A Star Trek: TNG Crossover
Cereals Back was in trouble. It wasn’t just Henry Potty lying beside him, occasionally ceasing his moaning long enough to puke. It wasn’t the general murkiness of the Scary Woods outside Chickenfeet Academy, where both of them lay. And it wasn’t that his most recent meal had been a hot dog off a street cart, so that he kept tasting horse each time he burped. He’d eaten far worse during his long decade of incarceration in the terrible wizard prison Marzipan, where everything was built out of burnt almonds and treacle. There, the black-cloaked Demeanies terrorized their inmates with their utterly generic monster costumes and scary “woo woo” noises. They were so vicious and disloyal, it was rumored they’d sell their services to the highest franchise (and indeed they’d appeared in many). Being forced to endlessly polish their plastic ghost masks and hear them rehearse for Wizneyland commercials had been the low point of Cereals’ year.
Cereals had escaped Marzipan (by chiseling through the crystallized treacle walls using only his front teeth) and was on the run, but that wasn’t the worst of his predicament. Cereals had endured everyone’s hatred, as he was wrongfully accused of betraying the entire Wizarding World to Lord Revolting by spilling the location of Henry Potty, who would one day become the star of the series. If Revolting hadn’t been so inept as to get himself killed by the one-year-old he was trying to assassinate, none of the seven books would have been written. Cereals had never committed that betrayal. In fact, he would never risk the franchise for any reason (the third book was named for him after all!), but the Demeanies had taunted him with their knowledge of the true culprit, the slimeball Wormsnail, while Cereals suffered amidst the endless treacle burgers and almonds almandine.
And that still wasn’t the worst: For so endangering their seven-book contracts, the Ministry of Muckups had compounded Cereals’ life sentence without chance of parole or toothpaste, piling on the cruelest fate they could imagine: In Marzipan, he’d been known only as the Man in the Iron Pants. Now free of the dreaded pants (by chiseling through the reinforced steel using only his front teeth) Cereals was at last facing real trouble. It took the form of the hundred or so Demeanies piled on top of him in a sloppy football tackle who were busy sucking out his brains. Cereals peered at the dingy grass surrounding him. Yup, he was dying. The brain matter oozing out his ears and into the meadow confirmed it.
Then he heard a glass-etching feminine screech from far above. “Henry, Cereals’ dying! We’ve got to save him.”
“Isn’t he evil?” This voice was male and more resonant, not because its owner had hit puberty, but because of the echo chamber his empty skull could supply.
“You fell for that? You actually fell for the AUTHOR’s misdirection? Wow, Horrendous, can you believe it? That’s what she wanted us to think.” This voice was filled with macho heroism and bravado, empty of common sense or formal education. None that had penetrated, anyway. Cereals rolled his eyes. A few cryptic pronouncements that he was going to kill all his enemies, starting with the almond growers and ending with all Wizneyland patrons, and everyone had mistaken him for a villain.
“So that creepy murderer guy who hasn’t showered in a decade is the good guy? Then who’s the bad one?”
“Your pet chinchilla. He’s been spinning on his little wheel for two whole books and plotting to betray us all.” Cereals winced as a single thought drifted from what remained of his brains. Henry was in two places at once, one retching beside him, and one spewing equal uselessness somewhere above. And that meant teenagers were time traveling. The universe would likely end in moments.
There was a smack of empty palm on emptier head. “Why didn’t I see that coming?”
Another screech introduced Horrendous Gangrene as the speaker. “Look! The Demeanies’ll suck out his brains and eat them without ketchup!”
“What are they, zombies?” Really Wimpy asked.
“No one knows. Under their robes could be anything. Even…” Cereals could hear Horrendous shudder. “Mime artists.”
“What can we do?”
“We need to change what’s already happening! Think how much fanfiction we’d lose without Cereals!”
Cereals Back felt his life draining from him and with his last thought, he willed the teens to just let him die, rather than shredding the entire fabric of the universe just so he could hang on for a few more lousy books (and thousands of fanfictions devoted to his nonexistent personal life). But as he felt a bubble of horse-flavored foreboding drifting up from deep inside him, he knew it was too late.
A Preposterous Portfolio of Parodies: Free Selections from Spoofs of The Hobbit, Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, Star Trek and More Page 4