Chapter 1

Prologue to the Story Always Told

Who am I? 

Hah. Mere mortals deserve not to know. After all, look at them--the meandering masses going about their days like mindless, sniveling imbeciles, blind to the reality. I always knew it, in my bones, that I was special. Even when I confessed to Lara and she laughed and wrote a memoir on how hilarious it was that I thought I stood a chance, I knew she was merely covering up for her embarrassment. Or when my mom left, citing that she'd rather stare into the abyss than breastfeed me, I understood she left so that I would have a catalyst to undergo a character development--

Cade Cool Conyak, who also went by his street name of Pissface, was all manner of confused and unfortunate. 

His life was oft dubbed 'The Three Tragedies' (by him and nobody else, to be precise; and to be more precise, there were vastly more than just three tragedies): that time his father, purportedly, slipped on a banana peel and fell off the building he was managing; that other time when his mother, when he was just seventeen days old, left due to a severe case of 'mom of a main character', never to be seen again. And the last (in his mind) tragedy, when he was forty-six days old, he was put into foster care, and a chain of abusive homes that had done a number on his psyche. 

In most cases and in most scenarios, this would merely be a tragic tale of a young boy betrayed by a broken system that did not care for his well-being. He'd become a name lost to the masses, a ghost in the cog of the machine. An insipid tale of a civilized society's failure to care for its most vulnerable, a dreary insight into the failures of modernity, a nameless statistic used and abused by the soulless for their personal wants. Like many others, mangled and ignored. 

But this was not that sort of a case (for the most part) nor that sort of a scenario! Rather than an insightful look into circumstances of birth determining the outcome of life, this was a story of how Cade Cool Conyak fixed the tumbling timelines, and saved the world(s)!... probably? 

"Cade Cool Conyak!" she appeared! The Goddess that would whisk him off into the fantasy world where he'd slay dragons and collect girls like it was a game and he was collecting voice tapes detailing the story they were not talented enough to incorporate into the active, ongoing plot! 

The world around him whited out until it was all a blur and the only thing he could see was a majestic, divine woman with mountainous bosoms floating midair(to clarify, she was floating midair, not her bosoms). Her clothes were strategically revealing, just enough to maintain a certain rating. Yet tantalizing enough to churn the blood of the adolescence target audience. 

"Yeah, that's a stupid-ass name," she said, majestically. "I have a mission for you, Earthling human boy, aged 16, average looks, size, and weight, so that as many people can project onto you as possible--and that mission is of great import!"

"Yes, Goddess!" Cade knelt. "Tell me of your plans for me!"

"You must traverse worlds beyond your scope," she said, divinely. "And ensure the stories play out as they should!"

Silence fell, and it fell for a long while, in fact. One minute, two, three, soon eighteen days had passed without either uttering a sound. 

"Uhm, is that it?" Cade asked. "Where is a proper exposition dump that details everything but not really because we'll probably have to break the established rules later on for the rule of cool?"

"You must traverse worlds beyond your script--scope--"

"Hey, you just said script."

"And ensure the stories play out as they should!" 

"Wow. I thought you were an actual goddess. Turns out you are just a cost-cutting measure some executive implemented by using AI."

However, there was no more time for meta commentary; Cade felt his entire body rupture from within his innermost self, and watched as every atom in his body seemed to detonate. His skin began to peel and his eyes began to bleed, and before long... he was sitting by the window, last row in a high school classroom, looking out wistfully at the falling leaves of an autumn... no, he wasn't in a last row. It was the first row, in fact, and it wasn't autumn, it was Spring. And then game windows suddenly appeared in front of him because increased number of sub-genres means higher chance of discovery.

[You have been transported into the wild, fantastical, beautiful world of... generating...: Galant Eden World of Divine Dragons, Wizards, and Vomitoriums!]

[You have temporarily taken over a body of a high school boy (ew) called Ranus Rex Reviled, 8th son of the 18th Prince of the 4th Emperor of the 19th Dynasty of the Sun! Despite the long title, Ranus has no importance to anything to happen, and would die in just 7 months by accidentally slipping on a banana peel and falling off the school's rooftop after summoning all the courage he had to confess to the heroine of this particular story, Celine Croute Chaussette]

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*Wow... well, I did ask for an exposition dump... 

[Every world is one of tropes and cliches, and this one is no different! The story goes yada yada yada yada...]

[Anyway, that's why your job is to ensure that Celine's frozen heart is thawed and that the 17 goblins do not get enslaved and controlled by her so she can birth her brother's child and conquer the humanity's last bastion of hope in a world overran with zombies!]

Cade fell asleep for a moment and woke up to a mangled corpse of a rather strange premise, but he was a man of many gifts--chief of which was his ability to ignore the weird... embrace it, even! Of course, he would not embrace this particular woman as she sounded insane, but... as he was chosen for this mission, he knew what he was to do! 

Looking over at his classmates, he noticed a trend--everyone was beautiful, good-looking, with perfect skin and perfectly sculpted thin bodies. There were no acnes at play, no greasy hair, no putrid, hormonal scents, no nose-digging, no bad breath, no crusty pants... It about resembled an average classroom as much as a fart resembled an atomic detonation of particles, but he didn't mind it. With his good looks(? he forgot for a moment he looked entirely different) and unparalleled charisma, he would fit right in.

His seatmate was a young little--*Nope*; his seatmate was a marginally young little--*Nope*. His seatmate was of appropriate age and stature, and turned and faced him just as he began to stare a bit too intently. All of a sudden, her cheeks flushed like scarlet flowers in a tender bloom, and she swiftly looked away, tucking a straying bundle of hair gently behind her quivering ear. She looked like one of those young girls who were full of hope, yet tender innocence, the perfect character stereotype of someone dealing with her first, budding love. 

She looked like her favorite song was Every Breath You Take (semi-ironically) and her favorite movie was Psycho (1998)--

"W-what are you looking at?" she asked in a maiden-sort-of-a-way. Cade was a man of tropes and cliches himself, and was just about to look away, twice as red as her, and stutter 'Nothing' as though he'd never spoken to a woman other than his mother ever, when the most incredulous happened!

Time stopped and a fluffy character most certainly not designed by a merchandise department appeared out of thin air, speaking in a squeaky but funny voice. 

"To break the final thread, you must undo the ones that build a bridge toward it; all life coalesces towards the end point of its existence, and choices knot a webbing tree that you must burn, if you were to save the world!" the little thing shared a rather out-of-touch and out-of-place piece of wisdom that seemed to entirely clash with the tone of the story before suddenly laughing for an undetermined reason and disappearing. It was then that Cade spat out what he thought were the coolest lines he could. 

"The most beautiful girl in the world," his words were like poetry, he was certain, and he reckoned that this was a way to break the final trope--something about her living out a dangerously fetishized familial relationship. He merely had to make her fall in love with him. And with his good looks (again, he does not know what he looks like) and unparalleled genius(wasn't it charisma?), he would be there in no time. 

The following bits of story will be quickly summarized in scope as detailing them out would be too cliche even for a meta-commentary: 

The beautiful young girl snapped, slammed her fist into his face, causing his head to ripple backwards and snag against the corner of the table. Cade, thus, died on the spot, blood pooling beneath his rather unsightly corpse. 

The woman was arrested and charged with second degree murder, and though her parents lobbied for her to be treated as a minor, she was not (because she was 18 years and 6 months old). She was sentenced to 22 years in jail with a chance of probation in 12. 

Later on, when released from jail, she would write a memoir called 'How I Fell in Love with a Boy Whom I Killed When I Was Most Definitely Not an Adult' which would go on to become a bestseller. She would last be interviewed at the age of 88, just 18 days before she would finally succumb to the 'old grandmother in a romance story aimed at young girls' disease. 

"I, Celine Croute Chaussette," she said. "Confess." the world awaited with bated breath. "I was 18 when I killed him." 

Cade opened his eyes and found himself in his bedroom, reeling. 

"What the hell was that dream...?" he mumbled. Just as the world expected it all to have been dreamed up nonsense, strategically-clothed goddess appeared once again, this time having changed her hair dye to another wild color since her character was more important than the others. 

"You have defeated the first trope, o' the disappointingly average Chosen One!" she declared holily. "But there is no time to rest! A new threat emerges... you shall be transported into the world of a novel called One Day I Woke Up As My Dad's Daughter But My Childhood Friend Is Just Too Adorable And He's Also a Demon Lord(?!) And I'm The Story's Villain And My Own Mother?!!"

"What the hell even is that--"

"Embody the principalities of a chosen one! Kill everything, humiliate everyone, and make the world bow down to your whims! Only so can you defeat the trope of the world!"

"What even is a trope there? It sounds like nothing I've--no, it just sounds like nothing!" do forgive the abrupt change in character, as, for the services of the narrative and story, it is sometimes necessary for characters to abruptly behave diametrically opposed to their established personalities. "No, wait, what was even the trope in that other world?!" 

"Face-punches and hurtful falls often lead to deaths in real world, you know?"

"Hey, weren't you AI?!" 

"... I... I'm just shy... te-he." 

"Wait, no, that's not a trope! What even is this?!" Cade declared in a rather self-aware manner. He was yet to learn, though, that this strange journey of his, even if incidentally random at times, would perfectly collide with needed changes in his character that would allow him to grow as a person and break out of the cocoon of adolescence into the flight of an adult life, and perhaps even profess his deepest love to his crush! 

Brief intermission to ponder upon that unexpected twist.

Continuing...

Is it real? Or an imagined story of a young little boy trying to cope with the impossible life beset upon him against his wishes, where everyone he meets expects him to fail simply because of his circumstances, and where nobody ever tries even a little bit with him?

No, it is real. 

As real as words on a monochromatic page could ever truly be.