Zoostuck 2

my grandfather always said, look in the last place first

In the water closet

my grandfather always said, look in the last place first

Yeah, that would be great advice if you knew where the last place was. Maybe if you had inexplicable time-manipulation powers like everyone else seems to you could, but you just have your fists, your feet, and the ability to make books play theme music of your choice. It's not like you can use any of that to...

Wait a minute. You just had a stupid idea, which might actually work given how stupid the entire universe is. You've got a math textbook right here. If you make it play some dramatic music for a final confrontation, that may make one actually happen.

It's completely stupid, but so is everything else. You give it a shot.

You make the book play a suitable tune and dramatically open the nearest door, which leads to...

In the water closet

A closet filled with water. More water than you've ever seen in your life.

And something's coming out of it... goddamn, it's the arms. Except they're changing into something...

You think your music shenanigans may have accidentally triggered the final battle. What are the arms turning into?

armaments

armaments

They seem to have turned into two gigantic arms wielding ridiculously oversized weapons. Honestly, it's kind of anticlimactic, but then, this is probably just the first phase. Final battles tend to get ridiculous.

You are now the principal, and you've suddenly stopped in mid-speech. Normally you would be completely unshakeable due to your incredible fortitude and composure, but this is different.

Someone is nearing a resolution. You have to stop it immediately.

Unfortunately, you haven't finished your speech and it would be an unforgivable travesty were the students and faculty to miss even a single word of it. You will need to use your genius intellect to find a way to prevent the resolution of this problem while still finishing your speech and convincing everyone to abandon the idea of resolution.

So how are you going to do that?

follow by example, abandon the resolution of your own speech

follow by example, abandon the resolution of your own speech

Of course. It's so ingenious you must have thought of it already. As brilliantly written as your speech is, there is no more suitable way to end it than by failing to resolve it and driving home your point.

Or at least that's how you can pass it off. Really, your point is just that other people shouldn't resolve things - you're all about resolving your plotline of rewriting the entire universe so you can be the author of an incredibly successful webcomic. And why not? Yours is the greatest plotline in all of existence. You're doing all those other plotlines a favor by preventing their resolutions, which would only be outshined by the perfection of your own plotline.

Regardless, you promptly demonstrate your point by announcing that the speech is over so that it will never be resolved. Then you run back into the school so you can put a stop to this decisive battle. You can't allow anyone's actions to be decisive except your own!

You're now Zoosmell Pooplord again. You've completely lost the plot, which isn't surprising considering how often your personal history's been rewritten lately.

The principal at this high school you apparently go to just rushed back into the school after giving a boring speech. Everyone seems to think that means the fire drill is over, so they're heading back in.

You're pretty sure, though, that the principal is the mastermind behind the whole scheme. Or maybe he's just a puppet of a singularity of complexity. You lost the plot here, too. But you're pretty sure that the only way to get the timeline back on track to whatever it's supposed to be involves stopping him.

So what are you going to do?

play hooky

put his car up the flagpole

play hooky

Yeah! He's the principal, so his nefarious plan must be for you to get an education! Well, you'll show him! You'll skip school for the rest of the day!

You're already bored. You have a really short attention span. You should probably actually do something while skipping school.

put his car up the flagpole

Heck yeah! Reckless disdain for authority! That's where it's at! You'll show them who really runs this school, which will be you after you put the principal's car up the flagpole!

There's just two problems with this plan. First, you don't know which car is his. Second, you don't know where the flagpole is.

Oh, wait, there's a third problem, you have no idea how you'd actually get his car up the flagpole.

And given your attention span, you've got maybe thirty seconds before you give up on this plan and do something else. So how are you going to resolve all these problems?

Put them all up the flagpole. Just do it. Don't care how. Just will it to be done.

divine where his car is. With the ancient car spirits you go bowling with every tuesday.

Put them all up the flagpole. Just do it. Don't care how. Just will it to be done.

Yeah, screw that. You're putting all your assorted problems up the flagpole, and by that, you mean this flag.

Oh. It's the state flag for North Carolina, apparently. This is less satisfying than you thought.

divine where his car is. With the ancient car spirits you go bowling with every tuesday.

You've never gone bowling in your life, except with how messed-up your personal timeline is that may not be true. You start meditating to consult the car spirits that probably don't exist, and focus on your principal's face and yeah you have no idea what you're doing and this is boring, forget it.

Hey, wait a second. Is that a Delorean in the parking lot?

It is! A very familiar looking one. Maybe you can stop the principal through time travel!

You rush over to the car and discover that it's locked. Well, that's just great. Now what are you going to do?

Find, like, half a brick or a rock or something and smash open one of the windows.

Check underneath it for the keys

check underneath the welcome mat. failing that, the fake rock. failing that, use the fake rock to smash open the windows

Check underneath it for the keys

Against all odds, you actually find a keyring under the car. That's kind of crazy. Now you just need to get inside.

Find, like, half a brick or a rock or something and smash open one of the windows.

And the obvious way to do that is to smash the window with the keyring, so that's what you do.

Except you aren't all that strong and neither are the keys for that matter, so you just kind of scratch the windows. Still, that'll totally show the principal! Assuming this is his car.

Wait a minute, the car's lighting up. What's happening?

it's being taken into a battle to the death

It's being into a battle to the life because this is the world of zombie cars

everything dead is alive, and everything dead can kill you. welcome to dead alive

it's being taken into a battle to the death

Oh, wait, you've heard about this, sometimes extradimensional entities get bored and grab a bunch of people - or sometimes things - from different universes and then make them fight.

Well, you can't do any pranks with this car if it disappears! So in that impulsive-and-stupid way that you always do things, you leap onto it and vanish as it does.

Wait, where is this?

It's being into a battle to the life because this is the world of zombie cars

Uh, there's a bunch of zombie cars here and some weirdo is saying something about how when these cars lose the battle they come back to life? This really doesn't make any sense, but it's not like that's anything new for you. You barely notice the introductions before you're flung off to a strange place...

everything dead is alive, and everything dead can kill you. welcome to dead alive

Which is your high school except with dead things coming back to life and trying to kill you. The host guy, whoever that is, calls it Dead Alive.

Man, this is weird even for your nonsensical universe. You just want to get out of here. Fortunately, the apparently-a-zombie Delorean was unlocked during the shift, so you hop in and go back in time to before this battle thing even started.

What's your temporal destination?

1929, right before the Great Depression. you're gonna make a killing on the stock market

To the beginning

The shankathon , i guess in a few days?

To the beginning

That's right, you're going to where and when this mess all started. You're putting a stop to it before everything gets out of hand. You're headed to...

1929, right before the Great Depression. you're gonna make a killing on the stock market

1929. The stock market is going to crash, and that's the start of everything. You probably can't actually stop the crash because you don't know anything about investing, but maybe you can keep the biggest problems from happening and making a mess of the whole universe.

Of course, that's just a time. You need a place, too.

Wait, as soon as you enter 1929 in the Delorean's time controls, it automatically starts driving. You'll just have to hope you emerge somewhere you can fix things!

And you end up in...

The shankathon , i guess in a few days?

The 1929 Old-Fashioned Shankathon. Well, this is awkward. You don't have a knife! All you have is a time-traveling car that may or may not also be a zombie.

Wait a minute, something weird is going on. A monkey with knives taped to his fists is fighting a pair of gigantic arms wielding an oversized knife in each hand. And looking at the crowd, you recognize everyone else here too! They're all from your high school!

Apparently you've somehow dragged the entire nonsensical high school setting back in time with you, and now everyone has knives. What are you going to do now?