The Prologue

The moon was full tonight, but no one could see it; it was completely covered in a thick blanket of gray clouds. The air had become frigid since Giuli had gotten into bed, but she hadn't noticed because she was underneath her warm blankets, and so the window in her room remained open throughout the night. Partially waking up for only a few moments in the middle of the night, she noticed how cold it had gotten and thought about the possibility of closing the window, but it was so warm in her bed that she decided against it.

This proved to be a fatal mistake. For only a few minutes later did a small figure creep into the room. It was the Fanfic Authors' Nightmare fairy, come to curse Giuli with her very first cliché'd Fanfic-Author-Gets-Visited-In-the-Middle-of-the-Night-by-Fictional-Characters fic! Oh no!

The Fanfic Authors' Nightmares Fairy, with an evil smirk on his face (it was, in fact male; he'd been demoted from Boogeyman a while back and his career never recovered), crept towards Giuli's bed. He tapped her on the forehead with his wand and turned to look at all the books she had. Oh, the bookshelves were lined with so many different authors and plots and characters! There were so many to choose from!

But, thought the Fanfic Authors' Nightmares Fairy, his research showed that Giuli had only written Animorphs and Animorphs-related fan fiction. His head slowly turned towards the bookshelves at the head of the bed, with only Animorphs books lining them and grinned. He hopped up onto the shelves and tapped them with his wand.

As the Fanfic Authors' Nightmares Fairy flew out the window, cackling evilly, Giuli only stirred a little. She was completely unaware of the minute figure climbing down towards her head...

The Fanfic

"GAH!!!" exclaimed the very small boy standing at the head of a giant's bed. How did he get here?? Cautiously, the boy surveyed his surroundings. It was a gigantic room with gigantic books all over, and an enormous something lying in the bed. The boy raked his fingers through his dirty-blond hair and looked at the giant suspiciously. Something very weird was going on here, and it seemed to him that this giant was responsible. After all, it was the only thing alive in this room. Who else could have suddenly zapped him out of his world and into a gigantic one?

The boy, after a long period of hesitation, leapt off of the bookshelf and onto the giant's forehead. Upon closer examination, he discovered that this was a human! - a really big human, but a human nonetheless. He was too close to determine the gender, but judging by the long hair and eyelashes, he guessed girl.

Thereby dubbing her Girl, the boy climbed down the bridge of Girl's nose, walked down to her chin, jumped down onto the pillow, and scrambled up to her ear.

"Hey!" he shouted into the ear. "HEY YOU! GIRL!" Although the boy couldn't see it, Girl's eyes snapped open. She rubbed her eyes, moaned, and grumbled something, still half-asleep.

The boy jumped onto Girl's face again and stood in front of one eye. He crossed his arms angrily. Girl blinked, then furrowed her brows, then covered her other eye.

"Oh, hello," Girl said to the boy. "Is there any special reason that you're standing on my face?"

"Yes!" replied the boy angrily. "I'm flying along, minding my own business and all of a sudden I'm human and in a giant's room! Who are you and why did you take me here??"

Girl grinned. "Hi, Tobias. I'm not surprised you're here. You're usually in my dreams."

Tobias looked shocked, then slightly embarrassed and violated, then angry, then confused.

"Murrr buu caaa...?" he said, trying to convey all his emotions at once and failing miserably.

"And I don't know how you got here," Girl continued. "I certainly don't have the power to bring fictional characters to life. I'm omnipotent in my fanfics, but I don't have any control over real life."

"Then how did I get he --" Tobias began to demand. He halted. "What do you mean by... 'fictional'?"

Girl plucked him off of her face by the shirt collar and placed him onto her bookshelf. "See these books?" she asked. "This is the Animorphs series. You're a character in the Animorphs series. Therefore, a fictional one."

Tobias gawked at the books, looking scared and worried and very, very surprised. "You mean..." he said shakily, "I'm not real? Rachel's not real? None of this is real?? Girl???"

Girl shook her head. "Maybe I'm a fictional character and I just don't know it, and the person reading about me is fictional too. Maybe it goes on like that into infinity. Who the hell knows? Point is, you're not in the right dimension or whatever. You're not the right size, either. Actually, you'd look like you'd fit easily into my old Ken doll clothing in the attic. And I'd appreciate it if you didn't call me 'Girl.' I have a name, and it's Giulianna."

Tobias cringed and turned around to face Giuli. "Hey, wait a minute. I know you. You're the one who moved grown-up-me to Kosovo and made my deepest desire to be a member in a boy band!" he shouted accusingly.

Giuli stretched her collar and wiped some sweat off her forehead, her eyes darting around nervously. "Well, yeah, but... I mean, see it from my perspective! I mean, that was funny, right?? I was only trying to be funny!"

Tobias glared up at her. "Yeah, well it wasn't that funny to me. I don't want to live in the middle east! And having that Scholastic Blue-Collar tell my wife that I was dead??"

"Hey!" shouted an unknown voice from behind a cabinet door. "I ain't your wife until I see a diamond ring on my finger, Bird-Boy!"

Out of the cabinet in which Giuli kept her CDs came a very small Rachel. Soon, Giuli was looking down on two very angry little people.

"And that's another thing you did!" Tobias shouted indignantly. "Remember 'A Diamond Is Forever'?? You made me lose an engagement ring! And what's with all of us living in New York City all of a sudden?? That fanfic was so damn cliché'd, it wasn't even funny!"

Giuli began to feel very tense and nervous, and wiped her forehead with the sleeve of her big T-shirt. "Hey," she said weakly in her defense, "I deleted that fanfic, unfinished!"

Rachel's itty-bitty eyes narrowed. "Just because you didn't finish it doesn't mean we didn't feel it! You made me pick my cousin's nose in some kind of wannabe explicit sex scene, you sicko! And you made me rub manure all over Cassie and myself!"

"And you made me engaged to a toaster which was actually a Powerpuff Girl!" Tobias butt in. "Then you made me marry a microwave!!"

Giuli looked down at her bedspread in shame. "Well," she began, stifling a giggle, "actually, it was Jake who was picking your nose. You were the one picking Freakazoid's nose, remember?"

Rachel wrinkled her nose. "Soooo not funny. And you have awful taste in music, too. Who the hell is Eden White? And don't you have any Alanis Morrisette CDs?"

"Yeah, I've kind of been meaning to buy one..." Giuli said, scratching her neck and looking very uncomfortable. "But, I mean, everytime I have money, you know, I forget and I buy something else. I mean, I like Alanis and I borrow my sister's CDs, and I will buy one eventually..." Suddenly, a thought struck her. "HEY! What the hell! Why am I explaining myself to you?? You're, like, 3 inches tall!"

Then Giuli slammed her hand down on the couple, scraped the mess off of her shelf with a fly swatter, and threw the mush in the garbage. She wiped her hands on her T-shirt and walked back over to her bed, shaking her head as she saw the clock.

"Man. I'm never gonna be able to get up early enough to watch that SNL special," she complained, closing the window - very tightly. She climbed back into bed and dozed off.

And that, my friends, is the reason that Rachel and Tobias were missing for most of the time in #44 The Unexpected. Of course, they came back in the very last scene due to the fact that K.A. Applegate and the ghostwriters are, for some reason, unwilling to admit that fanfic authors can swat their characters dead and that is that.

The End