2110, mankind's greatest saints banded together to defeat the great End Dragon and its infinitely replicating army. Among the greatest heroes of that day was General Halla, who sacrificed her magic to create a spell capable of negating the endling infection and led Earth's heroes in the war to retake our planet for two decades. This is where she lies. That's roughly what the plaque at the foot of a ten meter statue of General Halla said.

A flashlight lit up the night-dark marble corridor of the museum's hall of heroes.

"Hey, this is off limits at night. What are you doing there?" shouted a security guy.

Pren swept sweat from her forehead and let out a sigh. "Phew. Hey, perfect. I've got some questions."

The security guard started towards her, his flashlight held in a baton-grip. "What are you doing here? What's that?"

"Just looking for General Halla, although… you don't happen to know where she buried this photo she promised me, do you?"

He looked confused. He probably didn't know. Dang.

"What is that?" he demanded.

"A pickaxe? It's for chipping through stone."

The guy ended up not being very cooperative, so Pren gave him a nap time behind one of the other hero statues. She kept chipping away at General Halla's grave until early morning, before finally pulling out a well decayed corpse half human half magitech cybernetics.

"Time to cough up," said Pren, only to notice something that froze her on the spot.

Then she noticed another.

And another.

All around General Halla's grave, engraved in the stonework and littered about her, were spherical approximations of a creature with floppy ears and an unspeakably adorable face. Creatures so cute their visage burned itself into your subconscious and made you want to think of them and oh fuckity fuuuug.

Pren let out a groan.

Then another, more pained groan.

Then a fuck and a few curses not spoke of in most civilized realities.

"AAAAAHHH! Should've checked."

She checked the security guard. His phone had a tumbo background. His keychain was a tumbo. His underwear had a tumbo print. His ass had a tumbo tattoo. And all around her, every floor tile and pillar was decorated with tasteful artistically carved little tumbos.

"AAAAAAAHHH fuck! Fuck." Pren took her frustration out on the wall and stubbed her toe. She kept cursing. "Fucking fucking fuck fuck fuck. Whyyyyyy?! Why did I have to be an overconfident little twerp and not check everything? Always check evolution. ALWAYS. CHECK. EVOLUTION. I knew it. I knew it. I knew it, and I ignored it, cos they were so frigging impossible disgustingly improbably cute. Damn."

Pren took a deep breath and looked at the deceptively cute little things. Dammit they were cute.

"That one's on me," she said to General Halla's corpse.

Then she brought a handful of resurrection into the reality and sprinkled the figment onto the body. Bones straightened. Flesh reknit itself and a naked general Halla stared up at Pren with a blinking white cybernetic eye.

"Hell?" she croaked.

"You wish."

"Y-you…" The freshly reanimated General fumbled to rise from her sarcophagus. "I ordered your death. I saw your corpse."

"And I saw yours. A classic step in any good frenemy relationship. Anyway, get up. I'm gonna need some evidence of payment before I stop this apocalypse."

"The apocalypse…" General's human eye blinked. "I stopped it… We stopped it… We defeated the End Dragon."

"You didn't, and even if you had it wouldn't have done shit. Look." Pren pushed the man's phone towards General Halla. "Look!"

"A phone?"

"Look at the background!"

"Tumbo?"

"Look!" Pren gestured at the museum walls and floor and at the man's underwear. "Look!"

"Tumbos?"

Pren grabbed her by the collar. "What are tumbos?! Answer me?"

"Tumbos?"

"Where do they come from?"

General Halla's mouth hung open. "I would… I'm alive? I'm… how?"

Pren slapped her face around. "Focus! Tumbos, where do they come from what are they?"

General Halla's expression hardened. "You… you're back."

"Yeah yeah yeah, blahblahblah, dangerous outsider, must prevent her from destroying all I fought her. FOCUS WOMAN."

Her shout startled the woman blank.

"Your reality is under siege by a memetic anomaly. Tumbos do not have pooping holes or genitalia or predators or a natural diet or a natural habitat or a natural anything. I've studied thousands of pictures. I know. Have you ever seen anything remotely dangerous happening to them? No. Have you ever seen a dead tumbo? No. Have you ever seen other animals near them? No. You have not, because these things belong in your reality even less than I do. And before you try to argue anything, the whatever you're about to say is exactly the reason you haven't suspected anything until now. Believe me, I know. We need to assess how widespread the damage is, and you need to remember where you put the photograph of my ex if you want me to save your reality from certain annihilation."

General Halla absorbed the words. Slowly, reason and cognition entered her expression.

Pren let her stand and climb out of the sargophagi.

The general took a long look at her statue, then stared into the marble corridor of hero statues lit by pre-dawn. Her aged face tensed with emotion. Then hardened.

"If it is as you say, what can be done?"

"Oh, well that depends entirely on the payment. Do you have it?"

General Halla licked her lips like a person trying to skimp on payment.

Pren gave her a cross look.

"You cannot be trusted after I pay. An existence like yours… Union has recruited people capable of dealing with your kind. We are not as unarmed as we once were."

Pren let out a weary breath. "Seriously tedious that you keep it with the threats. No, you are not capable of dealing. You met one or two baby delvers, congrats. Did they sell you canned wonder and perpetual machine tech? Nice, welcome to being a banana reality. But I assure you, girlie, you are not capable of dealing with my kind."

The general swallowed. "So long as I hold the photograph, I have power over you."

Pren thought about saying something. She glanced at the marble statues and the faraway sky. It was a pretty sunrise. It had the right ratio of pinks and golds and the baby-blues were refreshingly clear. She caressed the cool smooth marble and reminded herself this was real stone. These – she glanced at the napping security guard and the graves and the uppity resurrected general and the city visible at the end of the museum hallway – were real people. Real people in a real world.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

They needed the certainties and rules and logics. They needed to keep believing in reality.

"Yes," said Pren, feigning annoyance. "So long as you have the picture."

General Halla relaxed visibly.

Pren met her gaze. "Do you believe that that power is more beneficial than my trust?"

The general considered it nervously. Her fingers twitched. She hid a trembling sigh. "Yes."

Pren nodded and got up, chipper. "Alrighty then, let's figure out how fucked you are."

Later, in a cafe in some big flying car and endless dystopian skyscraper megacity they'd built inside the End Dragon's corpse, they found out that the reality was very thoroughly mega extra fucked.

Cave paintings had tumbos.

Ancient civilizations had made tumbo statues.

The world's reneissance paintings had tumbos.

Tumbo was the symbol of most flags.

Tumbo meant cute/perfect/adorable in all of the world's eight major language families, despite them being separated by tens of thousands of years.

Tumbos had been found in deepest jungles, tallest peaks, darkest abyssal depths, and the coldest arctics.

Every single nature documentary ever featured tumbos. No other animals existed.

The only plushies available in any toy store were tumbos. No other character was worth making a plushie out of.

The first space programs had sent tumbos into space and discovered a thriving tumbo colony on the moon.

"They're messing with your causality and abstracts," said Pren after inspecting the evidence on the general's holopad. "Fundamental laws will begin bending soon."

"How can you be certain they haven't always existed?"

"They have now, but you can spot inconsistencies in places where they were half assed. Look here, it says a tribe of hunter gatherers used tamed tumbos to herd cattle. The picture has tumbos on a leash – adorable – guarding larger tumbos."

"Some tumbos are more adapted to certain roles," argued the general.

"No. Look at that pudgy cuddle beast. It's round, it's cute, it's helpless. It's not guarding anything. And what would it be guarding the cattle from? What hunts tumbos? And why raise tumbos anyway, when nobody ever eats them?"

General Halla stroked her chin in contemplation. "How… why would they do this? They're…" she sought for words but failed. "Tumbos."

"Why does water make things wet? Because that's part of its definition. Being the cute and adored companions of mankind seems to be part of tumbo's tropes."

"And you are saying this will lead to a reality-wide apocalypse, if not dealt with? Thus far it seems the tumbos are harmless, if not beneficial. People are enjoying them. They're peaceful."

"They've gotta go. I'd rather not. I love them too, I really do, but they've got to go."

"Stranger, they are the last animal that made it through the apocalypse. Do you understand what removing them would do to mankind?"

Behind General Halla, a little girl was trying to pick a sandwich she liked with her mother. She was hugging a tumbo plushie. Its beady eyes glared at Pren, trying to hypnotize her with their cuddly beadiness. And oh no the floppy ears. Too floppy. Unnaturally floppy.

"We must," said Pren firmly.

"That… but…" General Halla looked around them.

The cozy little square of the hip upper class UV-lit district was littered with joyful tumbo symbology. The cities, the people, the world, its internet, and its history. All contaminated.

"How?" asked the general.

Pren made the mistake of staring at a tumbo picture too long. Her heart clenched at the thought of hurting such an adorable creature. She let out a sound of pain. "Won't lie. It'll be ugly."

"Exactly how are we to approach something of this scale? To kill every tumbo in existence would require… Such cruelty will be opposed by the public and the entire world from beginning to the end. You will have no allies. Even without accounting for interference, which will be substantial, to eliminate all tumbos in the solar system would take decades. And then you would need to somehow reach the tumbo on Deep Delver Nine."

"You sent a tumbo to explore deep space?"

General Halla showed Pren the article about it.

"Of course you did… oh fuck."

"Modern mana propulsion drive. He's almost a lightyear away and flying fast."

"Fantastic stuff. Marvels of human ingenuity."

"Then there is the Far Friend Twenty program, twenty separate probes sent towards opposite corners of the universe. They aren't quite as far yet, but catching them won't be trivial, considering the total distance between probes."

"Aight." Pren started scrawling a plan on the table. She did not use tumbos for illustrations this time, despite the near unnatural temptation. She had to fight it.

"It would certainly take godlike power to accomplish. Do you intend on finishing that speedrun you spoke of?" asked the general warily.

"That makes you scared."

General's expression remained uneasy. "I cannot say with certainty, which would be a greater threat to this reality, your final form or whatever schemes the tumbo have for our world."

Pren chuckled. "Well, good thing you won't be seeing either."

"Then how will you deal with the tumbos in space?"

"Oh, dunno, I guess I'll empower you and send you flying around for a couple decades."

"Couple decades?"

"Yeah, well, killing all tumbos in existence was never the problem. I mean, sure that's something we've gotta do, but it's gonna take a century or two max. The real issue is killing the idea." Pren ran fingers through her hair, frowning at her plan. "Yeah… the issue is that you've got no other cute animals left. It'd be fine if you had, we could replace the concept and that'd be that, but no. This is gonna need some intense abstract surgery."

General Halla took a sip from her empty blue herbal brew mug. Tumbo snuggle flavor, said the cup.

Pren shook her head. "Intense abstract surgery. Gonna need to remove every concept tumbos have touched. Cuteness, animals, space flight, technology, internet, fluffiness, floppy ears, it's all gotta go."

Strange horror dawned on General Halla's face.

Pren offered a smile. "Don't worry. I'll stick around and get it done. No matter the cost. No matter the pain."