In the sun-dappled shade of a tropical paradise, two crabs sprawled (actually, they just sat there as crabs do, but they were sprawling in spirit) next to the wreckage of a gigantic fruit.

The little crab bubbled happily. Yes, it was big food, but after thoughtful consideration, he decided he was cool with it.

“FUD,” the giant crab said contentedly.

“Food,” the little crab said with a smile (not really. Crabs don’t smile, but you know what I mean.)

The giant crab settled contentedly.

“CRAB.”

The little crab looked at it with surprise. It was the first time it had said anything other than “fud”. Now, it was pretty good with that word and was able to express a great deal, but this added a whole different dimension to their conversations.

“Excuse me,” the little crab inquired, “did you just say, ‘crab’?”

“CRAB.”

The little crab looked at it with even more surprise. Not only did it indeed say “crab”, but it even used a punctuation! That was definitely a period at the end of what was, in fact, a complete sentence.

The little crab looked over at the giant one with wide eyes. (Not really. Crabs aren’t terribly expressive.)

“Huh,” the little crab said as it pondered the significance of that statement.

This was being a crab. Find food. Eat food. Find some more food. Eat some more food. Then, when the moon said so, make more crabs. They find food, and they eat food.

That was it. That was all there was to it.

He had been overthinking this the whole time!

Crab! He had become a stupid!

“Ha!” the little crab exclaimed, “Crab! Thank you, dear and wise friend!”

“CRAB?”

“A friend?” the little crab said, “A friend is… It’s a crab that is not food and not fight and not breed, but you like having around just the same.”

“CRAB!”

“Crab!”

“CRAAAAAABBBB!”

The giant crab liked the idea of that.

“Crab!” the little crab exclaimed happily, and then he froze.

Crab… Crab… CrabCrabCrabCrabCrab…

That was all there was to crab… But crab was all. All is crab.

The meaning to it all is circular! The point is that there is no point. There is no single point, or there are an infinite number of them… which makes any single point infinitesimal to the point of nonexistence!

There was literally no point!!!

The little crab’s eyes started to glow like two diodes that really shouldn’t have become LEDs.

“CRAAAB?” the giant crab asked dubiously.

The little crab didn’t hear them. They were having a moment.

There was no point. Crab had no point because it was infinite.

He had missed the beach because he was too busy counting the grains of sand… just like the two stupid stupids.

Crab was before. Crab will be after. Crab is everywhere. Crab is everywhen…

His mind was filled with image of crab after crab after crab… different species… different locations… different times… different universes…

Crab was truly… pointless…

And it was wonderful!

Suddenly, it became aware of others… Other crabs… Crabs like him!

They noticed him…

...and smiled. (Not really)

“crab,” they whispered…

…and his brain exploded. (Not really, but you know what I mean.)

“CRAB?” the giant crab asked as he poked his little friend (it really liked having a friend) with a concern-filled claw.

Did his little friend become food? That was a distressing thought.

“CRAB?” it asked as it shook his little friend. It was starting to act a lot like food.

Bubbling a sad little bubble, it picked the food up and thought harder than it had ever thought before.

***

Tawdry the bard knew heading north was a bad idea.

She even told the rest of the party and insisted they skip this one.

Did they listen?

No, of course not.

“Dumbasses,” she muttered as she looked at what was left of them as she clutched her abdomen, blood oozing out from between her fingers.

Do you know the worst part?

She still had absolutely no idea what the hell was up here.

She didn’t even know if they had been ganked.

Oh, that was a thing now. Apparently, it wasn’t just the one party anymore.

The world had gone mad… well… madder, anyway.

They had to have been ganked. Monsters were not that skilled, that coordinated. They were a silver-rated party, and they didn’t last ten seconds.

Whoever took them out had to have been at least platinum, maybe even one of the gemstones.

“Show yourselves, assholes! (cough)” she yelled. “At least let me know who to welcome when I meet you in Hell!”

“Pithy to the last,” the air said in front of her as it shimmered, and a monster appeared before her.

Wait.

“Evika?!?”

“Hello, Tawdry,” Evika the Demon said with a sad little smile. “Sorry about this. Nothing personal.”

“Yeah,” David the Demon said as he emerged from the trees. “We tried to make it quick, at least.”

“I hold you in very high regard, actually,” Stephan the demon said as he landed, his wings folding behind him.

“What. The. Fuck?”

“We’re monsters, now,” Evika replied, “Demons, actually. It’s a rather long story you don’t have time to hear, unfortunately.”

“Well, congratufuckinglations,” Tawdry replied before coughing up a little blood.

Stephan pulled out a potion and poured it on her. It glowed briefly before disappearing.

“I can’t heal you, I’m afraid,” Stephan said, “But I can at least make it painless.”

“So, instead of a murderous asshole, you’re just murderous. I suppose that’s better…”

“Don’t worry,” David said, “You aren’t actually dying. You’re going to be sent back to your old life.”

“Can’t you just kill me instead?”

“Guess what,” Stephan said, “David finally told Evika that he liked her.”

“Dude!” David exclaimed as Evika tried hard not to giggle (and succeeded… barely…).

“So, has Evika…”

“Bye,” Evika said as a bolt of raw, chaotic magic neatly removed Tawdry’s head.

***

A multiverse away, a rather plain-looking skinny girl sprawled on the street, looking up at the clouds.

“He’s totally getting some of that,” she snickered.

A car horn started to honk.

“Get out of the road, you idiot!” an aging soccer mom in a mini-van yelled, “Do you want to get killed?!?”

It was Mrs. (not Ms.) Perkins, a particularly annoying busybody at the church her parents dragged her to every Sunday.

She didn’t like Mrs. Perkins.

“Well, I was,” the girl said as she flipped to her feet in a single acrobatic move. “Thanks for spoiling my suicide, bitch.”

“Y-you actually were trying to kill yourself?!?” the woman stammered.

“I was,” the girl huffed, hands on hips, “But you totally killed the mood.”

She crossed her arms.

“I don’t want to now.”

She started to walk away.

“Wait!!!” the woman yelled as she drove alongside her.

“Nope,” the girl said as she stomped away, “You missed your chance. Sorry. I’ll get someone else to pop my cherry.”

“Please, stop.”

“I DON’T CARE WHAT KIND OF CANDY YOU SAY YOU HAVE IN YOUR VAN,” the girl yelled with an impressively loud and projecting voice. It could no longer shatter windows and be heard for miles…

…but it didn’t have to.

“I AM NOT GETTING IN!!!”

Mrs. Perkins hit the accelerator and fled.

“STRANGER DANGER! STRANGER DANGER!” she called after the poor woman.

“I should probably feel bad about that,” she giggled, “But I don’t.”

Natasha “Tawdry” Barnes started singing (very well) as she skipped down the sidewalk.

Her song could no longer summon storms, cause earthquakes, or cure cancer. (She was a very good bard)...

…but it didn’t have to.

***

“FUD,” the giant crab said happily as it dragged a large chunk of the food of all foods along…

…with a small crab lying on top of it.

It took a little figuring, but the giant finally came up with a solution that satisfied the code of the crab.

It took food to its home all the time.

It’s what crabs did.

There was no reason it couldn’t put a little food on top of the big food and drag both to its burrow.

There, it could eat more of the food of all foods and wait to see if the little food became his friend again.

It wasn’t smelling like a food yet.

***

“Mooooommmm…” Tawdry moaned. (Let’s face it. She’s still Tawdry, a level ? Tawdry, but a Tawdry nonetheless) “I was just fucking with her!”

“Suicide is no joking matter, young lady!” her mother said as she dragged Tawdry outside and toward her sedan, “And watch your language!”

“It was a joke, for fuck’s sake!”

“Mrs. Perkins said you threw yourself in front of her car! She said you tried to kill yourself!”

“Mrs. Perkins believes in Bagelgate!”

“Get (shove) in (shove) the (shove) car!”

“No!” Tawdry yelled as she did a very good impersonation of a cat being confronted with a bath.

“When did you get (shove) so slippery!” her mom yelled.

“About the time you decided to send me to the fucking mental ward!!! Now, let the fuck go!”

“It’s the bullying, isn’t it,” her mother wailed as she, in fact, did not let go.

“It. Was. A. JOKE!!!” Tawdry shouted. It wasn’t a joke, of course, but mommy was already in the process of hauling her off to happy town. The truth would NOT help. “You should have seen that bitch’s face! HA! Did she tell you the bit about the candy?”

“IT ISN’T FUNNY!” her mom yelled as she managed to get Tawdry into a headlock. “Bullied teens commit suicide all the time!”

“Murph… ufph… FUClumf…” Tawdry replied. (It’s kind of hard when your face is buried into the side of your mother’s generous bosom.)

“Stop biting!” her mother shouted as she threw a surprisingly vicious uppercut into Tawdry’s midsection.

“Flooopmuf!” Tawdry yelled, quite shocked.

“I’m sorry!... I’m sorry… Oh, God…”

“You fucking hit me!” Tawdry gasped as her knees buckled.

“Oh, darling!... I… I’m so sorry… It’s just that you were biting, and I… You…”

“Good one!” Tawdry exclaimed as she doubled over, “I almost peed. (Sigh)… Fiiiine… You win.”

She calmly got into the sedan and fastened her seatbelt.

“What?...”

“Well, I’m not going to actually fight you over this. You’ve made your point.”

She clapped her hands happily.

“Let’s go to the nuthouse! Woo! Nuthouse!”

***

“Is… Is our daughter going to be okay?” Tawdry’s mother and father asked a woman in her forties wearing a white coat at a nearby hospital.

The woman smiled.

“We have observed your daughter quite closely,” the woman said, “She really didn’t give us much of an option in that regard. She’s quite the character, isn’t she?”

Tawdry’s parents looked at each other in confusion. The word “character” didn’t really apply to their daughter, save in a tragedy. They loved her more than life itself, but their dear Natasha was a bit…

…well…

…dull.

“In clinical terms,” the psychiatrist said, “your daughter is an asshole.”

“W-what?” her father asked in shocked disbelief.

“After spending a few ‘lovely’ days with the little shit,” the woman said with a fond smile, “I completely believe that she would do a pratfall near the road for the expressed purpose of giving this ‘Mrs. Perkins’ a stroke… Did she tell you the part about the candy?”

“N-no…”

“Be sure to have her tell you that part,” the doctor chuckled, “That Mrs. Perkins sounds like a real piece of work. I fully expect that her version of events was at least ‘exaggerated’. Does she really believe that vaccines have microchips in them?”

“I… I don’t know…”

“Anyhow,” the psychiatrist said as she looked through Tawdry’s chart. “Your daughter certainly acts hilariously inappropriate at times and may have a much higher risk tolerance than is advisable. However, I think that regular counseling is perhaps a better first step than medication.”

Tawdry’s persuasion could no longer reprogram someone’s memories after a brief conversation…

…but it didn’t have to.

“We have set her up with a counselor who should hopefully be able to manage her and continue to monitor and evaluate her. Should further treatment be required, they can always escalate treatment.”

She smiled at the couple.

“Taw… Natasha loves you both very much,” she said, “It might be a mixed blessing to have a daughter like her, but at least she’s fun. Just try to keep her out of the street next time.”

“We… We will…”

***

The giant crab dragged the large fruit fragment adorned with a small crab into its burrow.

“FUD?” it asked with concern as it gingerly picked up the little crab and gave it a bit of a shake.

Aside from flopping a little bit, the little crab did not respond.

It examined his not food carefully.

It was empty.

It bubbled with relief. His friend had just left for a little while and forgot his crab.

This was new, but it made perfect sense… it thought. Although, to be honest, thinking wasn’t its strong suit.

It decided not to worry about it.

It tucked the little crab beside it in its comfy burrow and decided to take a nap.

“CRAB,” it said as it drifted off to sleep.

***

“Are you sure you are ready?” Tawdry’s mother asked as Tawdry put on her backpack.

“Unless you are willing to let me drop out and get that GED,” Tawdry replied, “which I think would be a great idea…”

“No.”

“Then I have to go back sooner or later,” Tawdry shrugged. “Might as well be today.”

“If the bullies start bothering you…”

“Oh… I’m looking forward to it,” Tawdry grinned.

After giving her mother a hug, Tawdry Songslayer, former level seventy bard master, High Minstrel, and dragonslayer, now a fifteen-year-old high schooler, skipped to the bus stop.

It was going to be a good day.

***

The little crab looked through the vastness of the actual universe.

Everywhere a crab was, he was.

Everywhere a crab is, he was.

Everywhere a crab will be, he was.

Cycle after cycle, end after end, beginning after beginning… crab after crab… over and over and over again… forever.

He waved to another crab as it scuttled through time and space.

“Hi!” the little crab exclaimed.

“Hello.”

“Where are you headed?”

“To get food. There is some big food that way,” it said as it pointed a claw in an impossible direction. “Want some?”

“I’m not a fan of big food,” the little crab said. “I like little food.”

“Why?”

“Everyone fights over big food. Little food is everywhere, and nobody fights over little food.”

“Ah, one of those crabs,” the other crab said sagely. “Nobody is going to fight over this big food. It’s too big. There will be a lot of little food as well.”

It wiggled an antenna.

“Coming?”

***

Tawdry, with increasing difficulty, behaved herself for the first few classes.

It was hard for her, but she managed it. Over a decade of doing literally whatever she wanted at any given moment made high school excruciating.

She would much rather be haggling with unicorns than sitting there… and she hated unicorns. She was plenty pure… sort of… There was no reason for them not to let her have a ride… well… except for that one teeny tiny thing…

…but she was a bard… It’s what they did! Whoever heard of a chaste bard? They would have laughed her out of the academy…

…not there was any hazard of that.

Speaking of gatekeeping unicorns, she idly wondered if Lars got sent back yet and how hard it would be to find him.

He was always a good time.

She sighed as she recalled some of those good times… They were good.

“Natasha…”

…and then looked down at her stick figure of a body and frowned.

She needed to eat more. Oh, that’s right. She used to have an eating disorder.

“Natasha!...”

She shrugged. It was nothing that a pizza and a few beers couldn’t fix.

Pizza! Real Pizza! She was definitely going to have to get some that afternoon… In fact…

“EARTH TO NATASHA!” an annoying voice shouted less than a foot away.

She looked up to see the teacher glaring at her while the class was snickering.

What was his issue… Oh right. That used to be her name… or is her name… This shit was confusing.

“Yeah, dude?”

The snickering built to giggles and chortles.

“Dude?!? We aren’t ‘buddies’ Natasha! Address me by my name!”

“Sorry,” Tawdry shrugged, “I forgot it,” she said quite truthfully. She had no idea who this guy was.

The giggles and chortles grew to laughter, causing the teacher to turn red in the face.

“Hey, Mister Dude, it’s not my fault that you have left so little of an impression that I can’t remember who the hell you are. It’s your fault for being the human equivalent of oatmeal.”

“OUT!!!” the teacher yelled, “GO TO THE PRINCIPAL!!!”

“Fine,” Tawdry replied as the class broke into full-bore laughter, “I needed to piss anyway.”

***

At lunch, Tawdry sat alone, as always, in a secluded corner of the courtyard and tried to enjoy her meal.

It wasn’t the solitude…

…it was the lunch… or sorry excuse thereof.

Carrot sticks? Celery? What the hell was she, a fucking rabbit?

Oh, that’s right. That’s all she would eat.

She huffed with annoyance as it all came back, the bullying, the self-loathing, the desire to be pretty… which was stupid because she was fucking hot… or would be after a few cheeseburgers and a couple of trips to the gym once she had recovered her strength.

She pondered the wisdom of jumping straight to pizza, burgers, and beer from carrot sticks and decided not to… Oh shit. She was underage! No beer?!?

She groaned as she turned the bag upside down hopefully.

Something fell to the concrete with a thump.

What’s this? A food bar?

There was a note.

At least try. I love you. Mom.

“God bless you, Mom,” Tawdry smiled as she tore into the bar.

Were they always this nasty?

She shrugged. It was solid food. It would do until she could get that pizza.

She was going to absolutely destroy some poor toilet tonight!

Her eyes were drawn to a little bird pecking at some refuse nearby.

She smiled and broke off a little bit of her bar. It wasn’t like it would fill her up, anyway, and it would fill up the bird.

At least one of them should get a decent meal.

She tried calling out to the bird… Oh right. She couldn’t talk to animals anymore… But it turned out that while she could no longer engage the bird in idle but extremely useful gossip…

…she didn’t have to.

The bird was soon sitting right next to her, happily snapping up bits of the bar, and all was right in the…

The bird flew off quickly as a shadow loomed over her.

She looked up and grinned at the group of girls confronting her.

It was showtime.

***

We will take a quick break from the story to discuss something called ‘bardic immunity’. Back in the day, bards could speak and even act quite freely, even around nobility.

The reasons for this were many. There wasn’t that much decent entertainment, and bards talked. Abuse a bard, and you wouldn’t see another.

But… That wasn’t the main reason.

Fuck with a bard, and they will roast you into oblivion. They would roast and malign you so hard and so artfully that your legacy would be ruined, your name reduced to the punchline of a joke or the subject of a song so hilarious and vulgar that it couldn’t help but be sung…

...forever (or close enough for the victim).

Tawdry’s taunts and insults could no longer magically reduce a holy paladin to incoherence and compel him to take the Lord’s name in vain. She could no longer cause a general to change his battle plan to silence her, dooming his campaign in a single afternoon...

…but they didn’t have to.

She wasn’t facing a holy paladin or a great general.

She was facing a nasty clique of high school girls.

It was bad. It was really, really, bad.

It was send you to counseling bad.

It was move across the country and change your name bad.

In the other world, a bard could just grind and level and just use their abilities. One could taunt, beguile, persuade, and all the rest by just reading the phone book (or almanac over there).

However, one got a massive bonus if you did it right. Also, the bard’s academy demanded it. There was nothing worse than a tone-deaf bard abusing some poor guitar. “Gank” was an ugly word…

…but someone abusing the class might wish they were killed as opposed to the slaughter their psyche and reputation would suffer at the hands of the academy.

Why Tawdry was assigned that class always mystified her. She did have a guitar that she sucked at but really wanted to be able to play. Maybe that was it. Maybe Trixx was actually a god and could see into her heart or some bullshit like that.

Whatever the reason, Tawdry wasn’t just a bard. She was one of the best.

She was good.

Through a combination of creativity and what could only be described as “malicious cold reading”, Tawdry sent her victim into a very entertaining rage. Now, the bully had shoved Natasha, pulled her hair… pinched her… even slapped her once or twice, but she wasn’t attacking Natasha. She was trying to attack Tawdry.

While Tawdry could no longer dance through a barrage of arrows (while roasting the fuck out of the archers) or slip between the talons of a dragon (while telling it that she had seen bigger penises on humans)…

…she didn’t have to. She wasn’t facing a legion of archers or a dragon. She was facing an enraged teen partially blinded by the tears in her eyes.

Tawdry whirled, capered, and jeered, making a complete fool of them both while staying just out of reach as cell phone after cell phone was pulled out to record the event for posterity.

“…and we behold the mighty Stankbush,” Tawdry did with a perfect impersonation of a certain distinguished naturalist, “Such a majestic creature. (duck) Oh no! A poor North American Flatchested Virgin, its favorite prey, has wandered into its path. (dodge) The Stankbush bellows and charges its prey and mortal enemy. The Flatchest takes flight, knowing that if the Stankbush seized it with its burly mannish arms, it would be the end…”

Tawdry performed a ballet pirouette out of the way as the bully crashed into a trash can and then did a little moonwalk.

The nature documentary continued as the girl now forever named “Stankbush” charged after the disempowered but still very dangerous bard.

“…GoooBle GoooBle…” Tawdry “sqwaked” as she did a convincing impersonation of both a fleeing bird AND a wacky inflatable tube man at the same time (You don’t need skill points for that, just a complete lack of shame.)

Finally, the bully, her breath coming out in ragged gasps, ceased her pursuit, exhausted.

Tawdry dropped the funny “North American Flatbreast” act.

There was one fact that every bard knew. When they stop chasing you, they are spent…

…and it was time for the kill.

Tawdry stopped being funny.

The cold reading interrogation began in earnest as the bully, utterly humiliated and exhausted in both mind and body, was at their weakest.

“So nobody loves you at home,” Tawdry sneered, “hardly a surprise. I mean, look at you. Normally, when a kid blames themselves for their parent’s divorce, they are wrong, buuuutttt… If you were my kid, I would go out for cigarettes, too…”

The bully started to cry.

“So your own mother didn’t love you enough to stay, and your daddy cares a lot more about chasing tail than he does about your worthless ass… I bet he’s just waiting until the day they can throw you out like the garbage you…”

Tawdry looked into the girl’s eyes… at the anguish…

…She wasn’t some stupid champion who needed to be taken down a peg. She wasn’t some general set upon conquest and genocide.

She was just a kid… a lost and injured child…

There was “punching down,” and there was what she was doing.

Without thinking, Tawdry lunged with the skill and speed of someone who had spent nearly half their life literally dancing on the line between life and death…

…and hugged her bully tight.

While she could no longer calm or beguile with a word and a touch…

…she didn’t have to.

A hug was all it took.

The floodgates opened, and the bully was gone, replaced by an injured soul who clung to Tawdry as if her life depended on it, wailing like a lost child.

“It’s going to be okay,” Tawdry whispered. She could no longer soothe with a whisper…

…but she didn’t have to. A hug was enough.

Tawdry glared at the crowd surrounding them with their phones out.

“If anyone posts this anywhere,” she snarled, “the video I post of you will be a thousand times worse.”

Tawdry could no longer intimidate the entire town guard with a smile and a wink…

…but she didn’t have to.

The phones were put away.

“Hey,” she said to the bully, “Why don’t you come home with me and we can hang. My parents will cook us dinner.”

“D-dinner?” the bully said hopefully. She ate alone most of the time.

“Sure!” Tawdry said with a smile. “My parents are cool. You’ll like them.”

“You… You don’t hate me?”

“Should I?”

“Um… Yes?”

“Good thing I don’t do what I’m supposed to, isn’t it?”

Tawdry looked up at the bully with a smile.

“I don’t suppose you have any lunch left, do you?”

There was one other thing that her master taught her at the academy.

Strength wins battles. Guile wins purses. However, mercy…

…Mercy wins wars.

***

The little crab looked around in amazement as thousands of crabs, all just like him, converged at the same spot.

A universe, cold and dark, had finally died.

It was time for crabs to do what crabs do.

The crabs started to eat.

The little crab burbled with delight.

It was delicious…

…and quite enlightening.

***

Epilogue:

In a fairly unremarkable high school in a city just like many others, a graduation ceremony was taking place.

The principal called out each name, and each student filed up and received their diploma.

He paused.

“Before I call the next name,” he smiled, “I feel the need to say a few words concerning a student who, when I hear her name, my first reaction is one I cannot share here without risking my job. She has raised disruptive behavior, graffiti, and inappropriate attire to levels heretofore unknown to education. Some of her more notable accomplishments involve a certain trip to an aquarium that will never allow us back, our homecoming ceremony about which less said the better, and my personal favorite, making our resource officer cry. She made me dread every single day I walked through the doors of this institute of higher learning, and I’m going to miss the little sh…oe… Tawdry… Get this piece of paper and get out of my hair.”

The entire student body broke out into a chorus of “GooBle GooBle”, Tawdry’s trademark war cry in both worlds, as an only slightly more shapely young woman did her “flatbreast strut” onto the stage.

She looked at the principal and grinned evilly.

“Oh God,” the principal whispered, “Please, whatever you are about to do…”

***

“And in breaking news,” the local news anchor said, trying and failing to keep a straight face, “There has been an incident at a local high school…”