WEDDING CRASHERS
From the over-heated confines of temporary studio set up in the corner of a local radio station in a town in Berkshire, two Respected Veteran Broadcasters were covering an Event of Major National Importance.
"Good morning, everyone," announced a bald guy in an expensive suit, overemphatically, "I'm Bob Generic, and welcome to Channel 6's coverage of the Royal Wedding. We'll be live from Windsor all day, with all the live footage, all the heart-warming moments, all the rambling interviews with alleged experts who know as much about the Royal Family from knowing them as your granny does from reading Hello! Magazine, and all the really awkward interviews with weirdos who've been camping out for days to see about thirty seconds of this. Not to mention top bantz with my co-host, Sally Sporadic!"
"Ha, ha, Bob, nice to be here," replied a middle-aged, attractive-in-a-motherly-sort-of-way, woman. "You truly are the Ron Burgundy of British TV and I'd sacrifice my firstborn never to have to work with you again! But anyway, this is truly an Event of Major National Importance, isn't it?"
"Quite so, Sally – who thought this day would ever come to pass? Fifty-something Prince Larry, third in line to the throne, international playboy, notorious womaniser and the man who made polyester leisure suits cool again, finally getting hitched to a showgirl thirty years his junior from a remote Pacific island who he met in a Las Vegas casino!"
"Yes, Bob – HRH The Duchess of Richmond, as she will officially become after the ceremony has already caused quite a stir in royal circles with her colourful public comments and even more colourful fashion sense! And we understand that Ms Frootsie has had a key role in planning this ceremony, so we can probably expect it to be as colourful as only she can make it! And notably, of course, this will be the first royal wedding to involve cast members of cult reality TV favourite, Danganronpa, hot off their European publicity tour! Of course, some of our viewers will have watched the recently broadcast 53rd season of that show and chortled at the hilarious antics."
"Well, Sally, I never missed an episode myself, and I have to admit it's the best thing to come out of Japan since Takeshi's Castle! And, since we're told those gory murders and executions are all faked anyway, it's great consequence-free violence! Although, to be honest, who wouldn't prefer it if a few of those slimy Japs didn't stay good and dead!"
"…"
Somewhere, far away, an irate producer started yelling into his mouthpiece.
Surrounded by several bodyguards provided by Team Danganronpa, Angie Yonaga, Miu Iruma and K1-BO strode up the red carpet towards St George's Chapel between crowds of cheering people held back by barriers. Some recognised them from the show, whilst others were just cheering anyone who looked like they'd been invited to the wedding, since they must be some sort of celebrity. It was a very hot sunny day, which was fantastic luck for not only the wedding, but for those, like Angie, who chose to walk British streets dressed only in a bikini and artist's smock.
"Oh my!" said K1-BO. "Look at them all!"
"A-ha-ha-ha! What did you expect, Kii-boy!" responded Miu, loudly. "Talent will out, and at last the world is recognising that of the gorgeous girl genius, Miu Iruma! That's why all these plebs are here – to worship me!"
"Oh me, oh my!" said Angie. "But I thought they were all here for my second cousin Tootsie's wedding like us. I mean, I've practised my sermon and everything. I hope I wasn't wasting my time!"
"A-ha-ha-ha! These people must be nuts to let you spout your bullshit about Atua in one of their most famous churches, Angie! Watch out, or they'll probably burn you at the stake as soon as you've finished!"
"Ugh, Miu, too soon!" said K1-BO. "Although I wouldn't be surprised if the Brits didn't do something uncivilised. They strike me as highly robophobic. I mean, those security guys at the airport insisted on physically putting me through the scanner with all the luggage."
Miu fired off another volley of raucous laughter. Meanwhile, they had reached the top of the flight of steps leading to the door of the ancient grey stone building.
"OK," said the chief bodyguard. "This is where we have to stop. From here on, the police are in charge of your security. You'll be shown to your seats by members of the Royal staff."
There was a minor contretemps as they entered the Chapel, when Miu took one look at the ornately carved font and insisted that they'd better get hold of a dipper and clean themselves before going in, before K1-BO explained that according to his databases churches weren't Shinto shrines, so you didn't need to do that.
"I might have guessed the Brits would be averse to anything involving washing! Ah-ha-ha-ha!"
"Shhhh, Miu!" said Angie. "This is the house of Atua, after all! You don't want to offend him!"
Several hundred of the stuffiest British people of their time heard the noise and glanced over in the direction of the robot boy, the brown-skinned girl in a bikini and the blonde girl in a pink dress accessorised with bondage straps and a pink Stetson hat which said, in large white letters "SEXY AND I KNOW IT".
Perhaps fortunately, none of them could understand what Miu or Angie were saying, but they didn't need to speak the same language to see trouble coming, and eyes started rolling. After all, Tootsie Frootsie and her family all looked and acted weird enough as it was, and it wasn't as if HRH Prince Larry was exactly a paragon of stability either.
"I give it six months," a duchess muttered to her husband.
"My dear, you're always such an optimist," he replied.
Angie, Miu and K1-BO found their allotted places with no problem. Luckily, K1-BO had been programmed to understand English, so the people directing them didn't have to rely on hand-signals. It turned that they had been put in one, rather distant, corner with the bride's family, who all greeted Angie with an outburst of joy like the long-lost relative she actually was, before shutting up hastily when they noticed the looks they were getting and remembered the stern lectures they had already been given by officials about correct etiquette.
The pews were hard and the wait was long. Miu started doodling on her order of service (it hadn't been translated either). She had a new idea for a machine that you could power with your brainwaves as you gradually came out of deep sleep in the morning, and would have breakfast ready for you just in time when you woke up. Surely this would finally be the girl genius' masterwork…
"Meh, I don't know why everyone in Japan loves these Western weddings so much," she muttered to K1-BO. "They're just as boring as the traditional ones. And all the English people here look so miserable. They probably need to get laid more. I mean, look at all those dried-up, wrinkly priests – you know none of them are allowed to get married? What kind of fucking freak would agree to that?"
"Actually, I don't think these are Catholic priests, dear," said K1-BO. "They're Protestant."
"Well, either way, I think they look as much like desperate virgins as any nun! Ah-ha-ha-ha!" cackled Mui.
Echoing from a high gallery somewhere, a fanfare of trumpets announced the arrival of the bridal party.
K1-BO squeezed Miu's free hand. "Get out your earphones and plug them in the port on my left side. I'll do a simultaneous translation to Japanese for you."
She bestowed one of her rare and dazzling smiles on the young robot. "Oh, Kii-boy, you're always so thoughtful!"
Back in the Channel 6 studio, things were mounting to a fever-pitch of excitement.
"Well," quavered the elderly lady to the stone-faced reporter. "Here's my mug from the Queen's coronation, and here's the commemorative plate from the wedding of Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon…that's a very rare piece, but they did make a lovely couple…a shame how that ended up, really. And this is an exact porcelain replica of the crown used when Prince Charles was installed as Prince of Wales in 1969…it's a lot smaller, of course."
Bob Generic's voice broke in over the live-link. "Alright, granny, I'm afraid you'll have to shut your cake hole and stick your china where the sun don't shine! WE NOW HAVE ACTION AT THE CHAPEL! Sally!"
There was a barely perceptible cry of "Oi! I haven't even got to my Sword Art Online figurines!" as the shot changed to the hosts for a second, and then to an overhead shot of Tootsie Frootsie, in an elaborate wedding dress hauling a thirty foot train up the Chapel steps, with her dad and a gaggle of bridesmaids.
"Yes, Bob, as you can see, the bridal party is now entering the Chapel where, as you can see, at any minute things are really going to kick off!"
To be fair, as this was England, and everyone in the Chapel knew they were being filmed, things didn't really kick off for quite a while.
Internally muttering, "Keep calm and carry on," they ignored Tootsie Frootsie tripping over her own train twice. They pretended not to hear Prince Larry's brother Prince Gary, who had been building up Dutch courage from his hip flask, dropping the ring with an audible curse. They pretended not to see the youngest bridesmaid throwing a tantrum as she went up the nave and her mother having to come over and calm her down.
They all pretended not to feel offended, insulted and/or profoundly amused as a Polynesian dance troupe performed what they were assured was a traditional dance of welcome but looked more or less like they were all twerking in the direction of the congregation.
They even managed to ignore Miu standing on her pew, waving her arms and yelling "Go, Angie! Go, Angie! Ah-ha-ha-ha!" as her friend wandered over to the lectern to deliver her sermon. An embarrassed K1-BO pulled her down and scolded her, something Miu found as gratifying as usual, but the damage was done.
No, what couldn't be ignored was the sermon. It actually became a meme for some time afterwards, although much of that was to do with Angie's accent and the fact that Team Danganronpa had insisted on what she had written being put into English by a guy whose last translation work had been on 80s video games. Originally the first sentence, for example, was "Ladies and gentlemen, let's marrying Prince and Princess!" What follows is therefore more what Angie was trying to say than her literal words:-
"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the wedding of Prince Larry and my second cousin Tootsie Frootsie! Praise be to Atua for bringing us altogether for this joyous event! I am Angie Yonaga, his High Priestess, and I am so honoured to be able to talk to you about the greatest god ever and everything he has done for me and my people on Pentecost Island, or as we call it, Aloaroamatoa! I think you have a saying here that "God is love"…well, either that, or maybe that he is a DJ, or something…but anyway, Atua certainly makes sure that everyone on the island gets plenty of love, especially at our coming of age ceremonies. You should have heard the noise Tootsie made at hers, it was audible for miles around!"
A camera shot of Prince Larry at this exact moment caught him nodding sagely, as though this nugget of information came as no surprise.
"We have heard a lot about your god, Jesus, and his lovely wife, Mary Magdalene, from missionaries. Some said that he built their hot-rod, which certainly got some of the women interested, especially when they said he was also your own personal Jesus - someone who hears your prayers, someone who cares. But then they would also say that Jesus not only knew them, but knew that they were right, which we thought was kind of arrogant, so we stopped listening to them, even when they kept saying that Jesus was way cool.
"Because for us, what can Jesus give us that Atua hasn't? We have a beautiful island to live on, we share lots of love between ourselves. In England, you drink the blood of Jesus, but on Aloaroamatoa, Atua drinks your blood! It's so much more hygenic, don't you think? And Atua has a thousand faces. He can be whoever you need him to be, whenever you need him to be it. Which is a lot better than a God who's eternal and unchanging, isn't it? I mean, how boring is that!
"If you ask me, Jesus could have learned a lot from Atua – if he'd done that, he'd never have bothered with all that becoming a human being stuff. Gods are special and magic and powerful! They sit on clouds and live in volcanos. If you're polite to them, they give you good stuff, and if you think bad thoughts about them, then uh-uh-uh, it's thunderbolt time! Who wants their gods to become human and suffer horribly for them? That's just…weird."
A heavy and awkward silence had settled over the Chapel. The Pentecost Island contingent still seemed cheerful enough, but the British part of the congregation were all looking around wide-eyed with shock and doing fair impressions of the characters in an H.E. Bateman cartoon. Behind Angie, the Archbishop of Canterbury sat with his face looking like a white wax death mask. Well, more than usual, anyway. He couldn't wait for this farce to end, so he could get the stiff drink he desperately needed.
"Anyway, Tootsie's a great girl and I'm sure she and Prince Larry will be very happy together. Because Atua tells me that they will! And you can't argue with that! Well, not if you know what's good for you! So I hope they, and you, all enjoy the rest of the day and bathe in Atua's wondrous sunshine. Praise Atua! Bye-onara!"
Angie walked away from the lectern and back to her pew. The stony silence was broken only by Miu's cackling.
"Ah-ha-ha-ha! You did it, you really did it! Angie, you magnificent bitch! I can smell those heaped-up faggots burning already!"
"Miu!" hissed K1-BO. "Sit down, please! Ugh, this is so bad! I can't believe you're being so robo…I mean, homophobic! I really need to take you in hand!"
Miu's expression became more… intense, and her face reddened. "Ooh, any time you like, big boy!" she gasped loudly, as she sat back down, to the great fascination of all the people sitting around them.
"How did I do, guys!" whispered Angie, as she reached them. "I really knocked it out of the park, didn't I?"
Miu's response was largely drowned out as the Chapel Choir and organ launched into "I was glad" by Sir Hubert Parry as loudly as was physically possible.
As stunned as everyone else by what had happened, Channel 6's co-hosts were interviewing one of their "expert" guests, a retired MP and full-time Royal sycophant who always turned up on these sort of programmes. He had partaken liberally of the free alcohol available, and was as red-faced and loquacious as usual.
"Well, you can say what you like, Bob, but what can't be denied is that the Royal Family has shown its willingness to bring the institution of the monarchy into the modern age, by allowing for a more relaxed and less stuffy ceremony – more like the weddings our own families might have."
"I think a lot of our viewers would probably think that if your family's weddings are usually like that, they'd be glad not to be invited!" replied Bob Generic. "Come on, Mr Farley – look at our footage of the people on the streets of Britain today and tell me that they weren't shocked by the goings on in St George's Chapel today."
Pictures of lots of pensioners standing around gazing at large outdoor screens and shaking their heads in disbelief at close ups of Angie's face were shown. One or two seemed to be crying. On the other hand, there was film of some guys in football shirts standing around a barbeque in a park somewhere who seemed oblivious to anything except the bottles of lager they were swigging down and the burgers they were munching, at least until they noticed the camera and started mooning it.
"Well," said Farley, "with an institution as old as the Royal Family, sometimes you just have to accept things won't always run smoothly. I mean, Henry VIII had six weddings – don't tell me that everyone took the sixth as seriously as the first."
"Do you blame the involvement of the Danganronpa reality TV stars for some of the fiasco that happened today?"
"Oh, no," muttered Sally Sporadic, out of shot.
"It's a popular show…necessary gestures of modernisation…give the people what they want…" Farley droned on.
"Even if that's wily yet inscrutable Orientals with a deep-rooted hate for everything British and a lust for world domination? I mean, admit it, that bossy pianist girl deserved everything she got!"
"Excuse me?" said Farley.
"Jesus Christ!" shouted Sally. "You really are the living end, Bob! This is all so unprofessional, I don't think I can put up with another second of it!" She stood up and made ready to walk out.
"Yeah, Sally, you just run away from the truth, like you always do!" yelled Bob. "You try being so politically correct when your grandfather was worked to death by sadistic guards on the Burma Railway!"
"That's rubbish, you told me he died in his sleep in 1974!"
"Well, he never really got over the war!"
Shortly afterwards, the Channel 6 Royal Wedding coverage came to an unexpectedly hasty end. Some days afterwards, so did Bob Generic's contract.
Back in London, some hours later, K1-BO and Miu were relaxing on an overstuffed sofa in their luxury penthouse suite. Perhaps fortunately for everyone, the wedding invitations to the Danganronpa survivors hadn't extended to the reception afterwards, so the security team had been able to drive them out of Windsor as fast as possible when the service ended, before things could get too ugly.
They'd been smuggled into the hotel by the back entrance, although that was usually the case with hotels, to avoid the fans waiting outside. This time, though, the crowd on the pavement sounded a lot less friendly than usual. As high up the building as they were, you could hear the booing. The chief bodyguard had told them they'd have to be up early tomorrow to catch their plane.
"What a bunch of losers!" complained Miu. "I mean, they invite Angie to speak, like it isn't obvious what she's going to say, then they get all pissy when she says it! No sense of humour either! They're not worthy of the great Miu Iruma!"
K1-BO looked thoughtful. "I have to say, I'm kind of disappointed in Europe generally. I thought everyone would be more polite and cultured than they turned out to be. Maybe the Professor just downloaded too much anime into my databases."
Miu cackled. "Admit it, you hoped it was going to be like Axis Powers Hetalia! I bet you like to draw porn of all the cute boys going at it hammer and tongs! Ah-ha-ha-ha!"
"That…that's so not true!" stammered K1-BO, blushing. Miu softened a little – he always looked so sweet when he was embarrassed. She reached over and gave K1-BO a hug.
"Aw, honey, you know I was only joking…you know what, let's have some fun this evening. I bet you need the fluff cleaning out of your circuitry again! I've brought that brush with the soft bristles you really like…"
"Oh, yes please!" said K1-BO.
