"Lots of things happen in cartoons that you just don't see in the real world. That's part of the fun of cartoons."
― Toon
A young man laughed hard in an almost empty classroom while watching something on his phone with earbuds plugged in his ears. He has short and spiky dark blonde hair and deep sea blue eyes wearing a black blazer with white accents, matching black pants, and white high-tops with blue laces.
A few students nearby raised their heads to look at him, wondering why he's laughing out loud like that. They saw his phone in his hands and now realized why. The students in his class knows about his obsession with cartoons and so didn't bother him while he indulged himself into his free time.
The boy continued to snicker at a blue cat and a brown mouse passing a stick of dynamite to each other only to start snatching the stick from each other as the blue tabby was the last one to hold it, only for the dynamite to blow up in his face.
He then wondered what it would be like for cartoon physics to exist here in the real world. Numerous thoughts then entered his mind at the idea as he started to get giddy with excitement at the possibility.
"Hey, Nova!" Said a young male voice from the door to the class. The boy, Nova, looked up from his phone to see a boy his age with short and spiky brown hair and matching eyes smile at him as he waved with two more boys at his side.
"Oh, Issei! And you brought Matsuda and Motohama. Cool!" The blonde-haired boy grinned at the trio.
"Uh, Nova? We go here, too." Matsuda said sweat dropping at Nova's quirky nature. Issei laughed nervously at Nova's little quirk to him. Nova then heard moans of grief and annoyance around the room, wondering why the others didn't seem to thrilled to have them here. Since school started, he's seen this trend and has been curious about this from the start.
"It's the Perverted Trio again…" Said an annoyed girl from a desk in the back.
"Why can't they just drop dead already? I'm sick of this!" Another angered girl voice yelled.
Nova shrugged his shoulders at this and went back to his show, noticing Issei and his friends walk to the back of the room to sit down from his peripherals with down casted faces. Five minutes later, the warning bell rang through the school for tardiness and seconds later more students flooded the room.
As he saw the teacher head in through the entrance, he quickly unplugged his phone and put the away in fear of them getting taken up. Nova reached under his desk and whipped out a brown bag from there and plopped it down in front of him.
"Okay. Good morning, everyone!" Said the female teacher, eliciting a round of greetings from her students. Nova made sure she wasn't looking and pulled out a sketchbook from his bag and a charcoal pencil. He opened it to reveal a multitude of pages filled with sketches of different cartoonish scenarios from his shows and several original work of his as he flipped to a blank page and began to doodle away.
Issei saw him scribble in his sketchbook and leaned over to see and widened his eyes in awe. It was a picture of a chase between a coyote running on its hind legs after a roadrunner on a swerving road in the middle of a desert.
'So this is what he does…' Issei thought while sitting back in his desk. Nova is freaking talented!
Later after school…
"Some-body once told me the world is gonna roll me~ I ain't the sharpest tool in the shed~" Nova sang while skipping throughout the halls of Kuoh Academy. Most of the students either plugged in their ears with their fingers or just rolled their eyes in exasperation. Very few laughed, getting the lore behind his sudden singing of the song.
Issei was just exiting the room when he saw Nova in the distance of the hallway.
"Hey now, you're an all-star, get your game on, go play~" He heard Nova sing as he laughed, one of the few who got the joke.
"Wait up, Nova!" Issei ran after his friend. Nova glanced back at the pervert and graced his presence with a smile.
"'Sup, Ise?" Nova greeted, exchanging fist bumps with the brown-haired boy. They continued trekking the halls as they indulged themselves in their conversation.
"You already know, dude. About to head to Motohama's to watch a couple of DVDs he managed to get away with, if you catch my drift~" Issei grinned pervertedly, giddy with impatience at watching the new Yuri special of their favorite series.
"I don't." Nova said with a blank face, looking straight at Issei. At this, Issei grew kind of nervous. He doesn't want to corrupt that innocent nature of Nova as he is still a kid at heart with his love for cartoons and sketching the characters in his shows. He doesn't want to be the one to do it.
As a matter of fact, he is going to be the one to ensure his safety of the real world.
"Nothing. Don't worry about it. So, cartoons!" Issei clapped his hands, changing the subject. He has to admit, aside from "adult cartoons", he does have a soft spot for kiddy cartoons as well as the older ones, but those can be more... aggressive with their humor. Plus, he loves a good laugh.
"Yeah! Last night, I pulled an all-nighter watching a marathon of a reboot of one of my favorite shows since I was little. Can you believe that? They remade the original into an even better one! That's so rare nowadays with TV shows." Nova rambled on, not even noticing how his smile grew into a cartoonishly wide smile which put Issei off guard at the scene. The pervert didn't know his love for cartoons runs that deep.
"Can't say I can. But hey, if it gets you to smile like that then who am I to say anything?" Issei shrugged.
The two eventually made it to the outside as they both headed for the gate to head on home. Nova kept walking but pulled out his phone and earbuds again to watch more of his show, a sign that Issei should leave him to his thing.
"Okay, see ya! Can't keep 'em waitin!" Issei waved at Nova before running in the distance towards a small neighborhood behind some brick walls. Nova watched him go while he put one earbud in until he was no longer there then looked down and tapped on his screen a few times before turning it to landscape mode and put the second earbud in.
On the way to his home, he was watching a compilation he put together of some of the funniest moments between all of his favorite shows and could not stop smiling. The same coyote in his sketch earlier running off a cliff and staying in mid-air for a second only to fall as soon as it registered what was happening, a gray bulldog punching the same blue tabby from earlier who was holding the same brown mouse from earlier as well in its hand as its head snapped backwards and stretched due to the powerful force behind the blow, and another brown mouse wearing a large hat who was zipping across a field and running from a few people.
He heard a car honking at him from his side as he looked up from his phone to see he was at a pedestrian line with a light telling him to go. Nova chuckled sheepishly as he bowed to the driver in the car who only shook his head in annoyance. Nova cleared his throat and rushed across to the other side and went back to his activities.
The walk home surprisingly took quite some time as Nova stepped up to his front porch and fished for his keys in his pocket to unlock the front door. Inside, he reached to the side to flip a switch on a wall.
"Looks like dad's not home yet." Nova realized that the lights were still out like they were this morning when they both left for school and work. He tossed his keys in a brown basket on a small table under the switch and flung his bag across the room, the handle scoring a point for him as it hooked itself on a chair at the dining table. He blinked. That never happened before.
He shook his head and ran upstairs to his room, flipping another switch on to provide more light to the house. In a room at the far end of a red hall, Nova entered his room and didn't even bother with anymore lights seeing as how he thinks it's getting a bit repetitive for the readers to have to keep reading about him flipping on some lights inside his house. Like, we get it. You don't have to write out every single thing you do. Get on with the story, you know?
Wait, how is he doing this?
Nova narrowed his eyes and scanned his room. His face scrunched up in confusion at this bizarre thoughts he's having. Readers? Story?
Maybe some TV will get his mind off of these things. Maybe.
As the TV turned on, the static on the screen jumped out and embedded itself in his wooden floor for the time being. Now Nova had not notice this for he rubbed his eyes tiredly.
"Or maybe perhaps some shut-eye. Dad will be home any minute now…" Nova yawned as he turned off his television andstripped down to his black shirt and shorts that he wore under his school uniform all day. As soon as he was about to pull his covers over himself, he stopped and thought for a moment.
'Shoot, the key.' Nova quickly rolled off of the bed. His dad gave him the key to lock up since he was the one to leave last. His dad left early for some huge renovation stuff to the warehouse he works at. He rushed to his door and made haste, the static traveling up the legs of his bed once he was out.
He ran downstairs to get this over with and scrambled over a few furniture as he bumped into the wall next to the front door to the house. His head was flattened due to the harsh impact. Nova put his hands on the wall and pushed himself off of the wall as his face made a sound akin to a sticker being peeled off of something. His face was red and birds started to fly around his head, a sign that he became dizzy.
"What the...heck?" Nova cringed in pain before it subsided fairly quickly which baffled him. He thought for sure something like that would hurt for a while. Outside, he opened a mailbox on the wall and dropped a gold key in there for his dad when he finally gets home. Once back inside, Nova immediately ran back upstairs to get some deserved sleep.
In a dream, he was seen running across a desert field with various shapes and sizes of canyon valleys and cacti surrounding him while being chased by a certain brown coyote who was wearing a napkin bib and a fork and knife in one hand.
All you can see was a trail of smoke both of them left behind in their wild goose chase. Nova then stopped mid-run as the coyote vanished into a puff of smoke. Nova then was shocked with white lightning from out of nowhere.
"AHH!" Nova screamed a short scream of pain. He was then covered in soot from head to toe as black smoke danced off of him.
Like in a cartoon!
This was one of the reasons why Nova liked to dream. They've always been related to cartoons and such. If only this happened in the—
"AHH!" Another lightning bolt struck Nova as he lost a bit of his clothes. The boy shook off the smoke and soot and grew angry at the sky as he shook his fist...only for another bolt of lightning to strike him dead on.
"STOP!" Nova sat up straight on his bed, sweating and panting heavily. His eyes widened comically as they bulged out of his skull every now and then. The static remained unseen as it was absorbed into Nova's skin.
The next morning, Nova had gotten dressed and went downstairs for some milk. It was then he noticed a man with dark blonde hair and deep sea blue eyes just like him at the table eating a bowl of cereal and some orange juice while reading a newspaper. The man spotted Nova descending the stairs.
"Hello, Nova. Hope you got a good night's sleep last night." Nova's dad greeted him, taking a sip of his juice.
"I don't know if "good" is what I'm looking for…" Nova said tiredly, rubbing his eyes as he yawned. His dad took notice of this and scooted his chair back to whip up something for Nova.
"Really? Then, what would you describe it as?" He asked while grabbing a bowl from the cupboard.
"Very...loony." Nova said while squinting his eyes, unsure of himself.
"Ah." His dad replied, putting the milk back in the fridge and slid the bowl of cereal on the table for Nova to eat. The boy thanked him and sat down to eat for the morning. In his mind, he suddenly got the urge to eat it quickly and so took the bowl, the silver spoon falling out and onto the table with a clang. He poured the contents into his mouth, the milk and cereal forming a waterfall as it entered Nova's cartoonishly wide mouth.
His dad's jaw hung open in complete shock at the scene, "You must be...hungry."
Nova nodded, still pouring his breakfast straight down his throat. When he finished, he belched quite loudly as he pounded his chest in surprise with wide eyes.
"Ah! That was good!" Nova said cheerily, but was not satisfied yet. He shrugged and walked over to the chair where he left his bag last night and headed for the door.
"I'm out." Nova bid his dad goodbye, the latter still in quite the befuddlement.
At school, Nova was walking through the courtyard with his buds in as he was watching cartoons again until he felt a tug at his blazer from the back.
"Nova-senpai…" Nova turned around and pulled one bud out to find a short girl with white hair with a black cat hair clip and hazel eyes staring up at him.
"Oh! Koneko! What's good?" Nova greeted with a weird gang sign. He saw the white-haired girl blink and raise a hand up to reach for the phone in his hand.
"Ah! You wanna watch?" He saw her nod with curious eyes as he levelled the phone so she can see. He handed her the bud hanging from his chest as she took it. Some students were nearby and were either cooing at the scene—females—and some were seething with rage—males—at the scene between the two.
One or two scenes from the cartoon got a small chuckle or a very noticeable smile out of Koneko as Nova had no trouble laughing out loud. Moments later, school happened as Nova said goodbye to Koneko who thanked him for letting her watch a bit of his shows with him. As Nova left her to go into her class, she furrowed her brows in a strange sense of curiosity at the retreating form of Nova.
'What does Buchou see in Nova-senpai that she must have him in our peerage? I don't want to get Nova into our business…' Koneko thought in worry for Nova's future.
Inside his class, he was unprepared for a straight punch as he was spun around due to the force as his tongue slipped out with dizzy eyes, the same birds flying around him.
"What the hell, dude?! I thought we were friends!" Said Issei who was crying comically at Nova who got his act together enough to finally stand.
"But...we are." Replied Nova who was still a bit wobbly with his balance. Issei sighed as he shook his hand. Nova has a hard head.
"Why were you with Koneko anyway? Are you two a thing?" Issei asked, trying to hide his jealousy.
"What thing? Where?" Nova asked, twisting around to find the thing Issei's asking for.
"Nothing, Nova. Nothing…" Issei asked exasperatedly. Nevermind. It seems Nova is still a bit too dense in the head to even know what love is, let alone a simple crush. It was pretty obvious to everyone.
Issei suddenly sprung with joy, "Oh yeah, Nova! I've got to tell you something. I finally got a—!"
The bell rung, cutting off Issei as he sighed. Nova smiled and told him to tell him later. Soon, class started as Nova and Issei went to their desks.
"Back to the grind~" Nova sang with a goofy smile, eliciting rounds of laughter from nearby students. By the time the final bell rung for the day, Nova was already out of his seat to get home and play his recordings of a marathon that he missed a week ago. Last night he couldn't keep his eyes open, so he decided to postpone it for today.
Ring!
It might just be because of lack of sleep, but he could've sworn he saw actual words spelling out "ring" above the doors. With that weirdness aside, he zipped towards the doors and was the first one out of the entire school.
"Holy hell! He just freaking dipped out of here like a bat out of hell." Issei said, connecting some dots that it could be related to cartoons or something. Nevermind that! He's got a girlfriend! Sunday's the big day and today's Friday. He's got to text Yuuma and tell her if it's still on.
Nova kept on zipping across the neighborhood, catching himself by turning on poles and traffic signs.
"I need all the time today to watch it!" Nova said until he was shoved into a brick wall by a blueish light. The wall caved in with Nova lying there with stars this time swirling around his head as it spun slowly in dizziness. He shook it off and weakly managed to stand.
"What in the…" Nova started, clenching his head in an attempt to stop the headache.
"I don't know why the boss wants you dead, but I can't really disobey his orders these days." Said a deep, masculine voice.
"Wha?" Nova asked, looking around for the voice that spoke to him. Is it speaking to him? Suddenly, a shadow came in his line of vision as Nova saw a tall man with a dark suit and a black fedora.
"Hello, sir? Might you be the one who was speaking just now?" Nova asked as he slurred his words in dizziness.
"Oh great, a weirdo. Listen kid, you seem like the nicest guy in the world, so I'm going to make this quick and painless." The man said as a blue light manifested between his fingers, a spear of light appearing and aimed at Nova who squinted his eyes at this.
"Pretty light." Nova joked before having to bend sideways to avoid a jab from the man and his cool spear.
'He can dodge, I'll give him that. But...why is his torso bent that way?' The man felt his spine shiver at the way Nova's midsection bent at a thirty degree angle like that.
"Something doesn't feel right." Nova said before he blinked and rubbed his eyes, the man thinking twice about this boy. When Nova opened his eyes, the man widened his and backed away as two black wings unfurled from his back, taking into the air.
"How in the…?" The man saw what was once blue eyes were now black, pie-shaped eyes instead.
Nova tilted his head, the pie-shaped eyes fully forming and glowing white for a split second until it settled back into black. Suddenly, the man saw Nova clap his hands and pull out a large paint brush from his pocket covered with black paint as he swayed it in the air in front of him. Soon, the black turned to a humanoid shape as a stick figure with Nova's eyes in white appeared. It took a fighting stance once it spotted the man in the air. The dark angel shook his head and then got why the boss wanted this boy dead. Nova can fight.
"Let's see you handle this." He chucked a spear at the stick figure who went barreling through the air and kicked it in a 720 motion, the light weapon breaking shortly after. Nova smiled and began to draw more stuff out of nowhere. A black fighter jet, tiger, and a small army of soldiers. The fighter jet flew in the air and came face-to-face with the man who grew weary at the plane.
The plane then started to shoot bullets in rapid fire at the man who went and dodged all the rounds but narrowly dodged a swipe from the black tiger. The army of soldiers began to fire their arsenal of weaponry ranging from AK-47 to grenade launcher at the man. Explosions and bullets rang through the air while the man tried his best to keep the barrier intact while still fighting.
The tiger and army took to the stick figure's side as they all stared up at the man who sweat dropped. The black jet also stopped in mid-air as if having a mind of its own.
"I must've mistaken you for someone else. If you'll excuse—"
The man was interrupted due to an anvil falling down on his head as it knocked him out cold, the dark angel falling down to the concrete floor below.
"Fetch him." Nova said to the tiger who complied with the command and appeared at the man's side in a blink of an eye. It took him in its mouth and brought him to Nova who inspected the guy.
"Black wings… Hmm...I don't know what he is…" Nova mumbled until he snapped his fingers.
"I know! I'll ask Issei." He took his phone out and called his friend. After a minute, Issei didn't respond and so Nova turned off his phone and rushed for Issei's, his small army of friends vanished in puffs of smoke.
"Actually...did he say he needed to tell me something?" Nova stopped, putting a hand to his chin, his new pie-shaped eyes narrowing in thought.
"Hmm...nah. Don't think so. Maybe he'll tell me Monday. Time to go home." Nova said while skipping away towards his home, the man still lying unconscious on the sidewalk.
Behind the same wall our loony friend busted up, Koneko was there watching the exchange with shock written on her face. She just saw her senpai fight a fallen angel all by himself, draw cartoon characters to come to life, and those eyes of his were so unexpected.
"Buchou was right…" She said before she disappeared in a red light. She thought about bringing the fallen with her but her president didn't say anything about them yet. So she'll play safe for now.