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dizzyhslightlyvoided · 1 year

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Jenny Over-There In: Who Laws the Lawyers?

Jenny Over-There receives a call asking for someone she can't find -- and she can't find the caller, either! Things spiral out of control from there.

The Multidimensional Finders Service: a place you could call if you wanted help finding anything. And by "anything", they meant "anything". No matter who you were, no matter where you were, no matter what universe you were calling from: if it existed, they could tell you exactly where to find it.

This was mostly all owed to one employee.

In the head office in Wales, at a desk with a red telephone, sat a young woman with scruffy reddish-brown hair and a bored expression. Her name was Jenny Over-There, and she was endlessly scrolling through her phone. Not through social media — she did her best not to succumb to that sort of doomscrolling. Well ... most of the time. But no, she was browsing through the app store, in the hopes of finding a game which didn't have a predatory business model, wasn't an ad-ridden mess, didn't deliberately try to cause gambling addictions, or some combination of all three.

She was just downloading the seventh or so Solitaire app when the Red Interdimensional Telephone on her desk rang. Jenny put down her smartphone so she could answer. "Hello, Multidimensional Finders Service."

"Greetings, Jenny Over-There," said an imperious voice which somehow called to mind an Egyptian pharaoh. "Would you like to become embroiled in a conflict of cosmic importance?"

This gave Jenny pause. "No, I'm just here to help you find things," she said, maintaining her customer service voice.

"All right," said the voice, without breaking stride. "Then, would you be so kind as to tell me the location of the descendants of my dear friend Randolph Carter?"

Jenny had the ability to locate any person, place, or thing that existed, no matter where it was in the multiverse. This was why she had been employed by the MFS to begin with. It was why she was the employee. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the question; there was some measure of "do what the person asking means" to her power, and so rather than trying to find every possible descendant of a man she'd never met in a universe she'd never visited, the image formed in her mind of two youths, a brunette young woman and a sandy-blonde young man, frantically driving in a small brown sedan, with an impression of their precise location in terms she could understand (and, usually, convey) ...

"They're driving towards lower Manhattan," said Jenny, "due west of where you are."

"Thank you," the voice purred, and hung up.

Jenny frowned. She made a note in the log book about having to deal with something of cosmic importance, but the phone rang almost before she'd finished.

She put her customer service voice back on as she answered. "Hello, Multidimensional Finders Service."

"Ah, hello!" said a frumpy woman's voice. "I'm looking for my keys."

Jenny concentrated, and found them immediately. "They're behind the blue couch under the window."

"Oh, is that where they landed," said the woman. "Thank you!"

"No problem!" said Jenny. She didn't bother wondering about the million or so questions this exchange had raised, because if she did that with every strange call, she'd never get anything done.

Moments later, there was another call. "Hello, Multidimensional Finders —"

"IT IS I, LORD GRALLYX!" roared a demonic voice. "TELL ME WHERE JENNY EVERYWHERE IS!"

Jenny Everywhere, the Shifter, who existed in every possible reality and could shift between them, and who in this universe worked for the glorious e-commerce website Kablamazon in order to undermine it from within. Jenny Over-There immediately felt a strain in her mind as her power tried to pull her perspective in a million directions at once.

Fortunately, this was the one question which permitted Jenny to get snippy with the customers. Putting the full weight of the headache into her voice, she snapped, "She's everywhere! It's right there in the name!" She slammed the receiver back down before Grallyx could respond.

It wasn't long, however, before the phone rang again. Jenny tried to shake herself out of the headache, went back into customer-service mode, and answered. "Hello, Multidimensional Finders Service."

"Where is Benito?" said an irritated, gravely voice.

Jenny Over-There hesitated. It sounded like some sort of cartoon villain as performed by ... yes, by famous actor/comedian/musician Dwight White. "As in ... Mussolini?"

There was the briefest of pauses on the other end. "Yes, Benito Mussolini," the voice said flatly. "No, you nitwit, the Italian copyright lawyer from Brooklyn!"

"Er ..." Oh. Right. Of course. Benito. The protagonist of Super Benito Siblings, one of the oldest extant video game franchises in this world. The de facto mascot of Kyujudo, a megacorporation which had started in the nineteenth century as an organized crime syndicate with ties to gambling; in the final decades of the twentieth century, it had metamorphosed into a video game corporation which prided itself in a carefully-cultivated family-friendly image, whilst being absolutely cutthroat with their lawyers. They were making a Super Benito Siblings movie with Dibbsy, which was approximately the same thing but with animated movies, and there had been posters of Mammon Mouse and Dollar Duck dressed up as Benito and his brother Giovanni. It was a match made in Lawyer Hell.

Jenny concentrated on the question.

Nothing.

What?

She concentrated again. Nothing continued to happen; the caller might as well not have asked. Jenny asked herself, where is the caller? Zilch. To all appearances, her power had simply stopped working.

"Hello?" said the voice on the other end.

"A-any store that sells video games," Jenny said hurriedly.

"... What?" said the voice, genuinely baffled.

"Er, technical difficulties, please stand by!" said Jenny, her heart thumping in her chest. "We apologize for the inconvenience."

"Wait!" exclaimed the voice.

She hung up and ran through the seemingly-endless labyrinthine hallways of the MFS headquarters to her boss's office. "Um, excuse me!! Sir!?"

Her boss, a nondescript man in equally-nondescript grey robes, quickly put down his smartphone. Jenny thought she recognized a particularly predatory Kyujudo game on the screen. "Yes, Jenny?" he said. "What is it?"

"My power isn't working!" Jenny said frantically. "I got a call, and ... and ... and it was as if my power just wasn't there!"

"Wasn't ... there?" said the Man in Grey, frowning. "That's very bad!"

"It really is, sir!" said Jenny.

The Man in Grey shook his head. "How will we do business like this!?" He looked up at her. "Right. Right. First, stop panicking. We have to test it."

"I'm NOT panicking!" shouted Jenny.

Quickly, the Man in Grey said, "Where is the Red Interdimensional Telephone?"

Reflexively, Jenny concentrated. "On the desk of my office ... wait."

"Where is Dynamite Thor?" said the Man in Grey.

"Uh ..." Jenny concentrated again, then turned around. "Oh, he's coming up right here."

A blonde man in a red, yellow, and blue superhero costume with an explosion-emblem on his chest was approaching: Peter Thor, alias Dynamite Thor, one of the multiverse's worst superheroes. His only power was an immunity to explosions, and he fought crime using his eponymous dynamite. He was an intern at MFS. "Sorry," he said, "I heard the commotion and I wanted to see what was up."

The Man in Grey was calming down. "Jenny had her power fail once," he said, "and she concluded that she had lost the use of it completely." He was usually at least a little bit of a mess, but he was very dedicated to ensuring that the MFS ran smoothly. ... Most of the time.

"Oh," said Dynamite Thor, nonplussed.

In the distance, the red telephone began to ring.

Jenny and the Man in Grey looked at each other. "I'd ... I should answer that, shouldn't I?" said Jenny. For some reason, she was feeling a certain level of disappointment that her power still worked. In some ways, having some kind of power meant she had the responsibility to use it. It was a bit of a bother.

"Please do!" said the Man in Grey, oblivious to her inner turmoil.

The trio made their way all the way back through the MFS hallways until they reached Jenny's office, and Jenny picked up the phone without bothering to sit down. "Hello, Multidimensional Finders Service."

"Finally," said a young man's voice. "Where's that DAMN fourth Shining Trapezohedron?"

Jenny narrowed her eyes, but concentrated.

Somewhere in New York City, in the same universe as a previous call, she found a man in a black business suit. He looked for all the world like Nicola Tesla as a young man, with the addition of a pharaoh's stylized beard. He promptly looked up at Jenny's point of view, smiled and gave her a little wave, and then reached into his pocket and produced a small oddly-angled stone — nearly black, with red striations, which seemed to have a faint but eerie light from within.

Oh. That must have been the previous caller. Jenny was fairly certain she hadn't seen him in this particular guise before, but she knew who she was looking at.

"It's in Lower Manhattan a few miles east of where you are," she said into the phone, unable to completely keep the weariness out of her voice, "being held by Nyarlathotep the Crawling Chaos." The pharaoh in her mind's eye nodded encouragingly.

The young man let out an exhausted and exasperated stream of profanity under his breath. "I'm going to punch Yog-Sothoth!"

"Dwain!" said the voice of his sister, or cousin, or whatever their shared relationship with Randolph Carter was.

"Uh," said the young man, "send the bill to Kadath!" He hung up again.

The Man in Grey was unable to hide his relief. "Well, Jenny, it looks like your power still works," he said. "It's just that one call in particular failed you."

"Yeah ..." Jenny sat down at the desk, and started filling out the entry in the logbook. "That ... is odd. But it is less worrying, I think."

"What was the call that failed?" asked Peter.

Jenny looked up at him. "It sounded like some sort of cartoon villain played by Dwight White," she said, "asking for Benito, as in the Super Benito Siblings."

"Dwight White," the Man in Grey repeated.

"... Yes?" said Jenny.

"Dwight White," said the Man in Grey, "who is presently playing the role of Benito's arch-nemesis Bonham in Dibbsy's Super Benito movie?"

"Huh." Jenny blinked. "Now that you mention it ..."

The phone rang again. "Ah!" Jenny quickly picked it up and tried to shift gears back into customer service. "Hello, Mul—"

"Now listen here, you brat!" said the Dwight White voice. "When I find you, I'll crush your entire finders service to the ground, along with everyone in it!"

Jenny furrowed her brow. "Will that help you find Benito?"

"... What?" said the voice, thrown off once again.

"I'm just saying," said Jenny, "if you kill us all, we won't be able to find Benito for you."

"Oh for darkness's sake!" he growled.

The Man in Grey whispered, "Where is Bonham?"

Jenny concentrated, then shook her head. Phrasing the question that way didn't find the caller, either. "Well, I'm sorry, sir," she said into the phone. "However he's hidden, he's hidden in such a way that even I can't find him."

"Useless fools!" said the voice, and hung up.

"So ..." The Man in Grey tapped his chin thoughtfully. "You can't find Benito. You can't find the caller asking for him." He frowned. "I don't suppose copyright would cause problems, would it? In this universe, he's presently under the jurisdiction of the two corporations with the deadliest lawyers in the world."

Jenny shrugged. Between the three employees of the Welsh MFS office, the Man in Grey was the one with the best meta-awareness, in stories with a permeable fourth wall such as this one. Well ... he was probably better than Jenny. Certainly more comfortable.

The red phone rang once again, cutting into Jenny's thoughts. She sighed, and picked up the phone. "Hello, Multidimensional Finders Service."

Silence.

"Hello?" said Jenny uncertainly.

"Where," said a squeaky voice with an American accent, "is Bunny Everyhare?"

Jenny glared at the phone. "Did you say 'Jenny Everywhere'?"

"No, no, no!" said the voice. "Bunny Everyhare!"

Jenny concentrated, then turned around in surprise. "'Right outside my window'!?"

The window shattered as a four-foot-tall figure somersaulted in. It was a brown-furred funny-animal bunny with a wiry build, wearing a Kablamazon delivery uniform, a red scarf, and orange-tinted goggles atop her head which didn't look like they'd actually fit over her eyes. She struck a pose and threw up her hands. "And now I'm in here!"

Jenny gaped at her. "What ...?" The local Jenny Everywhere had delivered a toaster a year ago, and this ... bunny ... was dressed exactly like she'd been.

"'Bunny ... Everyhare'?" said Dynamite Thor, who was even more dumbfounded.

The bunny grinned, light reflecting off her buckteeth with a ting! "That's my name, don't wear it out!" she said, winking with a xylophone note. "Or do wear it out, whichever one's funnier."

"We have a door, you know!" the Man in Grey barked. "Windows are expensive!"

Bunny froze, and looked up at him guiltily. Then she somersaulted backwards out of the window, and the shards of the window flew up towards the frame, repairing itself. The instant it was intact again, Bunny strode in past Dynamite Thor. "Haha, 'we have a door'," she said. "Gotta respect the classics!"

"Why are you dressed like this world's Jenny Everywhere?" said Jenny wearily.

Bunny shrugged, glancing down at herself. "I always look like the nearest Jenny Everywwwwwwhy the hell is this a Kablamazon uniform."

The Man in Grey huffed. "Look, Miss Everywhere ..."

"Everyhare," Bunny corrected him.

He groaned. "What are you doing here?"

"Oh right!" Bunny hopped on her heels. "Have you guys seen anything ... strange recently?"

"Besides you?" said Dynamite Thor.

Bunny tilted her head backwards to look up at him. "Besides me, yeah," she said. "I mean like. Nonexistence existing for no apparent reason? Someone calling you up, right after you started talking about 'em, as if they only existed while you were thinking about 'em? Any Null-creatures from beyond the Void?"

"I got a call from Nyarlathotep the Crawling Chaos a moment ago," said Jenny, gesturing to the red phone. "Er, not the one on the Interdimensional Pride Council, a version from a different universe —"

"Nah, nah." Bunny shook her head. "Nyarlathotep, he's just your regulation eldritch cosmic-monstrosity god, y'know? Nothing out of the ordinary there. I'm talking about the, the Null, which is, like, it's beyond the Void Between Worlds."

"I didn't know the Void Between Worlds had ... creatures," said Dynamite Thor uncertainly.

"I said beyond it, Pete," said Bunny. "Uh, I'm explaining myself badly. So, like ..." She gestured with both hands. "... the Interdimensional Void isn't completely empty, right? It's chock full of non-Jenny-Everywhere dimensional travelers headed from point A to point B, and there's even a few landmarks!"

Jenny mentally asked herself where the Void was, and got a vague sense of "outside" the universe. As usual when she searched for the Void Between Worlds, the vision it supplied was of ... nothing. Not even a blank backdrop. Her power was working perfectly well, it did produce a mental image, and that mental image contained nothing. It gave her an entirely different headache from the one she got when someone asked where Jenny Everywhere was.

"Everyone here knows all this," said the Man in Grey impatiently. "Knowing how the multiverse works is part of the job."

"Yeah, Mig," said Bunny, "but there's more to it than that."

"'Mig'?" said the Man in Grey. "Oh. My ... 'initials' ..."

"The Void is non-Euclidean, and has more than three, uh, dimensions," said Bunny, as if he hadn't said anything. "You pick a notional direction that's 'away from any universe' and 'away from any landmark' — and if you go far enough, you eventually disappear into a dimensional stratum of absolute nonexistence, never to be seen again."

"And it does have creatures?" said Jenny, rubbing her temples.

"Technically, it doesn't have anything," said Bunny. "However, it also doesn't have 'nothing'. Which means that the waveform can collapse into 'something', and you get stuff coming out of the Null which are neither existent nor nonexistent." There was the briefest of pauses. "Null-entities can be eldritch-as-in-Nyarlathotep, though," she added.

Jenny reluctantly asked herself where the Null was ... and nothing happened. Okay, good, no further headaches. "I can't find the Null with my power," she said slowly.

"See?" said Bunny, nodding. "Exactly!"

The three employees of the MFS exchanged a look. "Well," said Jenny, "there were a couple of people a moment ago who I couldn't find, in exactly the same way I can't find the Null."

Bunny's ears perked up. "Lemme guess," she said, trying to play it cool, "it was Benito 'n' Giovanni."

"Er, close," said Jenny. "It was Benito and Bonham."

Bunny looked startled. "Wait, really?" she said. "That's ... hilarious."

The Man in Grey looked thoughtful. "Miss Everyhare," he said, "would I be correct in presuming that as a cartoon character, who obeys cartoon physics, you can do anything?"

"Only if it's funny," Bunny said promptly.

The Man in Grey nodded. "I wonder if it'd be possible for you to comically find them yourself."

Bunny snorted. "If Jenny freaking Over-There couldn't find 'em, what chance do I have?"

"A rather good one, I think!" said the Man in Grey, cajolingly.

Bunny gave him a hard look. "Please don't try to do the whole 'are too' 'am not' 'are not' 'am too' routine," she said pointedly. "I already did that with the first Jenny Everywhere I met."

"I'm not Jenny Ev— you know what, never mind."

"The what routine?" said Dynamite Thor.

"One of the classic comedy routines, Petey," said Bunny. "You're in an argument, right, going like 'Are too!' 'Am not!' 'Are too!' 'Am not!' But then you mix it up by saying 'Are not!' and they're so caught up in disagreeing with you they go 'Am too!' and you keep going like 'Are not!' 'Am too!' until they get fed up and —"

Fortunately, at that moment they were interrupted by a loud explosion coming from the front of the building.

The Man in Grey glared at Peter. "Thor, what have I told you about bringing dynamite to work!?"

Peter flailed. "It wasn't actually my fault this time!" he exclaimed. "Also, that didn't even sound like dynamite!"

The four rushed to the front of the building, just in time to see the front door get blasted off its hinges. Outside, there was a hovercraft resembling a red, white, and black bumper car with a jester's face on the front and a cannon affixed to the bottom that was clearly too small to contain more than a single shot and had no readily apparent means of loading it from inside. The pilot was a portly, mustachioed, blue-furred cartoon hare with beady red eyes, easily nine feet tall without the hovercraft.

Bonham. The arch-nemesis of Benito.

"Oh no!" exclaimed the Man in Grey. "Now we'll have to pay to get the door fixed!" Bunny facepalmed.

Bonham glared at Jenny. "So," he snarled, "the whelp finally decides to show herself!"

"Er, hi," said Jenny ...

... and that's when she noticed the faint dark mist that was rising off his body.

Except ... Jenny didn't want to say it was dark mist, because ... it wasn't dark. It wasn't anything, really — not dark, not pale, not medium, not colorful or neutral. It was just nothing, like the Interdimensional Void, except it was here in the physical world instead of coming from her power.

But no, in terms of what it really looked like, it definitely was dark.

"Just as I thought," Bunny Everyhare stage-whispered. "This guy's a Bunny Nullhare. A Null-creature that follows my whole 'cartoon character' idiom."

Dynamite Thor hurriedly ran back inside. "Stall him!" he exclaimed.

"What?" said Bonham.

"Um," said Bunny.

"... Huh." Jenny watched him go. She'd seen Dynamite Thor trying to be a hero. The notion that he had a plan of some sort did not fill her with confidence.

Still, at the moment, what else was there to do? She exchanged a look with Bunny and the Man in Grey, then turned back to Bonham. "Well, sir," she said, putting on her calmest and most professional customer service voice, "I'm not sure what you want me to do. What you are looking for is simply unable to be found."

"Such uselessness!" said Bonham, gesticulating wildly. "I'll destroy you all, I'll tear down this finder's service, and then I'll use it to find Princess Plum —"

"In that order?" wondered the Man in Grey.

"— and then I'll defeat Benito and his scrawny brother once and for all!" Bonham shook his fist at the heavens.

"I'm gonna have to stop you there, chief," said Bunny, stepping forward and producing a wooden mallet from behind her back which was bigger than she was.

Bonham stared down at her. "You!?" he said incredulously. "You and what army?"

Dynamite Thor rushed out, wearing protective plastic earmuffs and a utility-belt full of dynamite sticks. "I'm back!" he said. "Has he blown you up yet?"

Bunny glanced at him. "I mean I've got a superhero right here," she answered Bonham.

The Man in Grey groaned. "Please don't ... just ... er, please stay away from the building.

"Haw!" Bonham shook his head. "Who dares challenge Bonham, the King of Hoppas!?"

Dynamite Thor pulled out a dynamite stick, and posed dramatically. "Dynamite Thor, defender of justice, and intern of the Multidimensional Finders Service!"

Bunny twirled her mallet, causing it to clip through the ground. "Bunny Everyhare, the Sniffter ..."

"The what!?" said Jenny and the Man in Grey simultaneously.

"... and the third most powerful being in the entire multiverse!" Bunny finished.

The Man in Grey looked at her, nervousness warring with incredulity. "Who are the first two?"

Bunny shrugged. "Eye dee kay, I can't think of any answer which could possibly be funnier than just leaving it at that."

"Well," said Bonham, "I suppose I can take the time to obliterate a couple of would-be heroes before getting down to busin—"

Bunny hit him with the mallet, flattening his face and producing a cartoon crashing noise that didn't particularly resemble any sound that either a mallet or a face should make. Dynamite Thor lit the fuse on his dynamite stick and threw it at Bonham; Jenny and the Man in Grey hurriedly covered their ears. It sailed right past the hovercraft before detonating, rocking it slightly.

Bonham righted himself, his face back to normal. "THAT'S IT!" he roared. "I'm tearing you down!"

Jenny could have sworn she could hear boss music. ©Kyujudo, of course. She tugged at the Man in Grey's sleeve, and the two of them hurried inside. Cartoony and explosive sounds began to waft in from outside.

The Man in Grey frowned, more nervous than Jenny usually saw him. "Jenny," he said distractedly, "where is the most powerful entity within one hundred kilometers?"

Jenny concentrated, and her mind's eye zeroed in on Bunny Everyhare, who was wildly somersaulting back and forth to avoid Bonham's bombs. She landed, held up ber mallet defensively, and Jenny saw that the back of her Kablamazon uniform now had the text By A Gat Dang Lightyear embroidered in flowery cursive.

"It's, er, Bunny Everyhare," she said. "'By a gat dang lightyear', according to the text that just appeared on her back. I ... suppose we're in luck, then."

The Man in Grey frowned. "I don't know about that," he said, gesturing for Jenny to follow him through the hallways. "'As long as it's funny' ..." He glanced back at her. "Which outcome is more hilarious: 'the final boss of a video game gets soundly thrashed by a silly cartoon rabbit and —"

"I'm a hare!" shouted Bunny from outside. "Get it right!"

"— by a silly cartoon hare and one of the worst superheroes in existence'?" said the Man in Grey without missing a beat. "Or 'the self-proclaimed third most powerful being in the multiverse gets a game over from a fellow cartoon character'?"

"Er ..." Jenny thought furiously. "Well. We're ... we've got to think about the consequences, don't we?" She glanced over her shoulder. "If ..." She still couldn't quite say the name with a straight face. "... Bunny Everyhare loses, then that has connotations of 'and then Bonham blows up the building, kills us all, and ruins our business'. That wouldn't be very funny, would it?"

The Man in Grey looked slightly ill. "I should hope not!" he said. "But ... there are comedies where that sort of thing is acceptable. No, I really think we should try to find some way to tilt the odds in our favor." He led her into his office and sat down at his desk. "I don't suppose you have any ideas?"

Jenny frowned thoughtfully. She wasn't any kind of hero, and her one stint as the supervillain Lovebomber had been entirely at the behest of her "victim." And anxiety and fight-or-flight like this was not very helpful when you needed to think. But ...

Her gaze alighted on the Man in Grey's smartphone.

"Earlier," she said slowly, "you asked if copyright laws might be getting in the way of my power."

"I did," said the Man in Grey, looking up at her curiously.

"Bonham's arch-nemesis," said Jenny, "is a copyright lawyer."

The Man in Grey caught on. "And in this universe, he's copyrighted."

Jenny nodded. "And he follows 'the same cartoon idiom' as Bunny Everyhare!" she said. "We could get Kyujudo's lawyers to go after him!"

The Man in Grey practically wilted with relief. "Well done, Jenny!" he said. "I think that sort of 'anticlimax punchline' is just what we need!"

He unlocked his phone, grimaced, closed the predatory Kyujudo game, and opened the search engine. "Let's see ... the number for Kyujudo of Europe's copyright office ... Aha!" He slowly and ponderously dialed the number. "Hello ... ah, yes, I'd like to report a copyright infringement ..."

—

Bunny's mallet vanished, and she raised her hands. In a puff of smoke, five other Bunnies Everyhare appeared and leaped up to land on each other's shoulders, forming a stack six Bunnies high. With a cry of "Block this overhead!", the one on the bottom smacked herself in the backside, launching all of them into the air. Each of them suddenly had a wooden mallet in her hand, and all of them whacked Bonham in turn.

"Ouch — oof — argh — ugh — ow — gah!" Bonham wobbled, as all but the original Bunny vanished again (well ... probably it was the original). "Accursed lesser bunnies!" he roared, firing wildly in all directions. "Why won't you die!?"

One of the bombs hit Dynamite Thor. "Oof," he said simply. "Uh, I'm immune to explosives, sorry."

"And I'm a cartoon character," said Bunny. "Nobody dies in the 'cartoon physics' kind of cartoon. Mostly," she added under her breath. "Meanwhile, the feeling's mutual, like who the hell gave you so many hit points!?"

Bonham growled. "This is absurd!"

"Couldn't agree more, chief!" said Bunny.

"Uh, Bunny," said Dynamite Thor suddenly, "I'm starting to run out of dynamite."

Bunny frowned over at him. "Not good, Pete!"

"Wait," said Dynamite Thor, "why are you calling me ... that ... name?"

Bunny hesitated. "You're Peter Thor," she said. "You're only now noticing I've been calling you 'Pete' and stuff?"

Peter sputtered. "That's ridiculous!" he said. "How could you possibly — why would you even think that I'm him!?"

"Why would you even think it's a surprise!" said Bunny. "For god's sake, Pete, you aren't even hiding your face!"

Bonham, now equally distracted by this conversation, peered at Peter. "Surely you at least wear glasses or something in your civilian identity?" he said. "Change your posture, and all that, to make it less-obvious you're the same person."

"Uh, no," said Peter, honestly confused. "Why would I need something like that? I have perfect 20-20 vision. And I'm not wearing this costume when I'm in my civilian identity ..."

Bonham turned to Bunny and wordlessly gestured at Peter with an incredulous expression. Bunny shrugged, equally incredulous.

"... which isn't this 'Peter Thor', by the way!" Peter continued. "I don't know what either of you are talking about!"

Bunny rolled her eyes. "Okay y'know what, screw that for now. We need another plan. Uh ... Bobo here is copyrighted in this universe."

"I am?" said Bonham.

Bunny held her hand out to Dynamite Thor. "Could you lemme borrow your phone for a minute, Pete?"

"What?" said Peter. "Why?"

"So I can make a phone call, duh," said Bunny.

"I left my phone inside," said Peter. "Also, I'm still not over the fact that you're calling me 'Peter Thor' ..."

"Ugh, fine, I'll use my own." Bunny reached behind her back and produced a blocky smartphone with a cracked screen. Holding the mallet under her arm, she smacked the front of the phone accompanied by a cartoon splat noise, and it began dialing, as Bonham and Peter exchanged a confused look. "Y'ello! Yep, got a copy-vio on our hands near the Multiverse Finders Service in Wales! Bonham's making a not-sanctioned-by-Kyujudo appearance!"

"What the hell is Kyujudo!?" shrieked Bonham.

"Yeah, hear that?" Bunny continued. "He just cussed out, not a family-friendly use of your brand image!" She blinked. "Oh, you're already on it, cool, someone in this building's faster than I am! Uh, yeah, just follow the 'splosions!"

Bonham leaned down to Dynamite Thor. "Who is she calling and what is she talking about?"

"Uh ... I'm not sure," said Peter. "But I think she might be calling Kyujudo's copyright lawyers —"

"WHAT."

—

Jenny and the Man in Grey reluctantly poked their heads out of the ruined front entrance. Bonham and his hovercraft were flashing red as he furiously zoomed around, firing bombs; Bunny was giggling as she ran in circles, always just ahead of the explosions. Dynamite Thor stood awkwardly off to the side, bereft of explosives.

"This is ridiculous," Bonham was shouting. "Why can't I destroy you alreadyyyyy!?"

"Cuz it wouldn't be funnyyyyyy!" Bunny called back, imitating his tone.

"God DAMN it!" said Bonham.

At that moment, several plain cars were driving up to the MFS headquarters.

Bonham and Bunny stopped their fight, and turned. The former looked confused; the latter, triumphant.

"Here they are," muttered the Man in Grey.

The cars came to a stop, and men in plain business suits came out. Many of them carried briefcases. They all looked the same. Well ... they weren't identical, they weren't moving in lockstep. They simply had the same kind of austere, formal bearing and facial expressions. Their clothes didn't even have the decency to look stylish or conventionally good-looking; they were business-formal, not fashionable. They didn't even have sunglasses.

They approached Bonham's hovercraft with the self-assuredness of men who could not possibly be stopped. "Good afternoon," said one of them, a balding man in a dark brown suit who sounded like a particularly dry BBC commentator. "We are here to present a cease-and-desist, due in three hours."

"And just who are you?" snapped Bonham, but now there was apprehensiveness in his voice.

"We are the Legalmen Collective," said the man. "Currently, this subset of the collective represents Kyujudo Company Ltd., Kyujudo of Europe, and The Wilt Dibbsy Corporation. We're here about your unauthorized appearance in this reality ..."

As the Legalman continued, Dynamite Thor sidled over to Jenny and the Man in Grey. "These are just lawyers, though," he said. "Are you sure this'll work?"

Bunny inexplicably popped out from behind him. "Guaranteed!" she said. "It'll be smooth as glass!"

"YOU'LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE!" shrieked Bonham, on cue. His cannon fired a bomb at the Legalmen, because he was a video game boss and thus had only a limited repertoire of responses to problem-solving.

Most of the Legalmen jumped back, letting out various yelps of alarm. But the leader in brown quickly whipped a paper out of his briefcase. "Legal Immunity!" he shouted.

The bomb detonated, kicking up a cloud of smoke which obscured them all.

Bonham exhaled loudly. "Finally, someone goes down!"

"Yep, totally," Bunny deadpanned, nodding. "You can't see what condition those guys are in, which absolutely means they're definitely completely toast."

Bonham glanced nervously between her and the smoke. "Uhhh ..."

The smoke began to clear, revealing the Legalman leader still holding the paper out. All of the Legalmen were completely unharmed.

Bonham's eyes widened. "Uhhhh."

The Legalman summoned more papers out of the briefcase. "Civil Procedure: Legal Action!" He thrust his hand towards Bonham.

The papers flew forward, tearing through the hovercraft as if ... well, as if it was the other way around. Bonham screamed as the hovercraft was surrounded by a succession of identical explosions, before detonating in a loud crash which whited out everyone's view for a split second. He landed facedown on the ground; a screw which didn't look like it had actually been part of the hovercraft fell and bounced off his head.

There was a pause. The black mist rising from Bonham's body thickened.

"Okay," said Bunny, "that was even cooler than I was expecting!"

"Wow," said Jenny weakly, looking the Legalman up and down. "Remind me not to get on your bad side!"

The Legalman coughed, almost apologetically. "You are all open-source or public domain characters," he said. "We read this story up to the scene before our arrival, as well as all of the 925th Universe stories by the original author. As long as the Paragraph is used correctly and you aren't committing any other crimes relevant to our current task, we can't do anything to you."

The Man in Grey frowned, and gestured to Bonham's prone form. "So, then, I gather that that business only worked because he fell directly under the jurisdiction of the companies you worked for?"

"Of course," said the Legalman. "We're Legalmen, not policemen."

The Man in Grey put a hand on his chest and heaved a sigh of relief. "Oh thank god."

Bunny jerked a thumb at Bonham. "Mind if I take the Bunny Nullhare outta your ... hair?" she said. "I can just take him back to the dimensional stratum where he came from. That'd comply with the cease-and-desist, right?"

The group of Legalmen exchanged a few looks; Jenny got the impression they were communicating in some unseen manner, perhaps reading each other's minds like different instances of Jenny Everywhere. There were general nods of agreement. "Of course," said the Legalman leader. "As long as he is no longer in violation of Kyujudo's copyright, we'll consider the matter as finished for the time being."

One of the other Legalmen said, "It's like a web host taking down the offending material regardless of the actions of the user who uploaded it."

"Okay, sweet," said Bunny. "Later, gators!"

"What are your names, by the way?" said Dynamite Thor, as Bunny approached Bonham's prone form.

The Legalman looked vaguely affronted. "We of the Legalmen Collective don't need names of our own," he said. "We're sort of like Jenny Everywhere in that regard."

"Some Jennies Everywhere do have names," said the Man in Grey. "Jennifer Barbelith, Jenny Jacobs ..."

"Ah." The Legalman shrugged. "Well, we don't. At least, no one in this group."

—

Bonham woke up.

He groaned, and tried to push himself up to a sitting position. "This is ... exactly why ... I hate copyright lawyers!" he said to no one in particular. "Those fools ... they'll pay for this!"

More nonexistent mist roiled up from him as he struggled to get himself upright. "Why am I ... why do I feel like ... I'm at the end of my rope," he muttered. "I'm ... I'm the Grand Demon King Bonham! I'm Bonham the Great! I'm ... I'm ..." He collapsed facedown.

"None of those titles have been used since like 1987," said Bunny as she approached.

Bonham looked up at her. He felt as though he was seeing her for the first time. "... oh."

Bunny smiled, and held out her hand. "C'mon, Bo," she said gently. "Let's getcha back to the Null where you belong."

"Ah ... of course." Several illusions in his mind were starting to fade away. He wasn't really Bonham. He barely counted as the idea of "Bonham" reified into existence. There was no Benito for him to find.

"Right," he muttered, taking her hand. His form began to waver slightly.

Dark Null-mist began to rise up from Bunny, forming a shape which vaguely resembled massive wings. "If you like existing," she said, "we still got that space Jenny Everywhere made. We've got a sort of whole Bunny Town there!"

"Oh? ... Oh." Bonham wasn't exactly knowledgeable about the Jenny Everywhere in question; but then, being that he wasn't real, he wasn't ignorant, either.

He thought about this for a moment. "I think," he said, "that I'd like to take a break from existing for now."

"Er, what?" said one of the Legalmen in the background.

Bunny glanced over her shoulder. "We're having a moment here!" she snapped. She turned back to Bonham, and smiled. "Okay," she said. "You ever change your mind, you'll know where to go!"

"All right," said Bonham, moving closer to her. "Thank you. Let's go, then."

Her misty wings wrapped around herself and Bonham, and the two of them vanished. For a moment, they'd ceased to exist.

—

After going through what few pleasantries remained, Jenny, Peter, and the Man in Grey watched the Legalmen's cars leave, then turned back to face the MFS headquarters.

The entire front of the building was badly scraped and pockmarked, both by the bombs themselves and the shrapnel from other explosions. The door frame was completely ruined. "We're going to have to do a lot of expensive repairs," grumbled the Man in Grey.

"I should get back to the phone," said Jenny reluctantly.

The Man in Grey started. "Oh! Yes, the phone!" he said. "Er, you'll get time-and-a-half for this incident, and, and for the rest of the day."

Jenny nodded. This was less than she could have gotten, and more than she'd hoped for. She'd believe it when she saw it, though. "Thank you," she said diplomatically, and made her way back inside.

She sat down at the Red Interdimensional Telephone, and fiddled with her smartphone another moment before sitting back heavily. Work was work, it seemed, explosions or no. There'd been a few missed calls; she noted them in her logbook.

The phone rang, and she picked it up. "Hello, Multidimensional Finders Service."

"Hi again, Jenny Over-There!" said an unfamiliar woman's voice.

"'Again'?" said Jenny, frowning.

"Oh right, the, uh, the Super Carter Siblings destroyed my other avatar, you haven't seen this one yet," said the caller.

Jenny asked herself, where is Nyarlathotep?

An image appeared in her mind of a rooftop in New York City, centered on a blonde woman wearing a bunny-eared headband and a corset which prominently displayed a black-hole-esque logo with the text "The NULL", like it was the logo for some sort of nightclub. She was holding a Shining Trapezohedron to the side of her head as if it was a phone.

There was a pause as she met Jenny's gaze, her expression unreadable. Jenny peered at her.

"I was in a hurry," said the woman, in a tone which was so confident that Jenny actually accepted it for several hours. "I'm not a Bunny Nullhare. Now, could you tell me where the Carters are one more time?"

Jenny concentrated. This time, the failure she got felt like something was specifically blocking her, and gave her a new type of headache altogether.

The next instant, the point of view of her mind's eye was suddenly surrounded by a conglomeration of iridescent orbs and dark tentacles. "Dwain Carter And Karolyn Carter Are In Kadath, Jenny Over-There," said a reverberating voice. "It Is Safe For You To Inform Nyarlathotep Of This."

Jenny blinked, and found herself back in reality.

"Er, they're in Kadath," she said weakly into the phone.

Nyarlathotep let out an exhausted and exasperated stream of profanity under her breath which was precisely identical to the one Dwain Carter had said earlier. "I'm going to punch Yog-Sothoth," she said, a great deal more cheerfully than he had, and she hung up just as abruptly.

Jenny sighed, hung up, and reached for the logbook. "Good luck with that."

The phone rang again. Jenny picked it up, and before she could say a word, Nyarlathotep said, "We Outer Gods make our own luck! But yes, thank you, much appreciated." She hung up again.

To the extent possible under law, Delilah H. Smith has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to "Jenny Over-There In: Who Laws the Lawyers?" This work is published from: United States.

The character of Jenny Everywhere is available for use by anyone, with only one condition. This paragraph must be included in any publication involving Jenny Everywhere, in order that others may use this property as they wish. All rights reversed.

The character of Jenny Over-There is available for use by anyone, with only one condition. This paragraph must be included in any publication involving Jenny Over-There, in order that others may use this property as they wish. All rights reversed.

You can just use the Man in Grey without any Paragraph or anything.

Dynamite Thor, Nyarlathotep the Crawling Chaos, and Randolph Carter are already in the public domain.

New characters unlocked!

The character of Bunny Everyhare is available for use by anyone, with only one condition. This paragraph must be included in any publication involving Bunny Everyhare, in order that others may use this property as they wish. All rights reversed.

The character of Bunny Nullhare is available for use by anyone, with only one condition. This paragraph must be included in any publication involving Bunny Nullhare, in order that others may use this property as they wish. All rights reversed.

The Legalmen Collective, Dwain Carter, and Karolyn Carter are available for use by anyone with no conditions, as this story is released under Creative Commons 0.

—

One morning as I was getting out of bed, I started wondering about a possible video game equivalent of Dibbsy Corporation and Mammon Mouse from Callum Phillpott's Jenny Over-There stories. My train of thought was basically "Hm, 'Ten-Eleven-Do' ...? Wait, no, I know 'nine' and 'ten' in Japanese, Kyu-juu-do!" I then spent half an hour looking up Italian names with one tab open to the Wikipedia article on katakana, and chose Benito (as a reference to Mussolini, the fascist dictator of Italy during World War II) and Giovanni (literally the only name besides "Luigi" I could find that ended with "I", had the right number of syllables, and worked just as well with katakana as "Luigi"). Their arch-nemesis ... 'Bonham' has the same etymology as 'Bowser' (in one draft his name was 'Goodman').

He also went from a turtle monster to a bunny monster — that is, from a tortoise to a hare. The clincher with that decision was when I decided to include Bunny Everyhare, whom I'd already been planning to introduce at some point, whereupon the plot basically wrote itself. In case it wasn't obvious from Bonham's ending and, well, everything to do with the Bunnies Nullhare, Bunny Everyhare is also a Null-creature herself! I have a half-written origin story for her which I'll release later. In the strictest technical sense, going by the intent of the original Paragraph as described by the Shifter Archive website, Bunny Everyhare is "a character related to Jenny Everywhere", so technically you don't 100% need to include Bunny's version of The Paragraph if Jenny Everywhere is already involved and you include her Paragraph, but it's more-or-less traditional to include all of them regardless; ditto the Bunny Nullhares with Bunny Everyhare's Paragraph.

As for the Null itself ... the Void Between Worlds itself didn't 100% have the exact properties I wanted, but "beyond the Void" is simple enough to explain and common enough in eldritch stories. (An early draft had it as "on the opposite side of the same coin" as the Void, but I decided that was too convoluted.) Null-entities which have somehow entered reality don't need to be cartoon characters; actually, in the strictest technical sense, they should be "nothing", but "nothing" cannot exist as such in reality — it's a contradiction in terms — and so they must instead be "something", which means that in practice they can be anything.

The Shining Trapezohedron is an artifact from HP Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, which is already in the public domain along with Randolph Carter and the Outer God Nyarlathotep the Crawling Chaos; the Trapezohedron has some sort of vague connection to Nyarlathotep. Randolph Carter is a recurring protagonist in Lovecraft's stories, in at least one of which Nyarlathotep was the antagonist. I figured it's like ninety years after Randolph's adventures, so let's give him some descendants instead. "Karolyn" just sprang to my mind randomly; "Dwain" is one possible anglicization of the Irish name "Dubhán", which has the ultimate definition of "little dark one". In other words, he's "Shadow the Carter", as in "where's that DAMN fourth Chaos Emerald?" Dwain "The Shadow" Carter. (I didn't actually know about Li'l Wayne, so I had to change the spelling from what I originally had …) Being that this story is released as Creative Commons 0, you don't need any permission to use Karolyn or Shadow Carter. Ditto Nyarlathotep's not-Bunny-Nullhare form.

The Legalmen Collective ... basically I decided to include lawyers with lawyer-based wacky superpowers (I came up with the idea of no-selling an attack while shouting lawyer-terms before I decided that they would be a whole Thing), and came up with the entire concept more or less on the spur of the moment. As the leader describes above, they can only actually use these wacky superpowers against someone if 1. the target falls under their current jurisdiction or a legal case they're presently working on, and 2. they have been called on to make a cease-and-desist or whatever, like in the current situation, or they're prepared to argue in court that the target is actually in violation of a relevant law. They're a hive mind, just like Jenny Everywhere, and can recall each other's memories. Really helpful for coming to decisions as a group. They are not, however, heroic: they serve whoever they're hired or assigned to work with, good or evil. These ones in particular are working for Dibbsy and Kyujudo, after all.

#my stuff #my writing #jenny everywhere #jenny over-there #the man in grey #bunny everyhare #bunny nullhare #The Legalmen Collective #ALSO FEATURING:#nyarlathotep #dwain the shadow carter #shadow carter #karolyn carter #yog-sothoth #The Shining Trapezohedron #shadow the hedgehog #where's that damn fourth chaos emerald #public domain

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