It was a beautiful morning. I had a nice, refreshing shower, brushed my teeth, had a great, healthy breakfast prepared by my adorable maidster, and then we both got ready for yet another pleasant and completely uneventful day at school. Then I opened the front door.

"Hello, fellow human," I was greeted by Judy… as she grinned at me. Like, it was an actual, honest to goodness sunny smile, teeth showing at all. It was weird.

"Um… Morning, Dormouse. Are you all right?"

"I am not a dormouse, I'm a fellow human. Just like you are. Now come, let us attend the human educational institution," she told me and gestured for me to follow after her.

"Oookay," I responded just a touch freaked out, and I sent a glance at Snowy, who seemed just as flabbergasted as I was.

"Let us not tarry, fellow humans, or we might be tarry."

With that said, she began walking away with exaggerated steps that reminded me of what you would see at a military parade. I would be lying if I said I wasn't just a touch wary, but since we were going to the same place anyway, I figured I might as well follow after her and try to figure out just what the hell was going on this time.

However, we couldn't even take three steps when I noticed a strange, whistling sound that was slowly changing its pitch, reminding me of the Doppler effect. In fact, it might have been just that, as before I could say anything, my other girlfriend literally flew in from the side in a shallow angle and, I shit you not, she delivered a bone-shattering dropkick to the side of Judy's head. She couldn't even react to what was happening, and the impact sent her body flying through the air, then through the neighbor's front wall, then out through the other side of the same house.

That was… mildly alarming. Yes, let's go with that.

"Oh no! Judy was sent flying!" Snowy called out in a panicked voice, yet all I could muster was an ambivalent grunt of acknowledgment.

I mean, if that happened at any other day, I would've been probably freaking out by now, but for some reason, I wasn't. Instead, all I felt was a slowly mounting sense of exasperation.

"Thank god I got here in time!" the princess jumped to her feet, dashed over to me, and patted me down from head to toe. I only just noticed, but she was already transformed into her draconic form, and she was showing it off in broad daylight. That was, of course, not the first thing I asked her about.

"Okay, first thing first: care to explain why you just kicked Judy through a house?"

"That's not Judy!" Elly protested and she dashed away, only to return with my assistant's limp and dust-covered body. The princess held her up by the collar, reached under her chin with her free hand, and then she tore off something with a loud ripping noise, only to reveal…

"It's an alien!" Snowy exclaimed at my side as we laid our eyes upon he stereotypical big-headed gray alien in front of us.

Now, there were a number of questions that came to mind at the moment. Why? How? Since when? And most importantly, how did that flesh-mask thing make her head look about five sizes smaller? Unfortunately, none of those questions could be answered, as the ground under our feet was shaken by some kind of impact, at which point Elly unceremoniously dropped the limp alien in her hands.

"Hurry! We must escape this island while there is still time!" As she said that, she grabbed hold of my hand and tried to pull me along, but I didn't budge.

"Hold on for a moment," I spoke as I used my unoccupied hand to massage my temple. "Are we actually being invaded by aliens?"

"Yes," the princess answered with a nod. "Sebastian and father are trying to hold the mothership back with our lawyers, so we must escape while they are buying us time!"

She tried to tug on me again, but I still refused to move.

"Wait, what? Lawyers? No, more importantly, why are we being invaded? And who are these aliens again?"

"It doesn't matter!" Elly stomped her feet in frustration. "They are aliens from space, and they invade planets because that's what aliens from space do! Now hurry, before…!"

"Here they are!" a new voice cut in as a white-winged person swooped in from above.

"Angeline!" Elly hissed as she let go of my hand and took up a boxing pose. "I should've known it was you!"

The winged newcomer was indeed Angie… except she had a pair of thin, metallic-looking antennae on her head. They even ended in large, red balls, and they swayed with the motion of her head.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

"Of course it was me!" the Celestial… alien… whatever girl declared with a hammy voice. "It was a sting operation!"

"Okay, time out!" I exclaimed as I held my hand up in the customary T-position. "Before we go any further in this… whatever the hell this is, can I ask one of you to explain what's going on? I mean, I can already tell that it's stupid, I just want to know what kind of stupid it is…"

"I will," the class rep told me. By the way, she was with us now. Don't ask me how, I don't know when she showed up either. Maybe between the previous two paragraphs? Anyhow, she adjusted her glasses and explained, "These aliens come from the Andromeda galaxy, and they are here because of the Dracis family. For you see, the Dracis wronged them in the past, and now they are here to collect what is rightfully theirs." She turned to me at this point and added, "Also, because of your business connection with them, you are also being investigated, and that's why they sent an undercover agent to pick you up."

"Thank you for the explanation. One quick question though: you specifically mentioned business connection instead of the fact I'm dating Elly? Why's that?"

"Thank you for asking!!!" a thunderous voice echoed in the sky, forcing us all to look up in unison. There, from behind the curtain of clouds, a large, silver saucer with one of those silly glass domes and a series of blinking, multi-colored lights on its surface descended and stopped right above our neighborhood.

A few long seconds later the camera-shutter style spot at the bottom of the saucer opened up, and it projected a bright beam of light right in front of us. A moment later, a humanoid shape materialized inside the light and stepped out, followed by a peal of thunderous laughter.

"Hahaha! Finally, the day of reckoning has come!!!"

"Josh!?" Snowy gasped at my side. Apparently her role had been reduced to just being surprised by plot developments. That's just sad.

"Yes, it is me indeed!" my friend, currently dressed in a cheap 60s sci-fi space suit, complete with those silly harmonica-style joints and a solid glass bubble for a helmet, yelled out as he put his hands on his hips. His voice also sounded a little distorted, probably because of the glass helmet thing.

"Oh no, Josh! How could you!?" Elly suddenly exclaimed with the melodramatic voice of a community theater actress.

"I'll tell you!" Josh exclaimed back as he began to pace up and down. "For you see, for the longest time, I felt that the world was wrong! The people around me felt lifeless and stereotypical, and everyone but me had a ton of money! It made no sense! But then, one day, I realized what was going on! This world, and everyone in it, is a farce! A fake! A simulation!"

"Uh-huh," I responded with a grunt and a small nod to get him going. I still had no idea exactly what type of stupid I was dealing with, but by this point I was fairly sure it was the weapon's grade variety.

"So! I searched for the reason behind this world's existence, its ultimate purpose, and at long last I found it! This place, and all the people in it, are nothing but an elaborate simulation… set up by aliens!"

"Aliens?!" Snowy called out, and I patted her head to calm her a little.

"By the aliens currently invading us?" I asked, still feeling oddly detached from the whole situation, yet curious all the same.

"No, of course not," Josh scoffed at my suggestion. "These guys are not real either, and they are not invading! For you see, they are just here to retrieve what is theirs! Don't you see?"

"Don't I see what?"

Josh shook his head with a grimace that said he was talking to a simpleton, and then he explained, "Ninety-nine percent of people being ineffectual or dumb? Things becoming more heated only after the people with a lot of money came to town? Your own inexplicable source of income? Don't you see the dots? Can't you connect them?" I shook my head, so he let out a tired groan and ultimately revealed, "The aliens are not here to invade! They are here to collect all the taxes you evaded!"

"… They are alien tax collectors?" I reiterated, and Josh gave me a giant nod and a beaming smile a teacher would give to a problem student who finally got an answer right.

"That's right! This whole world exists to simulate tax evaders and to collect data on how to best catch them!"

"That's… significantly dumber than what I expected."

"It's not dumb! Don't you see?!" Josh yelled out in a pained voice, but then his attention was grabbed by Elly shouting at him in turn.

"And you called them upon us?! Are you out of your mind?!"

"No, quite the opposite! For you see, if the reason behind our existence is to commit tax fraud and get caught, then what nobler goal is there but to--!"

It was at this point where I got bored by all of this. I turned to Snowy and told her, "This is too stupid for me to digest this early in the morning. How about we take the day off?"

"Um… Sure?" she answered, and with that, we turned right around and went back inside the house, completely ignoring how Sebastian showed up as a giant black dragon and battled the mothership by throwing bundles of paperwork at them and all that idiocy…

~~~

"… Well, that didn't go as planned," The Man stated a little dourly inside the not-black not-room.

"Whose bright idea was this anyway?" The Girl followed it up with clear disgust in her chirpy voice. "I mean, it was sci-fi all right, but what about all our other criteria?"

"W-Well, it did have a lot of plot twists," The Boy added a little hesitantly.

"Yeah, but it still had angels and demons and harems and deep ends," The Girl countered with an audible pout.

"They are not angels and demons! They are aliens!" The Man responded just a touch indignantly. "Look, I have four pages written to explain how they evolved on their home planets and everything. Do you see the word 'angel' or 'demon' anywhere?"

"And as for deep ends…" The Boy spoke up to further contribute to the conversation, only to fall silent and then quietly add, "What does that even mean?"

"It doesn't really matter," The Woman declared, speaking up for the first time. "I think this is going nowhere. How about we start over, this time with something more down to earth?"

"Oh! I always wanted to do a western!" The Girl chimed in, suddenly full of enthusiasm again.

"But… all my backstory and world-building…" The Man complained, only to get completely ignored.

"Western it is," The Woman proclaimed, and then she hit the big, red Reset button with her thumb, after which the not-black not-room became even darker and even less room-y. As for what happened after that, it is a tale for another day…