Disclaimer: Ok, this is where we say that we don't own anything in here, except for what you don't recognize. In other words, we own the characters not from the animes.
Note: , means that it is in their minds. Their thoughts. Well actually just those 2 characters thoughts
Chapter One: And Then There Was Chaos
It was Monday, December 15th, and school was out. The ground was currently covered with a foot and a half of snow, and the students at the Midway School of the Arts were getting ready to go home for the holidays. Mandy wasn't worried, though. She was in bed, sleeping.
The city of Midway, Pennsylvania had been hit by a terrific snowstorm the night before, and needless to say, for the students who planned on going home, this was a bit of a problem. The snow had made the roads kind of treacherous, and Mandy's parents had called the night before to let her know that they wouldn't be able to make it for another day or two, and did she have enough food until then? She was fine, and she was dreaming, dead to the world. Her dreams of swimming were cut short by the sound of her cell phone. She groaned as she reached over to the loveseat where her phone was, and nearly dropped it as she opened it.
"…'Ello?"
"Mandy!" the excited voice on the other end shouted, as what sounded like a tray of silverware hitting the floor echoed in the background. "Hey, keep it down, I'm on the phone!"
"…Kitty?" Mandy asked groggily, still half-asleep. "What the hell was that? Are your roommates moving?"
"Nah, they left for break. Anyway, Seikai wants us, or as many members of the anime club as possible, to get to her house ASAP for an emergency meeting. And bring food. HEY, PUT THAT DOWN!" Mandy blinked, and put the phone down on the bed and stared at it.
"Mandy?...Mandy…MANDY!" She picked the phone back up.
"…What?"
"Are you STILL in bed?" Kitty asked incredulously.
"…Yeah. Why?" Mandy asked, knowing that Kitty was getting exasperated. She could practically see her friend rolling her eyes at that last remark.
"It's three o' clock. In the Afternoon. This is important, so get up NOW. And BRING FOOD."
"Bring food where?" Mandy asked, now fully awake.
"TO SEIKAI'S PLACE!" Kitty roared, causing Mandy to wince and hold the phone at arm's length away from her ear. Whoever was in the room with Kitty obviously found this very entertaining.
"Why?" she asked, hoping that the next answer wouldn't be so loud.
"You'll see when you get here."
"Get where? You mean you're already at Sei-chan's place?"
"YES!" Mandy threw the phone across the room, where it fell by the closet. 'I knew I shouldn't have turned the volume on the earpiece up that loud.'
"OK, OK, I'll be there. Geez."
It was an hour later, and Mandy was finally standing in front of the old apartment building across town. She was wearing her red 'I Love Rock n' Roll' shirt with the winged guitar on it, and her old baggy jeans, which were now soaked up to the knees from having to climb through snowdrifts to get to the sidewalk, which really wasn't much better. Her feet were cold, she was cold, and she was hungry. She groaned as she adjusted her backpack, and her computer case. Her purse (more like a miniature book bag) dangled off her right shoulder. She was carrying two plastic bags of instant ramen, a frying pan, a cooking pot, three boxes of Pocky, and several pouches of instant oatmeal. The MP3 player that was on her neck was currently starting on 'American Idiot' by Green Day, and Mandy did feel like an idiot for trudging through the snow for half an hour to go to some secret, spur of the moment meeting. 'Well, Seikai had to have had a good reason for inviting everyone. Hell, even Kyle's car is here.' She thought as she opened the front door and stepped inside.
She always felt claustrophobic in the small, cramped entranceway and as she began to climb to the third floor where Seikai lived. Sure, the club was small, but there had been a lot of background noise during that phone call. Seikai's apartment had a kitchen, a living room that doubled as a dining room, two bedrooms, and a small bathroom. What if this was some event to get more members in the club? And just how many people were there, anyway? As she finally got to the third floor and the door to Seikai's place, she heard all the voices. There was quite a few of them, and they were often interrupted by crashing sounds and bumps.
All of this was happening behind that nondescript, battered old door. 'I could just turn around and go home right now,' she thought, and then remembered all the snow. 'Scratch that, there's no way in hell I'm walking back right away!' She made up her mind, and reached out and opened the door, stepping into the narrow hallway. As she took off her shoes, she walked over to the door leading to the living room and stared. 'Wow, the whole club's here, and they… brought cosplaying friends? The con isn't 'til April!' She thought, shuddering as she noticed the Kakashi cosplayer staring at her. 'Ugh, creepy!' He chuckled and went back to reading an orange book, and she went back to putting her computer, and her backpack underneath the huge Naruto wallscroll that was at the end of the hallway. She made her way through the crowd of people, and finally made it to the kitchen. "Hey, I'm here!" she shouted, holding up the plastic bags, The girl in front of the counter whirled around, her glasses gleaming dramatically.
"You made it!" she shouted, hugging Mandy tightly. Something cracked.
"Can't….breathe." Mandy gasped. Seikai let go.
"Sorry, it's just nice to have more food. We were worried that we'd run out of ramen!"
Seikai grinned, and gestured to the kitchen. "We have a small group on kitchen duty right
now." Mandy could see Kitty, Venus, and someone else working.
"So, they're helping out?"
"Yeah, they were getting a little crazy, so I put them to work." Seikai remarked. Mandy decided she shouldn't get on Seikai's bad side. The kitchen was small and cramped, and it didn't help that Seikai's cat Shinigami had its litter box in there. That was when she noticed the girl working with Venus and Kitty.
"Wow, Ashley dyed her hair pink!"
"Uh, yeah, about that…" Seikai started, before Mandy handed her the plastic bags and she began rummaging through them. "Okay, we won't need the frying pan or the pocky" she said, handing said items to Mandy, who looked like a kid on Christmas morning as she held the frying pan. "And we're pretty good in the kitchen, so…go do whatever."
"Yay!" Mandy cheered, as she left the kitchen and went into the hallway to get her computer. Seikai stared as Sakura came up beside her.
"She didn't notice, did she?"
"Nope, apparently not."
"She can be pretty dense sometimes." Kitty remarked from her post at the stove. Sakura
sighed as similar incidents involving Naruto came to mind.
"That's just sad."
"Heck, you should see her on a sugar rush." Kitty laughed. "She gets even worse."
"I don't see how this could get any worse." Sakura remarked. They were cut off by a loud scream a moment later. "I stand corrected."
To understand what just happened, let's go back a few minutes to the time Mandy took her laptop to the back room and turned it on. She sat it on the floor in the corner, before she picked it up, put her sketchbook down, and set the computer on top of it.
"Man, I'm hungry." She commented to herself as she left the room. She walked to the end of the hallway, where she could see into the living room. She did a double take as she picked up the Pocky and the frying pan. 'Tom did an excellent job with that Jiraya costume. So did those two dressed as Lina and Naga -Are those real? Oh my god, why are they attacking Tom?' Mandy decided she didn't want to know as she shook her head and headed back towards her workstation. As she entered the room, she realized, to her horror, that she was not alone. Her Pocky dropped to the floor, unnoticed. 'Ohgodohgodohgodohgodohgod……' she thought as she saw who was sitting in front of her computer. Long black hair cascaded down their back, a pale hand supported their weight as they leaned forward to investigate the computer…then they turned around, saw her, and started to get up…
'OH SHIT!' Mandy screamed and began hitting the intruder with the frying pan. There was a 'clonk', and then a thud as the intruder fell. She ran out of the room, only to run into the Neji cosplayer. She screamed again, and hit him in the nuts with the frying pan. That was when she noticed that she had a relatively large audience.
"What happened?" Seikai asked, trying to hold her laughter back and not quite succeeding. The rest of the anime club and the cosplayers were chuckling, until they saw the look on Mandy's face. She was paler than usual and shaking as she looked at the floor. Mandy mumbled something incoherent. "What happened?" Seikai repeated. Mandy looked at her and finally got the words out.
"…The lady from Ju-On tried to steal my computer." she said shakily, and that's when she noticed that only the anime club was laughing this time. Kyle came up and patted her on the back.
"That wasn't the lady from Ju-On. Hell, that wasn't even a woman." He laughed, and then he showed her the person she hit. "You just took down Orochimaru." The said ninja was sprawled out on his back on the floor, staring at the ceiling with a confused look on his face. Jiraya walked in and prodded him with his foot.
"You okay, old friend?" he asked, grinning evilly. Orochimaru glanced off towards the window, scowling.
"What did she attack me for? I just wanted to ask about that monitoring device."
"….I attacked a cosplayer? Is he a friend of yours, Tom?" Mandy asked Jiraya in a horrified voice. "Oh my god, I'm so sorry!"
"Who the hell's Tom?" Jiraya asked, scratching his head as Mandy went behind him and-
"AGH! MY HAIR!" he yelled, grabbing at it. "What was that for?!"
"….You mean that wasn't a wig?"
"Guys," Kyle said in a resigned voice. "We have a lot of explaining to do."
"Yes, let's get this done before somebody else gets hurt." The man in the black trench coat and wide-brimmed hat remarked. Mandy grinned and pointed at him.
"Dude, he looks just like Vampire Hunter D!"
"Now what the hell's she talking about?" Jiraya asked as Mandy picked up the boxes of Pocky that were scattered on the floor. She opened a box, and began munching on it as she shoved her way out of the room. 'God, I hate crowds.'
"Okay, this might take a while to explain," Venus began as everyone found someplace to sit in the living room. "But these guys aren't cosplayers."
"Seriously?"
"Yeah, they're real. Apparently, they came out of the posters in Seikai's room." Mandy blinked, as did her other friend Kite. Apparently he hadn't been informed either.
"But aren't some of those posters a little high up on the walls?" she asked. 'Damn, that had to hurt.' She noted that several of the characters winced as she mentioned that little fact. 'Oh yeah, and that Naruto wall scroll was right above-'
"Seikai, what happened to your computer?"
"…The computer is fine. The monitor is smashed beyond recognition into itty bitty pieces." she said in a hyperactively angry voice.
"That sucks." Kite remarked.
"Yeah."
"Lemme guess, that toad-summon-thing squashed it." Mandy said sarcastically, waving a stick of Pocky in the air as she spoke.
"No, actually Naruto landed on it, followed by the rest of us. How troublesome." Shikamaru commented. Kitty stared at him.
"You really do complain a lot."
"Kitty, don't antagonize the ninjas."
"No, that would be your job, Mandy."
"Well, I don't have a death wish."
"You're the one that took down Orochimaru and Neji-prick."
"Well, I can't help it if they look like the bloody lady from The Grudge! Besides, she's been known to multiply. And knowing Neji-prick, he deserved it!"
"How DARE you!" Neji shouted, as Hinata looked on, fidgeting nervously.
"Stupid prick!"
"Civilian!"
"Da Shabi!"
"…What?"
"It's Cantonese for 'Dumb Cunt', you nasty little prick."
"…Mandy, where did you learn that?" Venus asked, as the rest of the group began howling with laughter.
"Internet."
"Oh. Well, I guess it's true that you can find anything on there." Kyle laughed and slapped Kakashi on the back. "Dude, she hates you."
"…Why?"
"The mask, dude. She thinks you're creepy."
"Oi, Kyle, don't talk about me like I'm a bloody fucking fangirl!" Mandy shouted, before turning to Hinata. "Hi, Hina-chan."
"U-um…h-h-hello." She stuttered nervously. 'Dear god, what kind of family does she have? She's a nervous wreck!'
"My name is Mandy O'Riley. Wanna be friends?" Mandy asked, holding out her hand and grinning.
"O-okay." Hinata shook her hand nervously, and Mandy mentally shook her head. 'Damn ninjas, can't even raise a child properly.'
She noticed everyone was staring at her. 'Uh-oh, looks like I voiced my thoughts.'
"What was that?" Dr. Jackal asked, and Mandy then did something very stupid.
"I don't have to tell you, since you're not a ninja." She shrugged, and put her headphones on. Ginji and Ban sweatdropped. She talked back to him…
"So, would you tell a ninja?"
"Well, it would depend on my mood. Maybe later, when I feel like talking to you guys."
Seikai stared, and then decided to get everyone's attention. "Listen up, everyone! There will no killing or maiming while you are here! As our guests, you have to listen to us! And Lina and Naga, you will NOT eat us out of house and home! We seriously can't afford to feed you the amount of food you normally eat!" She proceeded to make a bunch of rules, before deciding to finally just do whatever. The visitors then started to explore their new world, while the anime club proceeded to follow them around and make sure they didn't get hurt. After all, there were a lot of things that they had never seen before, like the PS2, the toaster oven, or posters of themselves.
Mandy sat in the living room, staring at the strange scene before her. Naruto had challenged Sasuke to a game of Soul Calibur II, which was entertaining in the fact that they had no idea what the hell they were doing. Sakura and Hinata were cheering them on, while Lee was busy trying to impress Sakura by imitating moves from the game. He ended up kicking Naruto in the head and a small fight ensued, with them yelling at each other. Mandy really couldn't quite hear them, as in typical Mandy fashion, she had her headphones on. She did see Kakashi break up the fight, though, as the girls and Sasuke just stood there shaking their heads. She rolled her eyes and continued reading Boogiepop and Others, silently wondering if the Manticore was related to Orochimaru in any way. Kitty and Kyle were in the kitchen, talking about the situation the club had found itself in.
"Have you seen Lina and Naga?" Kitty asked as she opened the fridge to get a Coke.
"Yeah." Kyle grinned. "They're torturing Jiraya."
"Lemme guess, he was peeking at them while they were changing."
"Yep."
"What an idiot."
"Yeah."
Hope you enjoyed this first chapter.