Prince Conventionality peered out beyond the window of his chamber, his kingdom an infinite expanse of utter satisfaction. Sheer contentment. Children ran through the streets, their mothers beckoning them in uncannily similar mild but quite proper British accents to get away from that weapons dealer before you get any ideas of joining an assassin's brotherhood or fighting armies on your own with your girlfriend, and don't you forget the way our glorious and unrealistically perfect Prince Conventionality carved all this out for you. A bright grin crawled over his features as he noticed the absence of the poor--filthy creatures, they were. A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, the streets had been littered with the accursed beggars, but those rats had moved on to some other fairy tale. Fathers marched through the city with chests puffed out in pride over no particular experience or character, blades glimmering a brilliant silver at their waists.

A sort of childhood innocence crept into his eyes. They glimmered knowingly, almost unconsciously, fleeting memories of a childhood of heroism--defeat was, after all, for the real world, and who'd want to write about--er, live in--that? He had avoided sin with totally inhuman grace and ease, he recalled. 'Twas the kingdom that lie upon the endless earth before him that was his eternal, impenetrable symbol of that pristine glory. The skies, as always, were cloudless, a bright, hopeful ocean. The sun smiled almost foolishly.

The childish expression faded as the moment passed, as the world was still. A shadow fell, the death shroud of all beneath what had only just been the bright blue sky--now blackness was infinite. Shrieks of the innocent bystanders below became barrages of fear through this newborn night, the sound of drawn steel echoing in what the author is somehow attempting to pull of as some twisted kind of screaming silence. Rotten analogy that as, anyhow. Along that line, yours truly happens to find it particularly ironic that the narrator is stereotypically breaking the fourth wall while in the process of trying to express the common convention.

With his infinite foresight gifted to him by his crown, the One True Object of Power in the Whole Freaking World, he threw the name of his forsaken long-lost twin brother into the skies before a deep, bellowing laughter escaped into them from some disembodied force.

"Dark Lord Overuse! Face me!"

The shadows in the Prince's throne room coalesced into a single figure, striking him down with a single blow from his blade of unfathomable evil. He paused momentarily as the Prince's corpse fell to the ground a hundred feet below to consider his luck that his brother Conventionality had not predicted this through his Crown of Foresight.

A wicked smile, the devil's itself, was etched across his face, scarred from the wars he'd never fought in. He approached the shattered glass, but before his lips open and a brilliantly rehearsed speech poured out, he was forced to the ground by the sheer aggression and power of a voice from above.

The voice was an angel's, though its bearer was nowhere to be found. "I am Creativity, and you have greatly displeased me! I have incomprehensible desire to simply give your precious kingdom over to the Dark Lord Overuse and let him win for once, but in some ironic twist of that fickle fate that has been done too oft as well. I shall start anew!"

And with that, the year 1990 began.