Zoostuck 2

a boy named john egbert who gets a video game that changes his life... and everyone else's... forever :-)

Yes! Of course, it's all so clear now! Even though you're from a time period long before video games existed! ...Aren't you?

Never mind, you don't have time to think about that! You have a masterpiece to produce! Let's see, this needs MORE CHARACTERS! And MORE THEMES! And MORE KINDS OF ROMANCE ew why would you put that in girls are icky.

Wait a minute, this doesn't feel like an idea you'd come up with at all. This feels more like an idea that would be produced by a singularity of complexity. It's as though some other entity is manipulating your thoughts to get you to...

WAIT WHAT IF IT HAD TROLLS

ONLY THEY'RE ALIENS

FROM ANOTHER DIMENSION

AND ALSO THE ZODIAC

Something is starting to feel weirdly familiar about all this.

You are now the webcomic artist and omelet chef. You are preparing an incredibly dangerous cheese omelet, but you sense inherently that something is wrong.

Somehow, that Pooplord kid is stealing your masterpiece AT THIS VERY MOMENT even though you haven't started writing it yet! You have to stop him!

And the one person who can help you do that is your good buddy Ryan North, even though he still hasn't helped you catch the guy updating your website. How are you going to contact him, though?

praise satan

Deal the deck.

praise satan

Praise Satan? Never! That would require acknowledging an entity greater than yourself, which you know to be both physically and conceptually impossible. Satan should be praising you for the masterpiece you will bring into the world!

Well, you suppose you might be able to accept it if Satan is actually your future self. You therefore conditionally praise Satan if and only if he is a future version of you who has completed your masterpiece and continues to understand how perfect you are, and by extension how perfect he is.

That should cover your bases. Now you wait and...

Nope. Nothing. Good thing your praise was entirely conditional, were you not so careful you might have gained a flaw, which would be unacceptable. Time to come up with a new plan.

Deal the deck.

And that plan is to deal out this entire deck of cards across space and time. You can probably steal the time machine that kid came in to do it, so therefore the task should already be done and there's no need to inconvenience yourself with scattering them across space and time.

You are now Ryan North. You are in Hell and you just picked up the Three of Hearts. What are you going to do with it?

Stab the hearts.

Stab the hearts.

Yes! Of course! This must be another of those ridiculous puzzles! You stab the hearts and...

And nothing happens except that you have a ruined playing card. That must not be the solution. Maybe the card is a bonus collectible and you missed the rest of them? Oh man, that's no fun, you need that one hundred percent bonus so you can retire early and focus on your webcomic!

Well, that makes it clear what you have to do! You have to find the rest of these cards! They could be anywhere in all of time and space, and hopefully whoever owns these cards won't notice that you stabbed this one.

So you need to start looking for the cards, but first you need to find some way out of Hell. How are you going to do that?

bat out of

don't look back

bat out of

Oh, right! That's why you entered this demonic baseball game! Yeah, the winning team gets to leave Hell. At least you're pretty sure that was the prize, you were kind of distracted looking for the next puzzle. Or was it the last puzzle? You aren't even sure if you're still working backwards.

Anyways, it's your turn up at bat. The bases are loaded and basically if you hit this your team wins? That's good, but it would probably be better if you were any good at baseball.

Oh well. You give it your strongest swing and... whoa, you hit the ball! And your teammates are running! What do you do what do you do what do you do?

don't look back

YOU START RUNNING TOO AND DON'T LOOK BACK AND DON'T STOP AND oh wait you hit a base you should probably turn BUT DON'T LOOK BACK THE CROWD IS CHEERING YOU THINK YOU WON?

"And the first inning is done! The Tormented Souls have taken the lead thanks to Ryan North's incredible play, but there's still 665 innings to go before this is decided!"

Oh, huh. Yeah, you didn't think the game had been going on that long. Maybe you should have paid more attention!

You are now the corrupt demon running the ludicrously unethical betting ring on Hell Baseball. This North kid seems like he might actually be competent, or maybe just lucky. That's going to throw off your whole scheme to rig this game.

You'd better take care of him now, before there's any more trouble. How are you going to do that?

ball... to the balls

Bring the Japanese.

I know what you are. I know what you're up to! Stop being the Devil, Ryan North!

call in zoosmell to take care of it for ya

Bring the Japanese.

ball... to the balls

Oh, of course, your favorite plan: "Bring the Japanese ball... to the balls". Works every time. You don't have any clue what it means, but the boys seem to be pretty effective at doing it.

You call the boys up and... oh, what the Hell? They're on vacation? Now, of all times? Great, now you'll have to take care of this mess yourself.

I know what you are. I know what you're up to! Stop being the Devil, Ryan North!

Suddenly, a disconcerting thought strikes you. What if this North guy is really Satan in disguise? If you got in the way of whatever he's planning, you'd be in big trouble. And it would be just like Satan to sneak into a baseball game and be incredibly good in order to throw off the bets.

Maybe it's just as well the boys weren't in. You've got to figure this out before you make your next move. But you can't use any of your standard contacts. Got to find someone who can take the blame if things go wrong. But who?

call in zoosmell to take care of it for ya

Oh, hey, here's the perfect candidate. Some kid with a stupid name. He's exactly who you want to pin this on if something goes wrong.

Thing is, right now he seems to be outside the bounds of normal time and space. How in the Hell are you going to get him to Hell?

bring hell out of time and space

Destroy both time and space by pushing the big red button

freeze hell over

bring hell out of time and space

It already is! Time and space are where you get the new souls from, geez, what an ignorant thought. It's just out of time and space in a completely different way from the Paradox Space restaurant, which in turn is out of time and space in a completely different way from that mansion where a bunch of dumb stuff is happening.

Destroy both time and space by pushing the big red button

What? No! Not only would that get you in a lot of trouble, it wouldn't even help you find this Zoosmell guy or deal with your possible Satan infiltration, because Hell isn't even in time and space. What's going on here, do you have a bad idea ray pointed at you?

freeze hell over

Okay, that might technically help but it's incredibly stupid, you almost definitely have a bad idea ray pointed at you. But how's that even possible? The bad idea ray was destroyed during that incredibly stupid sequence of events that nearly resulted in the entire universe being rewritten. Plus it was in time and space, so how could it affect you here?

You are now the guy pointing a bad idea ray at a demon in Hell. You know exactly why you are doing this. The question you have is, how did you get the bad idea ray back and how are you transferring the bad ideas into Hell?

You got it back because that would be, if not a bad idea, at least not a good one. How is irrelevant, but needless to say it involved a DeLorean.

It might have a sombrero.

It might have a sombrero.

Yes, that's right - wait, no it isn't. That isn't ever an appropriate answer to "how"! You'll have to ask another extrauniversal force for an opinion.

You got it back because that would be, if not a bad idea, at least not a good one. How is irrelevant, but needless to say it involved a DeLorean.

You already know the exact reason why you did this and had no need to consult extrauniversal forces to learn that. What you're concerned with is how, because you can't remember and find that very disconcerting. The DeLorean does sound familiar, though.

Hypothetically, if a DeLorean were modified for temporal and cross-dimensional travel, you could use it to return to a time when the bad idea ray existed and take it for your own use. You could also use it for travel to Hell in order to point it at this demon. This is a perfectly sensible hypothesis, though it would be more compelling if you had an actual DeLorean nearby.

Regardless, if this is true you must return the bad idea ray to its original time period once your objective is complete. Otherwise you might cause a temporal paradox of some sort. That means you will have to locate this hypothetical DeLorean or some other means of time travel and a way out of Hell. Where in Hell are you going to do that?

there's a delorean up to bat next at the big baseball game, looks like it's time for a hit-and-run, get it

And get yourself an omelet while you're at it.

piss.

there's a delorean up to bat next at the big baseball game, looks like it's time for a hit-and-run, get it

Wait, what? How is it possible that there's - oh, this probably has something to do with the bad ideas you've been beaming at that demon. Well, you met your objective that is mysterious to all but yourself, so might as well make your way out. You rush onto the field and steal the DeLorean, then drop the bad idea ray off in the past in the mortal world. That was amazingly convenient, but you feel that you need to escape now - Hell is likely to notice what you did, and you need to somehow remember the next part of your plan.

And get yourself an omelet while you're at it.

You could also use some food. Fortunately, you know this excellent diner in Paradox Space that serves marvelous omelets.

You are now Ryan North. Someone just stole the batter on the opposite team and apparently this means your team wins. Hooray! You get offered a chance to leave Hell and go anywhere you want.

So where are you going?