A Midsummer Night's Fred

"I'm better than ever!" he told her gleefully. "Being a fairy is great! I read all those MSG episodes about how great it was being transformed into a new species but I never believed it until now!"

Astra continued to stare at him in stark horror. Had the man who'd fathered her child and with whom she'd fallen in love gone mad from life here? Come to think of it, she couldn't blame him. She was starting to feel like she was coming close herself. Had she really almost gotten into a fight with Alura over Velus? "I don't know what an MSG is, but I can tell you're not a fairy," she said as calmly as she could manage. "You don't have wings, right?"

"Fairies don't necessarily have wings. That was an from the Victorian era. Puck in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream didn't have wings, for instance."

Astra didn't know what a victorian or a shake-spear was either, although they sounded unpleasant, but decided not to press the point. "Alright, prove you're a fairy," she said defiantly.

"Why do I have to do that? I use my powers when I want to. You humans can't command me. Now hand over the child. He belongs to the Fae Court."

"Just kill him," put in Alura from the sidelines. "Your relationship never had all that much depth anyway. You're better off looking for another love interest. You've had lots of great threads without Fred, like the Irios one."

"Have you gone mad too?" shouted Astra, enraged. "I love him!"

"No, you're only being written like you love him because the authors don't want to portray you like a brainless slut. From what I remember you saying, you being in love with him didn't play as much of a role in your deciding to sleep together as the fact that he had an enormous man-sword. In fact..."

"Say one more word and I'll dash your head against the rocks! I don't care if Fred is mad, I still love him. And I don't care if we originally slept together out of animal lust, we might still have an enduring love, just as Manfox Fred and Alicia did in MSG's e--Gah! Now you've got me doing it! What is this 'MSG'? It sounds like a horrible disease!"

"Well, that depends on to what extent you can understand his plots. And his spelling. But Knight Random is even worse. He constantly loads down his episodes with confusing plots and writes new-reader-alienating pointless in-joke episodes like this one."

"What's wrong with pointless in-joke episodes? They're fun!" said Fred. "We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and--"

"Actually, that was from The Tempest, not A Midsummer Night's Dream," pointed out Velus. Everyone looked at him oddly. "Don't ask me. I have no idea how I know that."

"You've gotten me off topic," said Fred sternly. "Give me the child or I fear I will have to kill you."

Suddenly, someone else walked into the jungle clearing. It was:

1. Someone Velus recognized as Robin Goodfellow, better known as Puck. (They'd met before.) He seemed to take the idea that Fred was King of the Fairies seriously.
2. A mysterious entitiy called Crossroads Man. (Also the name of MSG's old alias, but that was just a coincidence.)
3. Knight Random
4. The mysterious submarine-using technomancer Captain Omen. He promised to restore everyone to sanity for a price.
5. Josh Burbank.

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