You Can Have Too Much Love, You Know.

Originally posted on Tales of the Parodyverse by Manga Shoggoth.

Parodyverse characters copyright (c) 2007 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works.

It started innocently enough.

Ebony was relaxing in her onsen, deep in the caves below Antarctica. The Shoggoth was off somewhere deeper in the caves, re-arranging its collection of anime memorabilia, reindexing its manga collection and watching the odd anime or six. It was also working on a fansub of Angelic Layer in Alko, this last occupation being a little more difficult as the subtitles had a tendency to sneak off and skulk in the corners - and in a cthonic Fortress of Many Angles there were a lot of corners. This obviously made such behaviour rather hard to clamp down on.

The first indication of trouble was the three "Naa!"s that slithered into the onsen. This, in itself, was not a problem. Ebony simply grabbed them, bashed them against the stone sides of the pool, and then held them underwater until they stopped struggling. This was followed by the bulk of the Shoggoth, as it filtered through the rocky walls of the cavern. For form's sake, Ebony shrieked and threw a bucket at it. It didn't take much to keep her patron happy.

A summoning is taking place, bubbled the creature. I have received a tip-off.

Ebony directed a quizzical look at it. "Somewhat unusual." she commented. "What form did this tip-off take?"

The Shoggoth paused, as if embarrassed. It was a note tied to a bottle of fill-cream milk that was thrown through window of the Hentai Bookshop in Mangatown.

"What on earth were you doing there?"

Toshio Maeda was doing a signing.

"I thought you didn't like that sort of thing."

I did say "was". Come on, duty calls.

As Ebony stepped out from the Shoggoth (a strange and terrifying mode of transport, but it did have compensations) she took stock of her surroundings. This was new - she appeared to be in some form of laboratory, owned - if the scale was correct - by a giant mad scientist some eight times the size of a human. This in itself was unusual: Ebony didn't usually have much trouble with mad scientists, who as a rule didn't go in to summoning creatures from beyond the realms of sanity.

Looking around the laboratory she could see a human-sized rat cage (open, and apparently well furnished), a huge white lab coat with black splodges on it folded neatly over the back of a chair, and all the paraphernalia one would expect for the chemical side of experimentation. There was also a fridge, cuppachino maker, several varieties of milkshake and the burned remains of a multi-tier birthday cake, with a couple of half-melted candles leaning precariously from one side.

From the far side of the laboratory came the sound of chanting. Ebony started to creep towards the sound, but froze when she heard a distinctive noise of stone scraping across... something.

She turned. And stared.

"What the hell are you doing?" she hissed at the thing behind her. It appeared to consist of a bowl containing an upturned jelly mould, from under which peeked a riotously multi-coloured jelly.

Just a little local colour, it replied. Please refer to me as the Irresponsibly Moulded Dessert for the immediate duration.

Ebony, who was more than used to this sort of thing, quietly returned to her skulking. In the shadows under a table in the furthest corner of the lab was the most outrageous "High Priest and Sacrifice" setup she had seen for, well, her entire career. The altar was roughly the right shape, but most unbiased commentators would have described it as a half-brick. The rather bulky "High Priest" didn't look much better - the robe was little more than a badly soiled sheet thrown over the obese body. The sacrificial dagger, such that it was, seemed to be held in a tentacle of some form.

"What the hell is that?" She demanded, pointing at the lump on the altar, which looked suspiciously unlike a maiden.

"'S chocolate." squeaked the creature petulantly. "Maded it myselfish.". It twitched, causing the "robe" to slip slightly to reveal a small head against a squat body, with two huge ears and a tentacle-like growth on the front of its face, between two long, protruding fangs. No part of the creature was particularly clean - in fact it made the robe look positively sterile. The creature was standing on four squat legs.

"That's not chocolate!" Ebony snarled. She moved closer to take a cautious sniff, then stopped and rubbed where her nose should have been. She then turned to face the creature behind her, who had wisely hidden under its mould.

"Why is it that I now appear to be a small plush cat with ... an elder symbol on my forehead?" she demanded.

More local colour. replied the creature. Besides, you really don't want your nose at the moment.

Ebony had to admit the truth of that. She turned back to the supposed High Priest (or more accurately, Priestess). "So, what are you after?"

The creature in question then started squeaking a long and rambling explanation that seemed to consist of a great deal of whining, unrequited love and (allegedly) chocolate. Somehow it also involved giant lizards, a superhero team, dragons and - unsurprisingly - the Hooded Hood.

Eventually the creature wound up its explanation: "So's what this little elephant wants is a world where everybodies loves me, so I can take my Christopher to be with me for ever'n'ever'n'ever."

The Irresponsibly Moulded Desert shimmered under its mould for a few seconds. There is such a world, it rumbled. Do you wish to go there?

The small elephant squeaked its approval.

Then climb on to my plate.

The elephant gleefully scrambled on to the plate, and the mould lifted itself to reveal a riot of colours. She wiggled once as she was drawn into the mass, and then disappeared.

"Another trap?" asked Ebony.

No. I have sent it to a place where the inhabitants will genuinely love it. Besides, some of the creatures it complained about will take steps to rescue it when they find out what has happened - Heroes tend to obey their archetypes, after all. Time to go, I think...

At the far end of the laboratory a door opened, to reveal a huge blond female form, and a giant rat that scampered across the floor and into the cage, flopping down on the bed. The female giant strode across the room, looked at the - now empty - area under the table, and smiled.

In a far-off dimension, although most people would agree that it was not far off enough, Baby Elephant appeared. It was less used to travelling in this manner, and was slightly dizzy. While it waited for its head to clear (and the world to come into focus) it lay and listened to the singing. Voices singing about how much they loved each other; Voices singing other songs that Christopher had been heard to sing as well. At length, her vision cleared enough to be able to distinguish three creatures walking towards her. The largest was purple, with a large green patch on its front, the next largest seemed to be yellow with green and purple patches, and the smallest seemed to be green with purple patches.

Finally, Baby Elephant's vision cleared completely. Then she could see the creatures in their full horror for the first time.

Footnotes:

"Naa!" is a frequent exclamation by Misaki Suzuhara (Masakichi), who is the protagonist in Angelic Layer. If you are sad enough you may spot the other Angelic Layer reference.

Toshio Maeda wrote "Legend of the Overfiend", which is the Anime that gave the genre a bad name in the west for years.

There should be enough clues about the owner of the Lab, but I would be interested to see if anyone remembers the birthday cake.