The battle for the Mailroom ended not with a bang, but with a form being signed in triplicate.
Jen stood over the defeated Middle Manager, her foot planted on his gelatinous chest. The Trolls had scattered, fleeing back into the shadows of the unread comments section after Li Wusheng spammed them with enough "Energy Shields" to crash their negativity bias.
"You cannot defeat me!" the Middle Manager gurgled, ink leaking from his tie. "I have tenure! I have stock options!"
"And I," Jen said, raising her golden clipboard, "have a Severance Package."
She reached into a pile of mail and pulled out a box labeled [CONTENTS: YOUR PERSONAL BELONGINGS]. She shoved it into the Manager's arms.
"Your position has been made redundant," Jen declared. "Security will escort you out."
The Manager gasped. "No! Not redundancy! My one weakness!"
He faded away, dissolving into a cloud of shredded resumes.
"Keycard acquired," Jen said, snatching the golden access card that dropped from his vanishing pocket. "To the elevator!"
They sprinted toward the golden doors. Elara Vance checked her tactical vest. Her Retcon Pen was still secure. The Author was panting, clutching their side.
"I need to do more cardio," The Author wheezed. "Why did I write so many stairs into my early drafts?"
"This is an elevator," Ignis pointed out, pressing the 'Up' button with his nose. "No stairs."
The doors slid open with a pleasant ping.
Inside, the elevator was luxuriously appointed with velvet walls and a chandelier. But there were no buttons for the floors. There was only a microphone grid on the wall.
"Welcome to the Corporate Ladder," a soothing robotic voice announced. "To ascend, please engage in Small Talk."
"Small talk?" Aldren Vance recoiled, clutching his Mantle of the Protagonist. "I do not do small talk. I do soliloquies about the crushing weight of eternity."
"If you do not network, you do not rise," the elevator warned. "Current altitude: Basement. Social status: Nobody."
"We have to schmooze the elevator?" Rex Chord asked, horrified.
"I got this," Jen said. She cleared her throat. "So... crazy weather we're having, right?"
The elevator hummed. It rose six inches.
"Is that it?" Li Wusheng asked. "We need more generic observations! Quickly!"
"How about that local sports team?" Ignis shouted. "They certainly moved the ball to the goal area effectively!"
The elevator rose another foot.
"I hate Mondays!" Elara yelled. "Am I right?"
The elevator lurched upward.
"Working hard or hardly working?" The Author offered weakly.
The elevator shot up like a rocket.
"Keep going!" Elara shouted as G-forces pinned them to the floor. "Be more banal!"
"It sure is a hot one today!" "Living the dream!" "Circle back! Touch base! Synergy!"
They screamed corporate platitudes until the elevator pinged and halted at Floor 50.
"Floor 50," the voice announced. "Marketing & Trends. Please mind the gap in logic."
The Labyrinth of Hype
The doors opened.
Elara expected a hallway. Instead, she saw a jungle.
But the trees weren't wood. They were fiber-optic cables pulsing with neon light. The vines were scrolling hashtags. The floor was made of shifting, glowing tiles that changed color every second.
"What is this?" Aldren whispered, stepping out. His dramatic spotlight flickered, confused by the ambient strobe lights.
"The Open Plan Office," The Author shuddered, pulling their hoodie up. "It's where ideas go to die. The layout changes every day to 'maximize collaboration'."
"It's a maze," Jen said, consulting her Plot Outline. "Objective: Cross the Viral Floor. Warning: Do not feed the Clickbait."
"Clickbait?" Ignis asked.
Something scuttled across the ceiling. It looked like a spider, but its body was a red arrow pointing at a circle. Its eyes were flashing text: [YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT!]
"Don't look at them!" Zero shouted. "If you click, they drain your attention span!"
"We need to get to the stairs," Elara said. "The elevator won't go higher without a 'Promotion', and we don't have time for a performance review."
They moved into the neon jungle.
The floor tiles shifted under their feet. One moment it was "Minimalist Beige," the next it was "Retro Wave Purple."
"I feel... judged," Li Wusheng muttered. "My robes. They feel outdated. I feel the urge to buy... Streetwear."
"It's the Trend Pressure," The Author said. "The air here is saturated with FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). Keep moving, or you'll be rebooted for a modern audience."
Suddenly, the hashtag-vines dropped down, blocking their path.
A figure emerged from the glow. It was a mannequin made of chrome, holding a tablet. Its face was a mirror.
"Halt!" the mannequin chirped. "I am the Brand Ambassador. You do not fit the demographic."
It pointed at Aldren.
"Vampires are out," the Ambassador declared. "Zombies are in. Please decay immediately."
"I will never decay!" Aldren shouted. "I am timeless! I am classic!"
"Classic is just another word for 'Old'," the Ambassador sneered. It swiped its tablet.
[ATTACK: BAD REVIEW.]
A swarm of thumbs-down icons flew at Aldren.
"Li! Shield!" Elara yelled.
Li raised his hand. "Energy Shield!"
The thumbs-down icons bounced off the blue barrier.
"I have no cooldowns!" Li laughed. "Your negative engagement cannot penetrate my firewall!"
"Ignis!" Elara commanded. "Roast him!"
"With fire?"
"No! With insults! He's a Brand Ambassador! Hurt his image!"
Ignis puffed up his chest. "Hey! Shiny man! Your tablet is... a previous generation model!"
The Ambassador gasped. A crack appeared in its chrome face. "Lies! It is the Pro version!"
"And your finish is prone to fingerprints!" Ignis roared. "You smudge easily!"
"No! My aesthetic!" The Ambassador wailed. It shattered into a pile of broken glass and charging cables.
"Go!" Elara yelled.
They ran deeper into the maze. But the layout was changing. Walls of "Hot Takes" rose up around them—literal walls of text made of controversial opinions.
"We're trapped!" Rex said. "The discourse is boxing us in!"
"We need a pivot," Jen said, looking at her clipboard. "The exit is behind the Focus Group."
"The what?"
They turned a corner and skidded to a halt.
Blocking the exit was a glass room. Inside sat twelve faceless figures around a table. They weren't moving. They were staring.
And they were staring at them.
The Focus Group.
"Oh no," The Author whispered. "Run. Run back to the mailroom."
"Why?" Elara asked.
"The Focus Group is invincible," The Author said, trembling. "They take good ideas and flatten them until they appeal to everyone and no one. They will strip your personality!"
The glass door slid open. A suction force began to pull them in.
"Come inside," the Focus Group chanted in unison. "We just have a few notes. We feel the third act is too... weird."
"Resist!" Aldren yelled, digging his heels into the Viral Floor. "I like being weird!"
"Your cape," the Focus Group droned. "It tested poorly with males aged 18-34. Remove it."
Aldren's cape began to dissolve.
"My identity!" Aldren shrieked.
"The Dragon," the Group continued. "Too scary. Make him fluffier. Make him a dog."
Ignis began to shrink. He barked. "Woof? I mean—NO! I am a apex predator!"
"The Monk," the Group intoned. "Too cultural. Make him a generic sci-fi soldier."
Li's robes began to turn into plastic armor. "I do not want to be a Space Marine! It lacks soul!"
"They're homogenizing us!" Elara yelled, fighting the pull. "They're sanding off our edges!"
"Use the Pen!" Jen shouted. "Elara! Use the Retcon Pen!"
Elara reached for the pen clipped to her vest. "I only have one charge! If I use it now, I can't use it on the Publisher!"
"If you don't use it now, we become 'Marketable Plushies'!" Jen screamed.
Elara hesitated. She looked at Aldren losing his cape. She looked at Ignis barking. She looked at The Author, who was cowering in fear of the feedback.
"No," Elara said. "I'm not wasting the Pen on a focus group."
She looked at her team.
"We can't fight them with logic," Elara said. "They want us to be marketable. So... let's be Unmarketable."
"How?"
"Be offensive!" Elara yelled. "Be niche! Be weird! Be so confusing that they can't categorize us!"
"Aldren! Recite your poetry! The really bad stuff!"
Aldren's eyes lit up. "The avant-garde cycle?"
"Yes! The one about the texture of lint!"
Aldren threw his arms wide. "OH, GREY FUZZ OF DESTINY! THOU ART THE DUST OF NAVELS!"
The Focus Group paused. "Data... inconclusive. What is the target audience?"
"Li!" Elara shouted. "Talk about obscure gaming mechanics!"
Li Wusheng stepped forward. "Let me explain the frame data of a pixel-perfect parry in a 1993 fighting game that was only released in one region!"
"Ignis!" Elara yelled. "Be gross!"
Ignis (fighting the dog transformation) burped a cloud of white-out dust mixed with prop turkey. "I have gas that smells like bureaucracy!"
"Rex! Play jazz!"
"Jazz?" Rex gasped. "But... nobody listens to jazz!"
"EXACTLY!"
Rex shredded a dissonant, free-form jazz solo in 13/8 time signatures.
The Focus Group writhed. The faceless figures covered their non-ears.
[ERROR: CANNOT OPTIMIZE.][CONTENT IS TOO NICHE.][MASS APPEAL: 0%.]
"Author!" Elara turned to her creator. "Finish them! Tell them the plot!"
The Author stood up. They looked at the Focus Group.
"In the next chapter," The Author shouted, "I kill the dog!"
GASP.
The Focus Group screamed.
"UNACCEPTABLE!" they shrieked. "THE DOG TESTS WELL! YOU CANNOT KILL THE DOG!"
"I'll do it!" The Author threatened. "And I'll end the story with a cliffhanger that never gets resolved!"
[SYSTEM FAILURE: AUDIENCE ALIENATION DETECTED.][ABORTING SESSION.]
The glass room shattered. The suction force reversed, blowing them backward out of the marketing trap.
"We're clear!" Elara shouted. "To the stairs!"
They scrambled past the shattered glass of the Focus Group and found the emergency stairwell.
"That," Aldren panted, adjusting his restored cape, "was more terrifying than any demon."
"We survived by being unpopular," Li noted, checking his robes. "I have never been so proud to be niche."
"Up," Elara pointed. "The Executive Suites are next."
The Executive Suites
They climbed twenty flights of stairs. (The Author complained on every single step).
They burst through the door onto Floor 99.
This floor was different. No neon lights. No noise. Just thick, blood-red carpet and walls of mahogany.
And standing in the middle of the hallway was The Legal Counsel.
The swarm of paper wasps formed the shape of a man in a pinstripe suit. It buzzed with the sound of a thousand lawsuits filing at once.
"You have breached the perimeter," The Legal Counsel buzzed. "You have ignored the Cease and Desist. You have mocked the Marketing Department."
It raised a hand. The paper wasps swirled, forming a giant gavel.
"Now," The Counsel said. "We move to Litigation."
"I hate lawyers," Ignis growled.
"Wait," Jen said, stepping forward. She looked at her Golden Clipboard.
"Objective: Defeat the Counsel," Jen read. "Weakness: Precedent."
"Precedent?"
"He operates on case law," Jen grinned. "And we have a walking library of canon law with us."
She pointed at The Author.
"Me?" The Author squeaked. "I dropped out of law school to write fanfic!"
"Exactly," Jen said. "You know the lore. You know the rules of this universe better than he does."
Jen turned to the Counsel.
"We challenge you!" Jen shouted.
The Counsel paused. "On what grounds?"
"On the grounds of..." Jen looked at The Author.
The Author took a deep breath. They stepped forward, their hoodie stained, their eyes tired but determined.
"On the grounds of Creative License," The Author said.
The Legal Counsel buzzed angrily. "Creative License is a myth! Intellectual Property is absolute!"
"We'll see," Elara said, igniting her... well, she didn't have a weapon. She grabbed a stapler from a nearby desk. "Court is in session."