--- Lilian Weaver ---

  "Wait. What was I doing just now." The Malumian interrogator suddenly stopped in her work and looked at her colleagues in confusion.

  Both of them looked equally confused. "I don't know. I feel weird. I can't remember what I was doing either."

  "How did we even get here?"

  "Don't worry about it." Lilian Weaver responded.

  The human woman was strapped into a chair in the middle of the interrogation chamber, unable to move. She looked much less concerned than her interrogators.

  "It's a plot hole caused by the buffer overflow. It's best not to worry about it."

  "What?"

  "The multiverse is trying to find a stable, self-consistent timelike curve. It's running through multiple variations of possible events and looking for the most stable one, so that reality can collapse to that state. This is one possible version of events, but it looks like some details haven't been put together yet. Don't worry about it."

  "I understood very little of that, but it sounds like we should probably worry a lot."

  "No. Please don't. Worrying about it emphasizes inconsistencies, which will make this branch of reality less stable and less likely to become real."

  "Wait. We aren't real?"

  Lilian sighed. "Look. Just don't worry about it. Everything that happened has a plausible explanation. You are probably just missing memories because, uh, because of the joke I told earlier."

  "Why would we be missing memories because of a joke?"

  "It was a very bad joke. Your brains responded by suffering selective amnesia as a defense mechanism."

  They looked at her incredulously.

  "That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Everything here makes sense and there are no inconsistencies. Only bad jokes." She added.

  "...but how did we get here?" An interrogator asked again.

  "Plausibly, I had a really epic fight against General Grognak in which he defeated most of my contestants. Then I ran away to my private ship, the 'Hold my Beer', but after a dramatic chase scene he managed to capture me."

  "Plausibly?" He asked.

  "Plausibly." She confirmed. "It sounds like something I would do."

  The lead interrogator sighed. "Alright. Let's take this one question at a time. First off, It looks like torture has no effect on you. Gren, please stop that. You have been trying to get her to shut up for two minutes now and she has not so much as flinched. She hasn't even looked in your direction once."

  "Yeah, I figured that if I just ignore him he will eventually just go away." Lilian added.

  "That's generally not how torture works." Their leader replied.

  "You misunderstand. I don't want someone like him on my show. He is both completely evil and uninterestingly generic, so I have no intention of keeping him around. He is completely surplus to requirements. If I ignore him for long enough, then maybe reality will take the hint and drop him."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Well, the universe hasn't fully recovered from the buffer overflow yet, and that makes causality pretty wonky and suggestible. If I send a strong enough hint that reality can just drop something and nobody important will mind, it might just take me up on the suggestion. While an interrogation scene can be pretty entertaining, I don't really want torture on my show. It's not appropriate for underage viewers, you see."

  The lead interrogator looked like she had grown a second head.

  "That is the scariest thing I have ever heard." The female interrogator commented.

  "Stop ignoring me!" Someone else said.

  Their leader seemed to take a few moments to collect his thoughts before he asked her the first actual question in this farce of an interrogation: "We have captured your ship."

  "My condolences." Lilian responded instantly.

  "What?"

  "What do you mean, 'what'? If you captured the 'Hold my Beer' then you must know why that was a bad idea, and you have my condolences."

  "No. Not that ship. We captured the big one."

  "You captured the 'Boaty Mc Boat Face'?" She responded incredulously. "How? I didn't bring it with me. It's way too large. Your battleships wouldn't survive the gravitational shear if they tried to enter orbit around it, and that doesn't make for very entertaining fights."

  "What? No. We captured the Massive Distraction."

  "Oh! That one! Yeah, I forgot I had that. My mistake." Lilian responded.

  "Bullshit." The lead interrogator said.

  "That has to be a joke." The female interrogator added.

  Possibly someone else had a comment as well, but if so it wasn't important enough to mention.

  "We are getting off track here. Tell us how your ship works. Where is the voice coming from? How does it know things?"

  "What voice?" "Lilian asked, as the narrative returned and thereby answered her question."

  "The Malumian interrogator sighed. He had been afraid that invoking it could cause the voice to appear, like a demon. The narration had been haunting the captured ship ever since its capture, and driving the crew insane with its commentary. He was slightly nervous, but he hid it well. The voice had demonstrated many times that it possessed private knowledge of people and had no compunctions about revealing any of it."

  "Don't you dare!" "He shouted at the air. He was worried that the narration would reveal some of his criminal misdeeds. But he needn't worry. The current instance of the narration was set to a different genre, and had no interest in revealing people's criminal activity."

  "What genre is it set to?" "The female interrogator asked Lilian."

  "I think it's doing a nature documentary right now." "Lilian responded. Her assessment was correct. The narration's primary concern was observing the Thrin in their natural habitat: Recently conquered territory. It had spent the last few hours commenting on their behavior to interested viewers. The present situation showed an interesting break from these events: While the Thrin were the ones who captured the Massive Distraction, they recognized the Malumians as valuable allies with their own unique skill set. Since General Grognak refused to visit Lilian Weaver, citing a very understandable sudden-onset depression, the Thrin remanded her into Malumian care for interrogation."

  "Thanks for adding all these plausible sounding details. Makes it a lot more likely that the multiverse will end up going with this branch of reality." "Lilian commented politely, which was appreciated by the narration. Ontological Discombobulation was in everyone's interest, so the narrative wanted to do its best to help. Lilian Weaver, the celebrity and quote-leader-unquote of the local human forces, now found herself in quite a predicament. But the careful observer will notice that there was more going on here than meets the eye."

  "Oh? Do tell!"

  "There were two Malumians present, one male and one female. The male was older and the female was his subordinate, but the female was much more talented and she was considered a rising star in her department."

  "Thanks!" "The female commented. Unbeknownst to her, the male had a strong romantic interest in her, and he was planning to use this interrogation to prove his competence to her. Malumians, it must be emphasized, cared much more strongly about competence when it came to romantic attraction than any other species, so this was a sensible plan. Let us now watch and see how it works out for him."

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  "Wait. What?" "The female said, as she looked at her colleague in surprise. The male blushed and tried to respond, but his voice was drowned out when Lilian started cackling. Unfortunately, it looked like the Malumians had caught on to the narration and did not appreciate being called out."

  "The voice is spreading lies and trying to turn us against each other." "The male said in an effort to protect his pride."

  "Oh? So you don't think I'm attractive after all?" "The female responded."

  "That's not what I meant!" "The male stammered in response. He was unaware that the female had said this deliberately to trick him. Her reputation as a rising star among interrogators was well deserved."

  "You! Make it stop!" "The male angrily ordered Lilian. But the human just kept laughing. He was trying to impress the female through a display of dominance, but his failure was having the opposite effect. Fessed up with the humiliation, and unsure what to do, he decided to leave the room."

  "So. That happened." "The female commented astutely."

  "Looks like there are only the two of us left in the room." "Lilian commented idly."

  "Looks like it." "The female responded. She was confused. Something was off about that statement, but she could not tell what it was."

  "Do you want to have some advice? Things are going to get interesting in the Facinus Sector in the coming months. It might get a bit stressful, for people in your industry. This is an excellent time to take a holiday, really. Something nice and remote would probably be best. In fact, it might be best if you hurry and put in your holiday request soon. To avoid the rush, you see. In fact, you should probably go and do that right now, while your boss is gone. Who knows when you will get the next opportunity, after all."

  "Sure. And when I get back, I suppose you will still be tied to that chair?"

  "Of course. What do you expect me to do? Magically escape these restraints? They were put in place by the Thrin. Breaking out of them would require a lot of brute force. Even if I could do that, the shockwaves would probably kill everyone else in the room."

  "...I see. You know what? Your advice sounds good. I think I'm going to go make those holiday applications now."

  With that, she left the room.

  That was almost too easy, Lilian thought as she slipped out of her restraints.

  Her equipment was in the adjoining room, and she was all alone in hostile territory, the only human on an unknown alien spaceship.

  Time to turn the tables.

  She grabbed her stuff and pondered briefly how she should disguise herself.

  Maybe shapeshifting into a Thrin? Or a Malumian?

  No. She was overthinking this.

  She kept her human looks, and simply changed her clothes: She now wore a lab coat, and carried a clipboard.

  She left the room and confidently walked off in a random direction.

  Everyone in the hallways stared at her, but she simply ignored them and kept walking.

  She was walking for ten minutes before somebody finally challenged her: "Halt! State your name and rank!" A Thrin guard demanded of her.

  Even he didn't question the fact that she was human. It was so absurd, surely something else must be going on? Maybe she was just a Malumian with a weird genetic condition? You wouldn't want to give offense by asking her, in that case.

  In response to the guard's challenge, she looked at him and raised a single eyebrow.

  She very deliberately looked him up and down, and then focused on his name tag.

  Then she made a single brief comment on her clipboard. All without responding to his demands.

  "Hey! I said: State your name and rank!" The man repeated.

  Lilian was silently impressed. The guard was professional. Fortunately for her, he was not alone. There was a second guard posted on the other side of that same doorway.

  She calmly responded to the guard in front of her: "Interesting. You should know these things already. It looks like your communication protocols will need to be updated."

  She made another short note on her clipboard. Then she ignored the guard in front of her and turned to the other one.

  "What is your take on this? How do you explain this lapse in communication?" She simply asked him. She kept her expression carefully neutral and completely unconcerned. Her pen was hovering over the clipboard.

  "Apologies, Ma'am! Lieutenant Horgus is new to this posting! I will update him on the situation immediately! Please have a nice day, Ma'am!"

  Then he waved her through, grabbed the other guard, and hurriedly walked off with him.

  Lilian simply walked through the now unguarded door.

  That trick worked every time. There was very little scarier than an annoyed bureaucrat who looked like they could make your life hell with just a word.

  That was true for humans, and apparently it was also true for Thrin.

  It should be strange that this would translate so well to an alien species, but at this point it was no longer surprising to her,

  The Thrin were a cartoonishly evil, warlike species. Emphasis on cartoonish. As if they were fictional. And in a way they were, since they never evolved, but were instead created by the Nishera and designed to serve a purpose. They looked and acted almost like stereoypes, or even parodies, as if the Nishera were inspired by terrible science fiction novels when they created the Thrin and all the other species.

  The Thrin were eminently hateable. They were such a despicably evil species, it was obvious that they must be that way by design. And Lilian had an inkling as to why that might be: The Thrin were hateable, but people loved how much they hated them, and that made them popular and much talked about. As a celebrity, she had a very good understanding in how to appeal to the masses, and when she created antagonists for her shows, she gave those antagonists many of the same traits as the Thrin. People would probably not admit it out loud, but Lilian strongly suspected that if the Thrin were to disappear, most humans would be disappointed to lose something that they could hate so freely and so strongly.

  Humanity had never found a single Nisheran, and they still hadn't managed to figure out just what the Nishera's true intent was for seeding the galaxy with all these other lifeforms. But if Lilian's suspicions were correct, then it was far from a coincidence that all of them were memorable and interesting to human sensibilities.

  The Thrin were just a more subtle form of interesting, because love-to-hate was a kind of emotion that most people weren't really consciously aware of. But the Nishera also created other species that were much more obviously designed with human sensibilities in mind. The Purrians were probably the worst offenders there: In terms of looks, personality, and even cultural norms, their average was our ideal, and humanity's average was their ideal in turn. It was beyond ridiculous to believe that this could be coincidence.

  Frankly, in Lilian's opinion, the Nishera were a little on the nose, but then again she really wasn't the right person to complain about a lack of subtlety.

  She continued wandering the corridors, looking for a good opportunity to cause some mayhem.

  She could cause problems any time, of course, since she was significantly more powerful than anything else on this ship. But where would be the fun in that?

  No, if she wanted to make things interesting to her viewers, she needed to sandbag and look for an opportunity to do something more exciting than just fighting her way through the ship by brute force. Any amateur could do that, and her fans were expecting better from her.

  She opened another door and her heart stopped at what she saw.

  No.

  This was not ok.

  As much as she liked to treat everything as fun and games, and as much as the Nishera seemed to enable her in that belief, sometimes reality had other plans. Real life was not like her simulations, and it was not like a game.

  Sometimes, bad things happened to good people. Sometimes cruel people won, and with enough power they could do whatever they wanted, no matter how despicable. Reality had no sense of balance or fairness, and excessive cruelty did not result in an automated balancing patch to fix that, like it did in the more sensible, simulated universes that most humans preferred to live in.

  "This is not ok." Lilian repeated out loud, as she cut the feed recording her actions.

  Lilian left the still burning room behind her and went back on her way, happy that she had made the world a slightly less awful place.

  She continued her exploration of the ship, looking for opportunities. Dozens of soldiers were rushing past her by the minute, ready to deal with the alarm she caused. She did not pay them any mind. It wasn't like they could make a difference.

  Then, her wanderings finally took her to something interesting: A kitchen.

  "Surprise inspection!" She shouted as she entered, waving her clipboard around.

  Several cooks and their assistants looked up at her in shock, but they quickly recovered and saluted.

  Perfect! Half the cooks were Malumian. They had latent psychic powers. Sure, her own abilities were far greater and she did not actually need them for anything, strictly speaking, but what she was planning to do would be so much funnier if they did it to themselves without her intervention.

  "This will be a test of your ability to follow unknown recipes with minimal ingredients. A vital skill for when you are stranded behind enemy lines." She bullshitted them as she started handing out instruction sheets to the cooks.

  She still looked like a human and she had absolutely no authority to be here, but she had enough presence that it didn’t matter.

  They set to work and followed her recipe while she supervised.

  After a few minutes, one of the cooks grew suspicious: "This has to be a mistake in the recipe. Are we really supposed to put the food on the ground Ma'am?"

  "Are you familiar with Xiaoran eating habits?" She asked, making up the name of a species on the spot.

  "Uh, no?"

  "I see." She responded, and made a mark on her clipboard. The cook looked nervous, and returned to work.

  "Make sure not to spread the mushrooms. They must be distributed on the ground exactly as shown. It is culturally important to get this right." She added.

  They continued to lay out the mushrooms and various vegetables in perfect circles under her watchful eyes.

  "...wait. Is this a ritual?" One of the Malumians suddenly spoke up.

  "Yes, it is. It's called a fairy ring." She said, as she beheld the assortment of vegetables laid out on the ground and charged with the Malumians' psychic energy.

  "What does it do?" The cook asked, suddenly very nervous.

  "It summons the Wild Hunt!" Lilian declared dramatically as she poured a last bit of power from her own reserves into the ritual to finish it.

  The circle burst into light as a portal formed in its midst. The cooks had just enough time to jump aside as the first rider appeared from the portal.

  The rider sounded a war horn and raised his sword to her in salute. Then he crashed through the kitchen's door and into the corridor. Seconds later he was followed by an army of other riders that emerged from the portal.

  The cooks looked on in shock and horror, but everybody ignored them.

  Lilian turned towards a corner of the room, where she expected the camera to be: "People keep telling me never to bring a knife to a gunfight, but in my experience, that actually tends to work out pretty well. So I was wondering: What else is the military lying to us about? Welcome to part one of my new series on unconventional warfare. Today we are going to find out: What happens when you bring cavalry to a space battle?"