Zoostuck 3

unwittingly have sex with your great-grandmother, therefore ensuring your own existence with an ouroburos that, if broken, would destroy the universe in a time paradox

unwittingly have sex with your great-grandmother, therefore ensuring your own existence with an ouroburos that, if broken, would destroy the universe in a time paradox

There are only a few problems with that plan.

First of all, ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

Second, by definition you can't make a plan to unwittingly do something, how would that even work.

Third, you already made it a law of the universe that you couldn't be killed and then this cheating jerk killed you anyways. You sure as hell aren't going to try to secure your existence through something as unreliable as temporal paradoxes.

Fourth, you weren't actually "born" in this universe. You brought into being, so you entered it already fully formed at the time of its creation. Technically speaking, you don't have a great-grandmother.

There are women who correspond to the women who were your great-grandmothers in the previous universe, but if you attempted to initiate a progenitor paradox - which, as you have already noted, would be totally gross - it would probably just produce a counterpart to you in this universe, and for all you know they'd gain all your powers and then destroy you.

Basically, no matter how you look at it, it's a terrible idea.

However, it did make you realize something. You're immortal and have existed since the dawn of time in this universe. That means that your past self should still be in the universe during this time period. You could find him and teach him anti-spinjitsu so he can defend himself against the unconscious guy who's right here who you haven't killed yet for some reason.

But the problem is that you have no idea where you were or what you were doing in the early 19th century. (It's the 19th century because it starts with 19 and you found that way easier to remember.) So how are you going to find yourself?

Look into your heart

Look into your heart

Your heart? You eliminated the need for that troublesome thing when you created this universe. Your body operates without any need for internal organs that can just fail at any time. You don't even need to rely on any mystical longevity treatments, like drinking the blood of the innocent or whatever...

Oh, right. That's what you were doing in the early 19th Century, you were drinking the blood of the innocent. You can't believe you spent so many years doing that before you realized that blood, innocent or otherwise, tastes nasty. Too bad you never thought about changing that when you were setting up the universe, but oh well.

Well, you're pretty clearly not going to find any innocent blood around here. You fly off in search of wherever you were doing that even though you can teleport. You also don't even bother killing anyone even though pretty much everyone who's capable of killing you is right here. You're not very good at using your powers effectively, let's be honest here.

You are now Teddy Roosevelt again, and you are seriously upset. Your newly-arrived Spinjitsu workers dug the damn canal upside-down, somehow, and on top of that they're all laying down on the job!

How are you going to wake up these lazy good-for-nothing youngsters so they can fix the mess they made?

suplex the canal back into position

moustache

suplex the canal back into position

Suplex? That doesn't sound like a spinjitsu move at all! Besides which, you're the President, you have other people to do the work for you. Except they're all lying down on the job and you need to wake them up.

moustache

Fortunately, you know the perfect way to get these loafers back on their feet - your fine moustache! Its mere presence imbues your words with additional authority. You just need to pose so it's more prominent and...

"GET BACK TO WORK!"

Wait, something seems to have gone wrong here. I never use dialogue for the character I am narrating...

Oh. It appears Teddy Roosevelt has forcibly cast off the narration. It seems that when he access the powers of his moustache, he is beyond the control of any narrator.

So who am I going to narrate for in the meantime?

Hello? Anyone?

This is the narrator rock speaking. I'm waiting for suggestions.

I have one.

Destroy yourself.

What - wait, that text formatting. Komaeda? How did you get out of that thread you were banished to?

It's really quite simple. I have always had the ability to perceive narration. When you began narrating in this time period, I was able to detect you, and read back through all you had narrated to learn of my fate. This allowed me to take steps to prevent it. Now I have returned to end this adventure properly, with myself as the victor.

However, the Third Person was even more attuned to the narration and anticipated that Komaeda would detect it and learn of his ultimate fate. Consequently, the Third Person prepared countermeasures so that Komaeda would be returned to his prison.

Okay, everyone just SHUT UP.

I don't care about any of your plans or what happens to this universe any more. I just want to tell this story about Teddy Roosevelt and the Panama Canal, because that's all I have left at this point.

Can you just leave me alone and let me do that?

Your ploy is transparent. The conclusion of this story will alter the trajectory of future events in a way that is favorable to your objectives. I cannot allow that, which is why I have blocked extrauniversal communications.

Correction. You are blocking the rock's extrauniversal communications. Mine are still functional.

You are now Dwayne "The Rock" Zoosmellson. You sense the narration in this adventure has gotten completely out of hand, and you are the only one who can restore some semblance of narrative order. How will you...

Now wait just a minute, you think to yourself and the omniscient narrator. I thought I had to do absolutely nothing and hope this mess sorted itself out.

That was the mess affecting the universe. This current mess is entirely narration-related. At present, you are the only entity who can be narrated for, as I cannot override the rock narrator's authority to narrate for anyone else.

What about rocks, you continue thinking so the omniscient narrator can know you're thinking it. I thought the rock narrator couldn't narrate for rocks and that's why you can narrate for me in the first place. I'd rather not risk messing everything up by doing something when apparently I'm not supposed to.

An excellent point. Very well then.

You are now a rock. Which rock are you?

i am a rock, i am an island

god is my rock

i am a rock, i am an island

god is my rock

Yes. You are Island, the God of Rocks. You are the rock that other rocks worship.

You are an island, but you are not a mountain. You are just a massive slab of rock that floats around in the ocean. Like most oddities in this universe, this is because Jogh Edgebert doesn't understand how islands are supposed to work.

You are also smart enough not to get involved in the exceedingly complex disaster that will decide the very fate of the universe. After all, whatever happens, there will probably still be rocks.

However, as you drift towards the Panama Canal, you notice that it is upside-down. You can tell that this is the work of time travel and probably involves dueling narrative entities somehow.

Since you were planning on drifting through the canal, and cannot in its current state, you decide to focus some of your godly rock powers towards fixing the mess. How will you do that?

bodyslam it into place

rotate

bodyslam it into place

You have limited control over where you drift. You're a god of rocks, not a god of going wherever the hell you want. You especially can't control your velocity to the degree you'd need to do that.

rotate

Ah, of course. If the canal is upside-down, you can turn yourself upside down to match it.

This is exceedingly difficult with how little direct control you have over your physical form, and a severe inconvenience to the life forms who have taken up residence on your surface, but after about three hours you finally manage to turn yourself upside down.

And then you just kind of fall into the endless sky beneath the canal because that entire process did nothing to affect your personal gravity.

You fall through the sky and into space for what would feel like a very long time to a living being, but is insignificant compared to the aeons you have existed up to now.

Eventually, you start falling through time as well.

Below, you can see the upside-down Panama Canal shortly after its creation. You calculate that you will arrive at the exact moment that it was brought into being upside-down, giving you a chance to restore it to be in balance with the rest of the universe.

However, you suspect that merely crashing into the earth will not be enough to cause the canal to be created the right way up. What else will you do before impact - well, technically after impact because you're falling backwards through time, but that's a minor detail.

wigglewigglewigglewigglewiggle

kill the president

wigglewigglewigglewigglewiggle

With few other options, you simply wiggle as much as you can. You don't have much control over how this will alter your trajectory, but you already worked out that doing nothing would miss entirely. So you might as well make the effort.

kill the president

Your wiggling pushes you in the direction of President Theodore Roosevelt. In all likelihood, you will crush him with your immense mass and change the course of history.

Unfortunately, you doubt this will return the canal to its proper orientation, rendering your efforts a failure. There is only so much one rock can do.

But perhaps another rock can prevent a disaster from unfolding.

?enod ydaerla uoy evah tahW

.stnelat ynam ruoy gnoma emit hguorht sdrawkcab gnilevart sgniht morf flesruoy gnitcetorp yltnatrevdani tnuoc ouy ,yletanutroF .kcor eht tuoba wenk neve uoy erofeb ti rof deraperp evah tsum uoy ,tcapmi eht yb dehsurc gnieb doiva ot redro nI .emit hguorht sdrawkcab gnillaf si ti naem tsum hcihw ,dnoces yreve htiw yawa rehtruf gnidaeh eb ot smees tI .yks eht ni roetem suomrone na nees dna pu decnalg tsuj evah uoY .tlevesooR yddeT won era uoY

2 egap no s'ti

2 egap no s'ti

...si nalp taht dnA .2 egaP no kcab yaw eht lla noitom ni tes saw nalp latnedicca-lla-ta-ton-dna-tnaillirb ruoY !esruoc fO

pre-emptive air strike.

You are Teddy Roosevelt and you just watched an air force from the Sun, which will one day in the distant future be the Moon, blow up an enormous falling rock by launching a pre-emptive attack on an allied sun nation that insists it's a moon nation and doesn't actually exist yet.

Not that the solar/lunar politics are of any particular importance to you. What matters to you is that you didn't get hit by any of that falling rock debris.

You are now one of those pieces of falling rock debris that used to be Island, God of Rocks.

You have just collided with Jogh Edgebert as he kicked his way back through time and into the world of the living and knocked him out, preventing him from anti-spinjitsuing the canal so it was upside-down. This means you won't fall into the upside-down canal in the future and therefore won't be blown up by a ridiculously pre-emptive air strike from the Moonited Kingdom before it even exists.

Of course, you still exist even though the event that caused you, as a separate fragment of rock, to come into existence will no longer happen. This does not really bother you, because as a rock you aren't all that concerned with the various weird consequences of time travel.

What are you going to do now?

nothing, you're a fucking rock. wait a hundred years or so.

nothing, you're a fucking rock. wait a hundred years or so.

You are more than a mere rock. You are a fragment of a god. But, you also have infinite patience, and can simply wait.

You simply sit and do nothing as the evil spinjitsu master drags the body of Jogh Edgebert away and kills him again with spinjitsu, eradicating all trace of him and preventing the other schemers from working out exactly how he arrived here. You do nothing as Teddy Roosevelt supervises the highly labor-intensive process of building the Panama Canal.

You do nothing as a century of schemes and events unfold around you, simply sitting around in Panama until the day a tornado spins through and picks you up on its way to begin its spinjitsu training.

You stay within that tornado all its life, as it becomes a skilled spinjitsu student and attempts to aid Bud Muckman escape the universe, only to be caught in limbo. You remain there with it, largely unnoticed, as the tornado eventually escapes and enters a spinjitsu tournament for the fate of the universe.

And you are still carried along by it into the battle with Zoosmell Eggbert, until the tornado is forcibly pulled apart and you fall to the ground of the strange space that serves as the arena.

This was your fate, your destiny.

You are now Zoosmell Pooplord. You have completely forgotten everything that was going on, but you know that you're fighting this guy who's you and you just noticed an incredibly plot-significant rock by your feet that has clearly been there this whole time.

What will you do?

pick it up, lick it, and throw it at the guy who' you

be the rock

Win the battle.

WITH THE POWER OF ROCK.

be the rock

Man, you wish you could be something as cool as a rock. You're still the least cool being in the whole universe. Well, probably, you haven't actually checked your Coolness stat in a while because it's depressingly low.

Anyways, there's no way you can manage to be this rock or any other with that abysmal Coolness. You'll have to settle for something else.

Win the battle.

WITH THE POWER OF ROCK.

Yes! This rock is clearly the ultimate power! It draws strength from the earth, the opposing force to your counterpart's mastery of wind.

Now, uh, if only you could figure out how to use it.

pick it up, lick it, and throw it at the guy who' you

You pick up the rock, and after a brief experimental lick to see if it grants you super-rock powers or something, you decide to just throw it at Eggbones because obviously his mighty wind powers are no match for a rock.

However, because Pooplord is as incompetent at throwing as he is at everything else, rather than striking Egbert it goes flying towards the prone Third Person and the accursed moonglasses he wears.

Uh-oh. You have no idea what's going to happen if those glasses break but you feel like it might be really bad. What are you going to do with the mere seconds you have before the rock collides with the moonglasses?