Mary Sue ordered another glass of whiskey and settled on one of the barstools. She was tired after saving the world yet again. It was the same formula, played out in different ways a dozen times over the years. She almost lost, but always won. It was hard to muster up the mood for celebration when she knew the outcome well beforehand. The bar was one of the few that had made it through the monster's rampage through the city this time, and so the survivors gathered to celebrate.
Her trusty team, changing over the years, with tragic deaths or betrayals taking out old members and bringing in new ones, were celebrating with beer and karaoke. She didn't have the heart to join them. In a few days, they would discover some tiny sign of a new problem, a new enemy.
Rinse and repeat.
Someone took the seat next to her and cleared his throat. Mary Sue looked up. It was a man, and her heart fell. Her crush was in their crew, a nice farm boy from Michigan who whittled wood pieces and played the ukelele.
"Hello," she said. So this would be her love interest. Dark-haired and mysterious, dressed in a suit nearly too tight, and wearing a nauseating smile. Already she could feel the memories of her farm boy crush fading away, and she refused to let herself grab onto them. It wasn't a good idea to reject the feelings that were written. Her feelings for the farm boy might be real, but they weren't in the storyline.
Follow the plot, Mary Sue told herself. Whenever she deviated, things didn't end well. If the crush didn't fade, she would have the farm boy briefly. She always got what she wanted. But he would die shortly after, a tragic end that would be a plot device to make her character deeper. At least if she followed the storyline, the fabricated feelings faded after a love interest's arc was completed.
"Hello," Mary Sue said to the stranger, hoping that perhaps he was just a cunning villain, an anti-hero, anything other than her main lead.
"I'm Hunter," the man said, holding out his hand.
A male lead name. It was never a good sign. When Mary Sue reached out to shake his hand, he kissed it instead.
"It's a pleasure to meet the woman who's saved us all," he said.
She hadn't saved anything. The story wrote itself, and Mary Sue was just a puppet in the right place, who was made to do the right things. The man smiled and ordered her a pina colada.
"I've always loved that song," he said.
Mary Sue had as well, and now it was tainted by the plot. She hummed along with him, as she felt the book come to an end. She had survived another adventure, thanks to the armor of her plot. But damn, if that armor didn't feel like a cage.
