Previously in The World Within And Without…
Megumi thought her newly-revived heart nearly stopped when she realized who Axl was: Her old boyfriend from her first life! Already Zappa was uncertainly looking at his wife, asking for answers whose time had not yet come.
Everything was coming to an end.
"Is that so… Mess with the wedding I've planned and prepared? Mess with Canada and Canadians, eh? Mess with me?"
The loose folds of his bandanna dramatically blowing with the wind, Person With Many Aliases, the Keeper of the System, glared at the unseen enemy.
"We shall see."
Drake sighed. What was she supposed to do?
"We are in deep trouble."
Notwithstanding the sheer gravity of the situation, the rapid shifting of events beyond control of almost anyone, and even despite herself –and, ultimately, because of herself–, the girl in black smiled. It was time.
"It's show time: Romancers."
"Ohayou, Person-sama, Mina-chan... Welcome, welcome, I've been expecting you."
The girl smiled a darkly pleasant smile.
"Welcome to my world."
Guilty Gear
The World Within And Without
Original Conception By: Sheo Darren
Overseen By: Yuuki Darren
Disclaimer: Sheo Darren does not own Guilty Gear or any of the games, anime, movies, books and the like that are the property of other people. All original characters in this story are his creations and property. All insert characters are copyright/owned by their respective represented real-life entities.
For Person With Many Aliases, who thought this entire premise up. Enjoy.
CHAPTER ZERO SEVEN
The Laws of Fan Fiction
"Ohayou, Person-sama, Mina-chan. Welcome, welcome, I've been expecting you."
The girl smiled a darkly pleasant smile.
"Welcome to my World."
"Your world?" Person With Many Aliases seemed miffed by the offhand comment. "There is only one person who had the right to use those words with regards to The World Within And Without. And it isn't you."
Despite that, the girl kept smiling.
A sweat-drop appeared on Person's forehead, who was struggling to keep focused on her, the beginnings of doubt and concern sneaking up on him already at this cavalierly opponent who seemed not to care.
The smile grew wider.
And then it hit them. Person did a double-take, even as behind him a horror-stricken Mina gasped. The Keeper of the System was taken aback by the possibility before him, the odds that this girl could be who they thought she was– who he was!
"Masaka!"
"Don't tell me that you– that you are–"
"SHEO DARREN?" they both exclaimed.
The girl giggled.
"Don't be silly," she half-clucked, half-lectured, in the way a precocious child would scold an adult on something she was the undisputed expert on. "I never claimed to be Sheo or anyone. I simply said this World was mine. This is my World, after all," she expanded quite cheerfully. "This is the World that I made. This World is mine."
"No way!" protested Mina. "The World Within And Without is Sheo's fan fiction! He created it! How can you claim to be its owner or creator if he is both, and if you're not him?"
"But it's the truth, plain and simple as that." The giggling stopped as behind her spectacles entrancingly menacing eyes lit up. Her frank tone carried the message more effectively than any sermon could. Then the girl giggled again. "Wow, the truth does set you free, doesn't it? Doesn't it?"
Person and Mina knew now that this encounter was far different and more dangerous than any they ever faced before. All their previous enemies were all outsiders to the Dimension –Samael Tsuzuku–or created characters in the World, like Mriya Falken. Even That Girl was of The World Within And Without; Yuuki Darren was Sheo's creation, bound to their Dimension by the purpose of her entire being.
But this girl was not any of those. She was the loophole, the crisis none ever expected to encounter, much less to deal with. She was not an outsider, and neither was she a created character. They didn't know why it was so or how it happened, only that it was. This girl was an exception to all before her.
And exceptions were lethal.
At the curtailed wedding of Zappa and Megumi:
The big battle that Sheo Darren had told Lone Wolf NEO about during an e-mail turned out to be not so much a battle between people as a battle to keep one from dying of laughter or insanity.
Considering that the Sheo Darren Effect is rampant in this fan fiction, plus the personal presence of Person With Many Aliases, it wasn't exactly surprising.
Quoting the latter, it is now time for a:
SCENE CHANGE!
Nik and Chibi Nik confronted Joker.
"Wendy!"
From behind the Author and his Chibi, a blonde girl appeared. It was Wendy Earhart (Read Or Die TV), Joke'rs secretary/assistant/admirer. She had a gun trained in Nik's general direction.
"Uh, oh," Nik uttered in surprise.
"Rid me of these obstacles," Joker commanded.
Wendy smiled. She aimed and fired.
Eagle was trying to shoo away the two inquisitive dogs sniffing at his ankles. "Go away, little dogs! I do not like little dogs!"
He accidentally hit Doggie on the nose, making the poor puppy whimper in pain.
Meeka growled.
Billy Kane got into his fighting pose. "I will beat you with my stick!"
"The sexual implication of that threat is disturbing," calmly noted Drake McKine.
"Eh?" Billy realized her allusion and blushed, even as he tried to cover it up with some more swagger. "I mean, I will beat you badly with a long hard stick!"
"Sorry, still suggestive."
"At least I don't use balls as well!"
(Somewhere distant, Venom decided to permanently retire. He'd put up with enough insinuations all his life concerning his sexual leanings and his style of fighting. This last insult was the final straw. His wife Millia agreed.)
"You seem to be the type who is usually cool but unusually aggressive." The psychiatrist that she was, Drake considered Billy's personality quite familiar, having encountered it several times before. "Would by any chance there be something that especially tick you off?"
"Well," the guy sputtered, now somewhat confused and actually feeling that he wanted to tell about it, "For one thing, I have a problem with my kid sister."
Person could relate to that, Drake thought. She pursed her lips, decided there was something to this discussion, and then said, "Tell me about it."
As for the parents of the groom confronting their son's nemesis, it was a very traumatic development.
"Axl?" the Tomb Raider mumbled in shock.
"Lara?" was the equally stunned answer.
"You know each other?" Zappa demanded.
"We've met," Axl admitted.
"Just 'met'?" Lara Croft was angry. "You destroyed my life!"
"Me? What did I ever do to deserve that accusation? You were drunk back then!"
"And you were, too, but you were also high then!"
"Well, there was that guy who offered me some free samples! (To the readers: Three guesses who this particular guy is.) I couldn't exactly pass up on a free offer!"
"See! But not only that, you were also repressed and horny!"
"Hey!" swore Axl. "Sheo Darren is the repressed horny guy, not me!"
In the Death Star, Yuuki just barely persuaded the girls not to fire the anti-planetary mega laser at Axl.
"But he's slandering Sheo!" all the girls protested. "We can't let him get away with that!"
"Oh, don't you worry about that." Yuuki smiled faintly as she gently told them off. "I'm sure Axl's going to learn quickly not to bandy the name 'Sheo Darren' around."
"Eh?"
The only answer was a smile, as light glared off That Girl's glasses.
"What is the meaning of this?" Zappa asked Crocodile Dundee. "Why does Mother know this guy?"
"Son," Dundee stated, "You aren't my son. I am not your biological father. When I married your mother, she was already pregnant with you. Before I met your mother, she met this guy who popped out of nowhere and, by progressing through a bunch of beer bottles and marijuana, got her pregnant. Then the guy vanished as quickly as he had arrived. Only now has he returned once more."
"You mean–" Zappa couldn't finish his indignation. "You mean–"
"Yes. Your true father," the Australian adventurer pronounced dramatically, "Your true father is Axl Low!"
Zappa stared in disbelief at everyone concerned.
Dundee was stoic.
Lara was rolling her eyes in disgust.
Axl grinned sheepishly and waved at his son.
Megumi was pale as a ghost.
Note: Insert Zappa in dramatic denial pose here.
"NO! My father is actually a New Age British hippie!"
Already devastated by the past few years of being possessed by a coterie of ghosts until he was finally 'cured'– only to learn that his bride-to-be was the girlfriend of a guy who lived more than a hundred years back in the past, to realize the truth of his ancestry was far too much for Zappa to take.
Thus, he turned into a vegetable.
Megumi was huddled in a corner of the big tree, sobbing silently to herself, when the girl found her. The poor bride had run away earlier, giving up on her happy dreams and settling for wishing she was dead again.
"Megumi-san." The girl walked over to the distraught woman. "There you are."
"Go away."
"Daijoubu?Are you okay?"
"No, I'm not–"
"–And you don't want a Buster Wolf to go along with that order."
"You are so funny. Now go away."
"Really?" There was no trace of malice in the way the girl seemed to take her rebuttal as a compliment. "Jeanne-sama said my humor needed work. Less on teasing and more on fiber, she said."
"I don't care." The Japanese woman withdrew even more into herself. "Just leave me alone."
"Chippy," the girl in black suddenly chuckled. "Love ka namin!"
"Eh?" The nonchalant deflection actually got a rise out of Megumi. "What?"
"It's a local joke among us Filipinos. You wouldn't know what I mean unless you've seen the Chippy commercials back home."
Megumi didn't know what to think. She wanted to curl up and cry to herself, but this newcomer was starting to get her attention. When she saw how the girl was dressed –in black, just like the evil girl who started this nightmare for her– she was of half a mind to run away. But this was a different girl than the other.
Somewhere inside her mind, something went click.
"Who are you?"
"Rione." Rhee-yoh-neh was the way the girl pronounced her name. "My name's Rione."
Despite her melancholy, Megumi found herself staring at her. "You're– you're–"
"That's right." Rione grinned. "I'm the one and only The One. Rione Asuka Hunter."
She paused significantly.
"Romancers!"
"Now why does it all seem so familiar?" the dark girl asked Person and Mina all of a sudden. "Tell me. Why does it all seem like we've seen and done this all before?
"No answer? I'll tell you what I think. It means that the vicious circle is repeating itself once more. This world has no definition of the word 'finish'. History is an endless waltz, the cycle of war and peace and revolution one after the other."
Her eyes gleamed meaningfully, menacingly, as all around them her power arose to take command of the battlefield.
"But I will change that. I will change everything."
"Change this!" Person charged forward. "Flying Ninja–"
"Person, wait!"
The girl smiled, even as her eyes shone darkly and as she–
"The hell?"
–As she pushed her eyeglasses back up her nose, in the way a certain Author and his assistant would do–
"Person!"
–And The Will And The Word was unleashed.
Strikingly alone in the midst of the many souls at one point or another touched by one special young man, his Assistant sees what no one else but he can.
"The power of one's will as manifested in one's words," she breathes out faintly, lost in thought. "The Will And The Word."
Person found he couldn't move anymore. He was caught in mid-Flying Ninja Kick, stuck in the air like a balloon tethered to the ground. Mina was in a similar position, frozen in place even as she had sought to pull out an arrow to nock into her bow.
"How could you do this? What is this trick?"
"It's really very simple." The girl talked like a patient teacher would address a particularly inattentive child, Person being the latter parallelism as he kept trying to break free of whatever invisible web immobilized him. "Authors are all-powerful in their own respective Dimensions. Also, Author's powers decreases immensely when they are in another Author's World.
"Expansion: No person should be able to defeat an Author on the latter's home ground. Even an Author out of his own Dimension is a formidable foe. However, the Author's opponent can choose not to directly combat the Author. Instead, she can exert influence upon a localized area that will result in her achieving temporary supremacy over the Author. Which is what I did," she finished, her expressive smile particularly emphasizing how smart she thought she was.
It was unfortunately the truth. Both her foes were stunned by the sheer speed and overwhelming effect she had unleashed. It wasn't an attack; it was manipulation of the Dimension's reality. The World Within And Without was far more powerful than Person was, so far away from his own fan fiction at this moment that he was. But the Keeper of the System was curious despite his predicament. "Could you put that in plain English a Canadian could understand?" he asked.
Mina groaned. But the girl was effusive and generous in triumph, not at all like an archetype vindictive megalomaniac psychopath super-villain like Samael Tsuzuku– because she wasn't, not at all. Thus she indulged Person's request:
"I used my power to create a small field where my power is supreme to anyone else's. Outside this field, I can be defeated. Inside, though, almost no one can defeat me. Almost, of course, is the important word, since there are always exceptions. There is, after all, the First Law of Fan Fiction that overrides all other Laws."
"What? The Laws of Fan Fiction?" Neither Person nor Mina had heard of such a thing. "What's that?"
"Something Sheo learned about while reading and writing fan fiction. The Laws of Fan Fiction govern the way a Dimension operates. They establish the very reality of a Fan Fiction story. Nothing happens within a World that violates the accords set by the Laws."
"And the First Law is?"
"The First Law of Fan Fiction: Everything is Fated to happen." The dark girl grinned cutely despite herself. "It's also known to the less educated as, 'Plot devices PWN everything'."
"It makes sense," agreed Person. "Know of any place where I can get copies?"
"Person!"
Somehow, Mina's wail failed to remind him what situation they were in right now.
"Go ask That Girl." Their enemy seemed distant now, aloof, focused on an insubstantial vision before her as she was. "Go ask Yuuki. In fact," she suddenly added, "In fact, let me tell her for you."
And then, as if her object was right before her, the dark girl suddenly greeted: "Ohayou, Yuuki-chan. It's been two fan fictions since we last met, hasn't it?"
"Four," breathlessly murmured Yuuki, miles away in space but unbelievably and personally close to her nemesis. "Four-chan…"
"That's right, Yuuki-chan." The dark girl now known as Four smiled wickedly. "I'm back."
Five minutes later, the dazed Person and Mina returned to an even more dazed ending to the battle for Megumi Sadako's hand.
Joker was bleeding on the ground. Aside, Nik and his Chibi were very enthusiastic in thanking Wendy, who had saved them by shooting her former boss.
"H-How could you have betrayed me, Wendy?" The man codenamed Carpenter could not believe this treachery. "I thought you were loyal to me."
"You didn't know?" The blonde secretary giggled. "Sheo recruited me into his harem years ago. He said he liked me a lot. Who was I to disagree?"
Joker fainted.
Next was Eagle –the tiny shredded pieces of what remained of Eagle– haphazardly lying around the wedding grounds. The likely suspects of this massacre: Meeka and Doggie, now contentedly chewing on a shoe that once belonged to the guy they literally took apart.
"No more Alpo for you, Meeka," Mina joked.
And there was Billy Kane lying on a comfortable divan, eyes focused on the distractedly pretty sky while the even prettier Drake was studiously jotting down every single word he was telling her into a notepad.
"–And I tell my sister Lily that there is no life in being the girlfriend of a Muay Thai fighter, and you know what she tells me? 'Big brother, we'll make life out of that empty space'. Her own words, I tell you!"
"Your tone of speech suggests you to be very protective of your sister and profess hostility towards this Higashi Joe."
"Damn straight I am!"
James Bond was out cold from having been UFC straddle punched by Crocodile Dundee. Sharpshooter 007 may be, but he was next to useless in a real fistfight against a guy with bigger muscles than he had.
Lara Croft was worrying over her son. Zappa was stuck in the very same state that had struck Sheo Darren a fan fiction ago: Camille Vidan Veggie Phase. He was barely breathing and did not register any consciousness of his surroundings. Axl was off to the side, a bit embarrassed and ashamed of it all. You would, too, if you learned you just upstaged the wedding of your own son in order to try getting back your old girlfriend who died a long time ago and as a ghost possessed your son, while you yourself were thrown this way and that way by time-space distortions.
To sum things up, the wedding was a disaster.
Staff in hand, Person immediately headed for Axl, his intent all too clear as the Brit backpedaled away from the annoyed Author.
"Hey, chill out, chap, I didn't mean to mess things up so badly…"
"Well, I mean to mess you up badly…"
And then Megumi appeared.
Beautiful despite the bedraggled state of her affairs and her once-beautiful gown, she knelt beside Zappa and put her hands on his chest, resting her face against his faintly beating heart. Megumi closed her eyes and let the words the Romancer called Rione told her echo once more within her heart– and into her beloved's own.
"If you truly love someone, you must put up with all the bad things happening to you. Despite all the adversity and the chaos and the way all of Fate seems to be turned against you, stand firm and stay by his side. Only when you've suffered through it all and seen how the two of you can take strength within each other against all others, only then shall you discover the depth of your love for each other.
"Go back to him. He's waiting for you and only you.
"And remember: All weddings in The Wedding Night 2 and The World Within And Without end happily despite everything."
"I love you," Megumi whispered to Zappa. "I love you for what you are and despite what you are. I love your for all that has happened to us and despite what has happened to us. And I," she swore, "Will love you eternally, until death part us at last– and even then, I will become S-Ko once more so that I can stay with you forever."
A hand clasped hers softly. Megumi looked up to Zappa, who smiled back at her.
"You don't need to go that far, Meg," he told her.
And then Megumi Sadako kissed Zappa in happiness and as wife to her husband, and that is the end to their story.
But it's not the end for someone else's story, not yet…
The frantic Axl was almost free of the pursuing Fury that was Person With Many Aliases when he nearly ran into someone– and realized his life was over.
"No way!"
"Yes way," was the calm counter to the shocked GG fighter, even as behind Axl came Person and Mina, who themselves were taken aback by this unexpected appearance. "So, Axl: I'm actually a repressed and horny guy, eh?" the new guy asked.
It was the Brit's turn to faint.
"And you just had to turn my room into a mini theater, did you, Person?" asked the guy of the two insert characters.
Person broke into a mad grin. "Glad you made it," the Keeper of the System greeted. "It's been a while, damn it!"
"Yeah, it's been a while, indeed. But I always was here."
Sheo Darren smiled.
"Always was."
Four smiled.
"Not everything is what it seems."
