Chapter 30: The Non-Canonical Lunatic Crack Chapter

[Author's Note: This is a very silly little thing, a gift to my readers for sticking with me for three years. Like the title says, it's totally non-canonical and absolutely crack. Don't worry, the actual story will continue as normal (or as normal as it gets, anyway) in Chapter 31. Happy third birthday to Shattered Skies, and thanks for sharing it with me!

- BHS, 10/14/2017]

The Lighthouse

Deep below the Lighthouse's towering central spire, below the Crossroads, below the Sekigahara communal training grounds, buried within the massive slab of floating rock that the crystalline structure rested upon, there was a room unknown to any of the interreality sanctuary's tenants. This room could not be found by any normal means; there were no physical entrances or exits, and the only way one could reach it without some manner of teleportation would be to create a tunnel down through layers upon layers of Immaterial, then bore down through the rock itself. Thus, no one could even find the room unless they were specifically looking for it.

If anyone were to somehow accidentally find their way down there, buried within half a mile of solid stone, they would most likely be shocked at what they found... and most likely in need of the room's services, after such an arduous task.

It was a bar.

A bar with a very exclusive clientele, to be exact. Only a handful of beings in all the multiverse knew of its existence. One such being sat on an Immaterial stool right at the front of the bar, nursing a colorful cocktail that was composed of roughly nine parts exotic fruit to one part alcohol... nevertheless, the way her cheeks were flushed indicated that the one part alcohol was doing its job.

That flush added a touch of crimson to her terracotta skin. She might have been Asian, Native American, or some mix of both, it was difficult to tell. Short, dark hair framed her round, reddened cheeks, and did a decent job of concealing the old-fashioned aviator goggles perched atop her head. Her clothes were casual and comfortable, a mishmash of styles culled from nearly every decade of Earth's late 20th and early 21st centuries... but the one constant apart from the goggles was her scarf, always wrapped securely around her neck. The young woman giggled into her drink as she spoke to the blue-winged spark behind the bar. It was always funny to watch Fantine's avatar prepare drinks, seeing as it didn't have hands, arms, or limbs of any kind save for its feathery deep blue wings.

"I really don't know, Jenny," said the winged spark with a deep sigh. "It's getting so complicated. All these people to keep track of, and nine of them still managed to sneak away from me and get themselves into trouble... I don't want to restrict their freedom, but-"

"Oh yeah," said the young woman named Jenny Everywhere with a ready smile as she waved her cocktail in Fantine's general direction. "Restricting freedom's no good. Very bad. You don't wanna do that."

"And they took Kinomoto with them! If they lose her, their worlds are doomed..."

"Miss Fantine, relax." Jenny tried to find a shoulder to pat for comfort, but was unable to do so. Probably a good thing. In her besotted state, she would have likely missed a shoulder by a few feet. "It'll turn out okay, you'll see. They wouldn't be magical girls if it didn't, right?"

"But this isn't like anything any of them have fought before, it's all gone wrong. One of the fundamental forces of nature is out of balance, and-"

The floating spark's lament was interrupted by a distinctive hum and crackle. A swirling lime-green circle of energy opened itself a few feet away from Jenny's barstool. Stumbling out of it came a tall, lanky, and aged figure, closely followed by a much shorter and more anxious-looking one. It might have been Jenny's imagination, but she thought she felt the temperature in the bar drop about a dozen degrees.

"Oh no," Fantine moaned. If a limbless, faceless, holographic spark could have put its nonexistent face in its nonexistent hands, she would have. "Oh God, not you. I do not need you here right now!"

"Fantiiiine, what uuuup, my glip-glop!" slurred the new arrival, his words punctuated by a loud belch. He was an old man of approximately seventy years, with spiky grey hair and an unhealthy pallor to his skin. Unidentified fluids caked beneath his lower-lip in a semi-permanent stain. Similar stains dotted the white lab coat he wore, and all of them smelled terrible. In fact, each individual awful smell joined forces with the others to form a noxious coalition of odor that quickly set about securing the entire bar as its territory. "We, uh, we just got done crashing a rave on Grip-urp-gorpulax Zeta, and I thought, 'Why not- why not hit up the Lighthouse for the after-after-party? You still got the best - urp - Pan-Galactic Gargle Blasters in a million dimensions, baby!"

"Rick," said Fantine, as patiently as possible, "you're hammered, and I will not be a party to one of your blackouts again. Please, just turn around and leave."

"Sorry, Miss Fantine, I'm sorry! Aw, jeez," said Rick's companion, a plain-looking, brown-haired teenage boy in a yellow shirt who seemed to be perpetually on the edge of a nervous breakdown. "I tried to keep him off the heavy stuff, but he saw the Collaxion Crystals, and-"

"Shut up, Morty!" the scientist snapped, spraying his grandson with foul-smelling spittle. "You're such a... you're such a little fucking buzzkill, Morty! Do you enjoy that, huh?! Do you - uuuurp - enjoy being a buzzkill? For fuck's sake, all I wanted was to lighten up this miserable axis of the multiverse for a few minutes, Morty! Do you even know what's happening in this story?! Little anime girls are dying a-and being turned evil and tortured and converted into monsters! Overdressed villains with half-baked motivations are running around everywhere and blowing up people's shit like it's a slightly more coherent Michael Bay movie, only without the thinly-veiled racism! Don't you think it's time for a few laughs in this lameass excuse for a plot?!"

"Plot?" Jenny took her eyes off the revolting spectacle long enough to shoot a confused look at Fantine. "What's he talking about?"

"He's always like that," said Fantine with a deep sigh. "Don't pay him any attention. Come on, Rick, you've obviously had quite enough tonight. Go back through your portal and sleep it off."

"Geez, who shoved all the corrupted data up your avatar's ass-uuurp-hole? Is there another parallel version of you somewhere out in the multiverse that's not a raging bitch?"

"No, there isn't."

"Ohhhh..." Morty clutched his temples and made a sound of abject misery. "Come on, Rick, let's just get out of here, huh?"

"Y-you see, Morty?" Undeterred, Rick did one of the things he did best: press buttons. Not literal buttons, though he was good at that too. Metaphorical ones. "This one's got daddy issues that got kno-uurp-cked up by her paranoia and squirted out a whole shitload of little grandbaby daddy issues. She's like the Duggar family of emotional dysfunction. Never try to pick up an omnipresent non-linear temporal entity, Morty. Trust me, the baggage is not worth it."

"Rick!" shrieked Fantine. Her avatar's wings missed a beat or two.

"Are... are you telling me had a thing with the glowing lightball, Rick?"

"We did NOT have a thing!"

"I don't... I don't get it..." Not that Morty would put it past him, but... "H-how does that even work?"

"Strobe lights and epilepsy medication." Rick shrugged, taking a pull from a flask inside his coat. "You asked. Maybe don't ask stupid questions if you don't want answers, you judgmental little shit."

"Maybe I should go," said Jenny, who peered into her cocktail glass with a suddenly suspicious eye. "This is getting a little weird, even for me."

At that moment, with eerily apropos timing, a small silvery blade poked through a hole in the air. With a tearing sound, it carved the hole into a five-foot glowing shear in reality. Man, teenager, woman, and floating holographic avatar stared in unison as two figures stepped out of it, one of them wielding a pair of jeweled scissors. Neither had ever been seen in the bar before.

"Are you sure these things are working right?" said a boy roughly Morty's age, tan-skinned, with a prominent mole under one eye. He wore a red sweatshirt hoodie and black jeans, a shockingly normal appearance for this crowd. "Maybe we should take them to Hekapoo and get them checked. This doesn't look like the Bounce Lounge..."

"Marco, relax!" said his companion, giving him a hearty slap on the back that made him stumble. Roughly the same age as the boy by the look of it, the girl wore a wide and seemingly permanent smile, and was dressed all in vivid colors. Her long blonde hair was accentuated with an unusual hairband which sported a tiny pair of devil horns. Her most striking features were the pink hearts on her cheeks... not decals or tattoos, but clearly a natural feature. Morty thought he saw them glow faintly. "The dimensional scissors wouldn't go on the fritz, Hekapoo's been making them for ten thousand millenturies!"

"I don't think that's a word, Star."

"Oh, Marco, you with your 'words' and your 'I don't thinks'. Oh, hey, everybody!" At the first sight of their fellow bargoers, the girl called Star waved an ecstatic hello, her arm a blur of motion. "Wow, Marco, look, it's a little blue light thingy! And a smelly old man, and a lady too!"

"Um," said Morty, unsure of whether or not to feel bad about being left out. "Who are you guys?"

It was as if the girl had waited years for someone to ask that very question. She spun around with an acrobatic twirl, struck a pose, and brandished a small winged wand emblazoned with a golden crystal star. "I'm Star Butterfly! I'm a maaaagical princess from another dimension!" A rainbow streamed from the wand's center and made a perfect arc over her head as she introduced herself, and various cute and fuzzy creatures that Morty was quite certain hadn't been present in the bar before now gathered around her feet. He was about to ask where they came from when the rainbow burst into inexplicable flames, terrifying the animals enough to send them scattering for cover.

Awash in conflicting but not exactly unfamiliar sensations, Morty put both hands in the vicinity of his lap and opened his mouth to say something he hoped was clever and interesting enough to get her attention.

Rick stepped in front of him and shook his head. "Don't even think about it," said the scientist gravely. "Manipulating the fabric of the universe and the space-time continuum is one thing, but even I won't risk fucking with Disney's lawyers."

Marco pulled his hoodie over his suddenly burning ears. "Um, language?"

"You know, Marco, you might be right." After taking a closer look at their surroundings, Star tapped her wand against her chin. "Unless the Bounce Lounge did some serious, and I mean monster redecorating, I think we are in the wrong place. But hey, we can always make it the right one!" Raising the wand high, Star let out a joyous shout: "Super Pancake Party Cannon!"

POW. When the flash of pink light from the wand faded, the bar had undergone a radical transformation. A half-dozen overstuffed easy chairs now sat in random places across the floor, all of them styled to look like stacks of pancakes with syrup, for whatever reason. A gently spinning disco ball hung from the ceiling and threw countless spots of moving light over the room... upon closer inspection, each spot looked like a crossed knife and fork. Completing the ensemble was a hot pink stereo speaker system, which began blasting something sugary, high-energy, and heavy on the guitars... in other words, if it wasn't J-Pop, it was the nearest multiversal equivalent to it.

A nervous but growing smile began to spread across Morty's face. "Um, wow... Real magic, Rick! At least I think it's magic, unless it's from one of those dimensions where the technology is so advanced that it gets mistaken for magic. Maybe we should stick around after all, you know? G-get to know the locals a little better?"

"Thank you, Mister 'I've Seen Enough Garbage Pop Culture to Absorb Clarke's Law,'" grumbled Rick, collapsing into a pancake-chair and taking another swig from his flask. "If I wanted to party with teenagers I'd just clone myself again. Go ahead, try to live out whatever G-rated approximation of your dirty little fantasies that the Disney legal team will let you get away with, Morty. I'll be here to bail out your ego when you get shot down."

"I've never seen you use that spell before, Star," said Marco, poking at a throw pillow that looked like a butter pat. "Is that one new?"

"Nah, a friend of Pony Head's taught me that one, I've been saving it for a special occasion. C'mon, Marco, stop being a buzzkill and let's get this party started!"

"Wait!" Fantine interrupted, swooping down in front of Star's face. "Miss Butterfly, I don't know exactly how you and your friend found this place-"

"Oh, thanks, but it was easy! Marco has dimensional scissors. They can go anywhere."

"What I mean is, this place isn't somewhere just anyone can find. And as much as I'm glad for the company, having too many people here at once could attract the wrong kind of attention, especially if things get weird."

Star gave the winged spark a floating pat on an approximation of its head. "So cute! Don't worry about it, I'm sure it'll be just us, the lady, the old man, and that yellow-shirted kid who keeps staring at me, and nobody else!"

VWOOORP. VWOOORP. VWOOORP.

If a blue winged ball of holographic light could look flabbergasted, Fantine did. "But... but... but that can't be-!"

"Can't be what?" said Jenny over the noise, who was again reconsidering her plans to leave. In all her times visiting here, she had never seen the place like this. "What's happening?"

The answer soon became apparent: rising winds swirled around a tall shape, fading in and out of existence with each grinding vwooorp it made. It was tall, and it was rectangular, and it was blue, and its seeming mundanity somehow made it the strangest thing any of them had seen all night... When it solidified and the whooshing died down, they were staring at an antique British police box, sitting right smack in the middle of the bar floor.

Seconds passed in silence before one of the box's doors creaked open. A disheveled, spiky-haired head attached to a tall, lanky body in a blue pinstriped suit and a longcoat poked out and took a quick survey. "... Blimey," the man said. "Now correct me if I'm wrong, which of course I'm not, just a formality, but... this isn't Barcelona, is it?"

All of Morty's newfound enthusiasm evaporated in a hurry. "Uh, Rick...? Who the hell is that?!"

"Holy shit, you finally got one right," said Rick, slouching further into his chair. "I'd be proud if I thought it was intentional, and if pride in other people wasn't a waste of my time."

"Wh-what? You're making less sense than usual, Rick..."

"He's a fucking out-of-genre experience is who he is, Morty. Look at him, he's not even animated."

The way the new arrival darted around the room like an overcaffeinated hummingbird seemed to disprove that statement. His brown longcoat barely had time to finish flapping before he was off in some other direction, his attention caught by another random object, his white sneakers squeaking with every sharp turn. "Early 20th century American, New England or thereabouts," he said, examining a light fixture. "But this over here's French, and that," he continued, running a finger along the bar's counter. "That... I have no idea what that is, hang on." Before anyone could stop him, he bent over and dragged his tongue along the countertop, then licked his lips. "Art deco. Late 1950s-ish. Bit salty. Brilliant!"

"I like this guy!" said Star to no one in particular.

"Wait, you know him too?!" Jenny turned to the floating spark in disbelief.

"We've met, it's complicated," said Fantine, with a sinking feeling that this entire situation was spiraling further out of her control than usual. "Doctor, what are you doing here?"

"Ah, Fantine, of course!" The Doctor bounded over to her, beaming like an oversized kid in a candy store. "The TARDIS would know you anywhere, the old girl must have locked onto your signal, reversed the polarity of the neutron flow to the time turbines-"

Across the room, Rick moaned into his flask. "For fuck's sake, really?!"

"- and brought us right to your doorstep, metaphorically speaking! How've you been? Floaty and insubstantial as ever? Good, good!" The Doctor smacked his hands together. "Now then! If we're going to have a proper party, we'll need proper drinks! By my count we've got at least three minors here, so no heavy stuff. Bad form, that-"

Star and Morty both made noises of intense disappointment, while Marco made to cheer, but thought the better of it and kept his mouth shut.

"- but who can say no to a round of old-fashioned Rassilon root beer floats, eh? On me!" Swiftly, all disappointment was forgotten, and the bar's patrons (minus Rick, who already had something stronger and didn't care besides, and minus Fantine, who stared in ever-growing horror) watched in delight as the Doctor vaulted over the bar and raided the oaken cabinets on the back wall in a blur of frenzied motion. "Now then, Silurian sarsaparilla! Cryonian cane sugar! Vanilla beans from the sun-baked plains of Vulcan! Not that Vulcan, the other one. There we are! And Morokian molasses, and just a pinch of Plutonian nitroglycerine for punch, and-" Ingredients were thrown onto the bar one after the other. "Bottled mineral water? Nonononononono, that's rubbish, what've you got that for? Ah, Arcturan Megatap Ultrawater, that's the stuff!"

"Great," muttered Rick to himself. His flask was all but dry. "Overuse of alliteration and ripping off dead British satirists. You're just digging yourself deeper, pal."

"Look," said Fantine, her avatar orbiting the oblivious Doctor like a moth flapping around a candle. "It's not that I don't want you here, but really, you're all attracting too much attention to-"

BANG.

"Holy crap, I've never seen even Rick make an ice cream scoop explode before! How is that even possible?! I-I mean, that was made of stainless steel and plastic, right? It's not like those things are volatile-"

"Awesome! Mister, do that again!"

"Star, we're standing right in the blast zone, don't encourage him!"

"Naaaw, that was just prep work, wait 'til you see the main event! And it's Doctor. THE Doctor. Allons-y!"

Unnoticed by anyone else in the commotion, a section of the wall on the far side of the bar rippled, briefly taking on the appearance of a strip of 35 millimeter film. Out of the distortion stepped a figure in magenta and black armor with an elaborate helmet concealing his face. The helmet bore a pattern of vertical black lines all across its front, rather like a barcode, which even crossed through its striking pair of huge green insectoid eyes. The passing-through Kamen Rider stopped for a moment to glance at the Doctor's antics at the bar, wondering if he should wander over for a drink...

"Onore, Dickeido!" roared a man in a fisherman's hat and brown-rimmed glasses, who passed through the distortion directly behind him. "Your presence here has disrupted yet another story! How many more worlds must suffer because of you? You're a plague upon the multiverse and everyone in it, Decade! Everything is your fault!"

Kamen Rider Decade sighed deeply, shook his head, and exited the bar through the distortion once more. Eager to tag along and make the Rider's life miserable, as was always the case, the man in the fisherman's hat followed behind him, grinning devilishly and tossing off a second "Onore, Dickeido!" for the sheer hell of it. Still no one else noticed. This largely pointless diversion from events of the chapter took approximately thirty seconds.

"And there we go, drinks for everyone, on the Lighthouse!" The Doctor spread his arms to reveal six glass tankards overflowing with rich dark fluid, each sporting a layer of bubbling foam an inch thick. One he took for himself, and four he slid down the bar, one for each of his audience. "Now, let's let the young lady from Mewni have first sip, she is royalty after all! Your Majesty!"

"Oh, stop!" Star blushed, and her cheek-hearts glowed. "But hey, if you know Mewni, you're welcome to come by and party whenever, Mister Doctor! Or if you're ever around near Marco's house on Earth, just come on in, no need to knock or anything!" ("Wait, what?!" said Marco, but no one paid him any attention.) With that, Star took up her tankard and drained half of it in one swig.

Unable to suppress his curiosity, Marco leaned in close. "Well, Star? How does it taste?"

Morty was already sniffing his. Over time, he had thrown up in enough transdimensional bathroom equivalents to be suspicious of alien drinks, but... "I-I-I don't get it. It smells like regular root beer." With great care, he poked the surface of the foam with his tongue. "And it tastes like it, too, I think... so what's so special about it?"

Star slammed down her tankard and wiped the foam mustache from her lips, radiantly happy. "Marco, you gotta try this stuff! It's-" The Mewman princess trailed off, for her stomach was now making a violent sound, less rumbling and more like an oncoming stampede. Before the eyes of the astonished bargoers, she let out a loud, wavering, lingering belch that put any of Rick's to shame... not only by length and volume, but by the foot-long jet of pink flame that came with it.

"DOCTOR!" Fantine's cry of horror fell on deaf ears.

Morty's jaw fell open. "Holy crap...!"

"Star!" Marco grabbed his friend's arm. "Star, are you okay? "

"That... was awesome!" Star shrieked, going back to finish off the rest.

"Um, Doctor?" Marco shot the traveler from Gallifrey an annoyed look. "Isn't root beer that makes people belch fire a little, you know, dangerous?"

"Dangerous?" the Doctor chortled at the idea. "Nonononono! The flames are harmless, all you feel is a little tingly-wingly bit at the back of the throat! See, watch!" To prove a point, he took his own drink and upended it... BELCH, FWOOSH. It was the same result, except his flames were gold and sparkly, almost like glitter. "Go on, young man, give 'er a pull!"

BELCH, FWOOSH. Jenny had just taken her first sip. The exhaust from her mouth was cool, icy blue. "'Scuse me," she said as she flushed red, more as a formality than anything. "I gotta admit, though, the flavor is spectacular."

Marco groaned and put his head in his hands. There was no hope of stopping Star now, she was so enamored of the root beer and its effects that she had erupted into a frenzied performance atop the bar, punctuated every few seconds by more rude noises and pink fire.

Morty slid over to his side and gently patted his shoulder. He recognized a kindred spirit when he saw one. "Aw jeez, you've got an extroverted interdimensional travel partner who drags you on wacky adventures too, huh? That's rough, buddy. I feel ya. Still..." He gazed at Star's wild belching-fire-breathing concerto, now incorporating dance moves, with something quite the opposite of innocent childlike wonder. "She really is something, isn't she?"

"You have no idea. Glass of milk, please," Without looking up, Marco waved a finger in Fantine's direction.

Fantine, for her part, was too busy worrying that the Mewman princess would fall from the bar and break her neck or set someone or something fragile on fire. Never mind not being noticed, if the rest of the royal family of Mewni found out about this place, it would never be safe or sane again. "Miss Butterfly... Miss Butterfly! Please, Princess, I'm begging you... Doctor, do something!"

"Quite right! No place for a dance, young lady! Off you get!" The Doctor took Star's hand and pulled her down, then grinned and snapped his fingers. He knew Immaterial when he saw it, and more than enough of the bar was made of the stuff to shape what he had in mind. "Now here's a place where we can dance, and more besides! I give you... KARAOKE!"

And so it was. In the bar's corner, a raised dance floor and a karaoke machine hooked up to twin microphones solidified out of the Immaterial.

Fireworks went off in Star's eyes. Normally that expression would be hyperbole, but Star was a special case. Clasping the Doctor's hand tightly in her own, she stared at him with her undivided attention... which very few beings in the multiverse could ever command. "Mister Doctor," she said, low and grave. "I'm being totally serious when I say this: I love you. Now let's wreck this place."

"Wouldn't put it quite that way, but ah, what the hell! Allons-y!"

And off they went. Calling the motions of the two "dancing" would have been inaccurate, as "dancing" implied that there was some rhythm or structure to the movements of their bodies. The activity that Star and the Doctor engaged in had less resemblance to dancing than it did to two people suffering simultaneous epileptic seizures, only with more pyrotechnics. They drank, and they flailed their limbs, and they spewed criss-crossing jets of fire, and they were both reveling in every second of it.

Fantine stared at the display, at a total loss.

And meanwhile, Jenny heard an electronic shoom and saw a flash of bright blue out of the corner of her eye. Someone laid a gloved hand on her shoulder, and she shook her head. "Nearly all the other time-and-dimension travelers are here. I should have known you'd show up."

"Oi, stranger!" The newest arrival wore a sleek jumpsuit of a gradient orange-yellow color, and some kind of futuristic harness on her chest that pulsed with blue light. Clashing with those were beat-up leather jacket and old-fashioned flight goggles, the latter of which covered a pair of big, joyful brown eyes. A lock of spiky dark hair briefly obscured one of those eyes, before the young woman blew a breath upward and put it roughly back into place. "Shame on you," she said in a cheerful Cockney accent, "thinkin' you could do a pub crawl without me!"

"Not a chance." Jenny smiled. "The Doctor already made an extra drink, he must have known. Here." Jenny slid the extra tankard to Lena Oxton, alias Tracer.

"Wait, hang on a tick," said Tracer, stopping dead for a few seconds... a record for her. "The Doctor? I mean, the Doctor?"

"Yup, look." Jenny pointed to the blue police box in the center of the room. The lamp on its roof shone bright and spun in time with Star's disco ball, almost as if the box was partying along with its owner.

"Holy shit." Tracer's features lit up with sheer joy. "Jenny, luv, pinch me! I watched the show from when I was an ankle-biter! Both Bakers, Davison, McCoy, McGann, all the ones from the revival... And when they were Jodie Whittaker! Woof! I mean, she helped me get through a lot of lonely nights at Overwatch Academy, knowwhatImean? Nudge nudge, wink wink, saynomore, saynomore?" said Tracer, driving an elbow into Jenny's ribs.

"Lena!" Jenny turned beet red and nearly spilled her drink.

Then she did spill her drink when Tracer pounded her on the back. "Oh, come off it, luv, you know I'm puttin' you on. Christ, you know, I really am super gay, though!" Pausing, Tracer adopted a thoughtful expression. "I mean, like, super, super gay. Full-blown ginger beer. I have this feeling I should be angsty and melancholy about it, and I should be runnin' around all reckless and self-destructive and makin' really bad decisions 'cuz I'm a child soldier with no will to live... but for some reason, that doesn't seem appropriate right now, like I've been hauled out a story that got waaaay darker than whatever it was based on. S'weird." Tracer shrugged, put the odd feelings aside, forgot about them, and resumed her usual cocky smile. "Funny this multiverse stuff, though, innit?" Her next instinct was to follow the party and join in the wildest part of it as soon as possible, but again she paused. "I mean, one minute you think you're dead from phasin' out of existence 'cuz you forgot to put your proper chrono-harness on and your ex-Talon sniper girlfriend's goin' mental 'cuz she thinks you're gone forever... and the next you're here, watchin' somebody you've loved since you were a kid as he's... what is he doin', exactly?"

BELCH, FWOOSH.

"Molto bene, your Majesty, now watch this one!" BELCH, FWOOSH.

"No idea," Jenny admitted with a shrug. "At least he's not singing yet."

"Blimey, I didn't even notice! Is that a karaoke machine?! SorryJennygottago!" A shoom and a long streak of light, and Tracer was on the stage with Star and the Doctor, making the briefest of introductions to both and giving the latter a hug before lunging for the extra microphone that the Doctor summoned for her out of the Immaterial. Star was the one to punch in the song number, and it barely had time to load before Tracer wrapped both hands around the mic and crooned passionately, if not exactly musically, into it: "Toniiiiiiiiight, I'm gonna have myseeeeeeeeeeelf... a real good time..."

"Oh, excellent, excellent choice! Good old Freddie!" The Doctor's face split into a manic grin as he took up his own line. His singing voice was a marked improvement over Tracer's: "I feel ali-i-i-iiiiive! And the woooooorld... is turning inside out, yeah... I'm floating around... in ecstasy, so..."

And now Star, after finishing off her tankard, shouted the next line at a volume that shook the whole bar, not even in the same time zone as the correct key: "DON'T... STOP ME... NOOOOOOW!" With perfect timing, the last word was accompanied by the loudest belch and the largest stream of pink flame yet.

There followed possibly the strangest performance of Queen's exuberant masterpiece that any universe had ever seen: not so much sung as bellowed by a hyperactive Mewman princess, the last of the Time Lords of Gallifrey, and a temporally-displaced Londoner, all three chugging alien root beer between verses and adding their own percussion to the track in the form of loud, strident expectorations and multicolored flames. Marco, still seated at the bar, had to wince at the slaughtering of a perfectly good classic rock song, but their glee was so infectious that he found himself clapping along, and even joining in on the last few lines. Jenny clapped along as well, both for the first performance and the many, many encores after it, all thoughts of leaving forgotten. A grizzled, six-fingered old man with thick glasses, a bulbous red nose, and a trenchcoat smiled at them all as he continued his journey, passing through a pair of dimensional distortions without being noticed. He would have liked to stay, and possibly say hello to Rick, whom he recognized, but there was more important work to be done. Besides, it was too crowded already, and parties weren't his style.

And Fantine, unable to stop any of this, buzzed her avatar around the bar in a panic, dodging fiery blasts from every direction and shouting in a futile effort to restore some order. Her pleas were all drowned out by what could technically still be called "singing".

Morty tore his eyes away from the girls long enough to wander over to Rick, sprawled across his pancake chair like a quilt and semi-conscious. "You sure you don't want any of this stuff, Rick?" he said, offering a tankard. "It's actually really good!"

"Can't you see how contrived this is?!" Rick suddenly sprung up in a foul temper. "It's a multidimensional orgy of pointless cameos, bad in-jokes, and copyright infringement, Morty! Some sick fuck dragged us into this fanboy jerkoff session to try to prove how clever he was. 'Woohoo, look at me! Pay attention to me, give me comments, indulge my ego! I waste my life on anime and cartoons and hide away from society in my basement like it's Fort Asshole because I'm too emotionally stunted and socially inept to interact with people who don't share my incredibly narrow range of interests! You think I'm not pathetic enough when I stick with magical girls, watch me mash together a bunch of other shit I like with no regard for internal consistency!'"

"Aw, jeez, Rick, y-you're coming on a little strong, even for you-"

"Strong?! Look around you, this whole thing's a self-indulgent shitshow, Morty! No-uuurp-none of it makes any sense! I-I-I mean, wh-what was the p-urp-point of all this?! How much longer can this even go on?! For fuck's sake, it's thirty chapters long already! Thirty goddamn chapters of misery and tormenting a cast of mostly underage Japanese girls! Three years and two-huuuuuurp-hundred thousand words, Morty, and it's not even done with the second act! And a-all these characters, there's gotta be hundreds of them... who-whoever's responsible for this is like George R.R. Fucking Martin without the talent, audience, money, or regular employment! Wh-what kind of... what kind of sick, obsessed lunatic even b-uuurp-bothers to learn enough about magical girls to write shit like this?!"

"All right, that's ENOUGH!" Fatine's scream somehow cut through the cacophony, shaking the Lighthouse to its core as what little was left of her patience and sanity snapped. "That's it, I've had it! All of you, out, out, OUT! This entire chapter is now declared officially non-canonical, do you hear me?! IT'S NON-CANON! It never happened! It's non-canon! Non-canon, non-canon, NON-CANON!"

MERCIFULLY, THE END OF CHAPTER 30

[Addendum: The character of Jenny Everywhere is available for use by anyone, with only one condition. This paragraph must be included in any publication involving Jenny Everywhere, in order that others may use this property as they wish. All rights reversed.

The version of Tracer making a cameo here comes from the amazing and epic Overwatch fanfic Break My Heart, Break Your Heart by thesilvergoddess, and is used as a tribute with the author's express permission. Please go read their work and give them your support! http://archiveofourown.org/works/7169057

All other cameo characters in this chapter belong to their respective creators, owners, and studios, and are used purely out of love, for the purpose of parody.

Lyrics excerpted from Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now" ©1978 EMI Records]