Disclaimer: Subreality is sorta mine, but is also a gestalt organism created by many. Mary Sue IS everyone's in the purest sense of the word. Other recognizable concepts belong to their respective creators, and if they really want to sue over few vague one-word mentions then they must be more strapped for cash than I am. Rated PG-13 for a disturbing thought or two. Feedback is appreciated, don't archive without my permission, etc.

A thank you to my betareaders, Hutch, Jeanine, and Andy Blumson, who convinced me that this wasn't too horrible. Whether or not you agree with them is your choice. ;) PS: The creepy quote is courtesy of Andy -- much obliged!

NOTE: This was written after reading Subreality Walkabout -- "alcheringa" means "Dreamtime" in native Arunta. (It took me longer to find the darn name than it did to write the darn story...) If you get the connection, you get a Tim-Tam.

-- Gordon Fellman, "Rambo And The Dalai Lama: The Compulsion To Win And Its Threat To Human Survival"

I want to go home now, that small part whimpered.

Several other small parts whispered back, But we ARE home. And we like it here.

In some people, this exchange might spring from a fertile imagination -- in others, insanity. In her, it was merely what she was: a composite born of countless dreaming minds, melded together from so many shards of being that anyone else, opening their eyes to such an existance for the first time, would have instantly been driven mad.

She could not remember ever having opened her eyes "for the first time."

And she was perfectly sane.

Thus, the creature currently called Mary Sue continued to bus tables at the Subreality Café, wearing a serene little smile as she gathered mugs and idly listened to the various aspects of her personality arguing in the back of her mind.

Some would say that cleaning up dirty dishes in a bar was a demeaning job for a being that had literally been and done everything imaginable...a being who could, if she wanted, hold ultimate power in these shadowy between-lands of the multiverse. However, she saw it differently. As a creature who literally could do anything she wanted, be it ruling the galaxy or cleaning up after a roomful of sloppy tavern patrons...who was to say which was more amusing, in the end?

When you've been around practically forever, when you'd done and seen and owned everything you could ever possibly have wanted, it all started blurring together. Places became interchangeable, and one chore was much the same as another. She wasn't in the mood to ride a dragon into Threadfall or defeat a Sith Lord in single combat. She was in the mood to contemplate, and collecting glasses was as good a way as any.

At the moment, she was contemplating the fact that she was afraid.

"Fear" was an unfamiliar emotion to her -- not a unknown emotion, because some writers got a twisted kick out of subjecting their various versions of her to terrible torments in the name of "good storytelling." However, it was not an emotion she normally felt when it wasn't being used as a plotpoint. She knew fear as one might know a necktie, something to be tolerated but put away after the work day was over.

So what was this shivery shudder trickling down her spine?

What was there for her to fear?

Subreality, part of her murmured timidly. I don't like it any more. I want to go home. Can we go home? I miss rainbows...

Exasperated, she slammed down a tray full of glasses on the bar and headed out the front door at a sharp clip, startling the Manager and earning a bemused glance from the Bouncer. She looked at neither, walking swiftly, preoccupied, acknowledging no building nor obstacle in her path.

Subreality hastily got out of her way.

But the Mists did not.

She halted there on the very edge. Her hair streamed like a banner on the breeze that sighed between worlds, and the cool fog of unformed chaos caressed her cheeks and she stood with her heels on solid ground and her toes...somewhere else. Oh, you could walk into the Mists -- people did, all the time. But you never knew what was out there. If you were unaware of the nature of the Mists, you might stumble headfirst into any story imaginable. Or you might wake up back in your nice warm bed in the real world.

Or you might just never come back at all.

The Mists were the real Subreality, the foggy border between Reality and Fantasy. What lay behind her -- the sunny lands, the huddled buildings, the impossible bustling throng of characters and writers -- was merely the part that had been molded into shape by mutual imagination.

Just like her.

Here on the smudged line between tamed chaos and what still belonged to the void, she was better able to examine those nagging misgivings. True, Subreality was changing...the writers were growing up, in a sense. Spreading their wings, stepping out of the nest, and realizing that the ground was a dizzyingly long way down.

Realizing that their fancies had consequences -- that a land based on imagination was easily warped by the dark impulses that lay barely below the surface of the minds that created it.

"And this is something new?" she shouted into the Mists. With a flare of her long beautiful mane -- red, then green, then blonde, shifting constantly as did the rest of her composite being -- she whirled to face the heart of what these writers had fashioned from the raw bones of nothingness. "You think this is a surprise?"

She was a creature of many faces, yes, and over time the shards of her psyche had settled into "layers." And so many of her "faces" were embodiments of interchangable innocence. It didn't matter whether they rode unicorns or captained starships. What mattered was that they were all sweet, charming, beautiful, perfect creatures whose stories always, always had happy endings...

The source of her fear. There!

She had it now, pinned like a mouse in a cat's claws. It was this congregate chunk of her being that was cringing from what Subreality was evolving into. It was also, fittingly, these traits that most writers in Subreality attributed to her, and thus it was the face she usually found herself wearing when she was borrowed for a Subreality story.

Everyone, after all, was fond of her "loveable" side -- of the pretty girl who used her powers only for good, who always meant a happy ending (or at least a romantically tragic one), who was best friends with all of their favorite characters.

Who was their best friend, too.

She had become...comfortable...with this. After all, she was the ultimate chameleon -- the living echo of humanity's deepest guilty self-centered desires. She was what they wanted most, even if they'd never heard of her. She was Mary Sue. She was part of them all.

And not all guilty self-centered desires manifested as innocent dreams of pegasi and senshi pens.

She smiled. It was not a pretty smile.

As one might pat a frightened puppy, she soothed the softer bits of her personality, smoothing away the fears, reminding them that they were not alone. Assuring them that her other aspects would rise to the forefront if needed, should Subreality continue down a darker path. She was, after all, made up of writers' fantasies...and not all writers' fantasies were so gentle.

For every part of her that had ever been a princess was a part that had been a dominatrix.

For every part of her that had ever chastely yearned for a first romantic kiss was a part that had been tied down and brutally raped.

For every part of her that had ever touched a rainbow was a part that had tasted blood. And loved it.

Sometimes, all anyone ever saw was the pretty face and the long legs and the "childish" superpowers. They rarely took a good hard look to see what she really was. She wasn't just Innocence and Friendship and Love. She was Need. She was Bitter Loneliness. She was Desire and Desperation and Jealousy. She was everything anyone had ever wanted...good or bad.

Mary Sue blew a careless kiss into the misty winds. Subreality could change all it liked. She would change with it.

But for now, there were dishes to be done.