All Things Fanciful and Free

By: Aviantei

A Shaman King One Shot(?)

[Twelve Shots of Summer 9/12]

Oyamada Manta sat on an armchair far too big for his small frame, feet not even reaching the edge of the cushion. It was a wonder he had even made it onto the chair in the first place. Ignoring the author's attempts to get used to intentionally breaking the fourth wall outside of Exception, he turned to the camera.

"Hello, Readers," he said, a smile on his face. In one hand he held a small pipe, which when blown on produced bubbles. Sitting on his lap was his oversized Mantanian Dictionary, a piece of torn notebook paper with the words Fairy Tale Compendium scribbled on it in nearly illegible handwriting (which was definitely Horohoro's doing) taped to the cover. "Today, the author is going to try something completely different, so please try and cut her some slack."

For no reason other than to give the aforementioned pipe some use, Manta blew a few bubbles before opening up his Diction—Fairy Tale Compendium.

"That being said, let's get started, okay?"

"Once upon a time…" Manta's voice echoed as the screen faded out, replaced with the image of a typical medieval castle against a blue sky. There was a pause as the boy tried to get over the absolute cliché-ness of the narration he was being forced—um, asked politely to give. "…there was a beautiful princess, who was of course kidnapped at a young age and locked away in some foreboding tower. Conveniently, no one could save the princess until she was a teenager, otherwise any potential love interest between her and her savior would just be plain creepy."

The camera panned into one of the castle tower's windows. Standing on the other side of the room wither back turned was the princess, dressed in pink and a tiara, her long, black hair falling over her shoulders.

"Her name was Princess Hao."

There was the sound of a record scratching, and whatever fairy-tale reminiscent track the reader had playing in their mind shattered to pieces. The screen shifted back to Manta, who had all but tossed his Diction—Fairy—fuck it, his book onto the floor.

"You've gotta be kidding me!" he protested. "Is this the angle we're going for?!"

"Come on, Manta, relax a little," Yoh commented from the side of the set. Despite his usual lazy demeanor, he actually sounded excited, and was standing at the ready in a knight's armor, his headphones somehow still hanging around his neck. "We already agreed to the script beforehand, right? So keep going or the director's gonna get mad."

At this point, Manta stood up in his chair. "What script?" he asked, still sounding distraught. "There's no script for this at all. The author's just winging this as she goes."

"Well, I do believe that she does have an ending in mind," Amidamaru added, floating farther back with the rest of the guardian ghosts. "Since I don't have a part in this other than this intervention, I think we should continue. I'm rather curious to see how this… 'crack fic' is supposed to pan out."

"Furthermore," Manta pressed on, "there is no director!" he pointed at the 'camera,' which was really just a cover up referral to the fourth wall. While there was an empty director's chair, no one was sitting in it."

"Oh! I volunteer!" Joco shouted, jumping up from behind Yoh. "This is supposed to be a comedy, right? That's my jam!"

There was the sound of something colliding with metal, and Joco's knight helmet flew across the room and into the castle set. "Shut up, you morons," Ren hissed, sounding more pissed off than usual—or maybe it just was his normal level of pissed off. "You're just making this unnecessary segway last far longer than it needs to."

"Yeah, come on, Manta," Yoh said. "Get back to the stor—"

"Anyway," Hao interrupted, the usual calm in his voice, despite the fact that he was once a main antagonist and now he was cross-dressing all for the sake of a silly prompt. "The princess was, naturally, beautiful, and she wasted away her days, lonely in the tower, waiting for her prince to come and rescue her, because it wasn't like she could possibly have any sorts of powers that would allow her to escape."

Like the fact that Hao was a shaman. And could summon a giant Spirit of Fire at will to carry him—her out of the place.

"Did he just steal the narration from me?!" Manta shouted from the living room like set.

"Huh," Yoh said, taking things as easy as usual. "Can he do that?"

Hao giggled—not chuckled, giggled—hiding his mouth between his gloved hand. "Of course I can, silly. I'm God."

"I'm more concerned that he's just wearing that with no problems," Horohoro grumbled. "What's even wrong with the author, thinking up junk like that?"

"Technically this is Manta's fault, since he had that dream," Hao commented. The boy in question automatically flushed red. He had tried so hard to forget that had ever happened! "So, it's technically canon. Now, if you're all done…

"There wouldn't be much of story if these fools didn't get on with it, so of course a rescue team was finally pulled together to save the princess!"

Amidst rocks, which were probably supposed to represent the area outside the castle, Yoh, Horohoro, Ren, Joco, and Lyserg were revealed, all clad in knight uniforms.

"Um, is it just me, or does this feel wrong?" Horohoro asked, looking at his armor.

Ren scoffed, the sound echoing in his helmet, which had been specially designed to accommodate his tongari. "That's because the author's an idiot that can't even remember how the official omake with this scenario goes and decided to make us all knights instead of researching to remember the classes we were given," he insulted in one breath.

"Well, she doesn't have regular access to internet," Lyserg said, providing the usual voice of reason. "Although, things had been going so well… Why couldn't she just leave me out of this whole mess…?"

"Don't be such a spoil sport!" Joco exclaimed, his helmet still missing. "If we don't get a move on, we'll be here all knight!"

As usually happened after one of Joco's puns, the group exploded into squabbling. Yoh just laughed.

At the top of his tower set, Hao leaned over the window and sighed. Really, those five couldn't get anything done. It was a wonder they had managed to successfully be the protagonists of the main series for so long and actually make it to the final battle.

"This is getting boring," the princess/former antagonist/God figure/pretty much the narrator now since Manta was dying in embarrassment said with a sigh. "Mindless banter and fourth-wall breaking can only go so far in a one shot like this. We need a twist to keep things going or otherwise even the people in the challenge group are going to give up on this." Another sigh.

"Well, I guess since no one else seems to care where this is really going, a little bit of trouble can't hurt at all."

Hao smirked.

Without any sense or warning a trio of girls fell from the sky in front of the five knights.

"Since it was taking too long for the actual heroes to get their act together, they encountered three mysterious girls, also aiming to save the princess," Hao's voice said, bringing the males on set to attention. "Since their leader permitted far less nonsense than my little brother—ah, I mean Yoh does, they were actually able to make some progress towards the castle doors."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," the brown-haired girl, Ivy said, sitting up and dusting herself off. She wasn't even dressed in anything remotely close to the pseudo-time period/setting they were going for in this thing. "We can't all be here. Are OCs even allowed in Twelve Shots of Summer entries?"

Lyserg let out a contemplative hum. "Well, a couple of entries have used OCs as minor characters so far, including ones by this author with no trouble caused," he said. "Besides, there isn't anything in the rules that says they're not allowed, so long as the piece still counts as fanfiction."

"This is nothing but a piece of trash," Ren criticized. "All the author's doing now is making shameless references to her other Shaman King fanfiction because she's running out of ideas."

"Who cares, I've seen that one before—" Horohoro pointed to Ivy "—but who the hell are these two?"

Standing behind Ivy were two other girls, a tall blonde with a grin on her face, and a short green-haired one who seemed to be totally expressionless. Upon being recognized, the blonde perked up, easily closing the distance between her and the blue-haired knight that had pointed her out.

"Hey there, cutie," she chirped. "My name's—"

"Don't," the green-haired one said, her voice almost a whisper. It still managed to bring the other girl to a halt. "We haven't officially made our debuts yet. If we say who we are now, we're going to spoil things."

The blonde crossed her arms and nodding, trying to seem like she was important. "That's true," she allowed. "Guess people will just have to wait for part twelve to come out then!"

"But that could take months!" Joco interrupted, somehow having knowledge of the author's plans for posting. It wasn't like they were blatantly posted on her profile page or anything.

"What do you care?" Ren asked, having shed his knight costume. This mess wasn't going to get anywhere, so there was no longer any point in wearing the thing. He would team up with Bason to destroy it later. "You haven't even showed up at all. In fact, I think she plans on ignoring you outright." At least he had been given a role. He didn't exactly appreciate his treatment, but it was better than nothing.

Though the part about ignoring Joco wasn't entirely true. He just didn't have his moment yet.

Horohoro snickered. "Looks like you're out of luck," he taunted.

"I wouldn't consider a brief mention by name anything to brag about," Yoh mused. Of course, he had received the same sort of treatment, but it wasn't so bad. It had been exhausting enough being the main character in his own series once. Only getting a tiny bit of screen time was good enough for him.

Joco, on the other hand, seemed quite disappointed. "Come to think of it, why isn't she planning to give me a bigger role?" he complained. "After all, I'd say I'm the write person for the job!"

And cue the banter and ridicule for lame puns once again. It's not like they make the author laugh too much anyway.

Deciding it would be better to get away from all the chaos, Ivy had slipped off of the main set. There was a refreshment table being manned by Ryu, and she poured a glass of water. At the table of guardian spirits, only Amidamaru seemed to still be entranced by his master's actions, the rest of the ghosts playing poker, led by Ponchi and Konchi.

Really, why did the author have to make things so complicated? Was she really that desperate for ideas that she had to do things like this? Didn't she get enough of writing ridiculous things in that one story of hers for a completely different series? Why did she have to bring this sort of chaos down on them? Ivy would take her emotional issues in the main story over this any day!

Still dressed in his princess garb, Hao smiled. Ivy blushed but didn't say anything. "Why don't you just enjoy this?" he proposed. "After all, ours tends to be a more serious story, Aviantei. There's nothing wrong with lightening up every once in a while."

"I guess," Ivy mumbled. Looking around, it appeared that the set didn't have any sort of exit or off button. She got that she and the two other girls had arrived via a deus ex machina kind of move, but how had everybody else gotten in? "Though you probably shouldn't call me that here, otherwise people who don't know the main story are going to get really confused why the author and I share a name."

"That's it!" the blonde haired girl exclaimed, causing Ivy to wince and spill some of her water on the floor. "I finally got what's bugging me." The blonde raced towards the refreshment table. "This is all wrong. She can't be the hero 'cause she's supposed to be the principessa!" It didn't take a genius to release who she was referring to, seeing as she was running towards Ivy at breakneck speed. "Hey, we gotta—!"

And, due to the comically placed water, Isse—the blonde proceeded to slip past her pray and crash into the refreshments table.

Ivy stared at her friend(?) for some time. Then, she stopped caring about the blonde's well-being. The brown-haired girl squinted for a few seconds, then seemed to stare into the very core of the camera/fourth wall.

"Okay, we're done here," she said, reaching out. With a smile, Ivy's hands covered up the screen until there was nothing but darkness. "The end."

Being a merciful narrator and writer, Hao and the author proceeded to let the almost contrived ending slide.

"Hello everyone," Hao said, beaming. He was sitting in Manta's armchair, the usual cloak around his shoulders, though the pink of his floor-length skirt was visible. "Since Manta is still occupied, I'll be providing the author's note on behalf of the writer!"

Since the fourth wall of the main story had been shut down, everyone else seemed to have retreated back to the halfway-standing refreshment table, and thus ignored him.

"This…" Hao pouted a bit at the wording the author had chosen, but decided to go along with it. "…thing was written for the Twelve Shots of Summer challenge, which is in its final month. The prompt was 'Fairy Tale with a Twist.' While the author had originally planned to take the route that old fairy tales were generally dark so the twist would be that the story had a happy ending, she realized she had already written for Ao no Exorcist, so had to save her planning for a later date. Since that path of thought led to writer's block, she was hit with this instead."

The blonde returned on screen, a cone of gelato in hand, then sat on the seat of the chair. "I like it better this way," she said. "More smiles!"

Hao smiled as if to prove the point, then folded his hands in his lap. "This was undeniably inspired by Amulet Misty's Anything That's Ordinary, which is claimed to be far funnier than this. The author would like to apologize to Dina for having to read this pale imitation, and requests that anyone who has familiarity with The World Ends with You go read that instead."

The blonde consumed the rest of her cone in one bite, then swallowed without trouble. "Me and the other OC girls are shameless cameos to the author's multi-chapter Shaman King fanfic, Aviantei, which hasn't been updated in years! Wow, that's some laziness going on there!"

"Ah," Hao said, still smiling, "it sounds like the author wants you to know that you're lucky you belong to her fiancée, otherwise your life would be a whole lot worse for that comment."

The blonde shrugged it off. "Still, if you have unanswered questions, going and reading that would be a good start. The author has been working hard on rebooting the story, so there should be an update to it sometime…though specifics are on her profile."

"The author would like to express her joy at finishing her Camp NaNoWriMo challenge." Hao started to twirl part of his hair around his finger. "Beyond that, she recommends that you read the other entries in the T-Sauce community, and consider joining yourself if you have the time or want a challenge. The next prompt shall be 'GIANT SWORDS' (all caps courtesy of Chronic Guardian), so that should be interesting to see what happens…"

The blonde grinned. "Really, if you made it to the end of this thing, you've sure got guts!" Realizing the end of the author's note was near, she made a peace sign at the screen. "Grazie for reading!"

Finally somewhat recovered, Manta sat up. Since the one shot was over, he picked up his Mantanian Dictionary and took the crude piece of paper off the cover. On the back was a short message that finally made sense since the story was actually posted and not just a completed Word document on the author's computer:

[POST] 080514