CaptainMarra and Grian had identical devilish grins and both were holding metal saucepans from the kitchen. They looked at each other then crashed the pans together, scaring the wits out of everyone.

"WAKE UP, YA SCURVY LANDLUBBERS!!!"

Zed screamed as he landed on Tango, who tripped and took down Impulse, Mumbo, and Iskall, which continued a major chain reaction of Hermits being woken up rudely. "AAAA-"

Xisuma woke up at the sound of clanging and screaming. "What shenanigans are going on now?"

He stood up, rubbing his eyes, and put on his helmet.

"IT WAS ALL GRIAN'S IDEA!!"

"YOU AGREED!!"

"BECAUSE I NEED FRIENDS!!" (rant time... oooooh boy, why did I write this? I apologize, but it'd take a while to write this out and it's supposed to also display that being all-powerful isn't as awesome as it's made up to be and all that.)

"Oh. Well now I feel bad."

Marra had sat on the floor as everyone stared. She laughed sadly at herself and whispered, "Gods, I'm so lonely."

Keralis quickly walked over and helped her up, giving her a small hug after she had a mini mental and emotional breakdown.

"Um, oh jeez..." Xisuma had entered the room. "What happened?"

Everyone explained that Grian and Marra had teamed up, woken them up in the loudest way possible, the Hermits got mad and started yelling, and Marra had just started crying.

Said pirate cleared her throat. "S-Sorry. The life of an Author can be really lonely, and besides, I tend to cry when yelled at for no particular reason."

"Wait, you're actually an Author?!" the admin asked. Marra nodded.

"I kinda made this game for selfish reasons. I've mainly been watching you guys, managing the other AUs, trying to make sure you aren't hit with tons of wormholes and such."

Everyone else was lost. Author? She'd been watching them?

"Do... Do you want us to leave?" Bdubs asked awkwardly, sensing this was a sensitive topic. Marra nodded grimly. Everyone but Keralis and Xisuma left.

The pirate tilted her head in confusion at Keralis. "Why're you staying?"

"You look like you need emotional support, sweetface."

Marra smiled and made a silent joke. "Emotional support human, yay!"

Keralis mimicked her smile and gave her yet another hug while X put a hand on her shoulder gingerly.

"Y-You guys barely know me. Why're you-?"

"Because we're good people?" Grian had stayed behind too. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you cry."

"It's fine, it wasn't your fault. I'm kinda overly-sensitive, don't worry about it." Marra waved it off, shaking her head. "I've got some stuff to do, tell the other Hermits I'll be back in a bit."

Keralis let her out of his hug, and-

POOF.

She'd disappeared. Grian stared where she had been guiltily.

(Cringe over, read on. Is this a quarantine rant? Probably. There's about to be a lot of fluffier stuff here, so feel free to ignore my kind of cringy mental breakdown/rant/angst thing lol)

"Oi, Alex." Marra jokingly whispered, sneaking around Stark Tower. The white-haired hero-in-training, Alexander Void, one of the two leaders for the next generation of Avengers, turned around and smiled.

"Hey Marra, Captain! What's up, need more testing?"

She nodded with a smile and said, "Some final testing, actually."

Alex's eyes lit up. Even with the face mask, Marra could tell that he was smiling in relief. This would be the last bit of mishaps he'd have to deal with, at least for this particular thing. He's an Avenger-in-training who has to deal with villains and a group of 20+ superpowered kids around his age with only his brother as help, what do you expect?

POOF.

The pair now stood on the main island in the center of the world. The sorcerer turned toward Marra. "Did you get this universe's Hermits here yet?"

She nodded and smiled. Her smile fell as she realized she hadn't told Alex about his version in this universe. "Um... EX?"

"Yeah?"

"You may or may not be an evil clone of Xisuma in this timeline, too."

Alex stood there for a second, before bursting into complaints. "Oh come on! Why am I the clone every time?! Why can't it just be twins??"

Marra burst out laughing. Alex pretended to pout.

"I like how you just ignore the evil part." The pirate snickered. Alexander Void took up a fake-looking serious face.

"Who cares if I'm evil, I am simply a copy of my brother in this universe, and it sucks." He said dramatically, trying to not laugh at himself. Marra gave him a playful shove. He chuckled again and said, "Besides, Xy agreed with me that he'd be the evil one if something goes sour."

She looked at the ship drifting around, filled with the Hermits of this universe/timeline. "Gimme a sec, gotta tell the Hermits about stuff I forgot."

POOF.

Alexander Void stood alone. He sat down and ran a hand through his white hair. "Well, at least one of us isn't evil in those timelines." He said to himself. "Thank the gods neither 'Suma or Hels have seen all the screw-ups that happened here. If they did, I'd never hear the end of it."

POOF.

Stressmonster and Welsknight yelped as Marra abruptly materialized next to them. She laughed and helped Wels up (he'd fallen over, luckily on the deck and not into the water).

"Sorry about that, blondie. Hey, could you two get everyone here? I'm gonna explain all the rules properly." Marra asked as she brushed some dust off of Wels' shoulders. "This deck needs to be cleaned, jeez."

Stress giggled and smiled. "Course, love." And she ran off. The knight thanked the Captain for helping him up and headed into another part of the ship. The Author sighed and leaned against the wooden railing of the ship, looking off into the distance as she waited. She quietly hummed "Hoist The Colors", remembering the hanging scene of Pirates. It was painful to watch, but it was meaningful.

She'd spaced out so much that she didn't notice all the Hermits waiting awkwardly behind her until Doc spoke.

"Are you going to explain why we're here or not?"

Marra (AKA poor me lol) almost fell off the ship. "HOLY CHEESE BALLS- Oh my- I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you all wait!"

The pirate cleared her throat and let her heart rate go back to normal as she rambled for a few moments. "Okay, okay okay okay. Yeah. Team leaders, please come over." Keralis, Grian, and Xisuma nodded and walked to either side of the witch-pirate. "I'll assign teams after I get these three situated. One minute."

POOF.

"AAA-!" A white-haired teenager with a dark grey mask shrieked as Marra accidentally teleported directly onto his leg, scaring the life out of him. Only X recognized him.

"SORRY ALEX!"

"It's okay, it's fine, I'm fine... Dear gods... Oh, sup other 'Suma." The Void waved tiredly, putting a hand to his racing heart. Xisuma cautiously waved back. "I'm not EX you know, I'm your twin from another universe."

Keralis and Grian looked at the pair weirdly. Marra explained (in a rush, obviously not wanting to focus on that topic right then) that there was a multiverse, which only kinda cleared it up.

"Yeah, Alex has been my test subject for the magic needed for this game. He'll explain your separate powers and how to use them while I make the teams for Week One." Marra explained quickly, before POOFing back to the ship.

POOF.

"Hi. Okay, I'm assigning teams now. Sorry if I'm being confusing, I'm trying to hurry this along." Marra chuckled nervously as she teleported back on the deck. She POOFed a scroll into existence.

"These are your teams for the first round. For the Sailors: Cubfan135, FalseSymmetry, Iskall85, MumboJumbo, StressMonster101, VintageBeef, and ZombieCleo. For the Merpeople: Docm77, Hypnotizd, iJevin, Rendog, Tango, and Zedaph. And, finally, the Siren team: BdoubleO100, Ethoslab, ImpulseSV, JoeHills, GoodTimesWithScar, and Welsknight." The manager of that section of the multiverse took a deep breath and continued.

"Merpeople and Sirens, come with me. Sailors, you'll get it easy for a bit. Tomorrow, the game will start properly."

Everyone looked at each other nervously as they split up.

POOF.

The Sirens and Merpeople disappeared.

"-and that's the basics of your new powers." Alex finished as POOF, the pirate brought twelve people to the island. The sorcerer huffed, "About time."

"What? I'm not late or anything." Marra huffed back. "Alright, I'm going to use some magic to give you guys your powers and tails. Except for Xisuma, he's gonna go to the ship in a second. Team leaders, please explain their powers, you'll have to do that a lot. Also, this magic will feel really weird for the first few days. Transformation magic, y'know?"

POOF.

"Hey, Captain X!" Cleo said jokingly. Xisuma smiled and told everyone to start preparing the ship to set sail. He explained that if the Siren team couldn't find them the rest of the day, they might have an easy first point. He also explained that every two weeks, the teams would switch up (excluding the team captains, they'd have to stick with their current roles the whole game).

"Well then shouldn't we start now?" Iskall chuckled and immediately rushed to climb up and prep the sails. Everyone else got the message and ran to get ready to sail.

"Someone pull up the anchor!"

"Isn't there a proper term for that?"

"Who knows?"

"Probably Joe."

"WHOOOO!!!" Several cheers echoed through the water as several people swam around. Keralis and Grian wished each other luck, and looked for the coordinates of their bases (Alex and Marra had been very specific).

"Bdubs, Etho! Wrong way!" Grian shouted toward the two shapes drifting off. Etho snorted and said "Told you so" and swam back, observing his own black and white tail as it cut through the water.

"Tango! Have you seen Zedaph?" Keralis asked as everyone stopped to take a break. Tango nodded and gestured up. Zed was floating around, relaxing. Keralis gave a quick sigh of relief.

Okay, here's how the game works.

Sailors earn a point for every day under two people die (limit may go up temporarily under certain circumstances, like violent storms or if I'm feeling really bad for them-).

Sirens earn a point for every person they drown.

Merpeople earn a point for every person they save.

Bonus points can be earned at certain times, like when sailors go to islands to trade/explore or when merpeople pull a harmless prank on the sailors without something going wrong (like a siren swooping in for the kill-).

That's basically the whole game. There's an island where people can meet up and no points can be earned in that zone. It's a peace zone, basically.

Also, over time, sailors become less and less resistant to the Sirens' song. The more often you go under, the harder it is to resist the next time. And, the harder it is to be saved, therefore making the merpeoples' job harder and the sirens' job easier.

That's pretty much it for now! Next chapter, the games will officially begin! Who's getting the first point? Feel free to make bets in the comments! Also, if you have any questions, please let me know!

- CaptainMarra

PS: I feel like this could be really cool, if done properly. I feel like I'm gonna mess this up, so please tell me if there's something you think I'm doing wrong.