In light of how I think most users thought The Void Within's plot was unsatisfying and even sort of poorly paced, I decided to do a quick rewrite of the plot, with how I'd go about it. Plot points under the cut, sorry if it sounds a bit incoherent, I was first writing it on the Neoboards and the 400 characters limit messes with my thought process.
Nyx and Juni are in the Void and leave to find Brightvale attacked by the voidlings and a strange greyness, and they get to battling some of the voidlings right away, but because of their void infection and powers, they get apprehended by Hagan's forces as a potential perpetrator to the attacks in Brightvale and Meridell.
Nyx and Juni protest, but Hagan and Skarl both agree it's best to be safe than sorry, and also just received an invitation to Altador to discuss the appearance of the void in Neopia, and so they can’t hold court and will just bring their prisoners over.
Meanwhile, Baelia and Tavi are going hiking together in the mountain range in between Altador and the Haunted Woods, unaware of the worldwide danger, more on Tavi's insistence that Baelia needs to get out of her house than any enthusiasm from Baelia's side. The two discuss their experiences with loneliness, abandonment, isolation, etc as a way to bond and fill their time. They at some point come across an astray Doglefox who is whining and begging to stay with them, and Baelia and Tavi accept it.
The three stumble upon the fabled mountain pass, which allows for Tavi to gush about how a legend from her past mountaineering times is real, and upon realizing there are interesting puzzles with machinations, Baelia is interested as well. The two make their way through it all seamlessly with the power of teamwork and friendship, but are clueless to the greater implications of the passage, only noting that there are strange symbols and creatures portrayed under that mountain, that they need to ask someone more knowledgeable about it, but they do note that it all seems so ominous.
They arrive in Altador and see a whole bunch of movement towards the city, and even notice that Queen Fyora, Seshatia and even other Faeries are coming over, and wave at the Faeries, and Fyora comes down to greet Baelia and Tavi and tell them that a huge meeting of leaders and heroes is happening at the moment, since the world is in danger, and the two should head to Altador right away to stay safe, and they could talk to her later about it.
At the meeting of leaders, the royals, elected officials, superheroes, etc. are all discussing and pointing fingers at both others on the table and villains of the past, but Hagan brings up that he captured someone suspicious who seemed linked to the attack on his and his brother's land, and Nyx is brought forth, and they are all shocked to see her and her infection, and there are all the discussions about whether she is evil, why did she come through a portal in the sky with her Petpet with magical void powers and all, why all the voidlings, if that purple thing on her arm and can spread to others, etc, basically sort of borderline hysteria from everyone, and Nyx is trying to respond to them all but is constantly being shouted over, when Queen Fyora interjects, basically telling everyone to shut up and let her speak.
Nyx explains her backstory, and how she traversed the Void and then came back to Neopia through a portal that opened for her, and she doesn't even know where she is, or where she landed, etc. King Altador and the Council try to explain the land's Altador and all, but Nyx is so confused, and then Dr. Landelbrot, who's been watching with interest because of Nyx's void infection, chimes in to ask what year she thinks she's in, and she answers it completely wrong, 20 years back, and he then says he thought there was this issue, and how her story is corroborated by this answer because something something portals to other dimensions may not respect time linearity, or some other sci-fi answer. The other leaders try to question it, but Fyora says she believes it and believes Nyx as a victim of said portals, which convinces Altador, which then convinces the others.
Nyx then protests saying that it's great that she's being listened to, but can anyone help Juni who was with her, and is completely overtaken by the void corruption and unconscious, to which then Landelbrot jumps in, and then cue the whole "you can backwards engineer a damper" stuff and the Voidworks minigame.
After the meeting, there's that scene with Altador and Fyora, but Fyora doesn't cry, just feels extremely anxious about the fact these voidlings and Nyx's magic and all seem so familiar to an incident on her past, and Altador asks if she wants to share what she means by that, but Fyora doesn't tell because of shame, just saying she wishes she had not done certain mistakes in the past, and then Altador joins in with the "we all make mistakes" allusion to TDF. Fyora says he's a good friend to her, more than she could ask for.
Meanwhile Tavi and Baelia are discussing with Seshatia about the markings and statues they've seen, and she and probably Jerdana and Landelbrot join heads trying to figure out what they are looking at, and what is that place in the mountains, and they manage to figure out it's written in ancient Altadorian, probably from the Vandagyre groups nearby, and then when Nyx recognizes the drawing of the statue of the Gourmandizer and freaks out about how she's come across that creature in the Void, they all decide it's definitely bad news and that it must be reported to the whole group of rulers.
When they head to talk to Altador, they find all of them in a meeting about the latest bad news: Neopia Central is under attack by the greying, they can see it live from some sort of crystal ball or magic mirror or some other device like that, and notice there are two Neopets leading the charge of the voidlings and one is quickly recognized by probably some DoN superhero as Vira, while the other one, who has the acrimonious grey paint brush, is a stranger to everyone but Nyx, who gasps and freaks out once more, shouting about how that's her little brother. The leaders all find it strange that she's implicated once more with villainy, but she swears she's just recognized him by his hue and demeanor, but he's way older now, and she didn't even think she'd find him so easily.
She promptly insists she needs to go to Neopia Central, because he'd listen to her, she's his older sister and she could never see him being a villain, he's probably just misled (or something like that), and the leaders agree, but she has to be accompanied by trustworthy individuals, to which Baelia and Tavi volunteer, and then Luxinia, who has come together with Fyora's court, volunteers to take everyone over to Neopia Central with her giant Walein.
Nyx, Juni, Baelia, Tavi, Luxinia and Styx all go together on the giant Walein to Neopia Central, and fight back the voidlings, and Nyx tries to find Ozzy, and when she finds him, he doesn't take it well at all, first thinking this is some sort of horrible prank or vision of the past (because Nyx is a teenager, she hasn't aged, but it has been literally 20 years), but then she manages to convince him of her being real, he starts berating her the whole spiel about her abandoning him as a kid, Vira joins in to egg on Nyx, the whole works up to when Ozzy summons the wave of grey, and they have to run off, and the Walein instead gets the brunt of the wave, and starts greying as it flies off back to Altador, and they barely make it to the city before the Walein crash-lands and everyone is miserable and defeated. Altador's forces (either some of the guards or perhaps some of his Council members or a mix of such) come to meet up with them. Baelia and Luxinia cry about the Walein, Nyx is crying because of her meeting with Ozzy, Tavi is comforting Juni and Styx. They are all led back to Altador's castle.
One more hopeless meeting of the leaders occur as everyone's pointing fingers at everyone, and then terrible news arrive: the Lost Desert/Haunted Woods is attacked by greying now, and the leaders have the horrible realization that the Grey Painter and Vira are coming in their direction, and probably Altador is next.
As preparations for the imminent attack occur, another conversation happens in between Landelbrot, Jerdana, Seshatia, Tavi, Baelia, Luxinia and Nyx in regards to the passage in the mountains, and Fyora and Altador and probably the Shenkuuvian Emperor all tag along to get debriefed about it. From the research that's been made with Altador's and Shenkuu's libraries, it seems like there was as a matter of fact some sort of cult of the Gourmandizer eons back, which was this big evil creature from another dimension, and that may be whatever attacked Nyx, and may be trying to break through, probably with some resurgence of the cult or something like that, given that the Gourmandizer needs all color to be drained to be allowed into Neopia.
The leaders present ponder whether something like that would be actually happening, if there is as a matter of fact a doomsday cult running around in Neopia in this day and age, Nyx freaks out about how her brother being involved in a cult, but Fyora thinks perhaps the reason is simpler than this, but doesn't let on much more. She comments something about wanting to go back to her land as soon as possible.
The attack happens, there's the whole second confrontation in between Nyx and Ozzy, where he once more attempts to blame her for him turning evil, but she pushes back, talking about how they needed money, how she saw no other option, how that was a miracle opportunity, and how she never intended to leave forever, and she too is a victim in all of this, after all she ended up in a parallel dimension and time-travelled 20 years ahead, and how it's not fair that he's acting like this is her fault, and they fight, Vira aids Ozzy, while he shouts about how no one cares about him or something like that, only Vira and their master care for him.
Tavi, Baelia, Luxinia, and then Juni and Styx join in on defending Nyx against the two's attack, and also trying to push back on his rhetoric, with Baelia for example saying how she relates to his eternal depression he was born with but that doesn't mean it is right for him to make others miserable; Tavi relating to how abandonment and losing Neopets can really hurt you and leave you feeling like no one in the world likes you but he must know that's not true; Luxinia trying to appeal to how she can feel he is not a villain deep down and is forcing himself to go through these motions and say those things he doesn't truly mean;
But then Vira begins to sabotage it once more, attacking the group and their insecurities, when Styx comes to bite her and she freaks out and fights him, until Ozzy joins in and pushes Styx off, yelling at him and all, and then hits the Doglefox on purpose with the acrimonious grey paint brush. The Doglefox whelps and falls over, turning grey, and the group rushes over to see to the Doglefox, and Nyx shouts at Ozzy saying he went too far, and then Ozzy, who is conflicted, hears from Vira something like "it's what that mutt deserves" and he just repeats it.The two villains go to continue their rampage, but Baelia pulls on Ozzy's coat or something and decides to give him an earful about this, and how he's acting beyond awful, and then Ozzy lets it slip that he has abandoned that Doglefox before, for attacking his friend Vira, and so the Doglefox doing it again is not surprising, or some sort of twisted logic like that. Vira is really satisfied with that answer.
The group goes all out on attacking the two, and are joined by the forces of Altador and beyond, and the attack is subdued, and Vira manages to escape but Ozzy is captured, if only because of Nyx's persistence in trying to subdue her brother. He is taken back to Altador's castle.
In that jail, Nyx confronts her brother a third time, and to each accusation of his justified anger against the world, she rebates with some factual truth, basically instead of the whole scene with Luxinia using her powers to force a redemption, Nyx and Ozzy debate until basically he's disarmed of every argument he can throw about. Also, Nyx confronts him about being in a doomsday cult about to bring a giant monster, which he does not know how to rebate, and all of that brings in enough doubt that he begins to lose his motivation to continue to be the Grey Painter.
Cut to Drakara's cave, where Vira arrives with bad news: she brought the acrimonious grey paint brush with her, but lost Ozzy. Drakara is very peeved and disappointed with Vira, and tells her to go fix this mess, lest she wants to have her deal upended. Vira abides and flies off right away, and Drakara wonders to herself if it's not about time that she could do things her way instead of relying on such flimsy tools.
Later that night, Vira slips through the castle or something like that to come and free Ozzy, and Ozzy brings up how he didn't agree to being in a monster-worshipping cult, to which Vira is like "what are you even talking about?", and also he mentions how he feels like he's not feeling up to villainy anymore, because it's too exhausting. Vira says something like "you just have to push through and do things even if you find them unpleasant, like how I kicked your Doglefox to get him to hate me back then, or turned Neopets away from your little art kiosk in Neopia Central" and Ozzy is like "you did what?" And Vira realizes she's said too much.
The two discuss, by discuss I mean that whole discussion where Vira is talking about how she was abandoned by her friends when she was cursed to be ugly, and how no one likes her for who she is, but she's trying to say like the two of them are hated by the world for what they are and all, and Ozzy can even say the "I think you're beautiful" line, but instead "I thought you were beautiful", to emphasize how he's mad with her for discovering she was pushing others away from him on purpose.
Vira decides that she doesn't want to deal with this mess anymore, but Drakara appears from the shadows and catches her and then turns to Ozzy and says she is disappointed in the two of them, because they've both failed her, and now she's here to rectify their mistakes. She breaks Ozzy out of jail and then forces the acrimonious grey paint brush onto him, telling him to do what he's supposed to do, and then turns to Vira and shoves her dagger-chucks onto her and tells her to lead a second wave of attack. The two protest that they don't want to do this anymore, and Vira escapes Drakara and runs off, while Drakara focuses on making Ozzy use the acrimonious grey paint brush once more, unleashing enough grey to allow her to create the portal to summon the Gourmandizer, and then begin the whole sequence of her attacking Altador with the monster, and taking it and Ozzy with her towards Faerieland.
The summoning of the Gourmandizer awakens everyone in Altador's castle, and a panic evacuation ensues as the monster tumbles towers and destroys the castle parts. In particular, Nyx, Juni, Tavi, Baelia, Luxinia and Styx find themselves navigating the crumbling infrastructure together at first, but get separated. Nyx goes through her sequence of navigating the darkness by listening to the music; Luxinia and Baelia get the scene that was to happen in the mountain where Luxinia is afraid and Baelia is trying to comfort her, but instead of being lost in the tunnels they're finding their way through the rubble; Tavi and Styx follows Juni's lead because Juni has the x-ray void vision. After some difficulty, they all meet up outside with the other refugees, and see that Drakara has Ozzy tied up on top of the Gourmandizer. Nyx insists they need to go after Drakara and the Gourmandizer to save her brother, but Fyora and all Faeries but Baelia and Luxinia are gone, so they decide the best way is to try to go through the passage in the mountain, and cross the Haunted Woods, as fast as possible
Back in the whole secret sanctum area, there's the whole thing about Nyx and Juni hearing unheard music, and Luxinia feeling the vibes and all, the whole bunch of traps that we see in the comic are set off this time because of some carelessness from Nyx or Luxinia or who knows, which then makes them all discuss about how Tavi and Baelia misled the group about the danger of the place, and both the argument and the traps all get solved with the power of making up and working together once more, to solidify bonds or whatever. Then they leave the sanctum and meet Luperus, and Styx befriends it, etc etc I think it'd be even cool that Luperus could be a substitute steed for those who do not fly in that group, since the giant Walein is gone.
They ride to Faerieland with Luperus, and when they get to Faerieland and note that the Faeries are prepared for battle, and tell Fyora that a Dark Faerie is coming to them with a giant monster bigger than a mountain, and Fyora is like "so it is how I thought it would go" and explains that she didn’t think this was some sort of doomsday cult from the start, because it reminded her too much of the MO of a past someone in her life, and she had seen the effects of this Void and its powers once before, and she thought it’d spell danger but didn’t imagine it’d be this bad or that this Faerie would go this far.
Cut to Drakara going all like "everyone will betray you, even your cute little goth girl betrayed us both" to Ozzy, and Ozzy is like "did she betray me or did you make her betray me" in regards to the whole thing about Styx and being isolated by Vira, and Drakara is like "well yes I actually told her what to do it was important to get you to work for me" and all, perfect weapon etc etc
Then the sequence goes very similar to the canon, with Drakara deciding then she'd just do it herself, going to attack Faerieland Castle and attack Fyora and that flashback where it is revealed the two of them know each other from way before her coronation, and how Fyora once was Queen had stripped Drakara of her powers due to her obsession with messing with the Void and banished her from Faerieland, and even up to her making Fyora semi-grey and pushing her off the castle tower, very cool.
Our heroes arrive to the battlefield just as the battle starts, and it all goes very similar, fighting the monster, oh no the Faerie Queen is grey, Drakara comes up to Baelia to offer her the acrimonious grey paint brush and offers her the wings and new name, etc Baelia says no and instead powers up into becoming Iridesia, saying she doesn't want to be miserable anymore, and Ozzy witnesses that with awe in his eyes. Possessed Orion shows up to fight the Gourmandizer, funny Nyx one-liner, Drakara's gem is broken, the Gourmandizer squashes Drakara and then continues to wreck havoc, battle to contain it, Orion is knocked unconscious once more, Ozzy realizes the acrimonious grey paint brush needs to be destroyed and asks Iridesia for help, breaks the paint brush and all color comes back to the world, the Gourmandizer is sent off to the Void by Nyx and Juni
Everyone is celebrating the victory despite all the destruction, but there are still unresolved things, like Nyx's and Ozzy's unresolved tension. They finally talk properly ever since meeting once again, and Ozzy realizes perhaps he had dug himself into a hole of his own misery, and blamed everyone else for it, and didn't see the truth for what it fully was. He talks about how he thought he had found a place where he belonged with Drakara and Vira, and didn't realize how terrible the three of them had become. Nyx apologizes for abandoning him, he says it was not like she wanted to abandon him, given that she never aged, Ozzy also apologizes to the others for attacking them, and then apologizes to Styx for being a massive jerk all of these years.
Then Fyora comes in, acknowledges his struggles and how he was manipulated but chastises him for choosing the path of evil, Aethia comes in to lock him up but Fyora says she'll handle it, the gang jumps in saying that he has done wrong but he doesn't deserve petrification or something awful like that, to which Fyora says she's not petrifying anyone, but will see to his rehabilitation into society, and that he will right his wrongs and make up for his attacks on the different citizens from all the lands and all, he accepts it hesitantly because of shame for having to face his victims, and then mentions Vira and how she also needs help. This is a narrative redemption for Fyora's situation with Drakara, and also a nod to how she mishandled Xandra, etc etc.
Reconstruction happens, Neopia is back to normality, Fyora invites Nyx to stay at Faerieland Castle to be around her brother, and she does stay for a while, but then decides it's time to go live her life, once Ozzy is well settled and all, and the others as well. Fyora still remains Queen, Ozzy is working with her, Nyx and Juni are off to adventure and live out their lives, Iridesia is now taking up their new duties as whatever is their new powers, Luxinia goes back to New Faerieland with her now healed Walein, Styx sticks around with Tavi as she resumes mountaineering, bada-bim, bada-bum, all's well in Neopia.
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