SkyBound: the Final Chapter

✅

, also called A Story Within a Story, is the sequence of events in which Baldurshroom attempts to destroy the Bureau of Fiction. Aided by the evil Porkchop, they confront the SkyBound chicks- Ned, Doofus, and Patricia -and, along with Baldur's daughter-in-law, Valerie, manage to save the day in the most unlikely of circumstances. In doing so, though, Valerie gives her life.

Chapter One: Something's Not Right

 * This tale picks up from when Valerie re-enters the BOF, thinking something wasn't right. She was just contacted by TSGGG, and she feared that bad things were on the horizon. She left Fraz behind and set off on her own, so that her chicks could keep a parent. To see the whole thing, please read Fraz and the Conservators.

Valerie knew that something wasn't right. Baldurshroom didn't seem to be in good health at all, and that penguin next to him just looked like a backstabber. She couldn't have been more right. She was going to exit back to her husband, when she was caught off gaurd. Evil music filled the empty hall of screens as the door creaked open. Nothing but the gentle pattering of the rain, and the music, were heard as a small shape made its way into the room.

"YOU THERE!" it shouted. It was Director Benny. Fraz asserted that a puffle was the "master of evil", if his father was to be believed.

"...what... me?"

"YES YOU. VALERIE JONES."

"...h-how do you know my name?"

"I know all." thunder rumbed as the puffle spoke.

Valerie thought to herself:  "The evil..." 

"I HEARD THAT."

Valerie gulped. It could read minds.

"I don't know what you're here for, Valerie, but it MUST have some sort of connection to THAT outside. I never trusted the Joneses. Any of them."

"There's just me, Fraz, and our kids. We're the only ones living."

Benny stopped. That was the future.

"Oh. Right. ANYWAY, since I can't get that thing o-"

Valerie glared.

"That's not a THING, furball." she said, in defiance of her usually shy nature. "That is my father in-law."

"I feel sorry for you, then." Benny snapped back. "Wait- WHAT did you just call me?"

Valerie shied away a bit, her usual demeanor returning.

"I called you a furball..."

"You don't work here, Mrs. Jones."

"...n-no..."

"You've been snooping around here, Miss Jones... I just figured it all out, you see. Your Anonymity Necklace kept you under the radar, but I figured it out any way, because I am awesome."

"You... did? You... are?"

"Yes. Now, I can't get that psycho you married because I..." he smiled evilly. "I need him to live for my plans."

"Wh-wh-WHAT?!?"

"You call yourself a spy, yet you haven't figured that out?" Benny said, deciding to scare Valerie by floating into the air.

"I am the past, present, and future. I am destiny and I, ultimately, decide what to do with pawns like you."

"What about the evil top hatted guy?"

Benny landed on the floor and scoffed.

"You ruined the moment! He's nothing but clay in my telekinesis, Valerie."

"BENNY! YOU BLOODY LIER, WOT!" another voice called. Benny's evil music stopped abruptly, like a record with its needle scratched, as a tern hops in. Valerie looks on.

"We're in the middle of a bloomin' code red situation and you're torturin this innocent, modestly dressed plot device, wot wot!"

"Plot... device?" Valerie commented.

"That wraith out there is about to attack big time, and those bally SkyBound chicks aren't comin' from the future 'till midnight, wot wot! We have GOT to be bloomin' ready for anything that Hamhead-"

"Porkchop, you ternhead." Benny interrupted.

"-that Porkchop is up to! Don't you read the Fraz article?"

"Article?" Valerie asked, and was ignored.

"Porkchop's a bally parody of EarthBound's Porky and Magic School Bus' Junkett, wot wot!"

"So?" Benny asked.

"WHAT IN THE NAME OF SCHOLASTIC ARE YOU BEASTS TALKING ABOUT?!" Valerie shouted.

"Well, think! If ya really ARE the bally past, present, future, and all seein' whatever, then tell me, WHAT DO THOSE TWO BALLY DO?"

The ego clogging Benny's rational thought fell away, like peanut butter on a sparkplug. The notion sprung to life immediately. Oen could practically see a lightbulb go off over Benny's head. (...-and it did. The emotes are there for a reason.)

"PORKY UNLEASHES GIGYAS AND JUNKETT NEARLY DESTROYS THE SHOW!"

"Ya just figured that out, eh? So much for all-knowing, wot!"

"SO THAT MEANS HE IS GOING TO UNLEASH THAT WRAITH AND NEARLY DESTROY US!"

"..." Valerie just stared.

Somewhere, a clock chimed midnight.

Chapter Two: TSGGG and the SkyBound Chicks
Porky rubbed his evil, sticky flippers together as he munched on a sandwhich and swallowed it whole.

"BALDURSHROOM," the parody shouted over the roar of the storm, "YOU'RE ALMOST THERE! JUST A LITTLE LONGER!"

It was then that a group of chicks appeared.

"BALDURSHROOM", a female in a pink dress shouted, "YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING!"

the wraith replied.

"No Baldur, we're from the future, we know what is about to happen!" another replied, this one in a striped shirt and a baseball cap.

"No!" the cap-donning penguin shouted.

"You destroyed the universe!" a bald penguin that apparently had a sadistic name added.

TSGGG replied.

"Just look at yourself, Baldurshroom! You're dying!"

"No, they didn't!"

"Baldur, I know you have no reason to trust us, but don't you remember that you're easily gullible?" the girl said.

The wraith stopped firing at the BOF building. The rain continued battering it, but the black clouds faded a bit.

"Porkchop is using you!" the penguin with the bad name shouted.

"What about your son? Didn't he call Porkchop over there 'junk'?" the girl asked.

The rain stopped. TSGGG hadn't thought about that. Guilt began to set in for a moment. If one focused hard enough, it almost looked like BaldurShroom was about to cry.

"BALDURSHROOM!" Porkchop screeched, getting his attention. "Who are you going to believe? Your friend of fifteen years, or a bunch of brats? Trust me. The world is better without the Secret. I know because I too am from the future."

"From a future where you didn't destroy the BOF, Baldur! I know! Porkchop was with us when we got the warning! He didn't think he was one of the 'chosen ones', so he left and went back in time to set you into motion." the striped penguin said.

"He's lying! I AM from the future, Baldur! I saw what life was like without the Secret! You have descendants! They're all happy and loved, and their will is free!"

TSGGG said, happily.

"Baldur, don't listen to him! I know you've only seen us for a few minutes, and known Porkchop for over a decade, but you MUST listen to us over your best friend!" the penguin with the bad name paused. "WHOA. That SO didn't come out right."

The striped penguin smacked him upside the head.

Chapter Three: Porkchop Does It
"YOU TELL 'EM, BALDUR!"

"NOOOOO!!!" all of the SkyBound chicks shouted, as the weather and attacks resumed.

he muttered.

"HA HA HA!" Porkchop laughed. "All right Baldur, are you ready for the real attack?"

Porkchop whipped a knife out of one of his jars of peanut butter and waddled closely, sinisterly, towards the machine hooked to the base of TSGGG. He looked to the chicks and then upwards, to TSGGG.

"Baldur, your power is great and immense... -but this machine is holding you back. You can't unleash your full abilities with this thing tying you down. I must open it."

TSGGG warned.

"Pppsshhhaaaww!" Porkchop scoffed, a devilish, sinister grin on his beak. "Sure you can take it!"

"NO! PORKCHOP NO!" the girl shouted. Porkchop held up the knife covered in peanut butter.

"IT'S PEANUT BUTTER JELLY TIME!"

"NOOO!" all of them shouted.

TSGGG consented.

Porkchop nodded and cackled as he faced the machine. The SkyBound chicks tried to fight him with their powers and abilities, but TSGGG had begun to hold them off, so that Porkchop could do his work. It was easy for him to do, with all his power. Porkchop looked over the machine. It was a big blue box, and then an odd, grey, ugly-shaped conglomeration of tubes, wires, and junk, with pipes so mangled that it looked like intestines, sat on top of it. At the top was a billowing smokestack that was actually there to stabilize, process, and maintain TSGGG's collapsed, gaseous form. Parts of him would run in and out, like water in a filter, and keep his piower- power he shouldn't have -in check. It was a work of Porkchop's own flipper.

He looked up and down the console and began to take his knife and stick peanut butter wherever he could. He added it in and out, and continued covering the machine in goop. Eventually, he realized the best way to break the machine and free Baldurshrooms' power.

"BINGO!"

"NOOOO!" the chicks cried out.

Porkchop leaped up the machine and scaled the pipes and wires. He stood next to the smokestack thing and poured globs of peanut butter all over it. Suddenly, TSGGG cried out, and no one was sure if it was pain or shock. He was sucked into the machine. The console then began to shake, and rumble, and whir, and rattle. Then, a beam of pure black auras shot out of a small crack... -and then another... -and then another... until...

The machine fell silent.

"WOW. That was anticlimactic." the penguin with the bad name commented.

Then, slowly but increasing in speed, the machine pumped out columns of black and red smoke, growing larger and larger. Soon, it was as big as the BOF offices.

Porkchop did, and the cloud of Baldurshroom wafted towards the BOF. It wrapped around it, like a snake around its prey, and began shooting beams of red and balck lightning at the office, blowing huge chunks out of it as employees screamed in fear. The sound could be heard from where Porkchop was laughing and the chicks were cowering.

TSGGG heard the screams too, and he pulled back, loosening his circling form from the office slightly.

TSGGG moaned.

TSGGG's circle pulled in slightly, and then burts outwards, like a sound wave or rocks in a bond. Behind the chicks, the background literally began to melt into a choatic mess of black and red swirls. TSGGG was no longer able to control it.

he decided. If he had to take out the universe, he might as well do it now.

Chapter Four: Back to Valerie
Meanwhile, things had taken a turn for the worst in the offices. Valerie, Benny, and McFlapp stopped arguing and shouted. Holes were torn off from the back of the DOS and whole televisions were ripped away. The black and red background, plus the gaseous rings of Baldurshroom, were easily seen. Benny was scolding Valerie and McFlapp.

A tentacle-like cloud snaked in and felt its way around. It touched McFlapp, and he felt a horrible shiver of pure darkness go down and up his spine. It touched Valerie and pulled back.

"DAD-IN-LAW?!"

Thundered rumbled in the distance as TSGGG stopped moving.

Valerie did so, as the tentacle started up again and grabbed Benny.

"LET ME DOWN, YOU CHEESY *(&%&*$%))][{{}{{::`~@~#~#$*%^*&^#^&u*i*(* PARODY!"

"Hooray! Gigya- I mean Baldur's got Benny, wot wot!" Valerie looked at McFlapp with surprise.

"Uhh... oh no. The bally Gigyas parody's got Benny..."

Benny screamed as he was sucked into an abyss of nothingness by TSGGG.

{{goth|"...ValerieValerieValerieValerieValerieValerie...."}} TSGGG said. {{goth|"Can't... control... power.... please... take.... ahold of... this... tentacle........."}}

Another tentacle reached out for Valerie. Seeing no choice, she grabbed on. TSGGG, as hard as he could, moved Valerie without doing anything except tattering her clothes and making several scratches on her. He placed her next to the SkyBound chicks and Porkchop.

Chapter Five: Valerie's End
"BALDURSHROOM! PLEASE, STOP!!" the girl pleaded.

"Oh, it's Shroomsky all over again!" the penguin with the bad name added. The striped penguin clapped his flippers together in inspiration.

"THAT'S IT! DOOFUS, YOU'RE A GENIUS!"

"Ned! I told you not to say my name!" Doofus shouted back.

"No time, boys! What's your idea?" the girl- named Patricia -added.

"Right! Professor Shroomsky is the answer!" Ned said, excitedly.

"Huh?" Doofus and Patricia said.

"Remember how his good intentions almost wrecked the world twice?"

"Yeah..." Patricia said, rubbing her flipper on the back of her head.

"Well, maybe if we show TSGGG what happened with Shroomsky and what he learned, maybe it'll convince him to stop! ...-and we can always appeal to guilt!"

Valerie was set down as Ned and company were discussing how to stop TSGGG.

"...-but who will go? The office is collapsing and anyone who goes would be risking their lives." Ned gestured to the BOF, which was literally breaking apart.

Valerie saw her chance.

"I will."

The chicks all looked at her.

"I've been spying for my husband for a long time, you see. I would gather files of utmost secrecy and hand them to him. He couldn't handle it, already being of fragile mind, so I eventually took the files and burnt them. I then began to show him the same files over and over again, so that he wouldn't go insane any more than what was already wrong. I think his father fell into the same problem... except he fell all the way. If the Secret has to live for my father-in-law and the world to live, then it's a sacrifice I must make."

Patricia nodded.

"Ma'am, what you're about to do is the most noble, selfless thing I've ever lived to see."

"Young lady," Valerie said warmly, "Where I come from, things like self-sacrifice, purity, the right thing, and family loyalty... those sort of things are a daily occurence... -and so it blowing up evil drinks. I'd be honored to lay my life on the line for my husband, for my father-in-law and for the world."

Patricia nearly cried at that.

"Okay." she said. "You can go."

As much as a penguin was capable, Patricia knelt down. She pulled out a cross, while kneeling, and positioned it at the crumbling BOF.

"What's she doing?"

"I know what she's doing." Valerie commented. "It's an age-old Unoian tradition. She apparently comes from Mattress Village."

"We all do."

"Oh. Well, basically the penguin would recite some sort of poem, and call on some sort of sky programmer to assist them in a task they couldn't do on their own. Different items are told to summon different beings. For instance, a propellor hat calls on a programmer gifted in numbers. A paintbrush summons one blessed with art. An ugly mask asks for one full of mischief. A Super Antics Bros. cartridge in the middle of ancient runes summons-- nevermind, don't summon him... -and the cross? Well, I really never figured out what that did."

"Does it work?"

"No. It's just a tradi-"

The whole area shook.

It was a booming voice with a Newjoyzy accent.

"NO. WAY."

Paula got up and gasped. IT ACTUALLY WORKED?!

every Boardmen shouted in their languages.

another added.

(Penguinian: "Well, let's hear it!")

A wind whipped through the area and a red staircase materialized, with convienent railing, leading to the BOF.

"Valerie, quickly, go! GO!" Patricia said.

Valerie nodded and ran across the path as fast as she could waddle. The SkyBound chicks followed behind.

Porkchop turned from the machine.

"NO! I CAN'T LET THEM WIN!" Porkchop clapped his fingers and summoned a giant robot of doom, similar to what he gave to Fraz years ago. He persued.

Valrie entered the BOF. The Board tore holes in the walls of the already falling towers and commanded Valerie to follow them. She did, and came across a filing cabinet reading "FUTURE", created by the Board just now to hold the Shroomsky file from the future. The drawer opened for her, and she pulled outt he file with a picture of a mushroom on it.

"This is a fungus!"

"NOT SO FAST!!" Porkchop shouted, running up to Valerie in the machine. Valerie screamed.

It was then that the SkyBound chicks entered and began a showdown with Porkchop. They managed to defeat his machine, so Porkchop jumped out and grabbed Valerie. Whipping out a Knicicle, Porkchop held it against Valerie.

"Come any closer and the girl gets it!!"

The SkyBound chicks stepped back as peels of thunder shook the office.

"I LIED! I WAS 'GONNA GET HER ANYWAY!" Porkchop squealed.

In seconds, it was done. One slash was all it took. Porkchop backed on his word and took the life of Valerie. Valerie died instantly, painlessly, and without any blood, gore, or description, in any shape form or fashion. She didn't even have time to gasp.

Valerie laid on the floor, dead. Patricia ran over to her and wept.

"HOW COULD YOU?!" she said.

"DUH! I wanted to take over this universe. I'm a villain! Since when did a villain honor their word, you silly penguin?"

Ned grabbed the file before Porkchop remembered. He ran to the nearest gaping hole and threw it into the storm.

"BALDUR! READ THIS!"

The file disintergrated. Baldur had aquired it. The file returned.

"Baldurshroom, this is what will happen if you don't stop this madness! Please, think of your family! Of the employees that are fleeing this place! Of Patricia!"

"THEN WHY DID PORKCHOP KILL VALERIE?!" Doofus screamed into the storm. "WHY WAS HE NEVER CONCERNED FOR YOUR HEALTH? WHY DID HE KEEP ON AND ON?! REMEMBER WHAT I SAID?! HE JUST WANTS THE POWER!!"

Suddenly, everything fell silent, and the background began wobbling. Baldurshoom figured it all out, and not a moment to soon.

The black and red began swirling faster and a wind whipped up.

"That's right Baldur! ...-and the Secret isn't always evil! Look how they helped Valerie get that file!" Ned added.

TSGGG replied.

"TSGGG, only you can make this right. Please, try and restrain your power! Please try!!"

TSGGG screamed as twenty or more tentacles of black and red gas circled around Porkchop.

"What? What's happening?!"

"Baldur, old buddy! Heh, I'm your friend!"

The tentacles came closer.

"Don't do this to me, Baldur!"

"NO! NO!"

The tentacles fell upon the screaming Porkchop. He was silenced. In seconds, the tentacles pulled away. In their place was a grey box.

"Baldurshroom? What did you do to him?" Ned asked, a bit disturbed.

"Thank you Baldur." Patricia said. "Now, let's get out of here."

TSGGG strained with all his might as he tried to contol his unrestrained power. Slowly, the background changed colors and the rings receeded. TSGGG continued straining until he had concentrated himself into a cloud about half the size of the Bureau.

Patricia did so. TSGGG pulled himself into the cabinet and shut the drawer. Then, the cabinet slowly began to fade away.

"Don't mention it." Ned stated, smiling.

'

Everything fell silent and Benny reappeared. He was as pale as a ghost and breathing heavilly. He looked as if he had seen something no creature should ever see.

"I...... need... I need to lie down....."

The SkyBound chicks cheered as BOF employees began returning to the decimated office. The closest ones lifted them up on their shoulders and sang praises of them. Then, they loaded them into a cracked time machine and sent them on their way.

Valerie's body was immediately given a noble, fully ceremonial burial to honor her sacrifice.

Epilogue
After Valerie died, Fraz was depressed for a while. He had no idea where she vanished, but knew it had something to do with the Secret. His chicks, though, managed to cheer him up by convincing him that moping around "wasn't what Valerie would have wanted". Fraz gets off the bus and wonders in the forest, saddened for his wife.

The Masters felt extreme sympathy for Fraz, and desired to cheer him up by any means possible. While sweeping up the rubble and destruction caused by Baldurshroom, they happened to find a small box containing the only surviving Thingamadoodle, and a note from Valerie.

Touched, McFlapp "accidently" knocked the Thingamadoodle into the meta-space, where it "just happens" to fall where the widowed Fraz was mourning.

He saw it and the note, and read it, realizing that he needed to get up and get going, as his children said. For the first time in a long time, he shouts his signature "WAAHHOOOO" and runs back to the Bus. Telling his chicks to fasten their seatbelts and get ready, he remembered what his father told him as a teenager: "to take chances, make mistakes, and get messy".

Figuring out what the Thingamadoodle was for- it was in the form of a cassete disk -Fraz inserted it into his bus' tape deck and figured out pretty quickly just how fast it could go.

...-and as he drove off, McFlapp and Benny were arguing.

"You idiot! You gave a fragile layman one of our top secret projects!"

"Without it, he'd just be mopin' around for the rest of his bally life! What about his bloomin' kids?"

"Well, if you had let him mope, it would have saved us a LOT of trouble in the 2000s!"

"You're not goin' back in bally time to mess with what I just bloomin' did, furball." Mayor McFlapp said assertively. "I've taken the bally liberty to get the Board involved in this."

"You lie!" Benny shouted.

"Nope. The Board has banned all bally time travel anywhere in the 1970s. None of us can go back and interfere with what's taken bloomin' place here, and none of us can intervene with Fraz or his bally posterity until 1990."

"Curses!" Benny shouted. "Wait, ALL of the 1970s?! You fool! Now we will not be capable of going back and time and preventing DISCO from being invented, either!"

"Well, it's for the bally best, wot. Besides, I sort of like disco, and now that I know that you don't, I'll make sure to play it more."

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"

Benny wanted revenge, and he wanted it bad... -but he couldn't get it for another twenty years. He decided to, in that time, cook up a means of using Fraz to his advantage without "meddling" with him.

Mayor McFlapp caught wind of this and managed, just in time, to save him from Benny's loophole of evil. McFlapp ended up rewriting the plan as much as he could, and Fraz became what we know today. Fraz remains on his quest to find the "Secret", and he thinks that by stopping to pick up certain predestined creatures, he can learn more. Sadly, those who ride with him have little info to share, even though they do talk a lot.

THAT is how Fraz became what he is today.

Trivia

 * This is a parody of the Gigyas Battle from EarthBound.