Zoostuck 3

ERROR. ERROR. CRITICAL UNIVERSE EXISTENCE FAILURE IMMINENT.

Oh no. Oh no. It looks like having a page number exceeding the maximum possible number in this universe has caused severe problems.

The Third Person is unconcerned. Their only objective is the destruction of the moonglasses, and the entire universe falling apart will certainly achieve that.

Great. And even grabbing that page from him won't do any good now. Well, I guess our best chance is to try to fix things while we still have a universe to fix.

You're still Fate and Death, so let's see what we can do...

Kick back and relax! They want your tools, your responsibilities, after all they've saddled you with? Let 'em have it! Let 'em TRY!

Let's be honest here. You never really wanted to be Death on top of being Fate. You just had that job forced on you.

So why not leave this sucker with it? You grant all of your responsibilities as Death onto the Third Person, and that means all the difficult paperwork when someone particularly troublesome dies. Such as, say, everyone in the universe.

The Third Person is not bothered by this in the least. They know the afterlife will collapse with the universe it's attached to.

Well. That was significantly less satisfying than you'd hoped. Maybe you should arrange for someone to die so this interloper can at least suffer a little before the end of the universe. But who would be a good choice?

all the johnsmells

Isn't the afterlife beyond the scope of a single universe? Like, all of them?

Isn't the afterlife beyond the scope of a single universe? Like, all of them?

No, that would be extremely difficult to manage. Each universe handles its own afterlife business, whether this be with a single afterlife, multiples, or none at all. There are universes that share afterlives, but yours isn't one of them, probably because no other universe wants to deal with the various idiots you've got dying around here.

all the johnsmells

There's only one Johnsmell! There's a bunch of Zoosmells, though. Millions of them. That would be a lot to process, which might overwhelm this guy since he's only just taken on the job.

On the other hand, you don't really have the capacity to kill that many people at once, not without giving yourself an equally huge workload. Which you really don't want to do.

Oh, but wait. It seems the fates of the Zoosmells are closely linked to the one Johnsmell. If he were to perish, it would have a significant impact on the universe, and your successor would be stuck working on a lot of it for the rest of this universe's existence.

Sounds like a plan, then. You just need to figure out how to kill Johnsmell Madden.

The Third Person is amused. Is this the best the narrator rock can offer? Killing an irrelevant former ruler of the universe even as it crumbles? How pathetic.

I, um, I am kind of winging it here. But maybe if we get the narrative going we can turn this around. Somehow.

So! You're still Fate. How are you going to kill Johnsmell Madden?

it is destiny

Money

it is destiny

Uh, yeah, destiny is under your purview. But actively killing someone requires more than just spouting platitudes.

Money

Oh, that's perfect. An ironic death! Let Madden be destroyed by the money he pursued so voraciously in life!

But you'll need a lot of money to do that, and Madden has most of it. The only other sizable source of money you can think of is Satan's generic dollar bill collection.

The Third Person is amused. All the narrator rock can do is send arbitrarily selected characters to look for arbitrary items in order to meet arbitrary goals. As though such insignificant acts could possibly thwart me or stop the imminent destruction of the universe.

Hey, it's worked before! Anyways, as a physical embodiment of the abstract concept of Fate, you can pop into Hell any time you want. But Satan's probably not going to part with his collection so easily. How are you going to handle this?

Fate will handle it incompetently, no doubt.

No one asked you.

Incompetently.

didn't satan turn his collection into something else? why don't you offer him a collection of perfectly generic dollar bills (which are something else) in exchange for his something elses

didn't satan turn his collection into something else? why don't you offer him a collection of perfectly generic dollar bills (which are something else) in exchange for his something elses

He didn't change them, he just wrote "BUTTS" on them all in hopes of fooling Madden. It still works for an ironic death. But you still need to figure out how you're going to find the collection.

Incompetently.

Well now! You do not appreciate extrauniversal voices judging your competence, any more than you appreciate bizarre extranarrative entities doing so. You are a perfectly competent manifestation of Fate, even if you don't care for the paperwork, and...

Oh. You seem to have opened your portal right into Satan's office. Where he's staring at you expectantly.

You are now Satan. You stopped paying attention to what was going on in the mortal world hours ago. Fate has just popped into your office. You suspect he's after your butts collection because you suspect everyone is after your butts collection.

How are you going to protect your extremely important collection from him?

Fate HATES responsibility. He's a consummate slacker. Offer him your collection, but couch it in a long-winded monologue about the meticulous, time-consuming care and maintenance of it.

What's the point of hoarding butts, anyway? The dollar bills are no longer generic because you put butts labels on them.

What's the point of hoarding butts, anyway? The dollar bills are no longer generic because you put butts labels on them.

Uh, yeah, it's a disguise? And you can dismiss it any time you want, that's one of the benefits of being the Devil.

Plus since you never spend them they're completely useless either way. It's not like there's anybody who can inherit them.

Fate HATES responsibility. He's a consummate slacker. Offer him your collection, but couch it in a long-winded monologue about the meticulous, time-consuming care and maintenance of it.

Of course. Fate hates doing more work than he needs to. You start explaining how you have to keep the butts organized by serial number, and spend several hours each day dusting them and cataloging the number of dust particles you found, and...

Fate gets frustrated halfway through and says he just wants to drop the collection on Johnsmell Madden to kill him ironically. Oh, well, why didn't he say so? You're totally willing to loan out your collection for such a worthwhile cause. You hand it over to Fate and tell him to make sure every single butt comes back to you within an hour.

You are now Johnsmell Madden and you're mad because your Super Puck hasn't won this tournament already. You have no idea that you are about to be crushed under a massive pile of generic dollar bills with "BUTTS" written on them, and therefore no reason to believe that the next orders you shout at the Super Puck will be the final ones. What are these orders going to be?

MAKE ME MORE MONEY

Invent a new sport called Buttsball

MAKE ME MORE MONEY

Invent a new sport called Buttsball

You promptly order your Super Puck to make you more money by inventing the sport of Buttsball. This is probably not going to help it win this tournament, but you're only concerned with the important priorities.

You are then crushed to death under a pile of generic dollar bills butts.

Meanwhile, as the narrator rock's machinations fail to accomplish anything, the Third Person marches onto the scene of the tournament.

You are now Fate again and you point out to the Third Person that, having claimed the powers of Death, he has to deal with the ironic death of the last Johnsmell in the universe.

The Third person refuses.

You're pretty sure he can't do that.

The Third person declares that he can. He then tears Fate's head off. He won't be dealing with that paperwork, either.

You are now Satan and you are really, really mad. This new Death isn't doing his job, and he killed Fate before he could return your collection!

You're not going to stand for this. How are you going to deal with this jerk?

Kill him by dropping your collection of butts on him!

Go intertextual

break the scythe

break the scythe

You could snap it in two like a twig, but let's be honest - this guy doesn't care about the scythe at all. You wouldn't actually be accomplishing anything and you'd probably have to pay for a replacement scythe for the new Death.

Kill him by dropping your collection of butts on him!

Here no. This guy doesn't deserve a death that dignified. Plus, since he is Death right now, he'd probably find a way to cheat his way out of it.

Go intertextual

Now we're talking.

The Third Person is irritated. Someone is stealing his background color.

You're the thief! I've had this for like thirty reboots of the universe or however many we're up to now.

The Third Person has no interest in tolerating this copycat WHO JUST SOCKED HIM IN THE FACE REAL GOOD HERE YEAH! Hey! Get out of my paragraMAKE ME, SUCKER!

Um. It looks like there's a fight breaking out in the nonstandard narration. This is probably a good time for me to narrate someone else so we can hopefully save the universe. Who should that be?

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson

It has already been established that I am unable to narrate for rocks. In fact, it was established by a failed attempt to narrate for Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. Nothing has happened since then which suggests the rules regarding this might have changed.

You may recall that this lead to me narrating for Muck Budman and... and... wait, I'm getting something.

You are now... Muck Budman? And you are complaining in a conveniently expository manner that you can't believe you and some other loser were caught by an interdimensional quarantine unit, who are now trying to put you back in your home universe so your uncool doesn't infect everywhere else, but have recently discovered that your home universe is going to collapse and are trying to figure out what to do about you.

You are now the other guy, the uncool version of Ryan North, and you're grumbling that you already knew all that so why is this guy saying it.

You are Muck Budman again and you are saying you just needed to vent.

So what are the two of you going to do?

kiss.

kiss.

Might as well. You don't have any feelings for each other, but it's possible these quarantine officers are going to just blow you up or something and you don't have anything else you can do if these are the last moments of your lives.

You lean in and EW MUCK BUDMAN HAS TERRIBLE BREATH THIS WAS AN AWFUL IDEA yeah well Ryan North is a lousy kisser and excuse me a moment, I don't feel able to narrate this from two perspectives at once.

.........................

Oh. It seems our other narrating entities also bore witness to the disturbing sight of Muck Budman kissing someone and have been shocked into speechlessness.

This would be a good time to dislodge them from the narration. But I'll need to narrate for someone in order to do that. Who should that be?

the dog