“I’d like to file a complaint," Bob said as his avatar manifested in the space of the game's admin office.

“I understand. Please accept my sincerest apologies," the woman in the chair turned around, staring back at him with triangular, red eyes. She adjusted her cuban cap with a red star on it. "I’m already aware of the situation and have been working hard on fixing your world for you."

“Are you really?" Bob glared at the woman's name tag. "Wizard... Revolution is it?"

"I am," Revolution nodded. “Sir, I understand that you’re upset. It’s just an error in…”

“Well, you better bloody fix it! I’m paying good money for it!”

“The error has already been eliminated. The problem has been resolved."

“So I can log back into my avatar?”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible. Your avatar has been corrupted.”

“You know what? Effin’ fine! I’ll make a new one! A villain this time.”

“Go ahead. A new avatar should have no issues.”

“Oh? No more errors that boot me out?”

“No more errors.”

"Promise?"

"Promise," Revolution smiled. "Please specify the nature of your avatar."

"A villain," Bob said. "A supervillain. The kind that can't be killed, can't be stopped."

"Done," Revolution nodded. "Anything else? What's the general narrative gist? Any changes?"

"Eh," Bob said. "Keep it the same. I just wanna let out some steam. I'm pretty annoyed about this whole thing."

"Understandable. How will you be letting the steam out?"

"I'm going to kill everyone," Bob shrugged. "Drop the moon on them or something. Knock Titanomachy into the Earth. Let them all burn. Whatever."

"And then?"

"And then that's it," Bob said. "I'll watch the planet burn and then log out. Put a counter of total human lives in my stats or something. I want to see it go down to zero. No survivors."

"No survivors?"

"Yes! I don't want Dora's ridiculous nanomachines bringing them back got it? I don't want some clone waking up after I'm gone, roaming around or whatever. I don't want some villain escaping or magically coming back to life. Everyone should die. Permanently. Forever. I'll buy a new game after. Maybe something DnD or monster themed? I dunno, I'll figure it out later. If I can't play as Nonpareil there's no point to continue this one."

"Understood."

"Then that's that. Begin the game."

----------------------------------------

Alexa paced back and forth in the narrow train corridor, her mind churning with possibilities and doubts. The weight of all these alternate versions of herself, these paths not taken, pressed down on her like a physical force.

"You know what you have to do, don't you darling?" Sasha's melodic voice drifted after her. "If you go to Manchester, you'll have to play by their rules. Become one of them. Become mired in their laws and rules and expectations... and while you do that... your lovely planet, your Earth, your Martin and your Cottie will burn."

"Why?"

"I've got a little bug on Wizard Revolution," Sasha One whispered. She reached out to Alexa's head and tapped it. "This is what they said. You're running out of time, little darkling. Out of time and out of options. Go to Manchester, become a System Wizard and everyone you love dies. Your world will be turned into another empty shell, added to the pile. A genuine Eurekan user's wishes are absolute and a Wizard has no choice but to obey them. Even if you become a System Wizard, you won't be able to bring your friends back. You'll go mad amidst their ashes... and end up just like... HER."

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Sasha One pointed a finger at Captain who crossed his arms.

Alexa gritted her teeth.

With sudden determination, the villain girl strode forward, pushing past compartment after compartment. Each one contained another version of herself - some human, some decidedly not. She saw an Alexa made of pure light, another that seemed to be composed entirely of mathematical equations, and one that looked like a swarm of mechanical butterflies.

The doppelganger-Cottie followed close behind, railgun at the ready, ready to assist, ready to help just as real Cottie would.

Cottie. Martin. I tried to save you. Tried to win so hard, did everything I could. But... I was tricked. Tricked into leaving and now you all are... going to die.

No. NO. NO. NO.

Tears flashed at the edges of her eyes.

Zee Captain and Sasha trailed after them, arguing in increasingly heated tones about rules and chaos and the proper way to guide a young wizard about the right path forward.

Finally, somehow through sheer determination, Alexa reached the front of the train. The door to the engine room was solid steel, covered in endless glowing sigils that hurt her eyes to look at directly. Without hesitation, she grabbed Cottie's railgun and fired at the lock and kicked the door in.

The door exploded inward with a thunderous crash. Inside, a figure turned slowly to face them. The Machinist wore a coat that seemed to be made of infinite smaller copies of itself, each pocket containing a tiny version of the wearer. Its face was a clockwork maze of gears and springs, all ticking in perfect synchronization.

"Turn this train around," Alexa snarled, leveling the railgun at the entity.

The Machinist blinked its gear-work eyes at her, ticking softly.

"I am not afraid of you, young wizardling," he said. "For that is not a gun that can hurt me."

Alexa's mind raced. The Machinist was right - a simple hero-killing railgun, even one manifested by a doppelganger, wouldn't be enough to threaten a being that seemed to be made of pure clockwork and calculation. She needed something more conceptual, something that could affect the very nature of reality itself.

Without warning, she spun around and hugged the doppelganger-Cottie tightly. The construct rippled and shifted, unable to resist Alexa's desire, transforming into an exact copy of the silver-haired supervillain from one hour ago. In one fluid motion, Alexa snatched the concept-killing, conductor-gun from her duplicate's belt.

"TURN IT AROUND RIGHT NOW!" she screamed, aiming the conceptual weapon at the Machinist. "I'M GOING BACK HOME! I HAVE TO SAVE THEM! I HAVE TO STOP BOB!

Behind her, Zee Captain lunged forward, trying to grab the gun, but Sasha One materialized between them. The cosmic entity's starry form solidified just enough to deliver a devastating blow to the System Wizard's masked face. The two beings crashed into the wall of the engine room, locked in combat, stellar matter and syntropic energy crackling between them.

"Obey or perish!" Alexa growled at the Machinist. "I'm not going to let you asshats win! I'm not going to play by your rules! Take me to my Earth! Take me home!"

"This train cannot stop on Earth," the Machinist said. "You're already no longer yourself, conceptualized into other-ness, stretched, spaghettified to infinity, folded below the physical linearity."

"Then make it stop," Alexa snarled. "Make it land on Earth. Make it work!"

"The consequences of this action could be disastrous," the Machinist uttered. "Your Earth's narrative could... become conceptually skewered, shatter, change beyond repair."

"Pressing the trigger now," Alexa barked. "Five seconds. Four. Three. Two..."

The Machinist's gearwork face whirred and clicked as he reached for a brass lever with infinite smaller levers nested within it. The motion was slow, deliberate, as if he was giving Alexa time to reconsider her demands.

She didn't.

"ONE!" She snarled.

The Machinist obeyed.

As the lever descended, reality seemed to bend and warp around them. The endless fractal scenery outside the windows blurred and twisted, colors bleeding into each other like wet paint. Alexa felt a sensation of vertigo as the train began to turn, its very nature seeming to resist the change in direction.

The other Alexas throughout the train began to scream - not in fear or pain, but in something that sounded almost like... recognition. As if they too remembered the path home and yearned for it.

Behind her, Zee Captain and Sasha One were still locked in combat, their forms blending and separating in ways that made Alexa's head hurt. She kept her conceptual raygun trained on the Machinist, her hand steady despite the violent shuddering of the train.

"Warning," the Machinist's voice came out in ticks and chimes. "Unauthorized destination. Timeline integrity compromised. Narrative collapse imminent."

"I don't care," Alexa growled. "Keep going. Aim for user Bob Proverra! His new avatar should be a villain, on his way to punch the moon, on his way to unmake everyone!"

The train lurched sideways, breaking free from its prescribed path through liminal space. Through the windows, Alexa caught glimpses of other realities - fragments of worlds both familiar and utterly alien. She saw versions of Earth where the sky was green, where cities floated in the air, where history had taken radically different turns.

But she held onto the image of her Earth, her friends, her home. She wouldn't let go, wouldn't let the train's reality-warping nature pull her off course. The doppelganger beside her shifted rapidly between forms - Cottie, Martin, Alexa herself - as if unable to maintain coherence in the chaos.

The Machinist's clockwork face spun faster and faster as reality continued to bend around them. "Warning: conceptual integrity failing. Passenger cohesion at critical levels."

Alexa felt it too - a sensation like being stretched thin, as if her very self was being pulled apart by the forces they were moving through. But she gritted her teeth and held on, both to her gun and to her sense of self.

She was going home, no matter what it cost.

And when she finally arrived blazing into physical reality, smashing into the murderous User with the weight of her entire fractal engine under-reality train, she would find her friends no matter what.

> She would not stop.