DiaBA chapter 69 - Darkness ***FINAL CHAPTER***

THIS IS 100% THE CANON ENDING.

---

“No matter what happens now
I shouldn't be afraid

Because I know today has been the most perfect day I've ever seen”

—Radiohead

Rob Mason stood above his similarly-initialed counterpart. He was holding a sharpened plastic sword against Randall Munroe’s chest. Randy had started the fight with a similar blade, but it was currently stuff in a crater that had been left by a stray overvolted laptop battery.
“I… win.” Rob breathed, panting from the effort of the incredibly dramatic and entertaining battle that had just happened. “And soon,” he continued, “XKCD won’t suck anymore, for XKCD will be no more.”
It had been a long journey to this point, full of twists, turns, friends, enemies, celebrity cameos, and run-on sentences. Rob was almost sad to see it all end. Almost.
With a tempered glee, the blogger prepared to stab the webcomic artist through the heart. Randy didn’t say anything, instead racking his brain trying to think of a quotable one-liner.
The very air seemed to hold still as Rob drew his weapon back.
“Wait!” a lone voice cried out, not quite distant but not yet close either.
Both men turned their heads towards the source. It was a tall, unshaven male in a gray hoodie and jeans with dark, messy hair, making an awkward shuffle-run up the path to the summit of the mountain.
“Wait! Don’t kill him!” he yelled, a northeastern accent slurring the latter two words together.
After an awkward few seconds of stretching out the pause in the climatic death scene, Rob looked back at Randy, wondering if this was Mr. Munroe’s last resource. But Randy looked just as confused as he did.
In another thirty seconds, the unkempt surprise had reached the circle that had been the battleground for the last three chapters.
“It doesn’t have to be like this.” he said, pausing between words to breathe, heavier than would have been expected.
The two men looked back and forth between the newcomer and each other, their previous characterization melting a little.
“XKCD isn’t funny, that’s true.” The stranger began, stepping over and around the vestiges of battle. “But that doesn’t mean it can’t be. Randy, you’ve come up with some really, really good comics this last month. I just want to see that happen more often.”
The aforementioned ex-NASA employee slowly reached up with an uncertain hand to push the sharpened plastic sword aside. Rob let him. After a moment, the three were standing in a triangular formation within the larger circle.

Several weeks later, XKCD’s new editor had just woken up and was sitting down to read through a small stack of drafts. He wrote up his criticism and revisions, in a slightly kinder tone than usual, before sending them back to Randy.
The artist of the internet’s most popular webcomic checked his email, noting the changes and arriving at a happy medium that would again be sure to please his readers, old and new. Below his editor’s email there was another list of t-shirt orders, enough to pay everyone’s rent for another month. He smiled contentedly and set out drawing the first figure of his next comic – making sure to connect the head to the torso.

XKCD was funny again.

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Like I say, this ending is completely canon. No take-backsies, pinky swear on my mother's life. Don't ask about the other 60 chapters. I never wrote 'em. Sorry.

Yeah, I basically got bored of writing this and gave up when I wrote myself into a corner, and didn't want to admit it. So... sorry. It wasn't even me who wrote this last chapter. It was actually Greg Greenwell of XKCD Isn't Funny fame who posted it a year ago. Please assign any praise/blame to him for this chapter, as well as flying the flag of XKCD hate well into the future. You should be mindlessly refreshing his page every day instead of mine. That is all.

Best wishes to you cuddlefish and now finally, I can die.

Family sickness

Hello there, dear XKCD-SUCKS reader

At this point you may be wondering why Died In A Blogging Accident is almost two weeks overdue for the next update. I' be honest, I was not looking forward to writing this, partly because theatrocious keyboard on my Nexus 7 cant seem to type without a second and a half of lag. I'd tell you the full story, but you probably don't want to hear it.

In short, my laptop broke down. After ruling out the RAM and the fucking SATA cable as the cause of the problem, we found that the culprit was a faulty SSD made by OCZ - go figure.

Since then, my laptop has been basically useless, as I can't get it running without a hard drive. And I'd left my backup drive in my parents' house, thinking I wouldn't need it anymore because all my backups are in 'The Cloud' - HUGE MISTAKE.

My housemate actually has a laptop with two hard drives - dont ask me why - for some reason he just needs two. And he still wouldn't let me borrow one. What a prick.

It took TEN DAYS for the new SSD to arrive, and when it did it was 32 gigabytes SMALLER than the one it was supposed to replace. That was my last straw with that company. I sent the drive back to OCZ, still in its original packaging, demanding that they pay me a cash refund. (Seriously, fuck that company.)

Dreck happens. And I was due for a new laptop anyway. But since I no longer need it for studies, I could not justify the expense to my (rich, Jewish) parents. That means I'll have to wait until Christmas* to have a working laptop again. 

Until then, I'm actually surprised that I can get by on a tablet+phone for like, 90% of the things I'd do on a computer (can anyone recommend a good DeviantArt client for Android?). However I'd be damned if I'm writing a novel on this thing. No matter what keyboard I install, my Nexus becomes a lag-ridden piece of dreck when I try and do any sort of long form writing on it. If you're reading this now, it's be ause I haven't yet thrown it against a wall in frustration.

To be honest, I kind of needed a break from DiaBA anyway. Rest assured though, Rob and friends will be back on the first Sunday after Christmas (28th December - mark your calendars), and I will update weekly from then on.

Thanks you for understanding, my patient fan. You're probably the only person who bothered to read this. 

*Yes, even yids celebrate Christmas.

DiaBA chapter 8 - Commitment

“And I make her prove her love for me

I take all that I can take

And I push her to the limit

to see if she will break”

—Pink Floyd

Megan awoke in the ball pit, seething and sweating from the lingering terror of a nightmare where the radiotherapy machine refused to turn off. She was strapped down securely, too tightly to move. Everyone else had forgotten and left left her in there for what felt like hours, while the machine continued to turn round and round and blasted her with over 9000 times the lethal dose of gamma radiation, until her whole body became cancer. “It’s funny how a thing that causes cancer is also used to treat it.” someone said, probably Randall. Her darling Randall was mocking her, possibly calling to her from outside the dream. She tried to roll back over to muffle the sound, to try and keep it going a little bit longer, because no matter how horrible the dream was, it felt preferable to the reality of her waking hours. It was hopeless. In the end, she always woke up.

Megan slowly opened her tired eyes. She was still strapped down and unable to move, but instead of the tumours pressing on her abdomen there were just play pen balls. regardless, there were still two very real tumours in each of her tits. It was them that were making Randall upset. That was why he behaved the way he did. He was such a sweet man really. He’d only ever done these things because of the cancer. Naturally, she blamed herself for this; it was her cancer that caused the problems.

She hadn’t left the colourful confines for over six weeks, not even to go to the bathroom. After a while, she began to rationalise that it was her punishment. It also brought her closer to Randall when he needed her the most. Sometimes though she needed reminding that it was for Randall’s own good, and every time she struggled against her bindings, he would tie them a little tighter, cutting off the blood supply.

Megan’s hair was long and tangled, just the way Randall liked it. Her skin was paling from the lack of sunlight, and her already-slim body was wasting away. She was also naked. With every passing day she looked more and more like the stick figure that Randall kept drawing, to the point of obsession. But Megan knew if she got too much thinner, then she would no longer be able to feed him. For this reason, her husband fed her every day, sometimes forcefully.

Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Randall would stroll into the ball pit, his meat stick rock hard from the satisfaction of updating the comic on a timely schedule, and made love to Megan forcefully and rigorously, saying that it was the best way to cure her cancer. By this point she’d almost started to believe him.

Tonight however, something was different. At first she didn’t hear Randall’s hushed panicky tones, but when she did, she snapped to attention. Randall had waded deep into the ball pit with one hand wrapped around his 13-inch MacBook Pro. He pressed the hot metal instrument into her bony thighs, and she flinched involuntarily at the sharp edges. She was suddenly very conscious of the fact she was naked.

“Ni-ahh!” Randall said.

“Is something wrong, darling?” said Megan. Of course something was wrong, but still she had to ask.

“Ni-ahh! Ni-ahh!”

And he tapped the top-right corner of the screen. According to the menu-bar clock, it was 23:40 on a Sunday night. Missing a midnight comic deadline would usually put him on edge.

“It’s alright.” Megan said soothingly. “It’s all right... In the next twenty minutes, we’ll just re-hash an old comic idea and make a graph joke out of it, just like we always do.”

This idea seemed to calm Randall somewhat, enough so that he loosened one of her bindings, and allowed her to control the laptop for a while. He opened Chrome, and sent the address bar to xkcd.com. Megan briefly considered the idea of sending for help via the internet, but the only other tab open was Twitter, and she couldn’t think of how to say it in 140 characters. Besides, Randall would see what she was doing. He was crouching next to her, knee-deep in balls, and resting his arm on her shoulder. It was Megan’s job to keep on clicking the ‘Random’ button until Randall found a comic he could use. After twenty or thirty clicks of the button, comic 631 came up.

“How could I ever improve on that— that masterpiece?” Randall asked rhetorically.

“Doesn’t matter.” said Megan. “We’ll keep looking.”

A few presses of the Randall button later:

“That one!” he said.

Randall hurriedly picked up a pad of plain paper, and sketched out a wobbly graph axis, then tore the paper from the pad and scrunched it up into a ball. That one wasn’t so good. He tried again, but he still didn’t like the result. The graph axes still looked wobbly. Yet another page was scrunched up and discarded.

“I’m not distracting you, am I?” said Megan. But Randall wasn’t listening. He was now too busy drawing a man and a woman that resembled Megan, having quirky stick-sex in the server room. After all, their copy of the Kama Sutra had a few mistranslations.

Randall broke away from his fantasy to make one more half-arsed attempt at a webcomic. The laptop screen wasn’t visible from where he sat, which was fortunate for him at that moment, because if he’d have seen the clock that said 23:54, he’d have panicked and had a temper tantrum.

“There, finished!” Randall said like a proud toddler showing a drawing to his mother.

“That’s very good Randall.” she said to humour him, but she couldn’t stop her voice from sounding tense and scared. “Now let’s get it up on the internet for everyone to see.”

She quickly pushed the COMMAND and M keys together, and handed the laptop over to Randall.

“There’s no time to scan it!” he said. “I’ll have to use the Android.”

“Oh, alright.” said Megan. She knew exactly what this would involve. Obediently she held the drawing up to her chest, trying hopelessly to cover her breasts, but there was no way she could cover her tits and her snatch with just one arm free. They would no doubt be visible in the picture.

Randall whipped out his smartphone, and launched the camera app. He stood back, held still and snapped a picture of Megan holding the comic. It didn’t matter that the comic itself took up a tiny percentage of the photo, because this phone was packing a 20.7 megapixel whopper. And it blasted out a pulsing flash that cast Megan’s body in an eerie white light that captured all its beautiful decaying glory. He made sure to stand far back enough to get her snatch in the frame. Once he’d taken the photo five or six times, he grabbed the laptop. Like most of the recent XKCD comics, he would make it look all formal and professional through careful cropping. He was about to launch Adobe Photoshop CS6 to do this, when out of the corner of his eye, he saw a minimised window on the Dock that hadn’t been there before.

Megan must have opened it when he was drawing.

“What— what’s this?” he said.

“Uhhh...”

Randall clicked it, and the window expanded to reveal a half-written email from Megan.

get me out of here before i die.

randall’s place, 101 rogers street, 021

But she never finished writing the ZIP code.

“Who are you writing to?” asked Randall.

The recipient line was blank, but the subject line just one word in it: HELP.

“None of your business.” said Megan weakly.

There was a long pause. Randall carefully closed the email and clicked on the ‘Don’t Save’ button. He then folded the laptop, and clutched it between his hands like a security blanket.

“I love you.” came the words in his trembling basso voice, and he started to stumble over his words. “And— and— and I take care of you! I— I feed you, and cure your cancer. There is— there is nothing I haven’t done to you— for you I mean. And now you’re asking someone for help? From someone who isn’t me?! Who doesn’t— doesn’t love you as much?!?”

“No.” she said, feeling a sudden burst of confidence. “There is someone else who loves me as much.”

“Is it someone I know?”

“No.”

“Oh, I think I do!”

“You don’t! You only know him as a 300-pound jerk from Seattle. If you really knew him, you’d know Rob’s actually a hundred times heavier, because his heart is just that big!”

Megan knew that her feelings of confidence came the memory of Rob’s love, and the hope that it might bring.

“You— whore!”

Randall slapped Megan on the cancer. He couldn’t bring himself to do it to her beautiful face, so he aimed his blow a little lower. He recoiled his hand from the blow, realising he’d have left a blushing red slap mark on his favourite milk pillow.

The XKCD creator was torn between a desire to kiss it better, and the need to punish Megan again.

“I’m so sorry!” he said. “Now look what you made me do! It’s not— it isn’t fair that you get hurt because of this. Just stop making me do this, you fucking bitch!”

Randall was already pulling his hand back to slap the other tit.

“Wait Randy, the comic!”

“Oh frakkin’ fuck! Unngh!” 

Randall tried to slap himself instead, but missed. So instead he resorted to throwing a tantrum and kicking his balls around the playpen.

When he’d calmed down after a few minutes, Randall grabbed the laptop, cropped the photo and saved it as a PNG. Then he uploaded it to the XKCD server, and added an essay-length mouseover text to it. It was well past midnight when the comic finally went online. Thousands of confused fans were stuck refreshing the previous day’s comic for 45 minutes.

Randall stared at the forum thread for a few minutes, basking in the praise and appreciation that his loyal fans fellated him with. But it was not enough. He needed something more physical in that moment to make him feel complete.
The forum thread was just enough to get him erect. From then onwards, it was all Megan. With one swift movement, Randall slid open his flies and jammed his meat stick into her withered pussy. He was harsh, shaky, unprotected. After twenty seconds of violent thrusting, against her pitched screams of terror, he spewed forth his man essence, planting his seed at the very back of Megan’s cave.
Afterwards he held tensely on to Megan’s hair, shuddering and almost crying with equal parts guilt and euphoria. He just hoped that he’d done enough to stop her from ever thinking about escaping.

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DISCLAIMER: this story and its characters are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons or cuddlefish living or dead is purely coincidental.

Trigger warning: people being mean. Please erase it from your mind if you already read it.

DiaBA - mid-season clip-show

Previously on Died in a Blogging Accident...


“Randall doesn’t know how lucky he is.” Rob monologued. “She is too good for him. She deserves me, a man who truly appreciates her. It is a great cosmic injustice that she became Mrs Munroe, when she should have been Mrs Rob Mason. Believe me when I say that I so desperately desire for hot sweet Megan-loving, that I would go as far as to kill the man she claims to love.”

“But why now? Why not two years ago when people actually gave a fuck?”

“She had cancer. And Randall’s been playing it for sympathy.”

“The bastard!” sneered Carl.

“Well now it’s come back in both tits, and it’s terminal.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” said Carl. “Megan is a truly special woman.”

“Yeah.” said Rob. “If I act fast, I may be able to get her while she still has hair.”

“Then I wish you good luck.” said Carl. “So tell me, has anything else happened while I’ve been gone?”

“Randall went public with his lactation fetish.”

“I always knew he would.” said Carl. “Christ, I dread to think how that’s affecting Megan.”

“Woman who have had mastectomies don’t lactate.” said Rob. 

---

When Rob got to the front door, he realised he had forgotten something.

“Mom!” he called out. “I’m leaving town for a while.”

“For how long?” came a voice from the downstairs bedroom. 

“Indefinitely.” said Rob.

“Why, is someone is wrong on the internet?”

“Yes.” said rob, cringing at the reference.

“You should just ignore them.”

“No Mom, Xkcd is a disease, and it's reached pandemic proportions.”

“Could you at least change my bedpan first?” the helpless woman pleaded.

“Fuck no... thanks.” he said politely.

Rob squeezed his way through the front door of his crumbling suburban abode, leaving his bedridden mother to die.

---

“Is it not a magnificent thing that I, Randall Patrick Munroe, do?”

“Won’t that kill him?”

“Probably...” said Randall. “Anyway, pretty cool for something I made in my free time, right?”

“Don’t kill him.” Megan almost begged.

“Why not?” inquired Randall.

She choked up. Megan knew that if Randall went through with this plan, she would never feel Rob's burning member up against her wet pleasure-garden. But she could never tell him, so she invented a lie.

“Because... you want him to be looking in your eyes when you kill him, knowing that you’ve won.”

“Hmm, a face to face defeat is tempting. Alright then. I shall disable the explosives.” Randall declared.

Megan gave a quiet sigh of relief. That would buy her some time, but for other reasons her time was still running out.

“Now will you please do one more thing for me?”

“What’s that, Megan sweetie?” he said, walking towards the door.

“Will you let me the frak out of this ball pit?!” she screeched, rattling against the heavy chains that bound her arms.

Randall peeked in through the doorway. His ball pit occupied an entire room, the largest room in the house with tunnels and slides everywhere, and in the corner sat Megan, wriggling about within the two-metre radius that the chains allowed her. She looked so beautiful and vulnerable.

“You know I’d never do that, my dearest darling danish.”

Megan sighed with sorrow. Desperately, she reached for her usual sympathy card.

“But cancerrrr!”

“And I vowed to take you in sickness and in health.”

---

The prisoner was running out of insults, so he reached for his trump card, the one thing that would offend Randall the most.

“You don't even look like Black Hat Guy with that thing on. You just look like a loser wearing a black hat."

“It's called a fedora.” Randall snarled “And it makes me look badASS.”

He walked over and flipped a switch on the machine, and it began to make a whirring sound. Then walked over to his 13-inch Macbook Pro, hovered his finger above the keyboard for a moment, taking one last look at his captive, before slamming down on the enter key. Suddenly the program snapped into action and the machine began to work, executing thousands of lines of code.

“What's it doing?" cried the captive as a strange white noise from the headphones filled his ears.

“It’s filling your head with… romance, sarcasm, math and language.” Randall proclaimed.

“You can't… no, NO! Turn it off! Turn it off!”

Randall tried his best evil laugh. “MWAhahahaHAhaHA!”

“Ahh! Make it stop! RANDALL, GET OUT OF MY HEAD!”

Randall took one last chance to gloat at his captive before his mind was wiped. He strutted over to the chair, and took the headphones off for just a second to whisper in his ear: “Who is your god now?”

---

“Do you know what else I hate about XKCD?” Rob postulated.

“That you don’t anything better to do with your time?”

“The fact that some people claim it has characters. Black Hat Guy is not a character. He is a series of unrelated incidents linked by an item of clothing. And don’t fucking get me started on Beret Guy, or that godawful Megan ‘character’.”

“I AM that Megan character!”

Rob and Megan glared at each other, with mutual angry tension in their eyes. Silence. The whole room had gone quiet. Suddenly and forcefully, they kissed each other’s brains out in a passionate mutual embrace of rage-filled horny lust. It felt so awfully wrong. He knew she was already dating Randall. She knew he was an enemy of XKCD and everything it stood for. Yet it made their loins burn for each other all the more.

Suddenly an Android phone sounded out. Megan broke from the kiss and pulled it from her pocket. It was a text message, from Randall. It only said one word, and three punctuation symbols.

Milk? :)

Megan explained that she had to run, her boyfriend was hungry, and when he gets hungry he gets angry, and when he gets angry he gets... well, she didn’t want to say what the third word was. Hastily, Megan said goodbye, knowing full well that they knew that they would probably never be able to see each other again. Rob understood, and replied that he would always remember that moment they shared together.

“Whatever happens.” he said “Till I die and after I die, and when I find my way out of the land of the dead.”

And he meant every word of it. As he watched his precious Megan slide out of the doorway, every fibre of his being yearned so much to be the one suckling on Megan’s succulent buds, that he could think of nothing else.

Rob had cum in his pants. He took off the XKCD shirt, and wiped it up, then ate it.

---

Rob stumbled back into a wall. A table was pushed into the window, breaking it. Rob made no effort to stop himself. The wall buckled under his weight, and then he rocked forwards. Android Carl readied itself into an attacking stance, but then Rob took two paces, and fell on top of the Android, crushing it. There was a dull crunching sound, and the twitching of a robotic limb. Rob pushed himself up, as the Android Carl spoke its last words.

“The process com.xkcd.destroyRobMason has stopped unexpectedly. Please try again.”

But Rob didn’t give it time to try again. He force-closed it as quickly and thoroughly as possible by stamping on its neck, several times just to make sure. Finally he picked up the remains of the robot, and ate it.

Rob looked around. People around him were gasping in shock. He’d already caused quite a scene in this cafe, but now he couldn’t see why they were still staring at him. Then he remembered.

His fly was still open and his dick was hanging out. Remorselessly, he zipped himself up and made for the exit. But the people around him continued to stare disapprovingly. So he shuffled back to his table, wiped up the cum with a pair of ten dollar bills, and left them as a tip.

---

“Wait, who’s that guy?” said Capn, pointing to the stranger behind them, who had a cropped haircut, and a red college hoodie with armpit stains. He had been standing there for a while, but Capn was the first one to notice him.

“Dunno.” said Rob.

“I don’t trust him.” said Kitten. He took a few steps towards the man. “Oi, mate...”

“Chris Houlihan’s room.” said the stranger.

The five of them stared at him.

“Ohhh, it’s this guy.” said Rob.

“Eh, is it a video game reference?” asked Raven.

“Chris Houlihan’s room.”

“STFU already.” shouted Kitten.

“Don’t feed the troll.” Raven cautioned.

“Chris Houlihan’s room.”

“...”

“Chris Houlihan’s room.”

“Is that all he says?” Ann asked.

“Chris Houli...”

He never finished the sentence, because Capn had swung himself forwards and punched the troll in the face.

“Chr...”

Capn aimed a flying punch at his chin, forcing the man’s jaw closed on his tongue. And still he didn’t fight back. Capn punched him several more times, then kicked him too the floor.”

“Chris Houlihan’s...”

“Shut the fuck up!” bellowed Capn, and he proceeded to stamp on his neck. 

“That’s enough, Capn!” said Raven.

“Shut up the fuck piece of shit die die die!!!”

Capn continued the assault until he broke every rib in the man’s body, and there was red stuff everywhere. The sight of blood seemed to calm him. “Sorry guys.” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “I’ve had a bad day today.”

---

A hook-nosed figure squatted on the roof of Inman Square Fire House, his beady eye pressed up to the sights of a sniper rifle. Through his magnified view of the plaza, he saw them scatter and regroup. He took great pleasure in firing the next few shots, though he only intended to scare them. One of them may have ricocheted and hit a pedestrian, but Capn was the only one he’d needed to kill. Then he relaxed the trigger, and checked the time a digital pocket watch. Not a second too late. He folded up the weapon, climbed down the ladder, and persuaded the security guard to look the other way with a sack of money. Then he slinked off into an alleyway.

He took out a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. It depicted a stick figure without a face, lying bloodied on the floor. There was a date and time written below it. He pulled out a lighter, and set fire to one of the corners, watching blithely as it burned away, before dropping it on the ground.

From the same pocket, he took another piece of paper, and unfolded it, more carefully this time. It depicted a man and a woman as stick figures in a bed, having quirky stick-figure sex, with another date and time below them.

He pushed a few buttons on his pocket watch, and the digits changed. Now it displayed 31 hours, 41 minutes, 59 seconds, and counting down.

---

Before the others could stop him, he rang the doorbell of a top-floor apartment directly above Randall’s. An annoyingly shrill female voice answered.

“Who’s this?”

“Hi,” said Kitten in his worst fake American accent. “Me homies an’ I recently acquired the flat downstairs. We wanna come take a look round yur place and intr’duce ah-selves.” 

“Doesn’t Pat live in that apartment?” said the voice.

“No he does-in’t. I just lost mah key so I gots to use yurs.”

“Um, I don’t think so.”

“LEMME THE FUCK IIIN!” shouted Kitten. His accent had gone completely redneck.

“I’m calling the cops.” said the woman.

And her voice cut off.

“Stop it, Kitten.” said Raven.

“Okay, let’s move on to plan B.” said Kitten. “I’m breaking in.” 

“What...”

Kitten shoved his fist through the glass door, and twisted the handle from the inside. There was blood on his wrist, but he wiped it on Ann’s ironic T-shirt.

“...the fuck?” said Rob.

“Wait, did she say Pat?” said Raven, but Kitten had already ran in.

“His middle name.” said Ann.

“Oh fuck this.” said Rob, and ran in after him.

---

The world around Raven and Ann cascaded into an ebony nightscape. Shapes of the tangible world shifted in and out of extra dimensions to reveal a landscape with everything in the same place as before, but looked completely different, and was out of phase with reality.

Everything here was made of shadows.

The ground below their feet was seen as the floor of an endless empty chasm. The houses and buildings were delicately angular mountains of twisted darkness. Trees had been replaced by black dendritic skeletons, with skinny tendrils hanging from their brittle branches. Their heartwoods glowed with a cold red life force. This colour was mirrored by the cold red sun hanging low above their heads. The rest of the sky was a bone-white void, which was slowly crumbling apart. And there was a thin layer of grey ash covering everything around them.

It was neither a fiery Hell, nor a cold world lost to sunlight. Raven and Ann did not feel hot and more than they could feel cold or room temperature, because temperature as a concept did not exist here. It was hard to even remember what heat felt like.

“Welcome to the Nether World.” said Raven. “Try not to get too comfortable here.”

---

At once, Ann started to glow brighter than all the cars on the freeway around them. Light from the heavens poured into him, and he hovered gracefully, six feet off the ground, arms outstretched. His T-shirt and jeans vanished, leaving him completely naked as his body re-shaped itself as female. His hips widened, butt tightened, and she began to grow breasts. Still bathed in that silvery light, her hair lengthened and became luminescently pink in colour. She stretched out her hands and began to revolve as clothing appeared in the air and wrapped itself around her lithe yet full figure. It formed into an overly elaborate nurse’s outfit with a low neckline to display the cleavage of her shapely bust, which was growing larger by the second, stretching the silky fabric. As a final flourish, the outfit gained frills on the sleeves, and a giant red bow on the back to match the two in her hair.

“Hali!” she screamed, the Japanese word for needle, and a giant pink syringe materialised in front of her. She grasped it in both hands, held it above her head. She touched down on the ground in a pose that showed off the curves of both her chest and her bottom.

“I am Mahou Shoujo Ann Apolis M.D. And I am ready to see the next patient. Now Kitten-kun, what seems to be the problem?”

---

“Prepare for shujutsu!” said Ann Apolis M.D, waving her scalpel at Kitten, so quickly that her arm became a blur. Kitten flinched for a few seconds, but was apparently unharmed by her cutting until his clothes fell to pieces, having been shredded by the scalpel.

Kitten stood before the busy highway, naked, missing an arm, and confronted with an angry magical girl doctor. Rob and Raven laughed haughtily at him. And from sheer embarrassment, his nose emitted a fountain of red blood.

Before the cold could kill his boner, Ann Apolis M.D. grabbed Kitten, and raped him there and then.

“This will only hurt... alot!” she promised as she pressed him against the cold hard concrete, and forcibly extracted his seminal fluid. Then she plopped a pill into his mouth, washed it down with a glass of water and started again, rocking back and forth on his sore genitalia.

“Now, hold still while I make an incision.”

The frenzy of limbs moved fast amid Kitten’s screams of pain as she opened him up, added to the incision with more. And because of the way Kitten squirmed, she kept finding new parts of him to cut with the scalpel. Every few seconds, she shouted something else in butchered Japanese, and picked up another surgical tool.

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DISCLAIMER: this story and its characters are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons or cuddlefish living or dead is purely coincidental.

Author's note: Thank you for bearing with me so far on slow updates. I wanted to post a new chapter today yesterday, but I eventually made the difficult decision of delaying it another week to get it written exactly how I want it. In the mean time, I hope you enjoy this recap, and chapter 8 will be posted on Sunday for the patient few who have stuck it out this far. You guys are the best. :))

DiaBA chapter 7 - Incision

“Let it all out, let it all out 

tsuyogaranakute ii nda ne”

—Miho Fukuhara

For the last two minutes, Rob, Raven, Ann and Kitten had been running for their lives when they crossed a busy overpass. It was already starting to get dark. Boston’s Central Artery stretched out to the horizon on either side below them, clustered with the red and white lights of rush hour traffic. Raven was still carrying Kitten’s severed arm, because everyone else was too squeamish to touch it

Kitten slowed up and stopped, continuing to bleed heavily from his stump as he slumped down on the pavement.

“I’m dying.” he choked.

“No you are not.” declared Ann. 

“It’s no use, Annie boy.” said Kitten deliriously. “I’ve lost too much blood. You’re just going to have to live twice as hard, for... me...”

“Doesn’t anyone have medical training?” said Raven.

“Yes, I do!” said Ann overdramatically.

“Don’t let us stop you.” said Raven, offering the bloodied and and mangled arm to Ann.

“Well, I kind of have to transform first.”

“Transform?”

“Yeah, it’s kinda like in an anime. When I say the key phrase, I transform into Ann Apolis M.D., a magical girl with the power to heal people.”

“Wait, you turn into a girl?” said Kitten, perking up suddenly.

“I discovered this power through intense introspection, and anime.” 

“Bet you anything that’s code for masturbation.” Rob whispered in Raven’s ear.

“Ready?” said Ann.

“Yeah!” they said in unison.

“Okay, here goes.” he said. “Aisatsu, ika to kyuuban ga age rareru watashi ha Anaporisu M.D. gozen.”

At once, Ann started to glow brighter than all the cars on the freeway around them. Light from the heavens poured into him, and he hovered gracefully, six feet off the ground, arms outstretched. His T-shirt and jeans vanished, leaving him completely naked as his body re-shaped itself as female. His hips widened, butt tightened, and she began to grow breasts. Still bathed in that silvery light, her hair lengthened and became luminescently pink in colour. She stretched out her hands and began to revolve as clothing appeared in the air and wrapped itself around her lithe yet full figure. It formed into an overly elaborate nurse’s outfit with a low neckline to display the cleavage of her shapely bust, which was growing larger by the second, stretching the silky fabric. As a final flourish, the outfit gained frills on the sleeves, and a giant red bow on the back to match the two in her hair.

“Hali!” she screamed, the Japanese word for needle, and a giant pink syringe materialised in front of her. She grasped it in both hands, held it above her head. She touched down on the ground in a pose that showed off the curves of both her chest and her bottom.

“I am Mahou Shoujo Ann Apolis M.D. And I am ready to see the next patient. Now Kitten-kun, what seems to be the problem?”

Kitten was so entranced by the sudden appearance of Ann Apolis M.D. that he forgot about his arm injury altogether. So to that he blurted out: “Well nurse, the problem is that I haven’t had sex with enough magical girl nurses.”

“Baka!” screamed Ann Apolis M.D. “I am a surgical doctor, not a nurse. Do the letters after my name mean nothing to you?” She pointed out the letters on the name tag pinned to her boobs, and brandished the giant syringe.

Kitten stared at the name tag. Promptly, a gust of wind came along, which blew into Ann Apolis M.D.’s skirt, and made her boobs jiggle.

“I wanna cum on those tits.” Kitten said, and he made a sudden step forward to rip the magical girl’s clothes off with his one remaining arm. But she was too quick for him. She leapt right over Kitten’s head, and promtly stabbed him between the shoulder blades with the massive syringe. Kitten’s eyes grew wider and his mouth grew smaller as pink liquid was injected into him. “What the fuck?” he said, turning round. But Ann Apolis M.D. was already wielding a shining scalpel.

“Prepare for shujutsu!” said Ann Apolis M.D, waving her scalpel at Kitten, so quickly that her arm became a blur. Kitten flinched for a few seconds, but was apparently unharmed by her cutting until his clothes fell to pieces, having been shredded by the scalpel.

Kitten stood before the busy highway, naked, missing an arm, and confronted with an angry magical girl doctor. Rob and Raven laughed haughtily at him. And from sheer embarrassment, his nose emitted a fountain of red blood.

Before the cold could kill his boner, Ann Apolis M.D. grabbed Kitten, and raped him there and then.

“This will only hurt... alot!” she promised as she pressed him against the cold hard concrete, and forcibly extracted his seminal fluid. Then she plopped a pill into his mouth, washed it down with a glass of water and started again, rocking back and forth on his sore genitalia.

“Now, hold still while I make an incision.”

The frenzy of limbs moved fast amid Kitten’s screams of pain as she opened him up, added to the incision with more. And because of the way Kitten squirmed, she kept finding new parts of him to cut with the scalpel. Every few seconds, she shouted something else in butchered Japanese, and picked up another surgical tool.

The traffic had slowed to a standstill on both sides of the road as drivers craned their necks to see the surgery. There were some crashes, but even the fatal ones died happy. The pileups continued for half an hour. Several hundred Boston commuters emitted in their pants at the mere sight of Ann. And the women looked on in awe, each wishing they had a little Kitten of their own to play with.

Once the painful bits were over, Ann Apolis M.D. sedated Kitten with a tube of laughing gas, which wasn’t difficult, given how much he was hyperventilating. She added some finishing touches to the internal organs, before patching up the arms.

The operation was a success; Kitten’s right arm had been reattached to his left side. And to preserve the symmetry, the left arm had been lovingly attached to his right. Kitten was sleeping now with a massive lollipop in his mouth.

“Nice hentai.” said Rob. “Needs more tentacles though.”

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DISCLAIMER: this story and its characters are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons or cuddlefish living or dead is purely coincidental.

Author's note: A list of storytelling conventions and tropes used by DiaBA may be found at this link. Feel free to add to it.

DiaBA chapter 6 - Secret Worlds

“Raven thoughts

Blacken your mind

Till you’re breathing in reverse”

—Bright Eyes

The world around Raven and Ann cascaded into an ebony nightscape. Shapes of the tangible world shifted in and out of extra dimensions to reveal a landscape with everything in the same place as before, but looked completely different, and was out of phase with reality.

Everything here was made of shadows.

The ground below their feet was seen as the floor of an endless empty chasm. The houses and buildings were delicately angular mountains of twisted darkness. Trees had been replaced by black dendritic skeletons, with skinny tendrils hanging from their brittle branches. Their heartwoods glowed with a cold red life force. This colour was mirrored by the cold red sun hanging low above their heads. The rest of the sky was a bone-white void, which was slowly crumbling apart. And there was a thin layer of grey ash covering everything around them.

It was neither a fiery Hell, nor a cold world lost to sunlight. Raven and Ann did not feel hot and more than they could feel cold or room temperature, because temperature as a concept did not exist here. It was hard to even remember what heat felt like.

“Welcome to the Nether World.” said Raven. “Try not to get too comfortable here.”

“Wow, this place is...” said Ann, failing to to think of an adjective because the word ‘amazing’ did not exist here. “How did you find out about this?”

“Intense introspection.” said Raven.

“So how do we rescue the others?”

“We climb up to where they’re standing, and pull them into this world.”

“That sounds... whoa, what is that thing?!” Ann pointed at a shadowy black figure walking towards Them. Beneath its hood was a pulsating mass of twisted flesh, tubes, fluids and tendrils. Its life force glowed with the coldest of reds.

“It’s a human.” said Raven.

“What’s that Smoke around it?” asked Ann.

“He’s having a bad day.”

“But why don’t we look like that?”

“We do.”

And then Ann looked at himself. When he saw the raw hideousness of his body, he let out a high-pitched Scream:

“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAHH!!”

It echoed around the nether world for several days, becoming progressively amplified on the fifth day, before fading into shadow like everything else there, but not before several emo kids could jerk off to it.

When they saw the similarly disgusting forms of Rob and Kitten, Raven explained that she could bring them into the Nether World by touching them with the note. But the non-geometric nature of the stairs blocked their way. She would have to fly to reach them.

“I hardly ever use this power.” she explained. “Because every time I fly, a random person around the world gets cancer.”

She hovered behind each of their shoulders, and lightly touched Kitten with the little yellow square, then Rob. Rob lost his footing and Kitten, caught within Rob’s gravity, fell to the ground beside him. 

“Aww, am I dead already?” said Kitten.

“Don’t worry, falling here won’t kill you.” said Raven. “You’re in the Nether World. We had to pull you out of existence to rescue you. That doesn’t mean you’re dead though. Now try not to get too comfortable here.”

“OK” said Rob, who had been here before.

“I didn’t need rescuing. I was three steps ahead of that bitch.”

“She had a gun.” said Rob.

“You forget though, I can dodge bullets faster than lightning with my cat-like reflexes.” boasted Kitten, punching the air for each of those last five syllables.

“OK” said Rob dismissively.

“Wait, this doesn’t look like Neverland.” said Kitten. “Where’s Peter Pan?”

“Dead.” said Ann. “They’re all dead.”

“Aaargh, my childhood!” Kitten cried overdramatically.

“Oh by the way.” said Raven. “Don’t eat any of the food here.”

“Too late!” said Ann, pointing at Rob

Rob had already walked over to the apartment block, and started eating it. It was slightly tougher than his usual meal. His jaw opened into extra dimensions, but got stuck on the edge of the bony sky. Eventually, his teeth crunched down on the shapeless black mass, and he began to digest it, before he had even swallowed it. The shadowy forms seemed to be screaming as they disappeared into the unthinkably dark void of Rob’s throat.

Neither Ann, Kitten nor Raven had seen Rob eating before, and none of them could bear to watch, but since they were two Brits and a Canadian, they were too polite to criticise someone else’s table manners. So they waited until he had finished, and then Raven said:

“So, in order for us to leave the Nether World, I need to tear up the note. Be careful of where you’re standing. You don’t want to end up inside a wall. We need to position ourselves so we reappear inside Randall’s apartment.”

“There’s no need.” said Rob. “I tasted the whole thing. Randall doesn’t live here at all.”

“Are you sure?” said Raven.

Rob nodded solemnly, but they didn’t need to know if Rob was sure. The walls and floors and the apartment block were gone, and they could see now into they could see into the empty space where 101 Rogers Street would exist in the real world. And they knew instinctively with the dull despairing clarity of the Nether World that this was not where Randall lived, because they could see there was actually an old lady called Pat living there, who hadn’t answered the door because she was taking a shit.

“You mean...” said Ann. “We came here for nothing?”

A moment of Silence washed over the group as realised that was indeed the case.

“Fuck you Ann.” said Rob, as if the map directions he had given earlier made him somehow responsible for this whole misadventure.

Raven sighed. As she looked longingly at Ann’s fleshy tubes, she decided that this trip hadn’t been a complete waste of time.

“Dammit, this is going all wrong!” said Kitten. If we don’t stop Randall then Capn would have died for nothing!”

“Not this again.” said Rob.

But Kitten had seen something. For the last few minutes, Ann had been absentmindedly brushing away the top layer of ash from the ground, revealing a dark black pit, where another human form lay hidden.

“Is that... Randall?”

“It’s just a dead person buried in the foundations.” said Raven.

“That must be Randall’s underground base!” said Kitten. “Let’s get him!”

The others could see what Kitten was about to do. Ann tried to hold him back, but Kitten was too strong for him. Rob grabbed him as well, but he was too strong for both of them. They were powerless to stop him if he dived into the ground and never came up again.

Raven, seeing what might happen, made a quick decision and hastily ripped up the post-it note.

All four of them felt an uncomfortable sensation, as everything around them faded to white, then beige, then a dull piss-colored ochre, then back to the real world. Their ears were ringing.

Apart from Raven, none of them had taken the time to position themselves, but luckily they were standing in the alleyway next to the apartment block, which still looked very solid. Raven was standing in a trash can. Rob and Ann stood either side of Kitten, who had come very close to running into the wall of the building.

“Did I... Did I really think Randall was down there?” said Kitten, looking at the concrete ground.

“The Nether World can make you act irrationally.” said Raven. “I told you not to get too comfortable there. I once spent too much time in that world, and briefly thought that Penny Arcade is well written.”

“Well it’s better than Real Life Comics.” said Ann.

“Praise God I haven’t been introduced to that one.” said Rob.

“Imagine CAD, but worse.”

“Nothing could be worse than-” Raven started. “Kitten, your hand!”

“Wha- Oh fuck.” said Kitten, realising that it was embedded in the brick wall of the building.

“Do we cut it off or what?” said Ann.

“I think that might be the only way.” said Raven despairingly.

“No, not Righty!” said Kitten. “We’ve had so many fun times together.”

“Well it’s either cut off your hand or remain stuck there.” said Rob.

“No, isn’t there any other way?” he moaned. “I don’t want to lose my hand.”

“I’m sorry Kitten,” said Rob. “But you kind of did this to yourself.”

“It wouldn’t feel the same wanking off with my left hand.” said Kitten. There were tears in his eyes. “Can’t we just go back into the Nether World and get me out?”

“I’m out of post-its.” Raven sighed.

“Buy some more.”

“And leave you here? Need I remind you that the police are on their way, and you would not last long in an American prison.”

“I can try and eat around your hand.” said Rob.

“Okay.” said Kitten. “Just be careful.”

Rob extended his gaping maw beyond the third dimension, and munched vigorously on the bricks and concrete. The others were somewhat shocked that he could use this power outside of the Nether World, but they still didn’t say anything, because they were British and Canadian. Before long, Rob had taken a large chunk out of the wall.

“Best I could do.” said Rob. Then he opened his mouth again, and spat out Kitten’s blood-stained arm.

“My arm!” shouted Kitten.

“We’ll get you a new one.” said Ann. “First let’s get away from these police cars.”

Then they heard it, faint sirens in the distance, growing steadily louder.

The beady eyed man was been hiding in the basement, waiting for them to leave. When he heard their footsteps, he got in position so he could casually tell the police that the unhinged woman in the attic had raised a false alarm. As he walked round the side of the building, he realised he would also have to distract them from the gaping hole in the wall and the trail of blood leading from it. What he never did realise was how close his family resemblance had come to giving him away to Kitten.

He checked his pocket watch again. Not long now, not long at all. But before that, he would cross paths with the four hate-bloggers. He’d just now wasted a perfectly good opportunity to introduce himself, but the blood and the wound had created an additional complication. He began to wonder if his influences would alter the time stream and create an entirely different future from the one he remembered. He doubted it though. Randall wouldn’t give up that easily.

He would reveal himself some time soon, but now he wasn’t sure how to do it. It could be so awkward. He was worried they wouldn’t like him.

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DISCLAIMER: this story and its characters are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons or cuddlefish living or dead is purely coincidental.

Author's note: I have nothing to say.

DiaBA chapter 5 - Increased Risk

“Don't keep me waiting here

Lead me to your door”

—The Beatles

Rob, Raven and Kitten faithfully followed Ann’s directions to the subway station, and onwards to Randall’s house. After boarding the red line, they talked little as the train crossed the river and carried on underground. 

Rob stood and stared at the other passengers, noting their vacant expressions, and unassuming postures, and thought to himself:

Look at these people. Glassy-eyed automatons going about their daily lives, never stopping to look around and think! I’m the only conscious human in a world of sheep.

He was the only one standing up, because none of the seats were big enough for him. After a while Kitten also stood up to look out the back window because he became convinced that “Some creepy guy is following us.”

Still, there was no sight of him as the train carried on through all the downtown stops and back out into the suburbs.

“Not yet.” Ann said at another station, sensing a growing feeling among the others that they had gone the wrong way. Wrong way or not, Rob guessed they were well south of the turnpike by now.

When they finally got off the train, they emerged into a suburb where most of the houses were clad in tacky wooden sliding. And unbeknownst to them, their pursuer slipped back into the shadows.

They could not be far from Randall’s house now. Ann led them down the main road, and before long, they saw a little green sign for Rogers Street. Excitedly they followed it. They were walking down the very street that Randall Munroe lived on, and XKCD fan’s wet dream. They kept going, until they reached a three-storey apartment block at the end of the road.

It was clad in the same wooden sliding as all the other buildings in the area, painted in a murky shade of green, and it looked quite newly built. They soon found the front door. Rob examined the list of doorbells, and saw that 101 was on the middle floor.

Without thinking, he pressed the doorbell with his fat finger.

“Shit, what do we say to him?” said Rob.

“Does it matter?” said Ann.

“We could pose as fans and ask to look around.” Raven suggested.

“He’ll never believe it.” said Rob. “Shiiiit.”

They waited tensely for a few minutes, and no answer came.

“Maybe he’s out.” said Ann.

“In that case I have an idea.” said Kitten. “I got it from an Episode of Sherlock. All we have to do is befriend the guy who lives directly above, then drop right down from the balcony to Randall’s.”

“That sound like a terrible idea.” said Rob “You should totally do it.”

Before the others could stop him, he rang the doorbell of a top-floor apartment directly above Randall’s. An annoyingly shrill female voice answered.

“Who’s this?”

“Hi,” said Kitten in his worst fake American accent. “Me homies an’ I recently acquired the flat downstairs. We wanna come take a look round yur place and intr’duce ah-selves.” 

“Doesn’t Pat live in that apartment?” said the voice.

“No he does-in’t. I just lost mah key so I gots to use yurs.”

“Um, I don’t think so.”

“LEMME THE FUCK IIIN!” shouted Kitten. His accent had gone completely redneck.

“I’m calling the cops.” said the woman.

And her voice cut off.

“Stop it, Kitten.” said Raven.

“Okay, let’s move on to plan B.” said Kitten. “I’m breaking in.” 

“What...”

Kitten shoved his fist through the glass door, and twisted the handle from the inside. There was blood on his wrist, but he wiped it on Ann’s ironic T-shirt.

“...the fuck?” said Rob.

“Wait, did she say Pat?” said Raven, but Kitten had already ran in.

“His middle name.” said Ann.

“Oh fuck this.” said Rob, and ran in after him.

Kitten rushed upstairs, and knocked on the door of the shrill-voiced woman. She opened the door cautiously.

“Good morning, Ma’am.” said Kitten, trying and failing to sound Canadian. “Ah’m a plainclothes police officer and ah understand there’s bin an intrusion in...”

“Get out!” she screamed.

“Sorry, ah have to inspect yur flat first.”

At this point, Rob caught up with him, and forced the woman out the way, and they rushed into her apartment.

“What now?” said Rob

“Now we go to his balcony.” said Kitten. “And... Shit, there’s no balcony!”

“Don’t move, you assholes!” said the shrill female voice from behind them. She was pointing a gun.

Meanwhile, Raven stood next to Ann at the smashed entrance.

“The police are gonna start arriving any minute.” he said to Raven. “And Rob and Kitten are still in there.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“What are we gonna do?”

“We could make out.” Raven suggested.

“We were probably gonna do that anyway.” said Ann. “I mean how do we rescue them? Going in the front door is too risky.”

“Well...” said Raven. “I could use my emo powers and teleport us into the Nether World, and we could pick up Rob and Kitten from there.”

“Whaaat?! Why didn’t you tell us you had this power?”

“Because every time I use it, a random person on the other side of the world drops dead of a heart attack.”

“Awesome.” said Ann, before adding: “But only if you’re comfortable using it. How exactly does it work?”

“Most emos activate the power by cutting.” Raven explained. “I do it by writing a shitty poem on a post-it note.” She withdrew a little square pad of yellow notes from her coat pocket, took out a ballpoint pen, and slowly wrote:

Wet pines stand watch

over silent streets.

Drowning worms die

beneath worn boots.

“Now, we both need to be touching the note.” said Raven. She held it in her palm and Ann placed a single finger on it. “3... 2... 1...” she said, and then they were both sucked off

into...

darkness.

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DISCLAIMER: this story and its characters are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons or cuddlefish living or dead is purely coincidental.

Author's note: for those are are curious about what route they were taking, I have mappped it here.