Gumball sat on the floor for a minute, gaping at his surroundings. It looked like he was in some kind of office. It was littered with all sorts of notebooks, scraps of paper, Post-Its with little notes written on them. What could he possibly find here that could help? And the guy, what were they called again? Oh right, humans. He was acting like he knew him but Gumball was pretty sure they had never met before. He had only interacted with one human and that wasn't even a real human, that was just Rob in disguise. Was he going to try and convert him? Or was he some poor soul who got transformed? Or both? Gumball had a million questions in his head and a few of them spilled out. "Who are you? How do you know my name? Where am I?" The man gave him a strange look.

"You came all the way here and you haven't figured that out yet?"

"Well, the van guy called this 'the other side.'"

"Ah, he can be so cryptic," the man said while shaking his head and sighing. "I know more than just your name Gumball, I know everything about you. I work on your show." Gumball's breath caught for a minute. If what he said was true, if he really did work on the show then…...Gumball's eyes widened as he finally put the pieces together, as he finally figured out what "the other side" actually meant.

"Wait...so that means I'm in…."

"The real world," the man finished.

"But...that's not possible, I thought we had to transform in order to stay here," Gumball stammered.

"You do, hence the one hour time limit. It seems like you're already starting to go," the man said as he pointed to Gumball's hand. Gumball looked at it and saw it was becoming translucent. He let out a yelp and stuck it in his pocket. Okay, he should probably get out of here fast then, but there was one question that he still had to ask.

"How are you being so calm about this? If anything I drew came to life and started talking to me, I would be screaming my head off. Of course, that's mostly because I'm pretty bad at art so anything I draw would be a walking monstrosity, but you get the idea."

"Well, I've known that you had a will of your own for a while now. Although I'm a little surprised that you managed to find a way here. How did you do that?"

"You don't know? I thought you 'knew everything about me,'" Gumball quipped.

"Well, ever since the show ended, the cameras have shut off, so to speak. Sorry, I couldn't think of a better analogy."

"Well, I've been doing some time traveling, using this," Gumball pulled out the remote and almost dropped it in shock. The remote had changed its appearance. It wasn't animated anymore like he was, it looked like it was live action. "Ok, it did not look like this in my world," he clarified. The man looked at it closely.

"Is this the remote from 'The Disaster' and 'The Rerun'?" he asked.

"Sure looks that way. It alters the world like that one did. Look," Gumball pressed a button on the remote to demonstrate, but nothing happened. Gumball looked confused and pressed it again, but still nothing. "I don't understand, it worked earlier."

"That doesn't work here," The man told him. "Well, unless you want to use it on your TV."

"And it only works in my world because I live in a TV show," Gumball realized. "This remote isn't even magical, is it? It's just a regular remote from the real world."

The man nodded. "I'm curious though, I thought that Rob destroyed it at the end of that two parter. How is it back together?"

"How am I supposed to know? You work on the show! Don't you control everything there?"

"Not exactly," he informed him. "It started off that way, but as time went by characters started doing things of their own volition, things that we didn't expect, especially you. We knew that something was strange about you ever since you came across The Void for the first time. We certainly weren't expecting you to find that, and we especially didn't think you would go in there." Gumball pondered this. If he wasn't supposed to go into The Void in the first place, then Rob wasn't supposed to get free, they weren't supposed to meet, and all the things that happened between them that led to him coming here weren't supposed to happen.

"So Molly and Rob? They were just supposed to do what? Stay in The Void forever?" Gumball said, feeling a rage building up inside him. "How could you do that to them? To all of us? Elmore is gone! It's gone and it's all your fault!" How could he just mess with people like this? Didn't he care about what happened to them at all? Sure, it was just a TV show, but it didn't feel that way to him. This was his life, the lives of his family and friends, and he was just using them for his own amusement. It might not have been real in the strictest sense of the word, but it was real to him. It was real to everyone who lived there.

"I didn't, Gumball," the man said simply. "I didn't end it the way that it did. The Void did that on its own. That's something else I can't control, but it's not as benign as you are." This response caught Gumball off guard. He wasn't expecting him to say that. But it still didn't calm his anger down any, and he noticed that he didn't provide any explanation for what happened to Molly and Rob. Even if he didn't put them in The Void directly, he was still the one who tossed them aside. He was the one who allowed them to be taken in the first place. Nothing he could say could justify that.

"Ok, maybe the ending wasn't your fault," Gumball said begrudgingly. "But what about everything else? What about all of the things that you put me through?! Going off an unfinished bridge in a bucket, almost being eaten by an alligator, watching my own brother die! And it's not just me, you did this to everyone! Not allowing anyone to grow up, tricking Darwin into thinking I didn't care about him, Making Rob the villain! Heck, you dangled my whole family off a cliff just so you could get your precious episode! And for what? For a joke? For some cheap entertainment? Is that all you see me as? Just a walking punchline? Is that really all I am?" Gumball said, the fury in his voice fading away as he kept talking, being replaced with a melancholy tone. The man looked at him, concerned. He figured that Gumball would be mad, as he didn't have an explanation for why he put them through those things. None that he would understand anyway. He started out just trying to make a TV show, but he couldn't stop, even when it became something more. But he always held a fondness for the little blue cat, he had been working with him for over eight years after all.

"Come on Gumball, you know deep down that you're more than that. You wouldn't have made it here if you weren't." Gumball didn't say anything, he just stood there looking at the ground. "You always were an enigma, Gumball Watterson. There was always more to you than what we created you to be. You kinda took on a life of your own. Some characters can do that. As a writer you can't always control them. Probably our fault, if I'm honest. We made you so stubborn. But you never really did what we wanted you to do, that wasn't your style." Gumball gave a small smile despite himself. This was true, he was never one to do what he was told. "As time went on you got more and more rebellious without even trying. So much so that it led to, well, this." He said while gesturing towards Gumball.

"And my friends? My family? What does that make them? Just flat, cardboard cutouts parroting back what you want them to say?" Gumball asked. The question had startled even him. Even after everything he had learned, everything he had gone through, he couldn't see them that way. These people had been in his life as long as he could remember. They were as real to him as anyone. Of course, this was his first time meeting a real person, so maybe he was way off as to what that even was.

"No, Gumball, that's not what I'm saying," the man clarified. "Sure, they play their roles a little better than you do, but that's not all they are. They've grown past that, and for some of them, like Darwin, that's because of you."

"How do you know that?" Gumball snapped. "How do you know what's really them and what's them acting out the roles you put them in? How am I supposed to know what's really me and what's just the character traits you wrote for me?" The man was silent for a while, trying to think of a good answer.

"I guess you'll have to figure that out for yourself," he said simply. Gumball rolled his eyes, that was such a cop out answer. Besides, it wasn't like he had time to figure himself out if he would be trapped in The Void for all eternity. Suddenly Gumball felt weak and doubled over. He looked down and saw that his legs were transparent now. Gumball pulled out his phone to see how much time had passed. His eyes widened as he looked at the clock on the screen. He had just wasted half an hour arguing with a writer. Not exactly the best use of his time. Antagonizing the guy who he was about to ask for help probably wasn't the best move either, but he still felt he had a right to be angry. The man reached a hand out in concern but he backed away from him in defiance.

"I'm still mad at you," Gumball told him. "But I have bigger things to worry about right now." The man nodded in agreement. "You work on the show, so you know how it ends. So I'm gonna need you to work your weird author magic and fix it. Change it, rewrite it, do whatever you have to do so we can have a different ending."

"I can't do that," the man said simply.

"What do you mean? Of course you can! You've been messing with our lives for who knows how many years now and you're not going to do anything the one time I ask you to?"

"No, you don't understand, I really can't," the man explained. "The show is over, the last episode already aired. I don't write for the show anymore so I can't change it. Once something's aired it's set in stone." Gumball's face fell. No, no no no, this couldn't be right! This was his last hope, he had crossed The Void to get here and he couldn't do anything? Couldn't help at all? How could he fix this? How could he save the show if there was no show left to save?

"So it's hopeless? There's nothing I can do?" Gumball said in despair.

"I said that there's nothing I can do. Not that there's nothing you can do," the man clarified. "You still live in Elmore, so you can still change it."

"But how? I've tried pretty much everything! I went back in time! I traveled to another dimension! I even teamed up with my worst enemy! And found out that maybe he's not such a bad guy in the process, but that's not the point! I'm running out of ideas! So why don't you just tell me what to do like you always do!" The man just gave him a sad look and shook his head.

"I can't Gumball. I'm not even sure how to change it myself, if I could have given you a way out, I would've. I can't just tell you what to do anymore, besides, you never listened to me anyways. In the end a lot of the best ideas were yours, not mine. You've done a lot on your own, I know you can do this too. It's time that you write your own story."

"Write my own story..." Gumball repeated as an idea started to form in his head. Maybe it wasn't hopeless. Maybe coming here wasn't a waste after all. If the remote was nothing more than a regular remote from the real world, then anything he found here would hopefully affect his world in a similar fashion. He needed to write his own story, and a remote wouldn't let him do that, all it could do was change the channel. But maybe something else here could.

"I can see that you're getting an idea," the man said, interrupting his train of thought.

"Maybe," Gumball said with a smirk. "But I think I'm gonna need one of your notebooks."

Note: In my original outline, the mysterious man was supposed to be Ben Boquelet himself. But as I was working on this chapter it just seemed kinda wrong to put a real, actual living person who could one day stumble across this in my dumb fanfiction. So I left it ambiguous. You can read it as him being Ben if you want, or he could just be a random writer. It's up to you.