Sherlock Holmes: The Grand Escape

A man in a brown trench coat, cape, and a deerstalker hat can be seen currently floating through endless space on what looks like an H.G. Wells time machine. As he floats through the space, images of countless people, places, things and so much more can be seen phasing in and out of existence all around him. This space is called the ideaverse.

What is this 'ideaverse', you ask? Well you see, the Ideaverse is a metaverse dimension where all the ideas that inspired the marvel world reside. So every character from the classic novels and stories that inspired Marvel was there. Dracula, Robin Hood, Frankenstein, Mowgli you name it, all those classic story worlds and characters you read of exist in the ideaverse. Caught in a time loop these worlds repeatedly told the same stories over and over again only to inspire new ones.

But as if not noticing anything around him at all, the man had his head down and was incessantly muttering incomprehensible words at a very fast pace. If one were to listen very carefully they would hear that the man was reciting lines from popular stories and novels in a very distinct British accent. "All for one and one for all, united we stand divided we fall." "Little puppet made of pine, awake. The gift of life is thine."

In between the low but fast mutterings, the man would sometimes suddenly start hitting his head in anguish and cry out, "Think! Holmes think! You know this. You've read this!" All the while his face was ghastly, anyone could see that the man was on the verge of a meltdown, his appearance as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders. And it was.

The man was of course Sherlock Holmes himself, the most famous detective in all of the universes in and out of existence. Holmes had discovered the plot of Deadpool to destroy all of the Marvel multiverse by destroying the ideaverse itself. And in true Sherlock fashion, he found a team of classic characters, somehow got a time machine from H.G. Wells's story and set out to stop Deadpool.

In the final battle against Deadpool, Sherlock managed to enter the ideaverse and throw the 'merc with a mouth' into oblivion out of the time machine. But even though he won the damage had been done, the ideaverse was crumbling, and with it the whole Marvel world as well.

And there Sherlock was, on the verge of a breakdown realizing that everything was ending. Yet he didn't give up, that wasn't Sherlock. There was always a solution to every problem, and Sherlock would always find the solution. But he was desperate right now, trying to remember all of the classics, from Pinocchio to The three musketeers and more, trying to keep the ideas alive. Trying to keep the ideaverse alive and with it, all the worlds including his own alive.

It may have been the gods answering his prayers or the One Above All (OAA) lazily restarting the multiverse once again while sighing at the antics of the inhabitants of his world. Maybe Deadpool from a parallel universe had a conscience and went on to kill the evil Deadpool and stop his plans to destroy reality. Or maybe, just maybe Sherlock managed to keep the ideaverse intact with his never-ending recital of the classics for who knew how long.

No matter what had happened, Sherlock didn't really care right now. The ideaverse had been restored while he was rambling a passage from Moby Dick. He didn't know if it was him who solved the problem but right now he was just glad that everything had ended and things could go back to how they were. New ideas would keep appearing while the classic characters would all get to return to their world alive once again and continue to inspire others.

But just as his heart was settling down, something came to his mind, something he had not had the time to process all this while. Having been running around trying to save the reality itself had kept him occupied so he couldn't think of other things but now, the ridiculousness of the situation slowly started to set in his mind.

He was a 'character' in a story. A story whose plot had been long since fixed by someone, and he had been playing along with that story without any say in it. He did what the plot said and spoke what the plot demanded. 'Do I even have free will?' Sherlock started to question himself.

Holmes was certain that once he went back to his world, he will be living in those same stories in an endless loop. He wouldn't have any control over the plot and everything would go as the author had once so dictated. But, Sherlock Holmes was Sherlock Holmes. As smart and arrogant as he was, how could he let himself be a puppet without free will?

Holmes had yet to realize but during the indefinite time he has been stuck in the ideaverse, at some point, something had changed within him. He was no longer the Sherlock Holmes that his writer had created. During the time he spent drifting in the ideaverse trying to keep the ideas alive, he had already far deviated from what S.H. was written to be. Now he was his own person no longer bound to the whims of the writer. He was no longer tethered to the 'Sherlock Holmes universe'.

He may have been created as a character in a famous story but he could be more than that… and he will. He would escape this fate of being a character and find the world of his creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Sherlock Holmes had set his mind to getting out to the 'real' reality.