Welcome to something utterly ludicrous. If one wants a long, long explanation on the origins of this idea, please visit my website /fiction (for some reason FF.net will not display a URL. Go from my user lookup) and look at the author's notes page for NeXus. I do not have space to post them on FF.net.
I don't own what I don't own. I do own Mana. He is my slave. He is my deranged inner child. Yes, self-insertation. Mary Sue, no. Don't leave yet. Give it a chance. I have candy.
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Particle 0: Zero
They say that every person has an inner universe. Do not ask who 'they' is. It is a proverbial 'they'.
Let us assume for a moment that each person's imagination creates a Road of its own, its own world. It is a world that transcends the tangible reality and creates its own reality.
In its purest, undeterred form, only the creator fully understands his or her own inner universe or imagination. Sure, the creator can communicate the world as closely as he or she can – through writing, drawing, spoken word, music – but the world only exists exactly and perfectly as the creator sees it within his or her own head.
Now, let us assume that another person hears the creator's story. It sparks this person's imagination. Sure, the person soon has a part of the imagination that is very similar to the creator's – they know the same characters, the same stories, the same plot – but there is always difference, minute or grand, that lies in the interpretation. One will try to tie everything into one's most core inner truth. The inner truths change. The interpretations change.
And a subtle character that is given nebulous dialogue and limited expression is interpreted a different way, to have some ideals or feelings that can be sensed but are never expressed. And even if they were openly admitted, the character is probably lying anyway to cover something up or just to confuse the hell out of you.
And a highly symbolic occurrence is interpreted a million ways by a million different people. Sure, the interpretation is often highly similar, and there are influential fan writers who write theories that become almost accepted norm, but even accepting those writings one will view it in a minutely different way, or even a larger-than-minutely (see: grandiosely) different way.
But all of these things are well known in the hearts of every person, or are they? Is everybody aware of this rift? Some radicals once tried to eliminate this rift by smashing every human consciousness into one big primordial soup [1], but this did not go so well. [2] Call the rift the "A.T. Field" (© GAINAX).
Welcome to the world of fiction. Fiction spawns fanfiction. Crossovers. Spoofs. Bad writing and good writing. Opinions. What defines 'good' and 'bad', anyway? OOC. PWP. Mary Sue. Gary Stu. Lemon. Lime. Yaoi. Yuri. Hetero. AU. A million-and-one acronyms for the same idea: "THIS IS MY INNER UNIVERSE; REVIEW IT AND VALIDATE IT." The capitols are necessary for the desperation, especially with the people that like to write "plz R&R!!!!!" next to every work.
Let us assume that every road – both 'official' (the ones that make money) and 'fan-made' (the ones that don't and will be sued if they do) – merges or finds points at which to run parallel. Well, not exactly merges, per say, but mixes. It is a mixture, not a chemical reaction. Or maybe there are minute chemical reactions here-and-there, only with select particles and often theoretically 'impossible' [3]. In any case, stuff happens. Things mix up in a huge proverbial mixing bowl. The bowl is the 'NeXus'. The capitol X is necessary for aesthetic enhancement [4].
What is the purpose of the NeXus? Unknown. You might as well ask about the purpose of human consciousness or parsley. All that needs to be understood is that fiction is going to take a spin in a centrifuge. It is the 'ultimate crossover of all things, ninety percent of which is anime'. Crossovers are notoriously horrendous and reliant upon things such as hack (or dot hack) slapstick comedy and liberal helpings of OOC-ness.
But this must be remembered: things thrown into a centrifuge often smash and break [5].
The result is seldom pretty or sensible.
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*I stole this footnotes format from Discworld, like the writing style. Don't sue me, Terry Pratchett. I love you.
[1] The Human Instrumentality Project. Watch the last few episodes of Evangelion.
[2] According to the anime, the only reason that we will not all be primordial soup in 2015 is because a fourteen-year-old with the security of the average otaku decided that after all, he wanted to be himself. This after he realized that if he was primordial soup, he would not be able to 'interact' with the nude women throwing themselves at him in his dream sequences.
[3] Like two positive ions bonding or ninety-nine percent of all instantaneous[I] PWP yaoi relationships. The chances are a million to one. But, to quote Pratchett once again, "million-to-one chances happen nine times out of ten".
[I] The instantaneous is the impossible part, without any backstory or development. Just "hey, you're here and I'm here, there's a bed, let's fuck like animals and cuddle afterwards. By the way, I hate you."
[4] Doesn't it look so much cooler and more interesting? It's so nonconformist.
[5] They also mutilate, merge, mix and crash, and deform themselves. Sometimes melt. Sometimes become a gas. Sometimes. But it's all for the sake of a plot, so it's okay.
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Ohtori Akio was bored.
Unfortunately, Akio, being an illusion master of sorts, is one of the most powerful people in a universe entirely made of people's fabrications and ideas. If imagination is considered an illusion, that is. There are different opinions. One may ask Socrates or Aristotle.
When Akio's world was 'pure' (definitely not in the moral sense, but in the fact that it was not thrown into any nexi of any sort), he found himself abandoned as a proverbial prince of the coffins. His only key to start once again his hollow revolution games left, quite literally, leaving behind her glasses and her pet's necktie. These items are not helpful in regaining a revolution. They are heavily symbolic, yes, and that symbolism is easy to debate, but they do not summon any Swords of Dios or Heavenly Castles in the Sky.
This is not for lack of trying on Akio's part, though.
Indeed, Akio's ennui had reached such a level that he had tried many things to start chaos in Ohtori Academy. Things had quieted down.
Of course, Akio is not such a person that he relishes in mindless chaos, nor does he create chaos for its own sake. He always has a motive. Lately, though, there has been no way of retaining his former self or the Power of Dios. He is all too aware of this.
However, Akio is a person who likes action. When the most significant development in the academy is that so-and-so is pregnant with somebody's child while dating so-and-so who also has an illegitimate child in France from his last vacation, and that said child is probably going to grow up and kill the father, it is not enough action to keep Akio from the brink of insanity.
He was already driven there by Tenjou Utena. The proverbial pebbles were showering over the brink into the proverbial abyss, and his was being driven further over the proverbial edge into said proverbial abyss.
Insane Akio is not good.
As it were, the Fallen Prince of the Coffins was sitting at his desk in his planetarium tower, hands intertwined in front of his mouth, staring at the screen of his laptop. The screens of the planetarium were folded up, revealing the blood-red sky and setting sun. It is a law of the anime world that the color of the sun be symbolic of something, and that people debate it on message boards. Commence, otaku.
But with Akio, where we were. He was aware that things were changing outside his room, stirring and mixing. Logic was rearranging itself. The flow of time was becoming relative.
Something was changing. Chaos was impending.
Akio slid his long fingers across the trackball of his laptop in circular motions, half-watching the cursor loop across his screen. He had found a website featuring himself. Not only himself, mind, but Utena, Anthy, even Chuchu. Oddly, the writer of this website, whoever it was, knew far more about him than he knew he had ever disclosed about himself to any soul other than Anthy, and he was sure this website did not belong to Anthy. For one, most of the interpretation and information was inaccurate.
As another point, tHe EnTiRe WeBsIte wAs wRiTtEn lIke tHiS!!!
Akio tapped his fingers on the trackball. Airheaded though Anthy might seem, she did not write with odd capitalization. It symbolized an airheaded and overly-energetic personality, not a façade of airheadness.
It probably takes more energy to tYpE LiKe tHaT than to copy and paste the text into something with a spell checker, he thought while reading the sentence "hE rApEs hIs sIsTeR iN tHe MoViE bY DrUgInG sOm whine." He sighed and ran his fingertips through the side of his bound hair. And I do not recall being in any movie in which I raped Anthy. Even if we made a 'movie', she would submit willingly in the first place. I do not need to result to drugging wine. –
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NO! NO! Too much inner monologue! It disrupts the flow of the prose! Makes it look like he overanalyzes! It's unnatural! It seems like an actor reading carefully written scripting and not a human! Bad!
Make him stop!
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Akio suddenly found himself incapable of continuing thought -- not from any lack of intelligence, but from some interference settling deep into his mind. The more he tried to wrap his mind around a thought, it slipped through with no development or comprehension. He was unable to think.
In addition to this, a small voice in the back of his mind demanded action.
Akio stood up and paced around the room. My thought flow was disrupted by something – lack of sleep or what, I do not know – but I feel the presence of an outside force. It is something as manipulative as myself. I know that it feels different when I lose my own mind of my own fault. I recognize my own stupidity and shortcomings.
Akio stopped and looked at the computer screen. The website was still on the screen, focused on white Times New Roman text over a tiled background of the Shadow Girls and with a picture of himself set into the text lines. Something about it looked very amateurish.
Akio leaned over and scrolled down the text to the bottom of the page. The following inscription was at the bottom of the page in minute text:
Ohtori Akio © Saito chiho and Kunihiko Ikuhara. i dont own him!!!!!
Well, damn straight you don't own me. Akio ran his fingers along his hair again. Copyright? What in the HELL? Copyright these people? I'm not somebody's char--
Akio stopped and stared at the screen for a moment.
". . . . . . . . . . . . . ."
Everything started to piece together. The website. The information. The interpretations. The interference. 'Interference'… for convenience of a plot?
Akio spun his chair back around to face the computer by its back and sat down. There were just a few more things he wanted to confirm…
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"Dead?"
The Great Will of the Macrocosm stared over her teacup at the man across the low table. Indeed, to create the impression that she was staring was a feat on behalf of the animators, for her face – and all of her body but her arms – was shrouded in a mantle of the night sky. It was an effect of the viewer's mind and the position of her arms that helped enhance this image.
The viewer also found it easy to see that even though both the man, the Will, and the table were floating in the center of space with air, they were somehow able to kneel. How the Will knelt, once again, was a trick of the celluloid.
"Dead," she repeated. She took a sip of her tea. "He was killed off tragically. It was very lovely. He had an image song playing in the background and several slow-panning sequences of him falling and of his comrades screaming and crying--"
"That's no good. I wanted to do something with this character."
The Will took another sip of her tea. The man across the table was wearing a white lab coat and had short, navy blue hair, a finely detailed face, and long eyelashes – a true archetypical bishounen. His eyes, however, were an utterly flat gray. One might guess that the animators merely did not draw a defined iris or pupil, but that would be an incorrect guess. Something about his aura said that there was a reason.
Besides, he was just as creepy as all hell. The camera always focused on his eyes to let the audience know this without question.
"Well, I could--"
"How, exactly, did he die?"
"He fell into a raging river."
The man stared at the Will silently. "He fell into a raging river," he repeated flatly.
"Oh, yes. To save the life of his best friend's girlfriend, who he himself fell in love with and tried to seduce. But he realized that he could not betray his best friend and so sacrificed his life in penance for his sin and so that they could live on."
"I see."
"The funeral was very nice. The couple placed flowers on his grave and cried. The man held the girl to his chest and the wind blew--"
"But about that…"
"--and there was a sequence in which the fallen man's smiling face appeared in the clouds to symbolize that he would always be with them in their hearts, and that he would always watch over them--"
"Wait a minute." The man folded his long fingers into a cradle and rested them on his lips. "This was never in the anime, was it, now?"
"Well…" The Will fiddled with her teacup. "Not exactly--"
"It was in a fanfic? A doujinshi?"
"Fanfic…"
"Uh-huh." The man narrowed his eyes. "And what validates this over the original creation?"
The Will swallowed nervously. "…there was an image song because the writer wrote it as an original songfic," she finished weakly.
"………….."
Will tried to appear busy by pouring more tea. Her hands shook so badly that the tea sloshed all over the table and dripped into the starry oblivion below. The man grabbed her wrist.
"Listen. I know well, as you know well, that fanfics never override the original work. This is a cardinal rule of the universe."
"But if everything here is determined by imagination, what validates one imagination over another?"
"Originality, Will, of which you have none." The man cocked his head to the side. Will winced and looked away beneath her mantle. "And do not remind me that I am the same as you, because I know well. But I, unlike you, am so skilled at weaving my stolen ideas into a tapestry that none ever recognize the nature of the threads."
Will did not respond. The man frowned.
"It means that I am a genius and you are an emotional girl who harkens to stereotypical, second-rate fics with superficial angst and great amounts of fluffy romance."
"They're sweet. And what validates your idea of what is 'valid' over mine?"
"What validates that aforementioned fic over any other fic out there, if you see all works as equal in validity?"
Will thought about this for a moment. "…I liked it."
"I see." The man dropped her wrist. "Well… I can see that I am going to get no help from you."
The man stood up and turned his back. He thought of something witty to say, but nothing was coming to mind at the moment. The Gods of Style and Charisma had been abducted by some high school students during last prom season, and they hadn't been back to work in the NeXus since.
"…you have hack plots."
Will sniffed hard. "Don't flame me. Please."
"What, you can't take a little criticism? You are so insecure about your writing that others opinions matters so much?"
Will started crying. "I write to be READ."
"Yes, you really are an SJ, aren't you."
Will sniffed. "Pardon?"
"SJ. Sensor-Judger. Meyers-Biggs. Jungian psychology. It means that you search for security and you value the opinions of society above all else."
Will thought about this. "That's such a closed interpretation."
"Well, I'm an NT." The man decided that it was time to say goodbye to all of this and hello to oblivion, which is where he began to walk.
Perhaps it would have been kinder to him had he asked about the wife and kids.
At this point, Akio walked directly into 'all of this', stepping out of a hairline rip in the fabric of macrocosmic logic and running straight into the man. The man tripped back on his heels as Akio stepped around his ankles. The men went down in a heap.
At about this point, yaoi-writing spectators around the multiverse were suddenly inspired with a way to get two men very leg-entangled for no reason whatsoever. This lead to more things while still being on the floor.
Will giggled.
This was by far, as we know, not the most unkind thing oblivion would do, but it is known for getting its revenge slowly and at the most opportune time. For something theorized to have no consciousness, it can be malicious.
Akio was the first to untangle his long legs and stand up from the jumble. He looked around and the focused on the Will.
"So… you have decided to settle your tiny area of influence in my academy for a while."
The unnamed man stood up and straightened the collar of his lab coat. "Well… Ohtori Akio, you have finally become self-aware in the highest sense."
"It is unavoidable, considering the circumstances currently underway in this 'NeXus'." Akio smiled. "And who might you be."
The man opened his mouth--
"Mana," said the Will. "Mana, but he is called Scienziato by some superstitious people. It is how you would hear him in ghost stories, anyway."
Mana glared at the Will. Akio smirked.
"Mana and Scienziato, a scientist of magic. A little bit of a paradox or an oxymoron, isn't it?"
"Paradox, maybe. Oxymoron, no." The man watched Akio carefully. "I quite dislike my 'real' name. But more and more I have seen evidence that 'science' and 'magic' coincide. Ever heard of alchemy? Sorcerers? The forefathers of science?"
"I am far older than you can guess." Akio walked over to the table. "But at the moment I have something to ask of this lady."
"Well, good luck getting any help out of her." Mana began to walk back into oblivion. He slowly dissipated into a mistlike ghost. "I am going to take my experiments into my own hands."
The last shadow of Mana's coat disappeared. Will sipped her tea.
"How did you find this place?"
"I have my resources." Akio leaned over until the tip of his nose was tickling the viscous mantle of stars surrounding the approximate location of Will's face. "And I want you to help me with something."
"…do you?"
Will was familiar with the Shoujo Kakumei Utena universe, and as such she was damn aware of how Akio convinced people to help him on his various 'ideas'. It usually and always involved the oldest form of persuasion known to any conscious and manipulative creature with hormones.
Akio kissed the Will.
Will paused. The edge of Akio's profile was buried in the cold mantle of stars, and was now working its way down into her neck. The man knew what he was doing. Every time Pedro tried to pull something like this off he ended up slobbering all over the place and leaving marks—
Oh, that's going to leave a mark, she thought as Akio sucked on the hollow of her neck. Wait… he's reading my thoughts. He has some sort of ac--Aaaaah! dammit, don't stop! Get back down there!
Akio had looked up and was now smirking at Will. Will stared back at him. So, he's not going to bother with any psychological manipulation or engraining before getting physical--
"Do we understand each other?"
This means I don't have to listen to him spout philosophy. How much experience does he have again?
"Pedro!" the proverbial (or not so) angel on her shoulder shouted in her ear. "Remember Pedro! He loves you as you love him! He's so loyal to you, even though what is technically 'you' betrayed him twice over and--!"
"Sex god," the corresponding devil hissed. "Come on, girl, you're not getting anything good out of that simpleton! This man knows how to treat a woman!"
"But sex is evil without love!--"
Akio pinched the small angel off of Will's hidden shoulder. There was a nasty crunch. The angel screamed.
"Thanks, man. I owe you again." The devil saluted Akio with her tiny pitchfork locked under her arm, then jumped off of Will's shoulder and onto Akio's. She pressed her elbow into his neck and leaned on it nonchalantly. "So I'll be seeing you tonight?"
Akio flicked the remnants of wings off of his fingers. "Of course."
The devil gave Akio one last swish up the neck with her tail before disappearing.
Will stared at Akio.
"What are you planning on doing to this holy NeXus?"
Akio leaned back down to the Will's height and hissed in her ear. "I am just planning on having a little fun. And I would call this world far from holy. The world is a cesspool of sin, as you know well. Even then, it is not so black-and-white as that, is it? It is a world of humans."
"Macroverse, universe," she corrected absentmindedly as Akio leaned down his former location on her neck. "And I only control a small little pocket. It's more of a microcosm than a macrocosm. A macrocosm in its own world."
"Mmmm. It's enough for now." Akio looked up and cupped the Will's chin in his fingers. "Let us weave illusions together. Will you help me?"
Will pushed Akio's head back where it belonged, in her opinion. "Sure. Just don't stop unless you feel like going further or something."
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Mana crossed his arms and perched on Michelangelo's Dome, his preferred place to sit over the cityscape of Rome, sulk, and look obligatorily dramatic and gorgeous. Scary, one might add. This is also obligatory.
Absolute idiots. God, this is annoying. Argh…