Chapter Text
When they went to bed that night, none of the children expected to wake up in a large room.
"What the *bleep* is going on!?" Cartman shouted when he realized he wasn't in bed anymore. "...Did I just get bleeped?"
"It's just for this one chapter so the story can be shared in certain places. Don't worry about it."
"Chapter!? The *bleep* does that mean!?"
"React fic, don't think about it. I brought the nine of you here to watch and react to a show from another dimension that happens to be about you guys. Normally people who do things like this go for a movie theatre set up, but I figured something more casual was appropriate."
"Jesus Christ," Cartman mumbled before looking around and finally realizing he wasn't alone in here. There were Stan, Kyle, and Kenny, of course; Butters was in the corner, and Tweek and Craig were here. "Oh, you brought Wendy!" he shouted at the disembodied voice when he noticed she was there.
"I'm not happy you're here either," the girl in question deadpanned.
"Her perspective important."
"It would have been nice to have more than two girls, though," Wendy added.
"Red's often very antagonistic, I can never get a read on Bebe, Annie's basically a non-character, and I'm morally opposed to putting an abuse victim in the same room as her abuser, so Heidi's out. I briefly considered bringing in Karen McCormick, but I'm pretty sure Kenny would find a way to find and kill me at the mere possibility that she could be in danger."
"(Oh absolutely,)" Kenny agreed through his hood. While all the other kids were in their jammies, the blonde immortal was still dressed in his daywear. He often slept in his coat, given it got cold at night and his house frequently was without heat.
While this exchange was happening, Cartman was looking around more. The room seemed decked out for a slumber party. Blankets, pillows, comfortable-plus-looking chairs, sleeping bags, and bean bag chairs were dotted around the area, all facing a wall with a giant TV screen. Tweek and Craig had already claimed a small blanket fort near some vending machines, many of which lined either wall. Each wall had two doors, each labeled "All Gender Bathroom," and up against the back wall was the biggest, comfiest-looking bean-bag chair the portly boy had ever seen. Unfortunately, it had already been claimed by...
"Wendy, you *bleep*ing idiot, you're the only girl here: The last kid is Douchebag," he replied.
This prompted Stan to speak up. "Yeah, he might be wearing a Hello Kitty nightgown, but New Kid's a boy."
"He just likes to crossdress sometimes," Kyle added. "It's cool, nothing wrong with a boy being feminine."
"He's honestly pulling it off pretty well," Butters added. "He's awful pretty for a boy."
"Right," Wendy said awkwardly. "Silly me. Sorry, New Kid."
As usual, New Kid failed to emote beyond a blink.
"That said, New Kid, it is very selfish of you to just take the best seat in the house. So if you would kindly—"
Cartman was interrupted by the disembodied voice: "If the King wants the best seat, the King gets the best seat."
Cartman cursed himself for ever making Douchebag the King in their games. "He can still share the big comfy seat with his best friend, can't he?"
And then, for only the second time that any of the children present knew of, the New Kid spoke. "What's my name?"
And Cartman drew a complete blank.
Shortly afterwards, both Kenny and Butters spoke up at the same time.
"Dovahkiin."
"(Dovahkiin.)"
New Kid snapped and gestured to both blonde boys, waving them both over, and both boys eagerly rushed over to take a seat on either side of their King.
"Okay, fine, I didn't want to sit in the stupid giant bean bag anyway," Cartman mumbled. Besides, with Kenny on it, it was covered in poor.
He wandered over to one of the vending machines... "Where do you put the change in these things?"
"Nowhere, they're free and the machines auto-restock. Just push the button for what you want."
Soothing his bruised ego with a mountain of candy, soda, and junk food seemed like an excellent idea to Cartman only... "No sugar added juice? Carrot sticks with low-fat cheese sauce? Baked potato chips? And what the *bleep* is hummus!?"
"It's a dip or spread made of chickpeas, garlic, lemon juice, and tahini sauce," Wendy interjected. "It's a healthy and relatively low-calorie food that's perfect for snacks."
"It's great on pretzels!" Tweek suddenly shouted from the fort he and Craig claimed. It seemed that they'd already worked out the vending machines and secured themselves a steady supply of snacks.
"Where's all the real food!?" Cartman demanded.
"This is real food," the disembodied voice explained.
"Why is there nothing good!?"
"Because *bleep* you, that's why."
Grumbling, Cartman hit the buttons for five packs of cheese and crackers, the closest thing to junk food on offer, and two cans of apple juice, which tended to have plenty of sugar even if it wasn't added. He then found a nice plush chair away from everyone else and parked his enormous ass.
Elsewhere in the theatre, Kenny had gotten up briefly to retrieve snacks of his own, as did Butters. Wendy had secured a sleeping bag for herself, Kyle a chair, and Stan spent five minutes deciding whether to sit near his girlfriend or his super best friend before electing to take a beanbag that was equidistant between them.
"So just so we're all on the same page, we're all just rolling with this out of a lack of options?" Craig asked, finally speaking up.
Everyone loudly agreed.
"Now that everyone is situated: While you're here, no time is passing. When we're done, you'll all wake up in your beds as if nothing happened. What's going to happen is we're going to watch one early episode that focuses on each of you, then skip forward a while to focus on The New Kid's story, then come back to the early seasons to review a cherry-picked review of stories, and this will last until I get bored and wander off. From your perspective, this will probably be a few days, maybe a few weeks, but this place has all the facilities you'll need. We will not be watching the whole thing, because God Damn we'd be here for months. And of course, this is all assuming this works out; I'll send you back early if it doesn't seem like it's gonna be a thing."
"Won't spending time here throw off our aging?" Wendy asked.
"Nobody in South Park has meaningfully aged or matured since the late 90s. You'll be fine. We now begin our journey with the pilot episode."
The giant TV flashed on, and an intro played.
"Oh hey, it's all in paper crafts like I made for you guys that one time," Butters observed.
"Of course it's you four that're the main characters," Craig deadpanned.
"There's a certain irony to these lyrics," Wendy mused.
"(Is that Primus?)" Kenny asked.
"Quiet down!" Cartman shouted.
As the intro ended, the episode proper began with the four main boys singing while waiting at the bus stop, before being interrupted by a toddler, Kyle's brother Ike. This led to a conversation insulting the child, the use of words that only Kenny, the boy with the most interest in age-inappropriate topics, knew the meaning of, before finishing with Kyle using his baby brother both as a club against Cartman and then as a football that he kicked into some mailboxes across from the bus stop.
The flesh-and-blood Kyle watching shrank against his seat. This... Wasn't going to be good for him. He used to be so awful to Ike.
Back in the show, the conversation turned to how Cartman seemingly hadn't gotten much sleep, prompting the portly boy to narrate and flash back to a dream wherein stereotypical grey aliens took him from his bed and placed him on a table for experimentation.
In the back, The New Kid flinched, but a back pat from best friend Butters made the King feel better.
On screen, the other boys attempted to convince Cartman that his dreams were real, referring to the aliens as Visitors, which Cartman denies, and then a car drove up, with a large black man climbing out.
Immediately, everyone in the room reacted. Quite strongly. Except the New Kid, who recognized the man as the penultimate zombie fought during the battle for the Stick of Truth, but...
"Chef was a very important part of all our lives," Butters explained to his friend. "We all miss him every day."
"(Never gonna forgive those bastards,)" Kenny mumbled murderously.
"You'll be happy to know they were all killed by the Loch Ness Monster when Chef's father finally agreed to give it the 'tree fiddy' it kept trying to get from him in exchange for helping him get revenge on those he rightfully blamed for the death of his son."
This announcement was met with a chorus of cheers.
After a brief discussion of the school's lunch menu, Chef confirmed that he had seen the alien ship and inquired whether the boys had, leading to a mention of his dream and a discussion of what aliens, or visitors, stereotypically do to people they abduct. After Chef left, the other boys teased Cartman about it. Cartman grunted in indignation at his on-screen humiliation, but no one watching paid him any mind.
As the school bus arrived, still driven by the volatile Ms. Crabtree, Ike continued to try to follow Kyle to school, only to be kicked again, this time through the windows of the bus. More bus-based misbehavior occurred, and Kyle lamented that his brother remained at the bus stop rather than going home, noting that their parents would blame Kyle if anything happened to Ike.
Then Kyle noticed the visitors carrying Ike off.
The next several moments were Kyle trying and failing to get off the bus, fighting with Ms. Crabtree, before lamenting his inability to rescue Ike. Cartman, meanwhile, continued to dismiss the evidence of the visitors as efforts to gaslight him.
"How the *bleep* can you deny what's happening right before your eyes, Cartman?" Craig demanded.
"It's Cartman, boo," Tweek interrupted.
Before Cartman could give his indignant response, Wendy said, "That must have been horrible, Kyle."
Kyle sighed. "I mean, it was, but..."
On the screen, Stan farted, killing the mood entirely.
As the boys joked about it, an alien ship took to the sky behind them.
The scene then changed to Officer Barbrady interviewing a farmer about cattle mutilations, with Barbrady dismissing it as something cows do to themselves all the time and in general dismissing everything out of the ordinary; meanwhile, the cows acted in self-preservation, showing disturbing signs of intelligence.
"Wait, are cows sapient?" Wendy asked suddenly.
"No!" Cartman shouted. "We are not having this conversation! It's bad enough I can't eat veal anymore; I'm not doing the work to get beef in general banned."
"But—"
"I said no!"
The scene ended with an alien startling the cows and sending them running off, with an oblivious Barbrady swearing to track them down.
In class, Mr. Garrison, via Mr. Hat, gave a horribly inaccurate lecture on Columbus while Kyle lamented the circumstances of his brother's disappearance... That eventually devolves into how his parents micromanage his life.
Eventually, Garrison catches on and interrupts the boys, which leads to them trying to explain the situation to an obviously disbelieving teacher. Eventually, Kyle attempts to ask for permission to leave and is, for all intents and purposes, told to go *bleep* himself.
Then Cartman starts farting fire, which the other boys blame on the alien probe. This continues to disrupt class and culminates in one Pip Pirrup being set on fire.
"...I miss Pip," Butters muttered.
The scene on the screen then shifted to the cows from earlier trying to board a train.
"Okay, seriously, I have questions," Wendy began.
"Wendy, I swear to god if you ruin beef for me, I will do to you what I did to Tenorman," Cartman declared.
"You want a repeat of what happened at the playground, Fatass?" Wendy countered.
"I'm starting to wonder myself," Stan added. "I think maybe we didn't go far enough on the veal issue."
"I swear to Christ I will bear mace everyone in this room," Cartman mumbled.
After Barbrady's arrival foils the cow's plans to skip town, the show transitioned to the school cafeteria. Constantly farting fire does not, in any way, diminish Cartman's appetite, a subject the boys discuss.
Kyle then points out that Wendy is there, and it becomes blindingly obvious that Stan is in love with her, though he denies it. Cartman claims he is, since he vomits when he tries to talk to her, which is demonstrated when she gives him a note.
The note specifically details her desire to meet him after school at Stark's Pond, and all pretense of Stan not liking Wendy is dropped as all of his friends, even Cartman, ironically, support his crush.
"Kenny," Wendy said, "I don't appreciate that joke."
"(Sorry.)"
Back to the show, the topic turns to escaping the school. They ask Chef for help, which prompts him to sing a song about making love to a woman that is, of course, completely unrelated to the topic at hand, before they clarify that Ike was abducted, and Chef immediately jumps to action. Cartman continues to deny that the visitor is a thing even as the probe emerges from his body and becomes visible. Chef briefly examines it, wondering if the Visitors wish to communicate somehow, as Cartman continues to deny reality. Afterward, and at Kyle's urging that they need to get out of school, Chef pulls a fire alarm.
"So that's what happened!" Craig declared. "We were standing in the snow for thirty minutes because of that, and then no one could find you four, and... Ugh."
"I'm sorry, but we had to rescue Ike," Kyle replied.
"Yeah, yeah," Craig muttered.
As Chef mutters about preparing to make First Contact, the scene transitions to the boys singing about being out of school for the day, which is interrupted by another one of Cartman's flaming farts. The topic soon returns to finding Ike, with Cartman continuing to deny reality up until the aliens take control of him and force him to act out a Looney Tunes reference. This, in turn, prompts Kyle to try and communicate with the Visitors by screaming in Cartman's ears.
Soon enough, Stan points out the alien ship above them, and Kyle demands his brother back and throws a rock at it.
In the audience, Kenny tensed. He remembered this one.
Back on screen, the ship turned around and fired some kind of energy blast that hit Kenny and sent him flying.
"Oh my God, they've killed Kenny!" "You bastards!" declared the Stan and Kyle on the screen.
Everyone turned back to look at Kenny, who stoically motioned for them to keep watching.
Back on screen, Kyle demanded that the visitors come back as their ship leaves.
When that doesn't work, Stan points out that Kenny seems to be okay, as the parka'd boy gets up to announce that he was fine.
Then he got trampled by the fleeing herd of cows from earlier. Miraculously, he's fine again. Then he gets run over by Barbrady and doesn't get up this time.
Everyone looks back at Kenny again in confusion, but he gestures to keep watching even as he gets up, begins to stretch, and most damningly of all pulls down his hood.
Kenny is clearly dead, mangled as grusomely as the papercraft art style can illustrate, and yet, even as Stan and Kyle point out his death, Cartman denies it... Even after Kyle pulls Kenny's head off.
"...Dude, what the *bleep?*" was Kenny's reaction outside of the show. He, obviously, hadn't been aware of that part.
"That wasn't what happened," Kyle said. "Kenny, Kenny was hurt; he couldn't help me find Ike anymore, but..."
"Yeah," Stan added. "He wasn't dead, he was just... I mean he was right there in class the next day; he couldn't have..."
"I die all the time," Kenny said coldly. "All the time. Back when this happened, I was getting killed at least once a week. It's been happening for as long as I can remember. One of my earliest memories is when we were all playing with firecrackers when we were like three, and one blew up in my hand and took my head off. No one cares, no one tries to help me. Stan shouts, 'Oh my god,' and Kyle calls someone a bastard even if there's no one there. I've been run over, trampled, torn apart, electrocuted, choked, drowned... It hurts every time, and I have to live with all of it... And the worst part is that none of you ever remember! And any time we talk about it, you all act like I'm crazy when I've been living this way my entire life. I, I..."
Kenny was suddenly pulled back to the large bean bag chair by The New Kid. "I believe you," the King said quietly as seats were rearranged to put Kenny between New Kid and Butters.
"Kenny," Butters suddenly interrupted. "Um, back when we was doing all the superhero stuff for the first time, and I was locked in a cage at Eric's basement for a couple weeks, there was an argument like that... And then everyone left. I don't remember you dying, but I remember being stuck there and really, really scared and uncomfortable, and I kept either looking at one spot in the basement floor or at anywhere but that spot until... The next day, you asked if anyone remembered you shooting yourself. Kenny, I'm asking you as your friend, and as someone who's been there before: Did you try to hurt yourself that night?"
Kenny exhaled. "I did more than try. I begged everyone to try and remember, but... I just woke up in my bed like always; nothing changed."
Suddenly, New Kid and Butters were both hugging Kenny.
"I think it might be best to take a break before finishing the episode," the disembodied voice declared.