Fic Joke: "The Future Unwritten"
Jun. 7th, 2011 08:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mark_asphodel The Future Unwritten
I do not own Fire Emblem or any of its characters.
-x-
In a just world, the great heroes of the nations linked by the Fire Emblem would be allowed to savor their victories over dragons, demons, and crazy-ass goddesses. They would, on attaining that hard-won peace, be able to spend the rest of their days basking in the afterglow of success-- respected, beloved, and happy-- until the hour when their souls went off to party in the great heroic afterlife. As the world was not especially just, they received no such reward. Instead, they got sent to The Box once the curtain came down.
The Box was a place where the sky was too blue, the grass too green, the trees too perfectly shaped, and the clouds had odd little faces upon them. It was a place whose living conditions recalled that concept known as “summer camp,” not that any hero of Jugdral or Elibe quite knew what summer camp was. They they lived, or rather existed, training with and against their peers against some unknown future battle that was definitely coming, though none could know the hour.
There, they lived in eternal trepidation of three things: sequels. Remakes. And tournaments. Sequels were bad. A hero would be sent back to his home, only to find everything was all jacked-up all over again, with more armies on the march and great evils going down everywhere. Remakes were even worse, because those consisted of literally re-fighting a war you’d already won, only it was different and probably much, much harder the second time around. And somewhere in between the sequel and the remake was this thing called a “gaiden,” which seemed to be some sort of alternate timeline that never quite meshed with the first time you lived through things.
Leaf, for example, had been caught in one of these, and consequently never quite remembered if the name of his true love was Nanna or Janne... or whether his campaign had been a brilliant success or a miserable failure. This bothered him to no end, and while he had the pity of the other heroes, they were mostly glad not to be in his shoes.
All these things were dreaded-- even, arguably, feared-- by the otherwise valiant inhabitants of The Box. But tournaments... they were a different class of threat.
-x-
Ephraim, quondam prince (or was it king?) of Renais, did not fear sequels or tournaments, mostly because he’d never been in either. Rather, he viewed these as opportunities to get away from The Box and its happy-face clouds, as opportunities to fight, to act, to be-- to live! He still felt cheated over not having been invited to the great tournament named Brawl; Ephraim assumed that he, as one of the better warriors among the Emblem heroes, would represent their corner of The Box on the field of honor. Instead, the available spots went to the new kid named Ike, and to Marth, who had already been in a remake and a sequel and an earlier tournament. As we said above, life is not especially fair, and in Ephraim’s eyes, the world seemed quite slanted against him.
So, when word of the latest tournament, supposedly called Paradise (or was it Apocalypse?) circulated through The Box, Ephraim swore that this time, he would go forth into the world as the standard-bearer of the Fire Emblem lands.
-x-
Ephraim put himself through the most rigorous training imaginable. First, he hit up young Roy (who’d been in one tournament and not placed especially well) for any sort of foreign weaponry he might have on hand, like baseball bats and some device called a “blaster.” Roy surrendered these without complaint and so Ephraim, aided by his loyal twin sister Eirika, spent long hours learning how to fire blasters, hit baseballs, and withstand the toxic effects of deku nuts.
In his spare time, Ephraim decided to take a page from his old rival Innes (who presumably was enjoying full dominion over their homeland of Magvel, what with Ephraim being mysteriously gone) and scope out the competition. There was Ike, an immensely strong youth who handled a massive sword with one hand. There was Micaiah, a lovely and somewhat eerie maiden who used magic tomes. And there was Marth, whose dramatic swordfighting style had made him extremely popular in the tournaments even if, by the standards of an Emblem hero, he wasn’t anything special.
But the smart money said that there were two available places in the tournament-- and that those three, in some combination, were likely to fill them. But Ephraim knew a bit about the rest of the tournament participants from years past, and he felt he had an advantage. The roster already had fair ladies of royal blood who could sling fireballs and use other arcane magics. The roster was always crammed to the gills with swordsmen. There were no lance users. Ever. At all.
And so Ephraim-- skilled as he now was in the bizarre martial arts that centered on strategic use of bunny ears-- felt his legendary weapon, the great lance called Siegmund, was his key advantage.
-x-
Everyone but Eirika tried to warn Ephraim off his course.
“It’s like a nightmare,” Roy said. “It’s not at all like arena fighting. There’s a woman with metal skin, and strange little creatures that try to eat you or shock you with thunder, and beast-people with guns.”
“You told me that already. I can deal with the guns.”
“You might not get in as a contender,” Lyn warned him. “You might be locked up in this... seed... and only let out for a few minutes in the battle. It’s not pleasant at all.”
“That won’t happen to me,” Ephraim replied with full confidence. He was, he felt certain, better than Lyn.
“You won’t be able to fight the way you’re used to,” said Ike. “It was like... being in water, or having weights chained to my legs.”
“I can handle it.”
It seemed to Ephraim like the entire world was against his participation in this Apocalypse tournament (or was it called Paradise?). To settle this, Ephraim decided to borrow another stratagem from Innes. Since everyone in the Fire Emblem corner of The Box believed Prince Marth of Altea would be part of this tournament (whether he wanted to or not), Ephraim decided to just challenge Marth to a contest at arms. The winner would represent the Emblem heroes in the great tournament... and Ephraim would, at long last, get to be outside The Box. Maybe he could even take Eirika with him, and they could find their way back to Magvel again.
Ephraim had very little doubt that he would win unless Marth pulled something sneaky. Ephraim didn’t realize that a two-time veteran of the tournaments would know more about “something sneaky” than every thief and rogue of the Fire Emblem worlds combined, but as it happened, this didn’t really matter. Before Ephraim could even issue the challenge, Marth (who was busy watching a strange sort of box with images of people trapped inside it) cast Ephraim a withering glance, removed the golden diadem that held back his hair, and offered it to Ephraim.
“If you want to go to the tournament, just go. The officials won’t know the difference-- or, more likely, won’t care.”
Ephraim looked down at the diadem for a moment of stunned silence. He would look rather a lot like Marth if they switched outfits... and weapons... but that wasn’t the point.
“I don’t want to go as you. I want to go as myself!”
“No, you just want to go because you don’t know any better. You don’t care if you’re turned into metal, or set on fire, or thrown in a cookpot, or have to swap bodies with a great disgusting man, or get humiliated in public by a flying bowling ball. Take the crown, take my sword, and just go. You’ll end up back here soon enough.”
Ephraim was about to enquire as to what a “bowling ball” was when a great commotion indicated that something very odd was happening in their corner of The Box.
“And I’m sure no one’s told you that everyone at the tournament spends their off-hours frozen as a statue,” Marth continued as the two of them went to investigate.
It sounded horribly like being turned to stone by a Gorgon, but Ephraim tried not to think about that.
Everyone was crowded around a newcomer, who had warped into The Box the way they’d all ended up there.
“Hey, Ephraim!” shouted Hector of Ostia. “You won’t believe this one...”
The object of everyone’s attention was a youth of about fifteen, small and slender with unruly teal hair the same shade as Ephraim’s. His face was similar to Ephraim’s, though the features seemed... distorted... in a way that made him appallingly cute. His eyes, in particular, were about three times too large for his face.
This bothered Ephraim, but the fact that this child held a lance that was a perfect replica of Siegmund bothered him even more.
“Who are you?”
The boy looked up with those great saucer eyes and began to chirp at him.
“My name is Prince Etain of Renais. I was told to come here before they sent me to the tournament.”
“Renais?” That was Eirika, who looked quite stunned by this small, warped replica of her brother. “Did you truly say Renais?”
“Yes,” said the boy. “I’m Prince Etain. My father was the great King Ephraim... did you, er, know of him, my lady?”
Part of Ephraim’s brain was spinning in a frantic attempt to determine if, or when, he’d ever fathered a child on some poor girl. The rest of his attention zeroed in on the other terrible thing to come from this boy’s mouth.
“You said... you said you’d be in the tournament?”
“Yes!” said the boy brightly. “I have a great adventure ahead of me, and so I’m being sent to the tournament first, to... to toughen me up!”
“That doesn’t really work,” Ephraim heard Roy mutter. But he really wasn’t paying attention... he felt numbed and cold, like he’d been hit by the Fimbulvetr spell.
Someone had him by the shoulders, and Ephraim looked up into the oddly sympathetic eyes of Hector of Ostia.
“I’m sorry, Ephraim. So terribly sorry.”
“Sorry for what?” Nobody had wanted him to be their representative in the tournament. They wanted Ephraim to stay in The Box, forever and ever, sidelined while lesser men took in the adulation.
“These sequels, man. These sidestories,” Hector was saying. “It’s a damnable business, and we all thought you’d been spared it.”
“Sequel. I’m in a... sequel. But I’m dead! Where that boy comes from, I’m dead, and I’m his...”
And so it was that Ephraim, quondam king (or prince) of Renais, learned honest fear of the three things that serve as the bane of great heroes-- the sequel, the remake, and the mashup tournament.
Until Next Time...
I do not own Fire Emblem or any of its characters.
-x-
In a just world, the great heroes of the nations linked by the Fire Emblem would be allowed to savor their victories over dragons, demons, and crazy-ass goddesses. They would, on attaining that hard-won peace, be able to spend the rest of their days basking in the afterglow of success-- respected, beloved, and happy-- until the hour when their souls went off to party in the great heroic afterlife. As the world was not especially just, they received no such reward. Instead, they got sent to The Box once the curtain came down.
The Box was a place where the sky was too blue, the grass too green, the trees too perfectly shaped, and the clouds had odd little faces upon them. It was a place whose living conditions recalled that concept known as “summer camp,” not that any hero of Jugdral or Elibe quite knew what summer camp was. They they lived, or rather existed, training with and against their peers against some unknown future battle that was definitely coming, though none could know the hour.
There, they lived in eternal trepidation of three things: sequels. Remakes. And tournaments. Sequels were bad. A hero would be sent back to his home, only to find everything was all jacked-up all over again, with more armies on the march and great evils going down everywhere. Remakes were even worse, because those consisted of literally re-fighting a war you’d already won, only it was different and probably much, much harder the second time around. And somewhere in between the sequel and the remake was this thing called a “gaiden,” which seemed to be some sort of alternate timeline that never quite meshed with the first time you lived through things.
Leaf, for example, had been caught in one of these, and consequently never quite remembered if the name of his true love was Nanna or Janne... or whether his campaign had been a brilliant success or a miserable failure. This bothered him to no end, and while he had the pity of the other heroes, they were mostly glad not to be in his shoes.
All these things were dreaded-- even, arguably, feared-- by the otherwise valiant inhabitants of The Box. But tournaments... they were a different class of threat.
-x-
Ephraim, quondam prince (or was it king?) of Renais, did not fear sequels or tournaments, mostly because he’d never been in either. Rather, he viewed these as opportunities to get away from The Box and its happy-face clouds, as opportunities to fight, to act, to be-- to live! He still felt cheated over not having been invited to the great tournament named Brawl; Ephraim assumed that he, as one of the better warriors among the Emblem heroes, would represent their corner of The Box on the field of honor. Instead, the available spots went to the new kid named Ike, and to Marth, who had already been in a remake and a sequel and an earlier tournament. As we said above, life is not especially fair, and in Ephraim’s eyes, the world seemed quite slanted against him.
So, when word of the latest tournament, supposedly called Paradise (or was it Apocalypse?) circulated through The Box, Ephraim swore that this time, he would go forth into the world as the standard-bearer of the Fire Emblem lands.
-x-
Ephraim put himself through the most rigorous training imaginable. First, he hit up young Roy (who’d been in one tournament and not placed especially well) for any sort of foreign weaponry he might have on hand, like baseball bats and some device called a “blaster.” Roy surrendered these without complaint and so Ephraim, aided by his loyal twin sister Eirika, spent long hours learning how to fire blasters, hit baseballs, and withstand the toxic effects of deku nuts.
In his spare time, Ephraim decided to take a page from his old rival Innes (who presumably was enjoying full dominion over their homeland of Magvel, what with Ephraim being mysteriously gone) and scope out the competition. There was Ike, an immensely strong youth who handled a massive sword with one hand. There was Micaiah, a lovely and somewhat eerie maiden who used magic tomes. And there was Marth, whose dramatic swordfighting style had made him extremely popular in the tournaments even if, by the standards of an Emblem hero, he wasn’t anything special.
But the smart money said that there were two available places in the tournament-- and that those three, in some combination, were likely to fill them. But Ephraim knew a bit about the rest of the tournament participants from years past, and he felt he had an advantage. The roster already had fair ladies of royal blood who could sling fireballs and use other arcane magics. The roster was always crammed to the gills with swordsmen. There were no lance users. Ever. At all.
And so Ephraim-- skilled as he now was in the bizarre martial arts that centered on strategic use of bunny ears-- felt his legendary weapon, the great lance called Siegmund, was his key advantage.
-x-
Everyone but Eirika tried to warn Ephraim off his course.
“It’s like a nightmare,” Roy said. “It’s not at all like arena fighting. There’s a woman with metal skin, and strange little creatures that try to eat you or shock you with thunder, and beast-people with guns.”
“You told me that already. I can deal with the guns.”
“You might not get in as a contender,” Lyn warned him. “You might be locked up in this... seed... and only let out for a few minutes in the battle. It’s not pleasant at all.”
“That won’t happen to me,” Ephraim replied with full confidence. He was, he felt certain, better than Lyn.
“You won’t be able to fight the way you’re used to,” said Ike. “It was like... being in water, or having weights chained to my legs.”
“I can handle it.”
It seemed to Ephraim like the entire world was against his participation in this Apocalypse tournament (or was it called Paradise?). To settle this, Ephraim decided to borrow another stratagem from Innes. Since everyone in the Fire Emblem corner of The Box believed Prince Marth of Altea would be part of this tournament (whether he wanted to or not), Ephraim decided to just challenge Marth to a contest at arms. The winner would represent the Emblem heroes in the great tournament... and Ephraim would, at long last, get to be outside The Box. Maybe he could even take Eirika with him, and they could find their way back to Magvel again.
Ephraim had very little doubt that he would win unless Marth pulled something sneaky. Ephraim didn’t realize that a two-time veteran of the tournaments would know more about “something sneaky” than every thief and rogue of the Fire Emblem worlds combined, but as it happened, this didn’t really matter. Before Ephraim could even issue the challenge, Marth (who was busy watching a strange sort of box with images of people trapped inside it) cast Ephraim a withering glance, removed the golden diadem that held back his hair, and offered it to Ephraim.
“If you want to go to the tournament, just go. The officials won’t know the difference-- or, more likely, won’t care.”
Ephraim looked down at the diadem for a moment of stunned silence. He would look rather a lot like Marth if they switched outfits... and weapons... but that wasn’t the point.
“I don’t want to go as you. I want to go as myself!”
“No, you just want to go because you don’t know any better. You don’t care if you’re turned into metal, or set on fire, or thrown in a cookpot, or have to swap bodies with a great disgusting man, or get humiliated in public by a flying bowling ball. Take the crown, take my sword, and just go. You’ll end up back here soon enough.”
Ephraim was about to enquire as to what a “bowling ball” was when a great commotion indicated that something very odd was happening in their corner of The Box.
“And I’m sure no one’s told you that everyone at the tournament spends their off-hours frozen as a statue,” Marth continued as the two of them went to investigate.
It sounded horribly like being turned to stone by a Gorgon, but Ephraim tried not to think about that.
Everyone was crowded around a newcomer, who had warped into The Box the way they’d all ended up there.
“Hey, Ephraim!” shouted Hector of Ostia. “You won’t believe this one...”
The object of everyone’s attention was a youth of about fifteen, small and slender with unruly teal hair the same shade as Ephraim’s. His face was similar to Ephraim’s, though the features seemed... distorted... in a way that made him appallingly cute. His eyes, in particular, were about three times too large for his face.
This bothered Ephraim, but the fact that this child held a lance that was a perfect replica of Siegmund bothered him even more.
“Who are you?”
The boy looked up with those great saucer eyes and began to chirp at him.
“My name is Prince Etain of Renais. I was told to come here before they sent me to the tournament.”
“Renais?” That was Eirika, who looked quite stunned by this small, warped replica of her brother. “Did you truly say Renais?”
“Yes,” said the boy. “I’m Prince Etain. My father was the great King Ephraim... did you, er, know of him, my lady?”
Part of Ephraim’s brain was spinning in a frantic attempt to determine if, or when, he’d ever fathered a child on some poor girl. The rest of his attention zeroed in on the other terrible thing to come from this boy’s mouth.
“You said... you said you’d be in the tournament?”
“Yes!” said the boy brightly. “I have a great adventure ahead of me, and so I’m being sent to the tournament first, to... to toughen me up!”
“That doesn’t really work,” Ephraim heard Roy mutter. But he really wasn’t paying attention... he felt numbed and cold, like he’d been hit by the Fimbulvetr spell.
Someone had him by the shoulders, and Ephraim looked up into the oddly sympathetic eyes of Hector of Ostia.
“I’m sorry, Ephraim. So terribly sorry.”
“Sorry for what?” Nobody had wanted him to be their representative in the tournament. They wanted Ephraim to stay in The Box, forever and ever, sidelined while lesser men took in the adulation.
“These sequels, man. These sidestories,” Hector was saying. “It’s a damnable business, and we all thought you’d been spared it.”
“Sequel. I’m in a... sequel. But I’m dead! Where that boy comes from, I’m dead, and I’m his...”
And so it was that Ephraim, quondam king (or prince) of Renais, learned honest fear of the three things that serve as the bane of great heroes-- the sequel, the remake, and the mashup tournament.
Until Next Time...
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no subject
Date: 2011-06-08 04:13 am (UTC)My pleasure.