IN WHICH A MINISCULE NUMBER OF SUBSTITUTE NARRATORS DO BATTLE FOR THE VACANT THRONE

I, Ayavail, am the main character of this story. My best friend, Dakiya, is in the midst of battling the Admiral of the Imperium. Let me describe it to you:

Crystal streamers of scintillating light spiral across the battlefield as Dakiya, her hair flapping in the velociraptor-smelling wind, skids aside from the horrific signature attack of the admiral: the Admiralty Beam.

The splendiferous rainbow-winged butterfly, which was the last creation of our sadly fallen narrator, alights in my hair, and I turn to gaze out over the spectators, mournfully. How brutal, I think, they have all become velociraptors now.

But Dakiya, dearest Dakiya, bolstered by my silent support, is leaping into the air, and she matches the Admiralty Beam with her own Piracy Beam, orange against blue, the two duelists rising into the sky in a crackle of thunder and a shimmer of light, framed against the flying clouds of the afternoon, which shine at their edges with the soft goldenness of the sun.

One cloud, in the shape of a reaching hand, unfurls toward the mountains.

Another, beautiful in its thousand streaming boughs—

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Okay okay Ayavail but let me try! PIRACY BEAAAAAM!

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BOOOM!

The stupid nightgown-scoundrel smashes down, screaming, "I-I-Impossible!" and I smash into him boot first! He tries to shout, "ADMIRALTY BE—" but forsooth! I smash him with a smashing knuckle sandwich smash right in his stupid snout!

I'm still sick from that cake, so I throw up! That gives the stupid nightgown-scoundrel a chance to shout, "PULL RANK!" and then he gets to choose my next move! So I have to shout, "INFLICT SCURVY" on myself! Gaaah! Now I'm double sick! But then I use "PIRATE TECHNIQUE" to steal his LEGAL TECHNICALITY, and then I shout "LEGAL TECHNICALITY!" and it cures me! I feel great! I feel fantastic!

"ADMIRAL'S WIFE!" he shrieks.

What? What does that do?

Then his wife smashes me on the back of the head with a golf club!

"PIRATE TECHNIQUE!" I shout, "ADMIRAL'S WIFE!" and then I fall over cackling while she winds up and says, "Sorry honey, it's your own law!"

Yeah, do it! "ADMIRAL'S WIFE!" "ADMIRAL'S WIFE!" "ADMIRAL'S WIFE!" I'm going to win! WOOOOO! "!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" "!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" "!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" "PIRACY BEEEEEEEEEEAMM!"

But then his wife uses a healing potion on him and before I can scream, "That's no fair!" he starts smashing me with ADMIRALTY BEAM! ADMIRALTY BEAM! ADMIRALTY BEAM! No! I can't believe this! That dirty lousy rotten little half-digested chunk of shark bait! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!…

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Ah, the sweet savor of revenge. What the foolish young Dakiya has failed to realize is that death—mere death—poses no obstacle for a full-fledged narrator. Indeed, her attempt to seize my throne was doomed from the very beginning, for I have returned now as a lich, more bony than ever before.

Is it not typical of mortals to fall into such chasms of imbecility? How can they fail to realize that the office of a narrator is not like that of a judge or a schoolteacher; you cannot simply kill the previous occupant and take over. But I digress…