[9:00 A.M. – Hero Academy Courtyard, Departure Portal]
"Again," Alex said, deadpan. "Explain to me why I'm going to a convention when I've done everything in my power to avoid being relevant."
Penny shoved a hoodie over his regular hoodie. This one said "PLOT ARMOR – UNRANKABLE, UNRELIABLE, UNBOTHERED."
"Because if you don't go," she said, "they'll project a hologram of you reading fanfiction of yourself, and it will be canon-adjacent."
Cryflame bounced in place, already wearing novelty shades and a foam finger that read 'CHAOS CREW CLASS WTF 4EVER.' "I'm bringing three notebooks, a portable autograph board, and twelve pre-written emotional speeches just in case we meet Omnigal!"
Mistopher floated upside down. "I'm getting my aura analyzed. Last time it was described as 'plot-adjacent sadness with notes of jazz.'"
Voidica stood nearby, silently tightening her scarf. The look on her face said "If anyone hugs me, I'm turning into mist."
Alex sighed. "Can't I just send a cardboard cutout of myself?"
"You already have one," Penny said. "It's trending. People proposed to it."
***
[10:00 A.M. – HeroCon X: Expo Plaza, Multiversal Convention Zone 7]
The entrance gates were thirty feet tall and covered in flashing sponsor ads:
"MEET THE LEGENDS! EXPERIENCE THE PLOTS! BE THE SIDE CHARACTER YOU WANT TO SEE IN THE WORLD!"
A marching band of genetically modified mascots danced past them. An explosion of confetti signaled the arrival of a hero who could fly using pure self-esteem.
And standing dead center, holding a sign:
"PLOT ARMOR – PLEASE LET US WORSHIP YOU"
A crowd of fans wearing cloaks made of redacted pages bowed dramatically.
"Oh look," Alex muttered. "It's a cult."
Cryflame gasped. "You have a cult?! That is SO COOL."
"I don't want a cult. I want a burrito."
Mistopher nodded. "We all seek purpose."
Voidica whispered, "I will burn them if they touch me."
***
[10:05 A.M. – The Welcome Ceremony That Felt Like Foreshadowing]
They were ushered in by staff bots wearing "Ask Me About Your Destiny!" buttons. One tried to hand Alex a badge that said "KEYNOTE LEGEND: PLOT ARMOR – STAGE 1 @ 2 P.M."
He stared at it.
"Is there a version of this where I'm just, like, attending?"
The bot buzzed. "No."
The main hall stretched out before them—booths upon booths, themed zones, staged fights, pop-up origin story generators, fanfiction contests, and something called 'Narrative Tasting.'
Voidica squinted at a booth titled "Villain Reformation Speed Dating." "I hate this place."
Cryflame already had ten bags of swag. "I love this place!"
***
[10:15 A.M. – Penny's Warning, Part 1]
Penny's voice buzzed in Alex's ear.
"Redline edited the guest list," she said. "He's manipulating narrative clusters—trying to put specific heroes and arcs in proximity to you. Watch for high-ranking emotional arcs, especially romantic rivals and backstory dumpers."
Alex groaned. "What happens if I bump into one?"
"Try not to make eye contact. And absolutely don't rescue anyone near a water feature."
***
[10:30 A.M. – Flash Interviews / Glitch Alerts]
As they moved through the hall:
A sentient microphone chased Mistopher, shouting, "WHAT DOES IT FEEL LIKE TO EXIST OUT OF NARRATIVE ORDER?"
Cryflame got adopted by a pop idol team and forgot how to blink.
Voidica almost stabbed a mascot who referred to her as "goth bae of destiny."
And Alex?
Alex got cornered by a six-year-old wearing a cardboard helmet and a cape made of fast food wrappers.
"Hey!" the kid shouted. "You're the guy who won the Starblazer fight by doing nothing!"
Alex blinked. "Technically, I tripped."
"You're my favorite!"
Alex's face twitched. "That's… terrifying."
***
[10:45 A.M. – Then Came the Devotees]
The Cult of the Unwritten returned, surrounding him with glowing scrolls, chimes, and someone playing a flute made of fan theories.
"O bearer of the unpenned," the cult leader intoned. "You are the error that liberates. The break in the beat. The un-footnoted storm."
"Please stop talking," Alex said.
"We have merch," they offered.
He took the sticker. It said "GLITCH GOD" in glitter ink.
***
[11:00 A.M. – HeroCon VIP Lounge, Also Known As Arc Pressure Cooker]
The VIP lounge was cooler than it had any right to be—lit like a nightclub with the energy of a board meeting hosted by supernovas.
Alex stepped inside and immediately felt like a walking error message.
Crystal walls pulsed with ambient mood lighting. A side table offered emotionally curated hors d'oeuvres. A looped highlight reel played in the background, showcasing key moments from the Hero League's top-tier members.
Above all that hung a glowing sign:
"LEGACY LIVES HERE."
Alex muttered, "Hope it brought snacks."
[THE CAST OF PERFECTION]
Penny had warned him. But nothing could prepare Alex for just how overwritten these people looked.
1. ChronostrikeHero of Time. Silver hair. Clockwork cape. Speaks like a cryptic calendar entry.Fun fact: Once saved the world before it ended.
- Immediately pulled Alex aside.
- "You shouldn't exist. You're a paradox the story hasn't processed yet."
- Alex replied, "You sound like a hangover."
2. OmnigalMultiversal brand ambassador. Can punch holes in reality or sell you thirty versions of the same arc.Power source: Publicity.
- Thrust a branded protein bar into Alex's hand.
- "You're perfect for cross-market integration! Have you considered a catchphrase?"
- Alex deadpanned, "I fall down a lot."
- She gasped. "It's relatable!"
3. PlothoundLooks like a trenchcoat, smells like a spoiler. His nose twitches at unresolved narrative threads.
- Immediately circled Alex.
- "You've got dangling arcs, no defined traits, and at least three foreshadowed betrayals orbiting your aura."
- Alex whispered, "I am begging you to not sniff my arc."
***
[11:10 A.M. – Social Trauma Begins]
Tess Astra was already there—trying to blend into a corner with Monk Wolf, who was quietly meditating next to a plate of emotionally balanced cheeses.
Raze Valor stood by a hero-sized espresso machine, staring daggers at Alex from across the room.
Alex approached Penny's hologram on a nearby console.
"Okay," he hissed, "can I go home now?"
"You are home now," she said. "This is your house. Made of pain and genre pressure."
"I'll burn it down."
"Too late. They insured it for emotional payoff."
***
[11:15 A.M. – Passive Aggressive Banter Time]
Chronostrike stepped forward, voice set to 'narrator audition'.
"You warp probabilities. You unravel threads. You wear a hoodie to a formal event."
Alex shrugged. "Comfort's a superpower."
"You walk outside and entire plotlines lose cohesion."
"Sounds like a skill issue."
Omnigal clapped. "Oh my gosh, I love this vibe."
Plothound muttered, "He smells like the finale to a series that never started."
***
[11:20 A.M. – Penny's Warning, Part 2]
Back in her command den, Penny's eyes widened.
"Alex, Redline's agents are moving. Multiple rival factions got free passes to VIP access. They're testing you—watching what triggers you."
"I'm not triggered," Alex said aloud.
Chronostrike: "Your emotional arc is overdue."
Omnigal: "Have you ever considered falling in love with someone who teaches you how to believe again?"
Alex: "Now I'm triggered."
***
[11:25 A.M. – Cue Minor Scene Glitch]
Reality flickered.
Just once.
Just enough for everyone to stop mid-breath.
Alex's juice glass turned into a crown, then a sword, then back to juice.A random NPC nearby blinked and said, "I think I just became a subplot."
Plothound's tail twitched.
"It's happening," he whispered. "He's destabilizing the tone."
Tess looked at Alex. "What are you?"
Alex sipped his juice.
"Hungry."
***
[1:00 P.M. – Expo Main Hall, Stage Alpha]
A countdown glowed above the main stage in bright, anxious red.
00:00:0700:00:0600:00:05
Backstage, Alex adjusted his hoodie strings and whispered, "Remind me why I'm doing this again?"
Penny's voice answered in his ear.
"Because it's better than letting a League intern impersonate you with a bad wig and a broken laugh track."
"That happened once," Alex muttered. "We agreed never to speak of it again."
The crowd roared as the countdown hit zero.
Spotlights flared. Fireworks launched. The announcer's voice boomed across the stadium.
"WELCOME TO THE MARQUEE PANEL: UNLIKELY HEROES & CHAOTIC GOOD!"
Alex stepped onto the stage with the energy of someone being tax-audited in front of a live audience.
***
[1:01 P.M. – Panel Chaos Begins]
The other chairs were already occupied:
On the far left sat Blightburn, a villain-turned-influencer in a neon suit and rebranded redemption arc. His smile looked like a cease-and-desist letter wrapped in teeth.
Next to him floated Steelheart, the sentient sword from Chapter 3, hovering in a display cradle and pulsing with disapproval.
And beside Alex, in a white cloak edged with narrative authority, sat Echo Solus.
The crowd swooned. The lights dimmed. A soundtrack started playing—his soundtrack.
"Seriously?" Alex said under his breath. "You brought your own theme?"
Echo didn't turn his head. "I am my theme."
Alex narrowed his eyes. "That's the most protagonist thing I've ever heard."
"Thank you."
"It wasn't a compliment."
***
[1:03 P.M. – Question One: Who Even Are You?]
The host—an overly enthusiastic half-cyborg named VJ Sizzle—leaned forward, his mic lighting up with algorithmic laughter.
"So, Plot Armor!" he grinned. "You've tripped, sneezed, and eaten your way into Class A status. What's it like knowing you're a walking spoiler alert?"
Alex scratched the back of his head. "It's a little like being invited to a dinner party where I am the dinner."
Laughter from the crowd. Mostly nervous.
Echo leaned into his own mic.
"He represents the decay of heroic discipline."
Steelheart hummed. "He represents the resistance of structure. The blade and the blank page. I respect it."
Blightburn winked. "I just think he's bad for my brand."
Alex shrugged. "I'm bad for everyone's brand."
***
[1:05 P.M. – The Tension Thickens]
Echo sat forward, hands steepled.
"You exist to unmake. You bring down arcs before they reach fruition. You derail growth. And worst of all—" he turned, voice rising, "you make people like it."
Alex leaned back. "Hey, if stories keep throwing me into the spotlight, maybe they deserve to be tripped."
"You're not a protagonist," Echo snapped.
"Nope."
"You're not even a foil."
Alex took a slow sip of his soda. "I'm just a really persistent glitch."
The crowd fell dead silent.
Then someone cheered. Then more. Then many.
Echo's eye twitched.
***
[1:07 P.M. – Penny Notices the Trap]
Back in her monitoring nest, Penny's tablet flared red.
LIVE PANEL: UNSTABLE ENERGY SURGE DETECTEDVIEWERSHIFT PATTERN: UNCONTROLLEDREDLINE SIGNATURES: CONFIRMED
She slammed the console.
"Alex—get off that stage. This isn't a panel. It's a trigger event."
***
[1:08 P.M. – And Then the Ceiling Exploded]
No warning.
Just boom.
A streak of light tore through the upper wall—followed by masked figures in cloaks stitched from static and corrupted dialogue code.
The lead one shouted:
"THE CONTINUITY COLLECTIVE CLAIMS THIS PANEL!"
Gasps. Screams. Applause from the cult in the audience, probably misunderstanding the vibe.
Blightburn vanished in a puff of glitter.
Steelheart ignited. "I knew I should've stayed in my sheath today."
Echo rose with righteous fury, drawing Storyshard mid-flip.
And Alex?
Alex was halfway through standing when a bolt of displaced narrative energy blasted the floor under him.
The ground cracked—
—and he fell straight through the stage.
***
[1:09 P.M. – The Plot Thickens (Under the Stage)]
Alex landed with a dull thud on something metallic, surrounded by darkness and old Expo wiring.
He groaned.
"Every. Damn. Time."
Somewhere above, muffled screams and battle cries echoed, followed by someone yelling, "WHO GAVE THE SWORD A MIC?"
Alex rolled onto his back.
"Well," he muttered to no one, "I guess this is the part where I find something I wasn't supposed to see."
A flicker of light shivered down the corridor behind him.
Footsteps. Not urgent. Not hostile.
Intentional.
***
[1:10 P.M. – Enter: The Visitor]
A figure stepped into view. Cloaked. Hooded. Carrying a lantern shaped like a deleted scene.
The figure stopped a few feet away.
"You weren't supposed to fall," they said, voice soft, genderless, weary.
Alex sat up.
"I wasn't supposed to be in this story."
The figure nodded.
"I'm called Novell," they said. "And I'm here to tell you: You're not the first PlotSing. But you might be the last."
***
[1:11 P.M. – HeroCon Sublevel: Storage Corridor (Unmapped)]
The path was narrow, built of obsolete tropes and old event banners. A busted hologram buzzed softly, flickering the words "Thank You For Your Participation" like a memory that refused to die.
Alex followed the cloaked figure deeper into the gloom. His hoodie scraped against stacked crates marked PLOT MATERIAL – NONCANON. One box hissed when he got too close.
Novell moved quietly, their lantern casting shadows shaped like question marks.
"You really don't want to be here," they said without looking back.
"That's been the subtitle of my entire week," Alex muttered.
***
[1:13 P.M. – The Archive of Abandoned Futures]
They emerged into a vault-like room. It didn't look like a space. It looked like an idea of a space—unfinished, unrendered.
Floating in the center was a huge crystalline structure, spinning slowly.
Within it: scenes.
People.
Moments.
Not real. Not anymore.
A child with wings made of newspaper, crying ink.A hero with too many catchphrases, buried in silence.A girl waiting by a door that was never written.
"This," Novell said quietly, "is what's left of the ones before you."
Alex stepped closer. The crystal pulsed at his presence.
"They were like you," Novell said. "PlotSings. Storybreakers. Not chosen, but... noticed."
"And now they're what?" Alex asked. "Scrapped?"
"Preserved. Briefly. Until Redline finds a use for them."
***
[1:15 P.M. – Who Is Novell?]
Alex turned. "And you? You're one of them?"
Novell lowered their hood.
They looked... familiar.
Not like someone he knew.
Like someone who almost was.
Alex gasped softly. "You're a prototype."
Novell nodded. "The first draft. Never published. I broke early—refused the romance arc, dismantled the training montage. I didn't last."
They reached out, touching the crystal. "But I saw what Redline does to us. What he's building."
***
[1:16 P.M. – The Rewrite Agenda]
"He's not trying to destroy the narrative," Novell said. "He wants to perfect it. A world where every arc lands. Every character fits. No interruptions. No glitches. No... you."
Alex frowned. "So I'm the threat?"
"You're the exception," Novell replied. "You shouldn't be surviving. You should have cracked under the pressure. Folded into someone else's arc. But you're still here. And now he's accelerating the Convergence."
Alex looked back at the crystal, watching a scene glitch and disappear.
"What's the Convergence?"
"The point where all genre boundaries fail. Where every story tries to assert itself through you. If Redline controls it, he decides which version of you survives."
Alex clenched his jaw. "So what do I do?"
"You stay off-script," Novell said. "You keep breaking what he tries to fix."
They handed Alex a page.
Blank. But humming.
"What is this?"
"Your next chapter. Write it before he does."
***
[1:20 P.M. – Then Came the Echo]
Above, the ground trembled.
Voices shouted.
A screen flickered on in the corner—grainy, showing the panel stage again. Echo Solus stood where Alex had fallen, sword drawn, demanding answers.
He wasn't just angry anymore.
He looked afraid.
"He senses it," Novell said. "He thinks you're the danger."
Alex pocketed the page.
"I'm starting to think he's right."
***
[1:22 P.M. – HeroCon: Emergency Lighting On, Trust Offline]
The Expo above had fully descended into genre soup.
Security drones flew in erratic zigzags. Fan cultists chanted in three-part harmony. A rogue time traveler argued with the panel moderator about event scheduling across collapsed timelines.
Alex burst out of a maintenance corridor and back into chaos.
Immediately, five people tried to take his picture.
Two others tried to knight him.
A third handed him a business card that said "Narrative Therapist – Specializing in Crisis-of-Arc Moments."
He ducked behind a shattered merchandise table.
Penny's voice crackled in his ear.
"You okay?"
"I found a forgotten protagonist who gave me an empty page that may or may not decide the future of all reality."
Pause.
"Okay," she said. "So that's a yes with a footnote."
***
[1:30 P.M. – Group Reunited, Sanity Not Guaranteed]
Cryflame tackled Alex in a glittery hug. "You FELL THROUGH THE STAGE! And you missed Steelheart singing!"
Voidica appeared like mist, dragging a duffel bag of stolen lanyards. "You triggered a multi-faction micro riot. I'm proud of you."
Mistopher floated down from the rafters holding a plush prophecy squirrel. "The rodent has spoken. It knows too much."
Alex pulled his hood tighter. "Okay. Can we go home before the multiverse tries to publish me?"
***
[1:40 P.M. – The Wall of Futures]
On the way to the exit, they passed an exhibit titled "THE HEROES WE COULD BE."
Dozens of posters lined the walls—each one showing Alex.
But different.
One wore armor made of cosmic code.
One stood alone in a destroyed city, eyes glowing.
One smiled from a throne built of tropes.
Each bore a title.
PLOT ARMOR: GOD-KILLERPLOT ARMOR: THE LAST FUNNY MANPLOT ARMOR: THE FINAL DRAFT
He stopped walking.
The crowd passed around him.
He just… stared.
Penny whispered, "They're prewrites. Fan expectations. Editorial predictions. Data-mined from your probability field."
"I didn't choose any of them."
"I know."
"But someone's writing like I already did."
She placed a hand on his arm.
"Then write louder."
***
[1:50 P.M. – The Gift Shop, Which Is Absolutely a Trap]
As they reached the gates, the HeroCon Gift Shop activated—because of course it did.
"Buy your own arc!" it shouted. "Customize your character journey! Try the exclusive Plot Armor action figure—now with ambient narrative distortion field!"
Alex picked one up.
The figure fell over inside the box.
"Accurate," he muttered.
Cryflame bought three.
Voidica stole four.
Mistopher argued with a cashier about fate and coupons.
***
[2:00 P.M. – Redline Watches]
In a screen-filled chamber somewhere far from the noise, Redline observed it all.
His hand hovered over a keyboard. Not typing.
Drawing.
Blueprints.
Story structures.
Backup arcs.
And beneath it all… a containment plan.
PROJECT: LOCKSTEPGoal: Synchronize the Convergence. Anchor All Variants. End the Drift.
Alex's face hovered in the center.
Redline smiled.
"Let's see how long you can keep dancing before the story catches you."
***
[2:01 P.M. – Final Beat: The Train Home]
Back on the Academy hover-train, Alex sat by the window.
The city lights blurred past.
His friends laughed around him—too loud, too weird, too alive.
Alex stared at the page Novell gave him.
Still blank.
Still humming.
And for the first time, he didn't feel like running.
He felt like writing back.