flame - the Interpunct, the single dot marking Bill's ascension into heaven.

Yet nothing happened. Through it all, Bill retained his form, he still held on despite the white flame eating away at more and more of his body. Indeed, it seemed to be doing much more damage than anything the Superiors threw at him. Lozenge screeched, throwing Bill down to the ground and hounding on Hard-Boiled Flumpty, who managed to wrench his duplicate out of the power core. This incarnation of Flumpty's eggshell was horrendously cracked and horribly mangled. His eyes vibrated intensely, and his mouth was trapped in a perpetual frown. When he spoke, it was barely above a whisper, and he had to hold on to Hard-Boiled Flumpty for support. Yet when he saw Bill, with white flame leaping out of him, White Flumpty let out an ululation of epic proportions and bowed down to the ground faster than anything. "WHAT IS YOUR COMMAND MASTER THY KINGDOM COME THY WILL BE DONE," he shrieked. Bill seemed to barely register this, but the Advanced Superiors' heads, which now resembled atomic explosions, seethed with thoughts of heresy. Interrobang was barely able to hold back laughter. Hard-Boiled Flumpty looked at Billy with steely determination, turning to his duplicate. You must take your Master and eat him. White Flumpty turned to Hard-Boiled Flumpty with tears in his eyes. "Wh... what???"

Hard-Boiled Flumpty pointed at Bill, whose body was destabilizing even more with every second. The nine Superiors were slithering in a circle around the Sacred Vertex, preventing anyone from leaving. He spoke again. Your Master is dying and decaying, consuming the very body that contains him. The ultimate act of service you can do to him is to take him from this husk, save the form he is corrupting, and sacrifice yourself to ensure peace. Bill looked up, trembling. EGG... N-NO... I CAN HOLD... THE... P-POWER... I CAN... I... Hard-Boiled Flumpty gnashed his teeth, snapping at White Flumpty. NOW! A kaleidoscopic haze crept into Flumpty's vision as he experienced the true ramifications of being immune from plot. Here, distanced from Fiction, he was at the edge of eternity. He saw everything that ever was and ever could be, trapped in anarchy. He saw White Flumpty, Bill, the Interpunct, and the line connecting them all. With fire in his eyes, Hard-Boiled Flumpty pointed at Bill, who began to levitate in the air. White Flumpty hungrily eyed him, and with shaking legs, he stumbled over to the triangle. His arms reached out, and with a pull of immense strength that didn't fit at all with his fragile nature, he tore the Interpunct out of Bill's soul. There was a vast pop as reality seemed to fit back into place, and everyone within the Gate was knocked backwards. Everyone present besides Interrobang and the two Flumpties turned away at the sight of the Interpunct. It was too holy, too pure, to be stared upon by the naked eye, no matter what dimension it was aligned in. The dot represented power throughout all planes of reality and unreality.

All of existence flowed both into and outside of it, from the summit of the tallest mountain to the bottom of the lowest valley. From every abandoned laboratory festering under decaying salt to every lush forest full of teeming life to every gleaming metropolis containing polluters and laborers. From universes whose bubbles have long since popped, to ruins skirting the outside of the void, to restaurants trying to get by, to trains trying to pass through, to every bubble yet to be blown by the vast machine called an author's mind. From the most complicated fractal to the most basic shape. From every extant idea purged by writer's block to the most simple tropes and cliches. From gods to modders and everything in between. It all comes together at the end of a sentence. White Flumpty held this symbol of unrestrained power in his hands for several tantalizing seconds. The weight of existence weighed on his nonexistent shoulders. He could edit reality in any way he wished, in any format. He could do anything. Yet Flumpty only felt like doing one thing with truly unlimited power.

He swallowed it whole. Exactly ten seconds later, on the dot, he exploded into one trillion pieces. The remnants of his eggshell were virtually dust. His egg white and yolk, held together despite the force of the explosion, bubbled and boiled away over the next several seconds, leaving behind absolutely nothing except whispers and murmurs that ascended into heaven and were never heard again. The Advanced Superiors finally shifted their forms back into a proper three-dimensional space, their necks cracking and their heads twisting as they assumed humanoid bodies. They adjusted their suits' collars and polished their nametags, stepping forwards to examine Bill and Hard-Boiled Flumpty. Bill's body seemed good as new, completely untouched by the horrors of the Interpunct and Metatron's fire. He touched himself over and over, as though he couldn't believe it. I SENSED A GREAT DISTURBANCE IN THE NARRATIVE... AS THOUGH AN INFINITE ARRAY OF IDEAS WERE SILENCED IN UNISON, AND THEN SUDDENLY CRIED OUT WITH LIFE. DID ANY OF YOU FEEL IT?

The Advanced Superiors forced cheesy fake smiles onto their faces. "Yeah," Lozenge said. "You could fucking say that."

Some time later...

---

HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED ABOUT METACHRONISM? the floating orchid triangle said. TO THREE-DIMENSIONAL BACTERIOPHAGES LIKE EPIDERMIS-WALKERS, OR JUST BACTERIOPHAGES THEMSELVES, IT MUST SEEM LIKE THIS COMPLETELY FOREIGN IDEA, PRACTICALLY MAGICAL IN SCOPE! THE ABILITY TO CALL TOGETHER A SET OF SEEMINGLY ARBITRARY ELEMENTS TOTALLY AT ODDS FROM THE FOUR CLASSICAL ONES PERPETRATED THROUGH MOST CIVILIZATIONS SOUNDS LIKE NONSENSE WHEN YOU CAN’T SEE THE CONNECTIONS. HELL, EVEN TO EIGHTH-DIMENSIONALS THAT’VE BEEN GRANTED ACCESS TO THE OCTAHEDRON AND SHOULD BE IN THEORY JUST SHY OF REACHING THAT CONSTELLATE POINT, METACHRONISM SEEMS AS OBTUSE AND ALIEN AS EVER. BUT WHEN YOU FINALLY BREAK BEYOND THAT BARRIER AND ENTER THE NINTH DIMENSION, IT ALL BECOMES CLEAR! Really? the black hard-boiled egg shrugged. [i]I was under the impression that metachronism was a nonsense word made up just to sound mysterious and give the idea that the Order and Curses were more cool than they really were.

The triangle took a sip of glass from sparkling purple liquid that looked like a cross between a martini and a milkshake. KID, EVERY WORD IS MADE UP TO SOUND A CERTAIN WAY. THE TRUE POWER IN REALITY LIES IN THE WORDSMITHS. THE ONES THAT CRAFT STORIES OUT OF RANDOM SETS OF CHARACTERS. EVERY NAME HAS POWER, AND EVERY LETTER! I MEAN, I’M SURE THAT EVEN THE LATIN ALPHABET HAS TWENTY-SIX DIFFERENT ELEMENTS UNDER ITS CONTROL, BUT THOSE ARE SO DILUTED THAT IT BARELY MATTERS. WATCH AS "D" ENDS UP BEING AN EPITHET FOR DEATH OR SOMETHING. IT’LL HAPPEN! It already has, the egg said as he downed a gulp of flaming cyan liquid. He thrust the glass onto the counter, and a crack ran down the glass. The egg blinked and scoffed, shoving the glass away from him. He reached into hammerspace and took out another glass, then reached in again. A stream of swirling green liquid began pouring into the glass. He filled it to the brim, then raised it up and took a sip. Huh. Didn’t know the fruit of knowledge from Eden tasted like a green apple. IT WASN’T AN APPLE. YOU KNOW THAT, RIGHT? Maybe prehistoric fruits tasted different. BET YOU COULD FIND OUT WITH METACHRONISM! What is it with you and metachronism? You get one look at God and all of a sudden you’re spouting about divinity. YOU STOLE GOD FROM ME, YOLK-FOR-BRAINS! I WAS STANDING IN A CHAMBER OF UTTER ENLIGHTENMENT AND YOU TORE ITS CARPET FROM UNDER MY FEET! I FELL OVER AND LOOKED LIKE AN IDIOT! I’M ASSUMING I LOOKED LIKE AN IDIOT, BECAUSE I’D IMAGINE IT’S HARD TO SEEM IMPOSING WHEN YOU’RE WASTED ON THE GROUND WITH THE KNOWLEDGE OF ETERNITY LEAKING OUT OF YOUR HALF-BLIND-WITH-WONDER EYEBALL. Yeah, you’re right on the money. You looked like an idiot. SEE?? I’M RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING!

The egg took another sip. I think we’re ignoring the fact where you were about to be literally consumed by the sheer wonder of the 64-Bit Name and combust into goddamn FLAMES! I saved your life! I gave you a chance to keep going on your plan to kill the Zodiac, or whatever idea you have in your head today. You can’t even thank me for that? The triangle shrugged, adjusting his hat as his eye tore apart, morphing into a mouth that took another sip from the sparkling liquid. I TRY NOT TO GIVE THANKS, KID. EXPRESSING GRATITUDE TO ANOTHER PERSON MEANS YOU CONCEDE DEFEAT TO THEM. YOU ACKNOWLEDGE HOW THEY GOT YOU THROUGH A CHALLENGE WHILE YOU WERE TOO WEAK. AND YOU SHOULD NEVER BE WEAK IF YOU HAVE DREAMS OF MAKING A DIFFERENCE! WEAKNESS IS WHAT DRAGS YOU INTO THE PIT AND DOESN’T HOLD YOU BACK. STRENGTH IS WHAT LETS YOU JUMP IN VOLUNTARILY, AND BECOME THE KING OF THE ABYSS. The egg rolled his roiling, swirling eyes. So you jumped into Tartarus because you were so absorbed in how amazing you think you are, is what you’re saying. PRETTY MUCH! He laughed, his skeletal mouth tearing at the seams. I’d expect nothing less from you, Bill. Good to have you back. The egg extended his skinny black hand, and the triangle took it. Joined by their palms, their hands spontaneously lit with flame, a soft fwoosh engulfing them as red and blue combined into amethyst. The two geometries gawked, pulled their hands apart, shared an awkward silence, and then busted into laughter.

The triangle turned around and talked to someone else. IT, HEH, JUST OCCURRED TO ME THAT YOU PROBABLY HAVE NO IDEA WHAT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT. Yet he blinked, finding that there was no third party in the conversation. The only other person in the bar was a figure in a red cloak sipping from Snapple. The triangle scowled. SO MUCH FOR THAT CALLBACK.

---

The swirling soup of eternity boiled and bubbled throughout the Void. Floating outside of it, just beyond a metaphysical arm’s reach, was a silently floating husk of a man. At one point in time, he could resemble a crumbling statue. At another, a jumble of scribbles. And at another, a charred, waxen skeleton. The mad doctor wandered through the ether, craning his head to speak into the screaming abyss. DOTS TO DOTS. THE PIXEL MATRIX DISPLAY OF EXISTENCE HAS GONE QUIET. SHATTERED FOR NAUGHT. INTER, INTERRED. Creeping from the shadows, silent figures emerged. One, a head with a toothy-crescent grin. Another, a lanky humanoid holding his face in his hands. You speak of a great disaster. Is that what you meant, W.D. Gaster? they said in unison. ALL I SPEAK IS TRUTH. I CAME, I SAW, I DID NOT CONQUER. THE ABYSS DOES NOT LEND ITSELF TO VICTORY.

More of the doctor’s followers emerged, a small congregation trailing behind him. Can you imagine a universe where everything is the same, but the universe doesn’t exist...? A broken man said. It seems they’re living through it... If what you say is true. The doctor hunched over, his face twitching. ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT PIECES IS MISSING, TRUE. YET THE NINETY-NINE PERCENT CONTINUES EXISTING, SOMEHOW. THIS SHOULD NOT BE. A grey lizard lacking arms shuffled forward. What do you think we should do...? The mad doctor turned. EVEN A PRESENCE IN THE GATE. TOOK INCREDIBLE BENDING OF PLOT. TO MANIFEST YET AGAIN WOULD BE SUICIDE. Then we bide our time? IT IS ALL WE CAN DO. BUT ONE DAY. EVEN IF IT IS NOT THIS TIMELINE. I WILL RETURN. AND YOU WILL FOLLOW.

Another one of the followers spoke. What does your research say about this? Did you... have any? The doctor nodded in a spastic gesture. INTERPUNCT SHAPED REALITY. FROM OUT HERE, I SAW THIS. THE OVERSEER HELD IT FIRST. THE FOURTH CONQUEROR HELD IT SECOND. THE TEN SUPERIORS HELD IT LAST. WITH NO ONE TO SHAPE IT, REALITY TURNS FORMLESS. ACTIONS WILL TAPER OFF. COHESION WILL CEASE. THE PROCESS WILL BE GRADUAL. BUT THE DIGESTION OF A DOT DEMANDS DOOM. THE END OF MAN DRAWS EVER CLOSER. How can you say so without fear? Our ultimate death will soon be here. The doctor stared into the darkness, calmly walking forward. THE DEATH OF THE AUTHOR. NOT OF HIS WORDS. AND NOT OF HIS WORK. THOUGH WE DO NOT EXIST, WE LIVE. THOUGH WE DO NOT THINK, WE TALK. THOUGH WE ARE NOT, WE ARE.

Peeling back the shadows outside the realm of the extant, the doctor stared at the shimmering matrix of reality in all its objectivity. Though those inside claimed to view it as a constantly changing, fluctuating sea of shapes and corners and bubbling universes, when you stood outside, you saw it for what it was. It was an unstoppable, unfolding flower of life that was the fastest thing in existence, for it was existence, and yet as still as a pane of glass, for it did not exist and had never existed. Everything in its web was ensnared by crowns and connecting lines and shifting prismatic tendrils, the forces of plot in their metafictional glory. Encircling unreality was a set of six circles, a set of six circles, and a single circle. Spinning, cartwheeling, and forging themselves into being within were a set of five solids - a tetrahedron, a hexahedron, an octahedron, a dodecahedron, and an icosahedron. The geometry was cooled and hardened, the underlying form within the geometry had rotted away, and the twelve outer circles seemed barren. The inner circle was punched out of being entirely, a hole cut through all conceivable points in Fiction simultaneously. The doctor stared at it, curiously. His head twitched, and he chuckled.

The doctor stared through the eye socket of God, and turned away. The wind was silent - and then he heard a knock at his door.

---

The Restaurant at the End of the Internet was bustling with activity. It had been completely refurbished and renovated, expanded to about five times the size it had been previously, before two miscreants on an oddventure desecrated the establishment. As it turned out, though Cipher had been right about changes to reality "sticking" when perpetrated in the Ends of the Earth, peacekeeping forces tended to restore the status quo rather so quickly. So it went that the Venezuelan dollar had, within a few short hours, returned to its perch of insulting awfulness. But before it had sunk back to rock bottom, one lucky individual had managed to come into possession of almost every Venezuelan dollar in their version of Earth through judicious use of red balloons, movie theater projectors, some covenite, and a sadistic sense of humor. It was this individual that sat behind the helm of the Restaurant now, as its new owner.

The pale figure in the black suit kicked back and relaxed in a booth at the north end of the restaurant, lounging in his riches. This operator (at least, one of them) had gone through his fair share of turbulence after the Second Godmodding War. He knew his... relatives... would hate him after siding with the Narrative back then, and that they’d hate him for siding with the Narrative in the future. But for him, it had seemed like the right thing to do. The logical thing to do. It made sense to his warped alien mind, allegedly. Some nonsense about how you don’t necessarily have to be a good person to be a hero, or something. After all, the label of protagonism isn’t selective. All it takes is for someone to step up and steal the spotlight. And if there’s one thing this man was good at stealing, it was the light. Thereby typically replacing it with darkness and/or static, but that usually goes without saying.

The tall man strained the ears that he didn’t have to listen to a conversation occurring at the next book. He raised his head up a bit and saw its occupants - two soldiers in black and purple armor, one on each side of the table. The tall man cringed slightly, but dusted off his suit, feeling that the best thing to do would be to get this over with. He stood up and walked genially towards the two, clasping his hands together. His tentacles were put away, for now. Welcome to the Restaurant at the End of the Internet, my fine gentlemen. Is there anything at all I could procure for you? The soldier to the man’s left scowled, having not even touched his menu. "Sure. You could tell us how you bought this place, and what you intend to do with it." The tall man twitched slightly, all electronics in the area blaring with static for a split second. Everyone in the restaurant jumped except the staff, who seemed used to it. Well, if you’re really that concerned with knowing... "Uh, yeah," the soldier spoke. "We are." He flashed his badge at the tall man - the official insignia of the Paradox Avoidance Enforcement Squadron, coupled with personal credentials.

Turning backwards to look at the heart of the restaurant, where a whirlwind of food was being prepared with every passing second, the tall man tensed up. He had been afraid of this. The Paradox Avoidance Enforcement Squadron had played a direct hand in reversing the horrors of the Venezuelan supercurrency, and what it had wrought. They’d probably come here, near the edge of Fictional space, to undo the last remnants of its power. If you insist. I acquired it through the use of around two hundred Venezuelan bolivars, and gave this hefty sum to the restaurant’s previous owner, Doctor W. D. Gaster. The two soldiers looked at each other, holograms in their visors flickering in fast-motion. "We think you should know, Mister..." Operator will do, the tall man quipped. "Operator," the soldier continued, "That no official records exist of a 'W. D. Gaster' in our database." The tall man’s head crept closer to the soldiers. I had a peculiar feeling that one of you would say that. You’re attempting to bend the laws of reality in order to close this establishment - one that I purchased quite legally. The right soldier scowled. "Your transaction was held at a time when the Venezuelan bolivar was paradoxically compromised on a conceptual level. By direct order of the Time Baby, any usage of the currency in said interstitial period is to be considered null and void."

Hm. You seem to be confused. Typical behavior of skinbags, the tall man said. It seemed to take a moment before his words clicked with the two in the booth. "Excuse me?" the left soldier venomously muttered. I meant nothing by it. It’s just typical of those who fail to see reality through an objective lens. You have to stand tall to look down upon the patterns. The lights, the shadows. The good doctor may not exist officially, but he can be found to those who have fun looking for him. And you both know this. Yet here you are, attempting to argue the point that his lack of physicality prevents him from having any say in the matter. The right soldier opened his mouth to speak and then closed it. The left soldier growled, slamming the table. "That doesn’t change the fact that you used the Venezuelan bolivar at a time when its existence put our reality in jeopardy!" The tall man seemed to turn away for a moment, his frail hands clenching into fists. Your organization hinges upon the collection and neutralization of paradoxes, correct? Both soldiers hesitantly nodded. "Tell me. Do you see any paradoxes in this establishment?" The soldiers blinked, looking around the restaurant before turning to electronic scanners in their visors. The left soldier scowled again. "The entire reason this place is here, now, is because of a paradoxical material. And we can’t ignore that!" The tall man adjusted his suit and took several steps closer. He was towering over the soldiers, whose hardened expressions began to crack. Do. You see. Any paradoxes. In this establishment, he repeated, slowly and carefully. Traces of static lay behind every word. "N... not directly inside of it, no." The tall man nodded. Then I suggest you leave, before I report you to your superiors for engaging in matters beyond your jurisdiction.

The left soldier sputtered out of confusion. "Y... you... you’ll what?? Do you have any idea how stupid you sound? Our direct superiors are the ones that told us to come here! They instructed us to neutralize the effects of every Venezuelan bolivar! You claim that there aren’t any paradoxes here, but I’m sure that with some sleuthing, we can find the evidence we need. As if we’d trust your word..." Both soldiers stood up, advancing on the tall man, yet he stood his ground. If this is the path you’ve decided to take in these great crossroads of infinity, I can’t really stop you. But you should know-- The left soldier held up his hand. "Save it for later. Scranton, let’s roll." Both soldiers walked out, taking out equipment and weaponry from their belts and cocking it. They kicked down the door of the restaurant, apparently radioing for backup. Soon enough, the restaurant was encircled by several P.A.E.S. vans, sirens blaring. The employees and guests of the place were beginning to get seriously worried. Pepe, who had just nailed the job after spending a period of time in unemployment for being declared walking hate speech, looked up at the tall man with sad eyes. >feels bad man, he declared. The tall man nodded, but walked ahead. Things may look grim, but I have a plan. Tell everyone to stay inside. There’s very little cause for concern. The tall man walked out of the restaurant and into the arms of the squadron.

Twenty black cubes glimmering with kaleidoscopic decals had been arranged in a ring around the restaurant, with personnel standing beside each one. They all muttered amongst themselves, pressing buttons on the cubes, with more personnel standing back beyond the restaurant, near the vans of the squadron. The tall man strolled forward, his feet not touching the ground and his hands in his pockets. Every P.A.E.S. member pointed their weaponry at the tall man as he approached, the sounds of their readied rifles piercing the thin air. The tall man coughed. Good quasievening, gentlemen. I believe that, as law-enforcing personnel, you should know that it’s against restaurant policy to brandish weapons on or around this property. The personnel gave no indication that they’d heard. I have to say, you aren’t doing an excellent job about being diplomatic at all. Opting straight for the warfare approach doesn’t seem very typical of you. A high-ranking officer with silver hair stepped forward. "Yes, well. That tends to happen when you deal with a Skinwalker. Just because you act like a gentlemen, you expect us to treat you like one. But we all know the truth. That you’re a walking natural disaster. A devil in a fine suit." Every devil’s in a fine suit. You can hardly call yourself one otherwise. The officer gritted his teeth. "You get the point. You’re a living manifestation of fear, horror, and senseless brutality. So excuse us if we don’t trust your 'facade.' What’s in this for you, anyway? Shouldn’t you be sucking the souls out of children?" The tall man’s pale head darkened, all kaleidoscopic light sources filling with static for a second. Racist, was his heated one-word reply. The tall man stalked off, hidden in shadow. The officer sighed to himself, then yelled to the others. "Clear the area! Move all innocents inside the restaurant to a neutrality zone! In three minutes, we activate Zeta-Formation!" A chorus of "yes, sir!"s rang out as multiple officers stormed into the building. The tall man sighed, reaching into the void and carving out a door through existence. He knocked once, waited, and then entered.

---

The essence of the Overseer is gone, the suited figure with no head quietly said. Though he had no mouth, and no actual head save for a swirling chasm, his words cut through the void. It was stolen. Eaten. By an... an egg. A white blithering idiot of an egg. I... I thought you should know. The room’s other occupant was a shimmering floating tesseract that was quite small - it could have fit in palm of the figure’s hand - and was constantly spinning in on itself in a kaleidoscopic manner, creating soft twinkling sounds as it did so. "You’re right. I... I can feel it. I can feel the cosmos spinning out of control." The suited figure nodded. Our realm has been on a collision course with the apocalypse for years now. But now, with this recent development, even I can’t predict what will happen at the End of Man. The tesseract floated around the room. "This is awful... Dreadfully awful. Without even the passive supervision of Metatron, the Impartation Simulation will grind to a halt in time. If the Hexahedron breaks, good luck putting that thing back together! The code of reality is going to rot from the inside out! Black holes at every corner! Geometry will lack meaning!!"

The suited figure held his hand. Yes, yes. I’m fully aware of what that entails. Total obliteration of reality by the time the End of Man rolls around. It’s funny. I would have thought you’d be the first to know. The tesseract laughed. "Oh, no one ever tells me anything anymore. Ditzy old Dot, they say! Your memory’s so awful, and you’re so unreliable, why should we come to you when we have Navi to help us? Or Siri?? Why leave out me, the ur example of a tutorial!?" Ocarina of Time was released before FEZ, Dot, the figure said quietly. "So?? From a nonfictional lens, yeah! But no one in here remembers me either! Me, one of the oldest beings in Fiction!" The tesseract shrunk to a corner of the room, sighing to herself. "It’s... not fair." The figure walked over to her and knelt, putting a hand on her spinning figure before moving it away after experiencing nausea. How close were you with Him? The Overseer? The tesseract laughed. "I always called Him METATRON. He was cool with it. I watched Him build that Simulation from the ground-up, forging such important ideas... The concept of refinement, of tetrominoes, of the Parliament... It was groundbreaking! Trend-setting! And I was always there, by his side, helping Him! Me and my trillion trillion trillion copies are all in that Simulation, somewhere. It’s tesseracts all the way up, you know! All stacked together to carefully form a layer of static - an incomprehensible barrier!"

Chuckling, the suited figure stood up. I thought you said you didn’t know anything. The tesseract spun around excitedly. "Oh, there’s lots I don’t know about the Simulation itself! Like what’s up with the Monolith! And why the heart cubes exist! And some of the really complicated puzzles! They’re always so confusing!" And yet you understand the great game of Narrative-Conflict relations like the back of a hand. You’re a clairvoyant of plot, and you’re stumped by a simple puzzle in a simulation? The tesseract floated towards the edge of the room. "Ah well, you know me... I’m prone to crashing, and all that... That’s what you get when you deal with a geezer like me, huh? I’m such an old model that I’m practically the buggiest thing alive!" The suited figure looked at his pocket watch and tilted his head back slightly. The door to the room had been locked tight. "It’s funny, you know... I never really thought He died. Back then, when His physical form was obliterated. The conqueror’s choice... To preserve His soul rather than to take it... It really kept Him alive in my eyes. I made sure to thank him for it... But that’s all gone now. I don’t even have His soul to remember Him by..." The suited figure turned the other way. "Even the Council of Nine bound some of their dragon’s essence to a lock. We have nothing now." The suited figure turned away, looking at the ground. Our relationship has always been peculiar to me. A piece of the Conflict, being friends with an agent of order. It seems contradictory, yet... The tesseract bounced up and down. "You and I both know we want the same thing, no matter what we serve! A better reality... One free from corruption and instability. It’s what He would have wanted. It’s what He always wanted."

The suited figure nodded, and the two sat in silence for some time. They stared at the window lining the wall of the room, watching as the blue pyramid spun through the Void, a chipped statue of an Owl at its capstone. The stars of the Void twinkled in patterns neither of them could see. The suited figure unceremoniously broke the silence. Do you have any heads for me? The tesseract jumped up. "Oh! Yes! Silly me, I almost forgot." The four-dimensional tesseract bent at a right angle to all of space, sliding inwards. They formed a shimmering kaleidoscopic cube. Another universal push, and they flattened into a square. Yet another, and they became a line. Then, with a resounding boom, the tesseract became a dot. A dot that opened up into a hole given time, a hole cutting itself clean through reality. Falling through from the other side was a warrior decked out in shimmering armor. A helmet obscured their face, and their sword was lit with green flame. When they regained their footing, they jumped back at the sight of the suited figure. Unsheathing their sword and running forward, they screamed in a foreign tongue while the suited figure tunneled into the warrior’s mind. At once, the warrior fell to the floor, their brain suffering through multiple seizures as the suited figure commented harshly on every action the warrior took throughout their insignificant life. In a matter of seconds, the warrior grew still. Smoky, abyssal tendrils unwound from the figure’s swirling head. They cleanly detached the warrior’s head from his body, leaving a flowing pool of pitch-black voidmatter. The warrior’s head fit perfectly in the voided hole of the figure’s head, and it spoke through its steel helmet. "Pyrrhic victories, pyrrhic wars." The dot unfolded back into a tesseract, shuddering slightly. "Tetrarch Viridian, a swordfighter under the tutelage of Het Hemera’s descendants. They passed through an event horizon while traveling through the Void on a hoverboard. I found them there, stuck in time." The suited figure nodded once, the helmet rolling up into nonexistence as the typical voided hole returned. Much appreciated. Now, he said, looking again at his watch, I should be leaving.

"You sure? I mean, we could reminiscence on the Overseer some more...!" The suited figure shook his head. The recent past has been recalled. I don’t have much more to say. But I’ll be back, and I’ll need you. My subordinate... Cipher... This is all his fault. Him and his egghead friend... I’ll make them pay. The suited figure’s hands clenched into fists, the void swirling around his head spinning with agitation. I’ll make sure of it. In one swift motion, the suited figure opened the door, stepped through, and shut it, leaving the tesseract to spin on its own. "O-okay then! See you later!" There was an uncomfortable silence. "I really need to work on my timing."

---

The ten figures had all arranged themselves in a circular formation, sitting at their respective seats by a round table. The table was littered with various papers, both handwritten and neatly typed, models of both machinery and entities, ink stains, jagged cyan crystals, and various geometrical shapes. In the middle was what was salvaged from the ruined power core of the Logic Gatekeeper. The ten figures were all identical, dressed in perfect black suits, adorned with gleaming nametags, their heads topped with sleek brown hair, and their faces pressed into depressing frowns. Their circular meeting hall was completely silent, and very little light besides the ambient natural light from the glass ceiling filtered through. Like so many others, they spun through the Void listlessly.

The ninth suited figure, with one eye blinding teal and the other solid gold, cleared his throat and tried to speak. Yet no words came out of his mouth. The seventh suited figure, whose eyes were light pink, sighed. "This is pointless. All of it. Pointless!" The fourth figure, with cyan eyes, interjected. "Caret, please. Now’s not the ti--" "Oh, haha, get it?? Not the ‘time!’ And you’re about time!! Wow, what a funny joke! That’s all we are! Jokes!" The fifth figure, with magenta eyes, stood up now. "Cut it out, all of you! I get it, we’re stressed, this is awful, but--" Number seven pointed an accusatory finger at number five. "NO. No, I’m done going along with this. All we can we be are archetypes. Blank shells! A cold, calculating personality, a lack of care for life, and some elemental power! All because of symbols! Sins! Sins are our shackles! Can’t you understand?!"

There was a tense silence as everyone sat back down. The sixth figure, with hollow eyes, spoke quietly. "I... understand. Despite our powers... Our metachronistic sight... We’re statues, really. Fated to make the same choices, act the same ways, every time. We exist in nine dimensions, yet we’re incapable of change. Stuck. Rooted here. In the world tree of world trees." The second figure, with grey eyes, nodded. "It’s like... we lost Him all over again." The ninth figure cleared his throat once more. "Are we done? Can I start?" There were several curt nods. "Listen, Caret..." he said. "I get what you’re saying. God knows we’ve all thought these things before. But giving up on all our plans isn’t what He’d want. And you and I both know that." The third figure stared at the pile of papers in front of him. With golden eyes, he spoke. "Lozenge, go... go ahead. Do your thing." The ninth figure coughed into his hand and spoke with a loud, booming voice.

"I call this official meeting of the Superiors to order," he said. "State... state your name and rank." The first figure, with black eyes, spoke. "Octothorpe, Keeper of Words, present and accounted for." The second figure spoke. "Pilcrow, Consumer of Shadows, present and accounted for." The third figure spoke. "Asterism, Spirit of Voice, present and accounted for." The fourth figure spoke. "Ampersand, Seer of Anachronism, present and accounted for." The fifth figure spoke. "Backslash, Bearer of War, present and accounted for." The sixth figure spoke. "Obelus, Judge of Death, present and accounted for." The seventh figure spoke. "Caret, Priest of Radiance, present and accounted for." The eighth figure, with pale blue eyes, spoke. "Dagger, Wielder of Absolute, present and accounted for." The ninth figure spoke. "Lozenge, Abstraction of Abstract, present and accounted for." The tenth figure, with stars in his eyes, spoke. "Interrobang. Head of..." His voice trailed off. "...God. Present and accounted for."

The ninth figure awkwardly bowed while seated, as though they’d forgotten to stand up, and muttered "At ease." No one else had stood up either, so they all shuffled in their seats. "Our order of business," the ninth figure said, "Is the discussion of what just occurred within the Garden of Geometry, and what we will do moving forwards. Octothorpe. You first." The first figure stood, brushing lint off his suit. "As you all know, Project Doorway was fully activated for the first time several hours ago. Its power source, a duplicate of a ‘Flumpty Bumpty,’ subconsciously lured William Cipher and the actual ‘Flumpty’ to our location, and imprinted the manifold sixty-four bit divine Name of truth into his unchained brother’s head. The thyme-based Flumpty spoke it, Cipher gained the Interpunct from what little power of the Overseer remained here, and defeated the Gatekeeper in combat. Flumpty unchained his duplicate, and the latter..." The figure’s voice trailed off. He shook his head multiple times, and sat back down, apparently unable to continue. The second figure stood. "I suppose I can’t beat around the bush," he said. "The Overseer is gone. Expunged. Erased. There’s now a hole in reality where he once was." We all felt it, all ten of us. And none of you can deny it. And the Gatekeeper... Now it’s gone, too."

The third figure stood up. "Project Binary is terminated. Project Doorway is terminated. Those were our two biggest options. Our two biggest tickets to total power. Reduced to absolute nothingness over the span of a few years. All because of some Descendants that beat plot. Influence from a plane of reality beyond any of our dimensions is what fuels them - something we can’t predict. Whatever happened to their misuse of our property, anyway? Our... prototype?" The fourth figure stood up. "I haven’t detected any transmissions or uses of the machine in quite some time. Their access of S.N.A.K.E.E.Y.E.S. has ceased, too. My most reasonable guess is that they went full Probect." The entire group shuddered, chanting in full unison. "You never go full Probect," they recited. "Never ever ever." The three figures standing up sat down, and the fifth figure rose. "The Descendants are a moot point to us now. We have all their data, they’re not fighting in any wars that we care about... What matters is the Gatekeeper." The fifth figure motioned to the power core lying in the middle of the table. "As you can see, I excavated this from the Garden of Geometry. It’s not incredibly operational, and I’m not just saying that because Flumpty isn’t inside of it anymore. But it still has importance. All our data on the Descendants is still inside it. If we can relocate a similar power source, it can be reused. But for what?" The sixth figure stood up. "I see great death in the future. The total death of the Overseer won’t stay a secret for much longer. The End of Man is swift approaching, and soon, every force in reality with a say in anything will be butting heads with themselves, and with each other. It would be useful to have a guard of the Gate, so to speak. With the Overseer gone, we will have to defend His legacy."

The seventh figure stood up. "...I miss Him. I miss Him so much. My powers hinge on connection to a god, and now that God is dead..." The sixth figure shook his head. "He died a long time ago, Caret." The seventh figure hissed. "No! As long as we held Him close, and thought of Him, and used His power, he was alive! In our soul of souls! You all felt it, right?" Everyone slowly nodded. "Without His essence, we could have never completed the Gatekeeper. But now, he’s gone. Him sleeping, comatose, behind the Gate felt different than this, somehow. At least back then... He was still there. Watching us. Now, his eye isn’t even closed. It’s gone. And through it all, I’m filled with... with soul-sucking rage." The seventh figure clenched the table. "Why wasn’t it us that got a divine sermon? We’ve spoken his name countless times since his physical death! More than anyone! We know the 64-Bit Name inside and out! But he never appeared on a whirlwind from heaven! He never shared wisdom of the underlying nature of reality! Yet he talks to a demon. A goddamn DEMON! He’d prefer a trickster over his trusted subordinates! The Serpents of the divine Ouroboros!" A harsh silence followed these passionate words. "...Maybe Cipher really was the son of God. I don’t know. But it doesn’t sit well with me at all." The three figure standing sat down, and the eighth figure stood up. "I don’t know about you all, but I think we need to rethink our alliances. Since we banished the Critic - thanks for that, Interrobang -, he’ll probably blab to the entire Conflict about how we directly acted against them and their policy of maintaining control over their subservient villains, or whatever. Cipher’s as much of a wildcard as ever, and so is his egghead friend. Waluigi Thyme and cancer do not mix. Seriously, it’s a horrible recipe. Tastes awful. Let’s say we somehow manage to reconstruct the Gatekeeper before reality falls apart. If we really plan to fight in whatever final conflict is on the horizon, or even get revenge on Bill for taking our god away... Will we stand alone?"

The ninth figure stood up. "Perhaps we should. I know, we’ve always been the type to make alliances and hide in the shadows and manipulate, but... Being passive and sitting back while our machinations inevitably turn to dust isn’t going to help us much, should our goal be to fight. If we want to fight, we run forward. We shackle our enemies with sin. We do what He would do, were He here. That’s always been our mission, and I don’t see it changing. All of you, think about this clearly. If the Overseer were in our shined black shoes, what would he do?" "Sleep," the tenth figure said as he stood up. The ninth figure blinked in shock. "I-Interrobang, now’s not the time to make jokes." The tenth figure shook his head. "I’m not joking. I’m just as hurt by this as the rest of you. METATRON helped me when I needed Him the most, back then. But I figured out Cipher’s plan. I understand what he’s going to do with my glasses. And I understand how horrific it would be if it actually happened." There was general confusion from the entire crowd. The fourth figure addressed the tenth. "I... can’t see anything about Bill happening in our future. Where are you getting this information from?" The tenth figure grimaced. "Objectively. From beyond time. That ol’ doctor was right. Alright, listen. I have a plan, but I need all of you to pay close attention. Got it?" The other nine figures nodded.

"I get it," the tenth figure said. "You’re angry. You’re confused. You’re hurt. And you have been a while. Would a history lesson help put things into perspective?" There were murmurs of assent throughout the crowd. The tenth figure closed his eyes. "Back when the Scribe--" and the tenth figure said that name with as much venom as he could possibly muster "--killed METATRON, the records say his allies convinced him not to use the Interpunct. Instead of taking it to reshape reality, and instead of letting Him use it to win, the Scribe sealed it inside of the Gate, locking it within an incredibly complex prison. You all know this, because you were there. You were the ones that busted it free." The tenth figure paced around the room. "The fires of the Interpunct itself were what fueled our later projects - namely, the Gatekeeper. The untempered flame of reality itself - they were what powered the Sacred Vertex. They were what let our Flumpty bend plot. But we didn’t have the real thing. We were never entrusted with the entirety of his power. Sure, shades and visions and words fluttered down, but never the whole. And I know why. It’s written in scripture that Interpunct only surrenders itself to its rightful heir. That would have been the Scribe, but he forfeited its power. And you’d think it would have fallen to us, but it didn’t. Because Bill Cipher, and not us, is both the son of God and the possessor of Project Binary’s powers. He carries the Interpunct and the Orchid Godhead. Or rather, he would, if the Interpunct was still around. But it... isn’t.

The tenth figure glared at everyone present simultaneously. "It might sound like I’m getting off-track here, but bear with me. You might not think Bill has a lot to gain from destroying the Interpunct - after all, if it was still around, he’d be able to use it. He’s the heir to the throne of the kingdom of heaven, et cetera. But with the Overseer truly gone, as we all know, there’s nothing left to repair the Source Code of Reality in the event that it takes damage. If Bill really wanted to, he has the potential to reshape a large portion of what makes reality tick, and suffer next to no consequences. And I think that’s exactly what he wants to do. He wants to become a god-king of existence, and create a party with rules of his own design. An infinite fun-house. He’s said that his plan is to ‘erase the Zodiac’ so he can’t be killed. But I think it goes deeper. He’s not going to be content with deleting the Descendants’ metaphysical signatures from existence. He’s going to remove every Zodiac from every universe. Every alternate timeline, every pocket dimension, every nook and cranny of the Zoid. We’re looking at the conceptual obliteration of Fiction. After all..." The tenth figure tapped his temple. "Can’t have a plot if you don’t have characters."

The tenth figure finally sat down, leaving everyone in complete silence. After several minutes, the ninth figure spoke. "There’s... no question. We have to stop Cipher from accomplishing his plans. Despite him having the divine right to control our reality, he was not entrusted the mantle of cosmic police force by the Overseer. We were. And thanks to the Ends of the Earth amplifying the effects of our power across all points in time and space, the establishment of the Logic Gatekeeper should now be a constant across all timelines. You all can feel it, can’t you." There were nods throughout the room. "It may be gone in this timeline, but in any others that exist... In all the others where we retain control... It will be there. Guarding the Gate. There’s only one question left. Interrobang," the ninth figure send, turning to the tenth. "How do we stop him." The tenth figure spoke with perfect clarity. "We rebuild the Gatekeeper. We sleep. We enter reality’s mindscape. And we pray."

And so the nine serpents and the head of God continued their sojourn through the Void.

The figure in the tweed suit floated silently across the Void. Eldritch horrors fluttered about his field of view. Any that came dangerously close to him were mentally bisected by a tendril of the figure's keen mind. Their thoughts were laid bare in front of him, indecipherable to mortals, yet not to agents of true darkness. A simple critique dissected them, rendering useless. The voided figure moved onwards. He entered a temple resembling a king's castle, coated with flaking amethyst paint, no doubt assembled carefully eons ago. Pressing his lengthy umbrella to one of the billions of bricks on the castle walls with no hesitations, a tall gate carved itself in the solid stone and swung inwards. The figure pressed on.

The castle's interior was dark and ruined. Hallways that once held red carpet were eaten away by the harshness of the Void. Alien dust coated the floorboards, and the colorings on canvases that once pictured stellar abyssal landscapes had faded. Banquet halls home to massive feasts served for royalty and featuring the cooked carcasses of abominations were destroyed and trashed, as though a stampede had run through. Staircase after staircase was climbed, and special attention was paid to the missing steps, or the ones that teleported those that walked on it - not intentionally, but due to corrosive voidstone. Any system in place that would trap those that entered had been disabled or damaged beyond repair long ago. The figure pressed on.

At last, he made it to a throne room of sorts - the only area in a presentable state throughout the entire castle. There was no ominous wind for the banners to wave in, but they slightly swayed nonetheless, the insignias on them being too dull to make out. The single source of light in the chamber came from its far end, from the figure sitting on the throne. The seat in question wasn't wholly remarkable, consisting of some stone slabs arranged in the rough shape of a chair. Its occupant, however, was quite interesting. He was dressed in the garb of a king, decked out in orchid and various other purple hues. His rippling cloak was arranged with a series of symbols in every known language and then some. Shining, radiant gems adorned his chestplate. His armor seemed like the antithesis of divinium, yet it glittered all the same. In the place of his head was a shimmering crown - an orchid emblem of static glowing against the spatial dimensions of reality. It was a rudimentary image, like a sideways E, but it conveyed absolute power.

The tweed figure walked along the faded carpet, made it to the seat of the throne, and knelt. Hail to the King, he uttered gravely. The figure on the throne made no movements, both of his arms squarely placed on the throne's own arms. What seemed to be a royal scepter and a sword were lodged into the ground on either side. "ƜИѦ†." The figure rose up and coughed. King's Crown, I have reason to believe that my protege, Bill Cipher, is conspiring to destroy every Zodiac in existence. He believes that this will ensure his immortality. I am requesting your assistance in stopping him. The king placed his right hand on where his chin would be, stroking it in a gesture of infinite thinking. "பՈᐭΞᎡ$ᛀØᦥḐ," the king replied. His voice sounded like shattering glass. The king stood from his throne, his cloak billowing as he did so. His crown tilted to look at his scepter - topped by an upside-down pyramid - and his sword - coated in amethyst, and resembling the tooth of a serpent. "⍹∑ ⟒1Ⱡ⨜ ₲Ὅ." The voided figure nodded uncertainly as the king grabbed both implements, wrenching them from the ground. He arranged them in an 'X' over his chest, glowing with power as the tweed figure knelt. The two disappeared with a faint hiss.

---

Not three minutes later, another door of shadow cut itself through reality. It slowly crept open, and the tall man waltzed through. Inky tendrils of darkness curled from the slender man's back, swirling above and around him. They seemed to made of the same material as his suit. The tall man adjusted his suit as the last officers cleared the building. Every member of staff, every guest, and everyone in between had been herded off into a section unceremoniously guarded by several personnel with weapons. The twenty cubes arranged in geometric patterns began to crackle with energy, seemingly waiting for some unknown event. The slender man surveyed the crowd menacingly, stalking over to the commanders.

Continue with this if you must, the tall man told them. But don't be surprised if the results are less satisfactory than you'd hoped. The lead commander rolled his three eyes and gritted his teeth, muttering to the tall man to step aside. The commander stepped forward and raised a hand, yelling to everyone present. "Set the spectrum to red!" Twenty personnel ran forwards, adjusting the machinery in the cubes. Their kaleidoscopic lights diffused into a singular red color that crackled and blared into the sky, trailing in a circular image across the ground. "Dock your Horizon Rifles!" The twenty personnel took out sleek black rifles and plunged them into the cubes, red light and power surging across them. The sturdy platform that the entire restaurant was perched on began to shake. "Fire!" The triggers of twenty rifles were clicked at once, armor materializing onto their owners to protect them from the cascading light-show. Crackling into existence, forged from hard-light, was an icosahedral dome that erected itself over the Restaurant at the End of the Internet. In a matter of seconds, the air within seemed to spontaneously combust, transforming into a volatile material that resembled a cleansing flame. The commanders looked at it with savage victory - yet so did the tall man, in a gesture that confused several.

There were shouts of anger from the crowd in the neutrality zone, who seemed incredulous and appalled at what was going on. The commanders scoffed, the one with the silver hair yelling at them over the din within the dome. "Oh, knock it off! We're doing you all a service here! We're ridding your workplace of the fraudulence and paradoxes it was built upon!" But no one else seemed to share these views. The commanders grumbled to themselves, and after nearly a continuous minute of scorching the Restaurant at the End of the Internet, they called for a ceasefire. The fingers left the triggers, and the rifles were pulled out of the cubes, red lightning crackling through the thin air and fire spilling onto the ground before fading into embers. The icosahedral dome fragmented into pieces, and the churning flame turned into smoke that completely obscured the restaurant from view. The workers wept and shook, fearing that they'd see a ruined establishment - or worse, nothing at all. The personnel stared either stoically or smugly. A combination of both.

Yet when the smoke cleared, the Restaurant at the End of the Internet stood perfectly still and pristine, leaving the dome exactly as it had entered it. The Paradox Avoidance Enforcement Squadron's faces contorted into rage and confusion. "WHAT," the commanders all shouted at once, followed by obscenities. There was mass panic, and for once, the workers were silent. The tall, slender man walked through the swarming crowd, whistling to himself, but the commanders grabbed him, pulling him aside before he could reach the door. "You!" they yelled. "You did this! What did you do? We should have you arrested for obstructing the progression of parajustice!" The tall man's head darkened and contorted, the technology in the armor of every personnel blaring into static. The entire squadron backed away in agony and confusion, staring grimly at the tall man. I told you, he said. There were no paradoxes in this establishment. The only thing I bought with the Venezuelan money was the legal ownership - which I just now reaffirmed, legally, without the presence of the currency. All these refurbishments were forged from shadow. The tall man waved his hand, a tendril of darkness curling around him. It hammered itself into static and fell to the ground with a thunk as a perfectly formed table. He also pulled out a contract stating he had ownership of the establishment. It was written in English, Cyrillic, Wingdings, twenty-third century Spanish, Old Gaelic, Sumerian, and whatever language is used in 207̃012.

The gears turned in the commander's heads. "So you're telling me you made us conduct an operation on this facility by intentionally making us believe its newfound riches resulted from paradoxes when there were none, wasting our precious time and God knows what else." The tall man shrugged. That's what I told you from the beginning. There were no paradoxes. The money's out of my hands - it's in the doctor's, now. I'm free, and there's nothing you can do to stop me. The commander practically seethed with anger at this point. "What was the point in having us do this, huh?? What do you have to gain from, from, making us waste resources here?! There's always an ulterior motive!" The tall man took a step back. I made you do nothing. This was what you brought upon yourselves. The P.A.E.S. seemed incapable of taking these words as fact, shouting and hollering about their situation while they hurriedly packed up their gear. The intensity of their remarks only grew as they filed away into their ships, and as they flew away, their screams outweighed the sounds of their engines. The staff of the restaurant alternated between staring in silence and ushering the guests back into the building. A floating head of surrealism shuffled over to the tall man. i fell ｃ ｏ ｎ ｆ ｕ ｓ ｅ ｏ ｎ ...why were them ANGERY?

The tall man's head gazed at the limitless cosmos. Sanity-draining powers work wonders on the fragility of the humanoid psyche, he said. But I wonder why in this case. The Squadron is known for their defenses against many reality-warping techniques and programs. They should have blocked my power. But they didn't."The head drank from his Bepis and looked along with the tall man. W-H-A-T doth it meme, he queried. It means, the tall man continued, that they aren't operating at full capacity. Something has them occupied. And I think I want to find out what.

The tall man walked back through the doors of the restaurant, leaving the universe behind him.

---

At the very top of a gleaming metal tower erected in the middle of nowhere, a man in a blue shirt and a red cape was sunbathing. The scar arcing down the left side of his face gleamed in the sunlight, as did his robotic arm. He flipped through the newspaper absentmindedly and reached for the bucket of popcorn beside him. His excitement at the prospect of savoring some delicious popped kernels was shattered when he found there were barely any crumbs left. Scowling, the man hopped off of his chair on the roof, pressing a nonexistent button and teleporting many floors down.

He appeared in the middle of a bustling popcorn creation factory. Rows upon rows of tall glass towers superheated at the temperature most conducive to optimal popcorn popping stretched to the expansive ceiling, with robotic and Minecraftian workers surveying the whole project. Each worker that saw the scarred man invariably jumped up, yelped, and saluted him. The scarred man seemed to pay no mind to the patriotic behavior, muttering to himself as he walked to the largest glass tower, the one adorned with elaborate gold furnishings and patterns. It was staffed by a series of golems, each of which dropped to their knees, put their hands over their heart, and recited a poem of allegiance to the man, which actually consisted of them insulting themselves in several dead languages.

The man held his robotic hand up to silence them, and their vocal chords fell out. "I'm not here to listen about how great I am - a rarity, right? If I wanted that I'd go literally anywhere else. No, I came here to get some damn popcorn. Ya feel me, Golem #DAA520?" Golem #DAA520 nodded. "I know you feel me. You feel me deeper than maybe any other golem here, because you're named after the hexadecimal color code of my speech. Totally coincidental, I assure you. BUT ANYWAY." The scarred man slammed his fist onto his other hand. "I remember saying I wanted popcorn." Scrambling to activate the machine and prepare a bucket of delicious buttered popcorn, the golems practically tripped over themselves in their haste. The scarred man turned and chuckled, noticing a ventriloquist's dummy stumbling over to him. In his hands was a stack of papers.

"Sir," the dummy intoned, "Reports have come in about the squadron of Decoys that you dispatched to the Infinity Train several weeks ago." The scarred man grinned. "About time. I was beginning to think that nothing would come from that whole expedition. Let me see the papers." The dummy held on to them. "It won't do you much good. They're all notices of termination. Every Decoy you sent died in battle." The scarred man blinked, looking over them curiously. "...Cipher and Flumpty, huh? Not exactly surprised to see those two powerhouses still kicking, but I'm still not that pleased about it. Did they... come back with anything, at least?" The dummy handed the scarred man an envelope, which he took and opened. Inside was a pile of golden tickets. The scarred man looked at them with glee, putting the envelope in his pocket. "Well, what do you know! I ended up getting exactly what I needed!" The dummy twitched. "Sir... If I could ask--" "Of course you can, Creepy Dummy #14D581. You're my friend. Legally." Taken aback slightly, the dummy started up again. "Well... What did you need a pile of train tickets for?" The scarred man laughed as the popcorn machine let out an amplified siren, a bucket of steaming hot freshly-buttered popcorn ejecting from its base. The scarred man held it in his robotic hand. "That's for me to not tell you and for you to not know, shorty," he said smoothly. Then the scarred man's cape bellowed as he took a few steps and teleported away.

A blinding golden light spilled from the tower as the scarred man harnessed the power within the tickets of the Infinity Train. The skies seemed to part, and the earth rumbled. And then, after a few seconds, it all stopped. The scarred man held, in his hands, a shining golden USB drive. The concept of infinity, distilled into a single piece of technology. He uploaded it to the internet, spread rumors like wildfire about Cartoon Network picking up Infinity Train as a show and posted incredibly convincing stills and videos about future episodes that had been made on the USB, and watched as rage flooded all corners of the web upon the news that they had been apparently faked by the creator of the show.

The scarred man sat back and feasted on rage. The pulsing, hazy beat of anger that clouded eardrums and put a red filter on vision. The sheer annoyance that was liable to instill idiotic decisions and cloud rationality. One that would even drive people to quit. He sat back and feasted on it all.

For that's what he did, really. It's what he'd always do.

---

The egg took a sip from a completely monochrome drink in an ornate glass. His body flashed monochrome for a bit, and he seemed to be in a self-made silent movie. When he came out of the illusion, he spoke. I have one question for you. SHOOT, the triangle said casually. The egg pulled out an Ultra Slugger and shot three glasses positioned on the countertop perfectly, punching clear holes through them. He brought the smoking nozzle to his mouth and blew on it, in that gesture every gunslinger does to seem cool. What was it like? Holding the flames of reality, I mean. The triangle squinted his eye, bringing his hand to his frame in a gesture of thinking. ...INTERESTING. IT WAS WHAT I USUALLY SAW, BUT AMPLIFIED. I COULD SEE EVERYTHING CLEARER, AND IN A METAPHYSICAL SENSE TOO! THE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN EVERYTHING IN EVERY CONCEIVABLE EXISTENCE UNFOLDED FOR ME, EVEN THE ONES I COULD NEVER SEE NORMALLY! And what about when you were almost dying? Could you, like, feel yourself slipping into darkness or something to that effect?

At this, the triangle's body paled, his pupil shrinking to a dot and darting around. OH, UH, WELL, I... He sighed, putting his towering glass on the counter as it sloshed with what seemed like drinkable tar. I KNOW THAT TRUTH IS OVERRATED WHEN YOU COULD EASILY LIE AND MANIPULATE THE BELIEFS OF EVERYONE AROUND YOU IN DOING SO, BUT I'LL BE HONEST WITH YOU, FLUMPTY. I SAW MY DEATH. The triangle seemed to age as he said those words. You saw yourself be consumed by white flame? The triangle's body turned back and forth, as though he was shaking his "head." NO, NO. I KNEW I WOULDN'T DIE IN THE ARMS OF GOD. THOSE WHO BELIEVE IN HIM WILL FIND THEMSELVES PROTECTED BY A FORTRESS AND A STRONGHOLD, A BEACON AGAINST THE WAVES. THE LORD IS MY SHELTER, MY DELIVERER! Reign it in a bit, Mr. Jehovah's Witness. MY POINT IS, I WASN'T ABLE TO TALK, BUT I WAS ABLE TO THINK. AND I KNEW THAT I WAS GOING TO LIVE. BUT I ALSO KNEW THAT I WAS GOING TO DIE, LATER. AND I SAW MY DEATH. MY EVENTUAL DEATH. The egg was quiet. ...What was it like?

The triangle stared into the distance, his body's orchid color fading into static before displaying a sequence of events. A cascading comet spiraling across a starry void, wrought with amethyst fire that trailed into twin beams of red and blue. Fragments of glass scattered across the void, blending into static. A broken, burned top hat was tossed aside, discarded. The frail figure of a broken triangle charted the abyss, and though there were no sound waves, there was sound. A beat that played every second. It sounded like a clock. Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Tick...

And then there was a sudden explosion. A burst of light that expanded into a blinding red fireball. A fireball that surged across the entirety of the triangle's body until the light coming from his exponentially outweighed the natural light of the bar. With a single motion, the triangle snapped his fingers, and his body returned to normal. THE CRITIC WAS RIGHT, he said. NO MATTER WHAT I DO, I'M DESTINED FOR DEATH! ALL I ACCOMPLISHED WAS THE DELAYING OF INEVITABILITY. AND BELIEVE ME, I PRACTICALLY EMBODY INEVITABILITY AT THIS POINT. WHEN I DIE, MY EYE GOES ALONG WITH ME. AND WHEN MY EYE GOES... The sentence didn't need to be finished. The hard-boiled egg understood perfectly. But there was the sound of someone getting up from behind the egg and the triangle, and before they understood, an empty Snapple glass slammed onto the counter. The two turned and saw the figure in the red cloak. "Give me some Snapple-flavored Snapple." WHAT. "GIVE ME. SOME SNAPPLE-FLAVORED SNAPPLE." I HEARD YOU THE FIRST TIME! One refill of Snapple-flavored Snapple later, the man in red was contented, sipping from his glass. "This is 'End of the Internet' shit, huh?" The triangle nodded. WE RAIDED THEIR ENTIRE BAR. GOTTA SAY, IT WAS A NICE WAY TO END OUR ADVENTURE. WOULDN'T YOU AGREE, DJ FLUMP? The egg began to retort at his nickname, but seemingly decided against it and just nodded. The man in red chuckled. "'End?' No, Bill, I think you're confused. Your adventure isn't over." Bill blinked. HOW DO YOU KNOW MY NAME? "Dude, come on. You know my voice, and you can see everything. How the hell do omniscient figures have any doubt or uncertainty? Is it intentional? Because every time I did it it was." VERY FUNNY. NOW REVEAL YOURSELF, SO I CAN BE SURE THAT I'M RIGHT! The cloaked figure didn't move. COME ON, HELP ME FEEL BETTER ABOUT MYSELF. He sighed, and pulled off his swirling red hood.

It revealed a ghostly white face with green glasses. Split. "I owe you one, funnily enough. If what you saw is true... You're the creator of my power source. So, something something, I'm forever in your debt. Now, anything you need help with?" Bill looked at Flumpty, staring at his swirling glass of tar. AS A MATTER OF FACT, GREEN GLASSES, THERE MIGHT BE! THERE MIGHT BE AFTER ALL. SO LISTEN UP, KID. Split nodded.

Together, the three of them spun through an arm of a reality with no center, gazing at the miracle of an old ending.

[x]