"Welcome to the monkey house" ~ Kurt Vonnegut
So I thought my life was at least somewhat normal back in the day. I thought
that I had seen a lot of weird stuff in my life - which I had, but only weird
stuff that I thought was weird before I came to the Sekai no Ecchi.
I can hear you people in the audience, asking, "What the fuck is the Sekai no
Ecchi?"
To answer that question, I have to tell you a story. The story of a guy
who was in high school who met up with an ecchi Queen, a Goth lord, and a
wimp. Naturally, it wasn't just any ecchi Queen, Goth lord, and wimp... it
was Angie, DS, and Shinji.
Before I start on my tale I'd like to note that it is mine, so I will be taking
some poetic licenses. I'm not going to tell my story in first person - deal.
The guy you all know as Scott, I'm going to call him Shinji. Why? Because that's
how they introduced him to me, and it's a funnier name.
It all began in the summer of 2000, at Otakon, the Convention of the Otaku
Generation...
===============================================================
"When Plutos Attack!"
Concept by Scott "Cyclops" Summerton and Emporess
This tale by Moogle (moogle@fanforce.net)
Side Story - "A New Hope" or "How The Fuck Did I Get This Damn Curse, Anyway?"
===============================================================
The young man ran his hand through his hair and sighed. Procrastinating, he
realized not for the first time, always came back to bite you in the ass at
the end.
In this particular case, he'd been procrastinating telling his parents that
he was going to go into Baltimore for the weekend and hang out with a bunch
of anime fans. He'd also failed to tell them yet that he was going to be staying
in a hotel room being paid for by someone he'd never met before. In fact, the
only person he knew who was staying there was a girl who he knew online but had
never really talked to before then.
He laid back on his bed and stared up at the ceiling, whistling "Dr. Worm" by
They Might Be Giants--
Mark: Look, shut up, okay? I know that I didn't hear of They Might Be Giants until
I went to Otakon, but I said this is my story and I'm taking poetic licenses!
He laid back on his bed and stared up at the ceiling, whistling the main theme to
Star Wars. It was something that he tended to do a lot when he ended up backing himself
a corner that he had to slickly play himself out of, something that he frequently
did. In a strange way it kept his life from being boring.
Mark Brown, a blooming anime fan, longtime Star Wars fan, and novice player of
Dungeons and Dragons, sighed again as he stood up and walked downstairs. It was time
that he informed his parents that he was going.
Strolling down the steps in the suburban house, he called out, "Hey Mom, Dad?"
Silence answered him. He called out again, "Uh, anyone home?"
"Yeah, doofus," replied his sister from where she was sitting and typing away on the
computer, "but not Mom and Dad, 'cause they went to the store."
"Oh."
The soon-to-be-otaku whirled and headed back up the stairs, one middle finger extended
towards the sky on general principle.
"Screw you too, Murphy," he added as an afterthought.
He could always count on Murphy, if nothing else.
***
Three hours and two hundred pages later, the door opened downstairs - his parents were
home, it appeared. It was as much the fact that he knew no one else was gone to come home
as his Mom shouting, "We're home, kids!" when they walked in the door that tipped him in
to who it was.
Though, of course he couldn't go bother them right away, because you never go bother them
right away. You wait for them to settle down, so they're not still pissed off about
something that happened on the road, or the stupid cashier at the store who can't count
change. Right when they've sat down, flicked on the TV or picked up their book, and
just want everyone to go away so they can relax.
"Hey, Mom?"
Which was precisely what Mark did on that Thursday afternoon. Right when his mom was
settling down to read her book, and would say anything for him to go away and let her
be in peace, was when he struck.
Fasten your seatbelts - rapid dialogue time!
Mark's Mom: "What is it, Mark?"
Mark: "You didn't have anything you wanted me to do this weekend, did you?"
Mark's Mom: "No, why?"
Mark: "There was this thing downtown that I kind of wanted to go to..."
Mark's Mom: "That sounds great! Why don't you have Daddy drive you on his way to work?"
Mark: "Er... really?"
Mark's Mom: "Sure!"
Okay, so maybe that wasn't very much rapid dialogue after all.
The stunned teenager turned and walked upstairs. If procrastinating was always this easy,
he idly thought as he bounded two steps at a time, then it can probably be done more often.
He'd come to regret those words when it was time for his Senior Year English Term Paper,
but THAT is another story entirely...
***
It was later that evening that events were set in motion that would change the fate
of the world as everyone knew it. It all began with a phone call. One tiny ripple in
the pool that was known as the history of the world, that would change the essence of
all things, and thus the existence of all things. For the pool sits, waiting, for just
that one pebble to be thrown into the pond...
Mark: What? Okay, fine, I'm stopping the deep philosophical shit.
Later that evening, while he was again in his room, the phone rang.
"Moshi-moshi?" Mark answered.
Mark: Of course I know that I didn't even know what moshi-moshi meant then, but doesn't
it sound cooler than "Hello?" Fine, fine, you win... (under breath) Asshole.
The teenager reached over and grabbed up the phone on the first ring, not wanting anyone
else to answer the phone.
"Hello?" Mark answered.
"Hi, is Mark there?" was the reply.
"Yep, that's me," came the reply to the reply.
Fuck it, dialogue sucks. Rapid dialogue time again.
Caller: Hi, it's Amber.
Mark: Oh, hey! I was waiting to hear back from you.
Amber: Got a pen and paper? I have the hotel stuff...
Mark: Uh, right, hold on. (fumbles with stuff, fetches pen and paper) Got it.
Mark's Dad: Hello?
Mark: (sweatdrop) Dad, I have the phone already.
Mark's Dad: Oh, okay. (click)
Amber: Your dad is strange...
Mark: Yeah. I know.
Amber: Anyway, we're in the Tremont Plaza Hotel. Do you know where that is?
Mark: No clue. I can look it up though. What room?
Amber: 1407.
Mark: Okay. Uh... when do you want me to get there?
Amber: (yelling off phone) ANGIE! When should Mark come tomorrow?
Angie: WHO THE FUCK IS MARK?!
Amber: The guy you said could stay in the room?
Angie: Oh! Him. Tell him to come when we're getting ready to go to the con.
Amber: (back on phone) She says come around nine tomorrow.
Mark: Cool... see you then!
Amber: Bye!
Rapid dialogue faded back into reality as Mark hung up the phone. Speaking of reality, it
finally sank in that he was going to an anime convention and hanging out with people. As
he suddenly remembered he needed to get directions to the hotel, he sprang off of his bed
and ran downstairs to print out directions.
***
The black-clad figure raised an eyebrow as he heard a phone click down on the receiver
elsewhere. The Perv had been quiet lately, until just now, in fact. He felt something, a
presence he'd not felt since...
"Angie," he started suddenly.
"What's up, DS?" replied the Ota-Ecchi-Queen in her usual genki tone.
"I wonder... who the fuck is 'Mark'?" There was a suspicious tone to his voice, as
though he thought there was something false about the guy who was coming to stay in the
room the next day.
"Dunno," Angie said, as she didn't yet know the importance of everything. "Some dude."
DS, the Lord of Things That Go Bump In The Night, grunted. "I've got a feeling about him...
It's a feeling I've got deep in my gut..."
Angie laughed as she shook her head. "It's your ulcers again, asshole."
DS grinned and said, "I guess so." But he didn't really believe her.
Wait until the morning, he thought to himself, then she'll see.
***
The morning came, and as with every morning, there were a whole bunch of things that
might have happened. Mark might have never been able to make it to the city. He might have
somehow never found Angie and company.
Not that any of them knew yet what was to come from the meeting of Mark and Angie, but
always there are might-have-beens.
At the time, Mark was walking down a street in Baltimore, towards a hotel he'd never been
to, where he was going to meet people who he had never before seen in his life, then go to
a convention with thousands of other people that he had never seen before and would never
see ever again. Except at the next year's convention, but of course he didn't know that
then.
With that settled, he adjusted the Star Wars bucket hat that rested on his head, and turned
to walk into the lobby of the Tremont Plaza Hotel as he passed it on the street.
He noticed first that it was air conditioned, a definite plus considering it was shaping up
to be a hot and humid August day in Baltimore. It's quite hard to go wrong with an air
conditioner in the summer.
The second thing that he noticed was that the place was huge. Like thirty stories huge.
Coming to his mind third was that he was there twenty minutes early, so he sat down in the
lobby in a huge comfortable chair and finished reading his Star Wars book from the day
before.
Before he was even really aware of it, twenty-five minutes passed.
'Guess it's time to get on the elevator,' he told himself.
'No shit, Sherlock!' His self, or what he thought was himself, responded.
'Hey, who the fuck are you? Why are you talking back to me?'
'You'd be a smartass to someone like yourself, too.' He'd have sworn his self wore a smirk.
'Look, I'm not going to take this shit. I'll throw your ass right out of there.'
'Just get on the damn elevator, you moron.'
'Heheheheheh... ehehehe... heheh... heh... right.'
Having been brutally smacked down by his own whatever-the-fuck-that-was, he stood up and
walked over to the elevators in the hotel. He pressed the button to summon an elevator to
take him upwards, then stood back to take a look at the little monitor that told him where
each of the three elevators was.
Mark: Yes, there really was a monitor that showed that. It was the coolest thing I'd ever
seen before. Well, not really, but you know how that goes. You don't? Fuck's sake, LEARN
TO RECOGNIZE EXAGGERATION, ASSHOLE. Anyway.
Before long came a noise - DING! - as one of the elevators reached the ground floor and
opened up doors. Elevator music greeted him inside, his lone external companion on the
fourteen floor journey upwards. There was still the issue of his self, whom he was quickly
starting to think was a complete bastard.
"Here I am," he proclaimed to his reflection in the brass plating of the elevator interior,
"being spontaneous and adventurous. And I have a crazy voice in my head."
'I'm the crazy one? Hey, you're the one who is going to stay in a hotel room with people
you've never met before,' retorted the voice.
Grudgingly, the Star Wars fanboy had to concede the point.
Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately,) since he was on the trip up the elevator, it didn't
make any stops on the way to the fourteenth floor, and thus he was at the top within
fairly short order.
A DING! announced the arrival of the elevator on the 14th floor, and the fanboy stepped
out. He gulped and took a step outside of the elevator.
Then he kicked himself for being dramatic about stepping out of a freaking elevator because
it was just the hallway of the floor, not the room of the people he was staying with.
Mark took a brief moment to get his bearings. Room 1407 seemed to be in the corner of the
hallway, so he strolled over to it and paused as though he looked like he was considering
something. But no, he wasn't, he just knocked right after a brief pause.
It sounded like there was groaning coming from inside, but that couldn't have been right
because he was assured that they would be leaving for the convention around now. Probably
just caught them on their way out, he thought to himself with relief.
The door unlocked and cracked open just a bit, and someone who wasn't Amber (because he'd
seen Amber's picture before and could tell this wasn't her) stuck her head out and gave him
the Evil Eye.
"Who the fuck are you?" she demanded.
Now, pessimist that he was, Mark was expecting some crazy shit to happen from meeting people
he knew (or didn't know) online. It wasn't something he'd done every day, or ever, for that
matter. As such he'd considered a lot of things that might happen. None of them, however,
consisted of the first words being spoken to him being "Who the fuck are you?"
"Uh... hi," he managed, lamely. "I'm Mark..." This gave him a blank look. "Uh... the guy
who you said could stay in the room?"
"Oh, hey. I'm Angie. Come on in."
As the door swung open a bit more, Mark stepped into the hotel room, and thus began his
first convention experience. Little did he know it then, but it would also alter the fate
of his life.
***
Otakon 2000 was an adventure in and of itself for our budding otaku, and while more than a
few tales could be spun about various adventures and misadventures during the con, this fic
is not being written about Otakon 2000, it's just using it as a jumping point for shit to
happen. So none of you get to hear about the parts that don't matter, which includes MAT3K,
sleeping on the floor next to a lesbian, and trying to dance to the Child's Toy opening
song.
Mark: I'd better not hear any whining, or I'll have to start killing people. Don't think I'm
kidding! You know I'm unstable.
The next day, after Shinji had arrived late from the airport, and Mark had been introduced
to the gang and gotten to interact with them, a discussion took place that forever altered
the world of two teenagers.
While the other occupants of the room - Amber, Vera, Sana-chan, and Mark himself - were out
doing various things at the con, DS, Angie, and Shinji found themselves discussing the new
male who had happened into their lives.
Yes, that's right, it was a rapid dialogue discussion!
DS: What do you guys think of Moogie?
Shinji: He seems kinda quiet to me.
DS: You'd be quiet too around a bunch of people you'd never met before, baka-boi.
Shinji: Maybe...
Angie: (gets a wicked look) ...
DS: That look frightens me.
Shinji: Yeah, me too!
DS: Everything frightens you, Scott!
Shinji: Oh, yeah.
Angie: I just had an idea!
Shinji: Run away! Run away! Angie has an idea!
Angie: (smites Shinji, who flies out the window) Baka.
Shinji: KYAAAAAAAAAAA! (falling fourteen stories) *CRUNCH!* (hits the ground and is run over
by a taxi)
DS: That must have hurt.
Angie: Nah, Shinji's got the eternally cursed luck, he never dies.
DS: So... what's your idea?
Angie: Moogie and Hime-chan.
DS: KAWAII!
Shinji: (from the pavement) kawa*hack*ii
Angie: (beam) That's what I thought, too!
DS: (raises an eyebrow) But how are you going to pull it off...?
Angie: Well, you know how Plutos like having more people to torture...
DS: That's cruel!
Angie: ^_^v Love is all you need!
DS: Now that you mention it, I figured out what that feeling was from Thursday...
Angie: And?
DS: It was Moogie. He is to be the next Ecch-i Knight. He is The One.
Angie: Excellent... then, we have found a new hope.
And that was that, really. Though neither of the two of them knew it, their fates were ever
sealed.
***
Months passed. Plans were hatched, hammered out, scrapped, reborn, reworked, trashed,
created, edited, and finalized. Well, maybe not finalized. As Angie indicated, the Plutos
would be more than happy to bring another player into their eternal game of character
torture, and were willing to cooperate once she presented them a plan. That was just the
problem, though, because she and DS couldn't seem to agree on a single idea in their shared
brain. In the end, she left it in the Plutos' hands, as long as she got her desired results.
Mark: And I got fucked over hardcore.
Hey, shut the fuck up, someone is telling a story here!
Mark: Don't tell me to shut the fuck up! You're me, and this is my story!
Quit making sense, asshole.
Mark: Whatever...
Of course, Plutos only do things for their own amusement. And this was left ENTIRELY up to
them. You can imagine that the results probably weren't very pleasant for our budding otaku.
The next and final phase of his entrance into the Sekai no Ecchi materialized on a random
day as he walked down the street near his house. He strolled along, whistling "Blue Moon" by
The Marcels-
-and suddenly he was free-falling in midair, and normally he'd have been screaming "WHAT THE
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK?" but he was too surprised to do much more than stare blankly as he
soared through the blue skies and the ground raced towards him faster and faster. Or maybe
he raced towards it, but he was too spooked to care, and he also didn't notice that his
clothes had changed into the very outfit he wore that first day at Otakon, the Star Wars
fanboy garb, and as he got closer to the ground, he saw what seemed like a lake racing up
at him, and it was directly underneath him, and he was going to land in it pretty soon so
hopefully it would keep him from dying or something and-
SPLASH!
He was alive, and he was soaked, and as he shook off himself his hair whipped around his
head, and-
"Wait a minute, what the fuck?" he exclaimed as the offending hair appeared in his vision.
It was a braid. He tugged on it. Yep, it was definitely attached to his head, he thought
as he checked.
Mark climbed out of the lake, in the process looking down at himself... or more accurately,
in the process looking at herself. Yep, they were real, he thought as he checked.
"Well, shit," she said as she continued to walk away from the pool-
-and then stepped off the side of a plateau that she didn't know was there, falling again
through the air where she passed someone who'd been punted who conveniently hit her with
warm water and made him his real gender again, and then he kept falling towards the ground,
where there looked like there were houses and trees and a street and people were walking
down the street and he was yelling really loud as he got close to the ground and-
***
For the Ecchi no Hime-chan, life was pretty good. She was the heir to the female side of the
throne of her own world, she had a bunch of friends, and she had an adoring bunch of fans.
As she walked down the sidewalk on a bright and sunshiny afternoon in the Sekai no Ecchi,
she heard some screaming above her but ignored it. Life, she decided, could only be any
better if a boyfriend fell out of the sky.
"AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH! GET OUT OF THE WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYY!" the voice was screaming
as Mark hurtled down from the skies straight at Kate.
She was too busy daydreaming to hear him, and thus the inevitable CRASH!
Mark groaned from his place on the ground in a tangled mass of fanboy and fangirl body
parts. His luck could get no worse, he was sure. Falling from a stable life into the
Nyannichuan spring (that is, the Spring of Drowned Girl), and then stepping out of that
and falling further, straight into someone that he probably didn't even want to meet but
ended up having the worst possible icebreaker with them. He reached a hand around to grab
onto the ground to stand himself up...
"Wait a second, the ground doesn't squish..." he said, then blushed as he realized what he
did. "Uh, I'm sor-"
Mark: Time out for a second. Now, consider that up until about sixty seconds ago, Mark was
strolling along, oblivious to the existence of the Sekai no Ecchi. Consider that through
no fault of his own did he find himself falling through the sky to be cursed by a Jusenkyo
spring within the first thirty seconds of his arrival, and through no fault of his own did
he then hurtle through the skies to crash-land into a day-dreaming Kate-chan. Also through
no fault of his own did he end up groping said Kate-chan. Will he find a rational and
understanding person? Time in.
"WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU, HENTAI?!" screamed Kate-chan as she launched off of the ground and
smote Mark so hard that he flew backwards and crashed against a nearby tree. She brushed
herself off, gave an arrogant female "Hmph", and walked away.
Mark: Beginnings are so humble, aren't they?
For his part, Mark had the grace to look embarrassed. He stood up and patted the dust off
of himself, still having no clue what in the Nine Hells was going on.
"My name's Mark..." he extended his hand out towards the stalking femme (who was out of
earshot), "...what's yours?"
He shook his head as Kate-chan walked off, wondering to himself, 'What the fuck is going
on around here?'
The voice in his head answered him. 'Welcome to the Sekai no Ecchi. Keep your seatbelt
buckled and your ass on a chair, or else you'll crash and get fucked.'
"Nice to know," Mark mumbled, then walked off in the opposite direction of the brunette
he had inadvertently fallen onto.
Somewhere at the Gate of Time, a Pluto with pink eyes cackled insanely. "Mission
accomplished!" she gleefully proclaimed to the empty expanse.
***
Later that day - or at least, he was pretty sure that it was that same day because the sun
set - Mark found himself wandering around a mostly empty expanse of wooded area, getting
increasingly more frustrated at his new surroundings that he knew absolutely nothing about.
So far he had figured out a few things.
Thing 1: He wasn't in Kansas anymore, Toto.
Thing 2: His clothes had changed on his 'arrival' into wherever the hell this was.
Thing 3: He now seemed to be a magnet for water of any temperature.
Thing 4: The place was real, yet the place also had anime characters in it.
He reached out and slammed his fist into a tree trunk in frustration. To his amazement, the
tree listed, then toppled and fell to the ground. He stared at his hand in awe. That, he
decided, certainly wasn't normal.
"Ha," he said to no one in particular. "Who am I, Ranma?" It was intended as a joke, but
once he thought about it for a second he fell over right quick. Which was when a hilt jammed
into his stomach. Closer inspection revealed it to be a scabbard for a sword. "You've got
to be kidding me..."
His hand strayed to grasp the handle that stuck out of the scabbard. He paused, a gasp
escaping his lips. Suddenly it seemed like Mark KNEW what to do with that sword. His feet
shifted to a position used by Kenshin for battoujutsu. "Whoa," he said to the wilderness
around him.
The fanboy-turned-swordsman scanned his surroundings, looking for something he could use to
see if he really did have some sudden knowledge of sword techniques. A tree next to the one
he'd just inadvertently downed looked like a pretty good target.
In the blink of an eye he sprang forward as the sword was drawn. Something in the back of
his mind noticed that the sword was a sakaba-tou, and in an even shorter time he had spun
it around so the sharp edge faced front. Yelling loudly, he whipped the sword around and it
slashed through the thick tree trunk effortlessly. With an idle thought Mark stuck out a
foot and sprang backwards off of the falling trunk to land near where he started. The tree
fell over much in the same way as the one he had punched.
That, he decided, was pretty damn cool.
Sword in hand - left hand, of course - he walked around, looking for trouble for perhaps the
first time of his life. Considering his journey was under the watchful eye of a Pluto, it
was not long in coming.
"This is injustice!" he heard a voice shout as he walked along. "Toppling trees is for the
weak!"
If Mark didn't know any better, he'd have sworn that Chang Wufei was about to come waltzing
around the corner. But obviously that couldn't be, because Wufei was a cartoon character
and they couldn't be real, could they?
Around the same time it occurred to him that if he could have the same curse as Ranma
Saotome, and wield a sword in the Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu, then there probably wasn't anything
too weird about having one of the Gundam Wing boys roll up and start stepping on his turf.
Not like it changed the fact that Wufei was now standing next to him or anything.
"Hey, are you listening to me?" the pilot of the Altron Gundam demanded. "Silence is for
the weak!"
"Look pal," Mark said in a level tone, "I don't have time to deal with this shit right now.
I just fucking got here a few hours ago and I have no clue where the fuck I am, why the fuck
I'm here, or why the fuck YOU'RE here, and especially not why you're in my personal space."
"Don't you curse at me, weakling!"
Wufei leapt at him with a fist extended. Mark leaned his torso back and yawned, causing
Wufei to fly right past where his upper body had been a second ago. The Gundam pilot also
ended up smashing into a tree.
"Just leave me alone, and I'm not going to test out more of my l33t sk33lz on you."
Another Wufei rush. The fanboy jumped up in the air to look at a butterfly, which caused
Wufei to run straight under him and smash into another tree.
The pilot pulled out a gun at that point.
"Tsk tsk," our hero scolded. "Now I have to get mad... HITEN MITSURUGI RYU! RYU TSUI SEN!"
Impossibly fast, he soared into the air, sword drawn, flat side pointing out, then came down
in with wicked gravity-aided momentum, and cracked down on Wufei's head.
Mark clapped his hands and sheathed the sakaba-tou, then turned to walk away.
"I'm not done... yet..." Wufei proclaimed in a heavy voice, as he slowly clambered to his
feet.
"Dammit, won't you just go away? I'm about to get-"
Wufei rushed him again.
He sighed. "-mad."
The Chinese pilot came dashing forward. Mark simply stood there with a blank look on his
face, until suddenly he called out, "KACHUU TENSHIN AMAGURIKEN!" With unbelievable speed and
precision his fists darted out and struck Wufei dozens and dozens of times in his torso,
arms, and neck. The defeated one flew through the air and slammed into a tree, which toppled
on impact.
Mark: Hey, look, I'm just going to end this scene before the environmentalists are all over
my ass, 'cause that's the third tree I've taken out and all. Sorry.
Mark shrugged as he walked off the way Wufei had come. "I guess I am Ranma," he decided.
Looking back at the beating he had wrought on Wufei, he almost felt guilty for a second, but
then he said to himself, "Well... he's had it coming for a while."
'Damn right he has,' the voice in his head echoed.
For once, Mark and it were in perfect agreement.
***
Watching all of this from the palace of the Sekai no Ecchi were the two masterminds of it
all - the Jo'o-sama and DS themselves. Considering it was Angie's world and all, she could
watch events that were going on through a crystal ball in one of the rooms of the palace. It
was a centerpoint of convergence for all events, or something like that. She never really
thought of why it worked, just that she could spy on anyone at any time.
Naturally, at some times, it was more amusing than at other times. She chuckled at one
memory in particular...
Shinji: (on knees) But Lita! I love you! How can you walk away from me?
Makoto: How many more times to I have to tell you to piss off, AND THAT MY NAME IS MAKOTO?!
Shinji: But I... But...
Makoto: BAKA! (punts Shinji)
Shinji: KYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! (flies through the roof and off into space)
...of course, other times she just didn't want to know...
Mark: But since this story is about me, I'm not going to tell you about that one. Ha!
Either way, watching as Mark stumbled his way through the Sekai no Ecchi was quite amusing.
Yeah, she winced a bit when he fell into the spring, until she thought about all of the
ecchi possibilities. But, she was all laughs as Mark hurtled through the sky and
accidentally groped Kate-chan. And as the scene with Mark giving Wufei a good beatdown
unfolded, both she and the Ecchi Lord were impressed with the prowess of the newcomer.
So impressed that they launched into rapid dialogue!
DS: The Perv is strong with this one...
Angie: Hai hai! ^^ Moogie must court Kate-chan! Moogie must end the reign of Pokemon terror!
DS: Don't you think he needs to figure out where the fuck he is first?
Angie: He shall learn. He shall perservere.
DS: (sigh) Yare yare. He has to find his way here eventually.
Angie: (looking into crystal ball) Of course! Where do you think Pinky is leading him?
DS: Where does she figure into this?
Angie: Oh, I'm letting her pretend to be a voice in his head.
DS: (wince) He is of sterner stuff than even I first thought...
Angie: Hey, she's not THAT bad... (trails off) Okay, so yes she is, but she gets the job
done.
DS: How much longer until he gets here?
Angie: Hm... unless I miss my guess, right about... (knocking in distance) now.
DS: Impressive. Most impressive.
On the other side of the palace, the door was opened for Mark by Hino Rei. He stared at her
a second, as much at it being Hino Rei in the flesh as it being a stunningly attractive
female in the flesh.
After a minute's pause, he said, "Aren't you going to say 'Who the fuck are you?'"
The Shinto priestess laughed at him. "No, you're Mark, and you're expected. Come on." With
that she led him through the palace towards Angie and DS (although he didn't know that was
where he was going).
"Nice place," he remarked, at a loss for anything else to say as he walked through the
massive hallways.
"It's a lot of fun," Rei replied mischievously, and Mark immediately decided that he didn't
want to know.
He was right, of course. Though he didn't yet know that the palace belonged to Angie, and
even if he did know that he didn't yet know the ecchi nature of Angie, he still got the
feeling it would be better off not to ask. Luckily Rei didn't give details and break his
poor head at that crucial juncture.
"The Jo'o-sama will see you now," she informed him as they reached a grand-looking chamber,
then turned and disappeared back into the depths.
Mark called after her, "Who is Jo'o-sama?" but she either didn't hear him or didn't answer
him. He shrugged and opened one of the huge doors before him, stepping straight into rapid
dialogue.
DS and Angie: MOOGIE!
Mark: What the fuck? How did you guys get here?
DS: We're always here, Moogie!
Angie: How did YOU get here?
Mark: (deep breath) Well, nothing too out of the ordinary, unless you count falling through
a sidewalk and hurtling through the air and splashing into a cursed spring, then stepping
out of that and falling off of a ledge and being splashed with warm water and then falling
on some chick I'd never seen before in my life and being kicked into a tree by said chick.
Angie: Hm... that's the last time I'll leave something entirely up to the Plutos...
Mark: (blinks) Plutos?
DS: Setsuna, we unworthy peons require your services...
Setsuna: (strolls in with an omniscient aura) You called?
Angie: New guy. (points towards Mark) Give him the run-down.
Setsuna: Okay... well, you know how I'm Sailor Pluto?
Mark: (nodding slowly) Yeah...
Setsuna: The idea is that each universe that exists has it's own Pluto. Mine does, yours
does, and every other one does. They have, ah, varying degrees of sanity, to say the least.
Mark: This relating to me being here, how?
Setsuna: This place, the Sekai no Ecchi, was created by Angie over there. Which meant that
there wasn't a specific Pluto to mess with her, so... the entire lot of them have their fun.
Mark: (blinks) I don't get it.
Setsuna: (sigh) Know your Murphy?
Mark: Everyone knows the Murphster.
Setsuna: He's your world's Pluto. And this world? It has infinite Plutos. And they were
responsible for getting you here.
Mark: (falls over) Fuck, no wonder it was a nightmare.
Setsuna: Yes, well... others have had it worse.
Angie: No they haven't. We just had to make sure Moogie was worthy for our li'l
Hime-chan. ^^
Mark: Who?
DS: Never mind...
Setsuna: Well, if that's all, I will be going. (exits with omniscient aura in tow)
DS: Thank you!
Mark: Uh... so why am I here again?
DS: Because we want you to be here, baka!
Mark: What about home?
Angie: Oh, that. They won't miss you. See, you simultaneously exist here and there now.
Mark: How does that work?
Angie: I dunno, it does. Trust me. ^^
Mark: (shudder) Well, if that's it, I'll just be going.
DS: We'll find you when we need you, Moogie! And you'll find us if you need us.
Mark: See you around, then.
Without any further adieu he cleared out of there before anything else weird could happen.
As he left, the palace doors came closed behind him with a bang and he walked off into the
sunset.
"Guess I may as well make the best of it."
***
And that, people, is how I came to be in the Sekai no Ecchi with the unique affliction of
being an aquatransexual.
You want to know what happens next? Well stay tuned! The best is yet to come!
***
End.
4/25/02
Notes:
1. Hard to believe it's been almost two years since I met Angie, DS, and Scott at Otakon in
2000. Believe it or not, they actually did plan to hook me up with Kate from when they first
had met me like that.
2. We've been planning to have me as an official part of the cast for a while, but after the
disaster that started as the Halloweenfic, became "The Readwolf Affair" and then just kind
of died, it hasn't 'officially' happened in Plutos continuity yet, so I wrote this fic.
3. This has been the first thing we've put out for the public in ages, but hopefully that
will change now... *glares at those responsible for finishing up Season One*
4. Keep reading! The best really is yet to come! :)
So I thought my life was at least somewhat normal back in the day. I thought
that I had seen a lot of weird stuff in my life - which I had, but only weird
stuff that I thought was weird before I came to the Sekai no Ecchi.
I can hear you people in the audience, asking, "What the fuck is the Sekai no
Ecchi?"
To answer that question, I have to tell you a story. The story of a guy
who was in high school who met up with an ecchi Queen, a Goth lord, and a
wimp. Naturally, it wasn't just any ecchi Queen, Goth lord, and wimp... it
was Angie, DS, and Shinji.
Before I start on my tale I'd like to note that it is mine, so I will be taking
some poetic licenses. I'm not going to tell my story in first person - deal.
The guy you all know as Scott, I'm going to call him Shinji. Why? Because that's
how they introduced him to me, and it's a funnier name.
It all began in the summer of 2000, at Otakon, the Convention of the Otaku
Generation...
===============================================================
"When Plutos Attack!"
Concept by Scott "Cyclops" Summerton and Emporess
This tale by Moogle (moogle@fanforce.net)
Side Story - "A New Hope" or "How The Fuck Did I Get This Damn Curse, Anyway?"
===============================================================
The young man ran his hand through his hair and sighed. Procrastinating, he
realized not for the first time, always came back to bite you in the ass at
the end.
In this particular case, he'd been procrastinating telling his parents that
he was going to go into Baltimore for the weekend and hang out with a bunch
of anime fans. He'd also failed to tell them yet that he was going to be staying
in a hotel room being paid for by someone he'd never met before. In fact, the
only person he knew who was staying there was a girl who he knew online but had
never really talked to before then.
He laid back on his bed and stared up at the ceiling, whistling "Dr. Worm" by
They Might Be Giants--
Mark: Look, shut up, okay? I know that I didn't hear of They Might Be Giants until
I went to Otakon, but I said this is my story and I'm taking poetic licenses!
He laid back on his bed and stared up at the ceiling, whistling the main theme to
Star Wars. It was something that he tended to do a lot when he ended up backing himself
a corner that he had to slickly play himself out of, something that he frequently
did. In a strange way it kept his life from being boring.
Mark Brown, a blooming anime fan, longtime Star Wars fan, and novice player of
Dungeons and Dragons, sighed again as he stood up and walked downstairs. It was time
that he informed his parents that he was going.
Strolling down the steps in the suburban house, he called out, "Hey Mom, Dad?"
Silence answered him. He called out again, "Uh, anyone home?"
"Yeah, doofus," replied his sister from where she was sitting and typing away on the
computer, "but not Mom and Dad, 'cause they went to the store."
"Oh."
The soon-to-be-otaku whirled and headed back up the stairs, one middle finger extended
towards the sky on general principle.
"Screw you too, Murphy," he added as an afterthought.
He could always count on Murphy, if nothing else.
***
Three hours and two hundred pages later, the door opened downstairs - his parents were
home, it appeared. It was as much the fact that he knew no one else was gone to come home
as his Mom shouting, "We're home, kids!" when they walked in the door that tipped him in
to who it was.
Though, of course he couldn't go bother them right away, because you never go bother them
right away. You wait for them to settle down, so they're not still pissed off about
something that happened on the road, or the stupid cashier at the store who can't count
change. Right when they've sat down, flicked on the TV or picked up their book, and
just want everyone to go away so they can relax.
"Hey, Mom?"
Which was precisely what Mark did on that Thursday afternoon. Right when his mom was
settling down to read her book, and would say anything for him to go away and let her
be in peace, was when he struck.
Fasten your seatbelts - rapid dialogue time!
Mark's Mom: "What is it, Mark?"
Mark: "You didn't have anything you wanted me to do this weekend, did you?"
Mark's Mom: "No, why?"
Mark: "There was this thing downtown that I kind of wanted to go to..."
Mark's Mom: "That sounds great! Why don't you have Daddy drive you on his way to work?"
Mark: "Er... really?"
Mark's Mom: "Sure!"
Okay, so maybe that wasn't very much rapid dialogue after all.
The stunned teenager turned and walked upstairs. If procrastinating was always this easy,
he idly thought as he bounded two steps at a time, then it can probably be done more often.
He'd come to regret those words when it was time for his Senior Year English Term Paper,
but THAT is another story entirely...
***
It was later that evening that events were set in motion that would change the fate
of the world as everyone knew it. It all began with a phone call. One tiny ripple in
the pool that was known as the history of the world, that would change the essence of
all things, and thus the existence of all things. For the pool sits, waiting, for just
that one pebble to be thrown into the pond...
Mark: What? Okay, fine, I'm stopping the deep philosophical shit.
Later that evening, while he was again in his room, the phone rang.
"Moshi-moshi?" Mark answered.
Mark: Of course I know that I didn't even know what moshi-moshi meant then, but doesn't
it sound cooler than "Hello?" Fine, fine, you win... (under breath) Asshole.
The teenager reached over and grabbed up the phone on the first ring, not wanting anyone
else to answer the phone.
"Hello?" Mark answered.
"Hi, is Mark there?" was the reply.
"Yep, that's me," came the reply to the reply.
Fuck it, dialogue sucks. Rapid dialogue time again.
Caller: Hi, it's Amber.
Mark: Oh, hey! I was waiting to hear back from you.
Amber: Got a pen and paper? I have the hotel stuff...
Mark: Uh, right, hold on. (fumbles with stuff, fetches pen and paper) Got it.
Mark's Dad: Hello?
Mark: (sweatdrop) Dad, I have the phone already.
Mark's Dad: Oh, okay. (click)
Amber: Your dad is strange...
Mark: Yeah. I know.
Amber: Anyway, we're in the Tremont Plaza Hotel. Do you know where that is?
Mark: No clue. I can look it up though. What room?
Amber: 1407.
Mark: Okay. Uh... when do you want me to get there?
Amber: (yelling off phone) ANGIE! When should Mark come tomorrow?
Angie: WHO THE FUCK IS MARK?!
Amber: The guy you said could stay in the room?
Angie: Oh! Him. Tell him to come when we're getting ready to go to the con.
Amber: (back on phone) She says come around nine tomorrow.
Mark: Cool... see you then!
Amber: Bye!
Rapid dialogue faded back into reality as Mark hung up the phone. Speaking of reality, it
finally sank in that he was going to an anime convention and hanging out with people. As
he suddenly remembered he needed to get directions to the hotel, he sprang off of his bed
and ran downstairs to print out directions.
***
The black-clad figure raised an eyebrow as he heard a phone click down on the receiver
elsewhere. The Perv had been quiet lately, until just now, in fact. He felt something, a
presence he'd not felt since...
"Angie," he started suddenly.
"What's up, DS?" replied the Ota-Ecchi-Queen in her usual genki tone.
"I wonder... who the fuck is 'Mark'?" There was a suspicious tone to his voice, as
though he thought there was something false about the guy who was coming to stay in the
room the next day.
"Dunno," Angie said, as she didn't yet know the importance of everything. "Some dude."
DS, the Lord of Things That Go Bump In The Night, grunted. "I've got a feeling about him...
It's a feeling I've got deep in my gut..."
Angie laughed as she shook her head. "It's your ulcers again, asshole."
DS grinned and said, "I guess so." But he didn't really believe her.
Wait until the morning, he thought to himself, then she'll see.
***
The morning came, and as with every morning, there were a whole bunch of things that
might have happened. Mark might have never been able to make it to the city. He might have
somehow never found Angie and company.
Not that any of them knew yet what was to come from the meeting of Mark and Angie, but
always there are might-have-beens.
At the time, Mark was walking down a street in Baltimore, towards a hotel he'd never been
to, where he was going to meet people who he had never before seen in his life, then go to
a convention with thousands of other people that he had never seen before and would never
see ever again. Except at the next year's convention, but of course he didn't know that
then.
With that settled, he adjusted the Star Wars bucket hat that rested on his head, and turned
to walk into the lobby of the Tremont Plaza Hotel as he passed it on the street.
He noticed first that it was air conditioned, a definite plus considering it was shaping up
to be a hot and humid August day in Baltimore. It's quite hard to go wrong with an air
conditioner in the summer.
The second thing that he noticed was that the place was huge. Like thirty stories huge.
Coming to his mind third was that he was there twenty minutes early, so he sat down in the
lobby in a huge comfortable chair and finished reading his Star Wars book from the day
before.
Before he was even really aware of it, twenty-five minutes passed.
'Guess it's time to get on the elevator,' he told himself.
'No shit, Sherlock!' His self, or what he thought was himself, responded.
'Hey, who the fuck are you? Why are you talking back to me?'
'You'd be a smartass to someone like yourself, too.' He'd have sworn his self wore a smirk.
'Look, I'm not going to take this shit. I'll throw your ass right out of there.'
'Just get on the damn elevator, you moron.'
'Heheheheheh... ehehehe... heheh... heh... right.'
Having been brutally smacked down by his own whatever-the-fuck-that-was, he stood up and
walked over to the elevators in the hotel. He pressed the button to summon an elevator to
take him upwards, then stood back to take a look at the little monitor that told him where
each of the three elevators was.
Mark: Yes, there really was a monitor that showed that. It was the coolest thing I'd ever
seen before. Well, not really, but you know how that goes. You don't? Fuck's sake, LEARN
TO RECOGNIZE EXAGGERATION, ASSHOLE. Anyway.
Before long came a noise - DING! - as one of the elevators reached the ground floor and
opened up doors. Elevator music greeted him inside, his lone external companion on the
fourteen floor journey upwards. There was still the issue of his self, whom he was quickly
starting to think was a complete bastard.
"Here I am," he proclaimed to his reflection in the brass plating of the elevator interior,
"being spontaneous and adventurous. And I have a crazy voice in my head."
'I'm the crazy one? Hey, you're the one who is going to stay in a hotel room with people
you've never met before,' retorted the voice.
Grudgingly, the Star Wars fanboy had to concede the point.
Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately,) since he was on the trip up the elevator, it didn't
make any stops on the way to the fourteenth floor, and thus he was at the top within
fairly short order.
A DING! announced the arrival of the elevator on the 14th floor, and the fanboy stepped
out. He gulped and took a step outside of the elevator.
Then he kicked himself for being dramatic about stepping out of a freaking elevator because
it was just the hallway of the floor, not the room of the people he was staying with.
Mark took a brief moment to get his bearings. Room 1407 seemed to be in the corner of the
hallway, so he strolled over to it and paused as though he looked like he was considering
something. But no, he wasn't, he just knocked right after a brief pause.
It sounded like there was groaning coming from inside, but that couldn't have been right
because he was assured that they would be leaving for the convention around now. Probably
just caught them on their way out, he thought to himself with relief.
The door unlocked and cracked open just a bit, and someone who wasn't Amber (because he'd
seen Amber's picture before and could tell this wasn't her) stuck her head out and gave him
the Evil Eye.
"Who the fuck are you?" she demanded.
Now, pessimist that he was, Mark was expecting some crazy shit to happen from meeting people
he knew (or didn't know) online. It wasn't something he'd done every day, or ever, for that
matter. As such he'd considered a lot of things that might happen. None of them, however,
consisted of the first words being spoken to him being "Who the fuck are you?"
"Uh... hi," he managed, lamely. "I'm Mark..." This gave him a blank look. "Uh... the guy
who you said could stay in the room?"
"Oh, hey. I'm Angie. Come on in."
As the door swung open a bit more, Mark stepped into the hotel room, and thus began his
first convention experience. Little did he know it then, but it would also alter the fate
of his life.
***
Otakon 2000 was an adventure in and of itself for our budding otaku, and while more than a
few tales could be spun about various adventures and misadventures during the con, this fic
is not being written about Otakon 2000, it's just using it as a jumping point for shit to
happen. So none of you get to hear about the parts that don't matter, which includes MAT3K,
sleeping on the floor next to a lesbian, and trying to dance to the Child's Toy opening
song.
Mark: I'd better not hear any whining, or I'll have to start killing people. Don't think I'm
kidding! You know I'm unstable.
The next day, after Shinji had arrived late from the airport, and Mark had been introduced
to the gang and gotten to interact with them, a discussion took place that forever altered
the world of two teenagers.
While the other occupants of the room - Amber, Vera, Sana-chan, and Mark himself - were out
doing various things at the con, DS, Angie, and Shinji found themselves discussing the new
male who had happened into their lives.
Yes, that's right, it was a rapid dialogue discussion!
DS: What do you guys think of Moogie?
Shinji: He seems kinda quiet to me.
DS: You'd be quiet too around a bunch of people you'd never met before, baka-boi.
Shinji: Maybe...
Angie: (gets a wicked look) ...
DS: That look frightens me.
Shinji: Yeah, me too!
DS: Everything frightens you, Scott!
Shinji: Oh, yeah.
Angie: I just had an idea!
Shinji: Run away! Run away! Angie has an idea!
Angie: (smites Shinji, who flies out the window) Baka.
Shinji: KYAAAAAAAAAAA! (falling fourteen stories) *CRUNCH!* (hits the ground and is run over
by a taxi)
DS: That must have hurt.
Angie: Nah, Shinji's got the eternally cursed luck, he never dies.
DS: So... what's your idea?
Angie: Moogie and Hime-chan.
DS: KAWAII!
Shinji: (from the pavement) kawa*hack*ii
Angie: (beam) That's what I thought, too!
DS: (raises an eyebrow) But how are you going to pull it off...?
Angie: Well, you know how Plutos like having more people to torture...
DS: That's cruel!
Angie: ^_^v Love is all you need!
DS: Now that you mention it, I figured out what that feeling was from Thursday...
Angie: And?
DS: It was Moogie. He is to be the next Ecch-i Knight. He is The One.
Angie: Excellent... then, we have found a new hope.
And that was that, really. Though neither of the two of them knew it, their fates were ever
sealed.
***
Months passed. Plans were hatched, hammered out, scrapped, reborn, reworked, trashed,
created, edited, and finalized. Well, maybe not finalized. As Angie indicated, the Plutos
would be more than happy to bring another player into their eternal game of character
torture, and were willing to cooperate once she presented them a plan. That was just the
problem, though, because she and DS couldn't seem to agree on a single idea in their shared
brain. In the end, she left it in the Plutos' hands, as long as she got her desired results.
Mark: And I got fucked over hardcore.
Hey, shut the fuck up, someone is telling a story here!
Mark: Don't tell me to shut the fuck up! You're me, and this is my story!
Quit making sense, asshole.
Mark: Whatever...
Of course, Plutos only do things for their own amusement. And this was left ENTIRELY up to
them. You can imagine that the results probably weren't very pleasant for our budding otaku.
The next and final phase of his entrance into the Sekai no Ecchi materialized on a random
day as he walked down the street near his house. He strolled along, whistling "Blue Moon" by
The Marcels-
-and suddenly he was free-falling in midair, and normally he'd have been screaming "WHAT THE
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK?" but he was too surprised to do much more than stare blankly as he
soared through the blue skies and the ground raced towards him faster and faster. Or maybe
he raced towards it, but he was too spooked to care, and he also didn't notice that his
clothes had changed into the very outfit he wore that first day at Otakon, the Star Wars
fanboy garb, and as he got closer to the ground, he saw what seemed like a lake racing up
at him, and it was directly underneath him, and he was going to land in it pretty soon so
hopefully it would keep him from dying or something and-
SPLASH!
He was alive, and he was soaked, and as he shook off himself his hair whipped around his
head, and-
"Wait a minute, what the fuck?" he exclaimed as the offending hair appeared in his vision.
It was a braid. He tugged on it. Yep, it was definitely attached to his head, he thought
as he checked.
Mark climbed out of the lake, in the process looking down at himself... or more accurately,
in the process looking at herself. Yep, they were real, he thought as he checked.
"Well, shit," she said as she continued to walk away from the pool-
-and then stepped off the side of a plateau that she didn't know was there, falling again
through the air where she passed someone who'd been punted who conveniently hit her with
warm water and made him his real gender again, and then he kept falling towards the ground,
where there looked like there were houses and trees and a street and people were walking
down the street and he was yelling really loud as he got close to the ground and-
***
For the Ecchi no Hime-chan, life was pretty good. She was the heir to the female side of the
throne of her own world, she had a bunch of friends, and she had an adoring bunch of fans.
As she walked down the sidewalk on a bright and sunshiny afternoon in the Sekai no Ecchi,
she heard some screaming above her but ignored it. Life, she decided, could only be any
better if a boyfriend fell out of the sky.
"AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH! GET OUT OF THE WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYY!" the voice was screaming
as Mark hurtled down from the skies straight at Kate.
She was too busy daydreaming to hear him, and thus the inevitable CRASH!
Mark groaned from his place on the ground in a tangled mass of fanboy and fangirl body
parts. His luck could get no worse, he was sure. Falling from a stable life into the
Nyannichuan spring (that is, the Spring of Drowned Girl), and then stepping out of that
and falling further, straight into someone that he probably didn't even want to meet but
ended up having the worst possible icebreaker with them. He reached a hand around to grab
onto the ground to stand himself up...
"Wait a second, the ground doesn't squish..." he said, then blushed as he realized what he
did. "Uh, I'm sor-"
Mark: Time out for a second. Now, consider that up until about sixty seconds ago, Mark was
strolling along, oblivious to the existence of the Sekai no Ecchi. Consider that through
no fault of his own did he find himself falling through the sky to be cursed by a Jusenkyo
spring within the first thirty seconds of his arrival, and through no fault of his own did
he then hurtle through the skies to crash-land into a day-dreaming Kate-chan. Also through
no fault of his own did he end up groping said Kate-chan. Will he find a rational and
understanding person? Time in.
"WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU, HENTAI?!" screamed Kate-chan as she launched off of the ground and
smote Mark so hard that he flew backwards and crashed against a nearby tree. She brushed
herself off, gave an arrogant female "Hmph", and walked away.
Mark: Beginnings are so humble, aren't they?
For his part, Mark had the grace to look embarrassed. He stood up and patted the dust off
of himself, still having no clue what in the Nine Hells was going on.
"My name's Mark..." he extended his hand out towards the stalking femme (who was out of
earshot), "...what's yours?"
He shook his head as Kate-chan walked off, wondering to himself, 'What the fuck is going
on around here?'
The voice in his head answered him. 'Welcome to the Sekai no Ecchi. Keep your seatbelt
buckled and your ass on a chair, or else you'll crash and get fucked.'
"Nice to know," Mark mumbled, then walked off in the opposite direction of the brunette
he had inadvertently fallen onto.
Somewhere at the Gate of Time, a Pluto with pink eyes cackled insanely. "Mission
accomplished!" she gleefully proclaimed to the empty expanse.
***
Later that day - or at least, he was pretty sure that it was that same day because the sun
set - Mark found himself wandering around a mostly empty expanse of wooded area, getting
increasingly more frustrated at his new surroundings that he knew absolutely nothing about.
So far he had figured out a few things.
Thing 1: He wasn't in Kansas anymore, Toto.
Thing 2: His clothes had changed on his 'arrival' into wherever the hell this was.
Thing 3: He now seemed to be a magnet for water of any temperature.
Thing 4: The place was real, yet the place also had anime characters in it.
He reached out and slammed his fist into a tree trunk in frustration. To his amazement, the
tree listed, then toppled and fell to the ground. He stared at his hand in awe. That, he
decided, certainly wasn't normal.
"Ha," he said to no one in particular. "Who am I, Ranma?" It was intended as a joke, but
once he thought about it for a second he fell over right quick. Which was when a hilt jammed
into his stomach. Closer inspection revealed it to be a scabbard for a sword. "You've got
to be kidding me..."
His hand strayed to grasp the handle that stuck out of the scabbard. He paused, a gasp
escaping his lips. Suddenly it seemed like Mark KNEW what to do with that sword. His feet
shifted to a position used by Kenshin for battoujutsu. "Whoa," he said to the wilderness
around him.
The fanboy-turned-swordsman scanned his surroundings, looking for something he could use to
see if he really did have some sudden knowledge of sword techniques. A tree next to the one
he'd just inadvertently downed looked like a pretty good target.
In the blink of an eye he sprang forward as the sword was drawn. Something in the back of
his mind noticed that the sword was a sakaba-tou, and in an even shorter time he had spun
it around so the sharp edge faced front. Yelling loudly, he whipped the sword around and it
slashed through the thick tree trunk effortlessly. With an idle thought Mark stuck out a
foot and sprang backwards off of the falling trunk to land near where he started. The tree
fell over much in the same way as the one he had punched.
That, he decided, was pretty damn cool.
Sword in hand - left hand, of course - he walked around, looking for trouble for perhaps the
first time of his life. Considering his journey was under the watchful eye of a Pluto, it
was not long in coming.
"This is injustice!" he heard a voice shout as he walked along. "Toppling trees is for the
weak!"
If Mark didn't know any better, he'd have sworn that Chang Wufei was about to come waltzing
around the corner. But obviously that couldn't be, because Wufei was a cartoon character
and they couldn't be real, could they?
Around the same time it occurred to him that if he could have the same curse as Ranma
Saotome, and wield a sword in the Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu, then there probably wasn't anything
too weird about having one of the Gundam Wing boys roll up and start stepping on his turf.
Not like it changed the fact that Wufei was now standing next to him or anything.
"Hey, are you listening to me?" the pilot of the Altron Gundam demanded. "Silence is for
the weak!"
"Look pal," Mark said in a level tone, "I don't have time to deal with this shit right now.
I just fucking got here a few hours ago and I have no clue where the fuck I am, why the fuck
I'm here, or why the fuck YOU'RE here, and especially not why you're in my personal space."
"Don't you curse at me, weakling!"
Wufei leapt at him with a fist extended. Mark leaned his torso back and yawned, causing
Wufei to fly right past where his upper body had been a second ago. The Gundam pilot also
ended up smashing into a tree.
"Just leave me alone, and I'm not going to test out more of my l33t sk33lz on you."
Another Wufei rush. The fanboy jumped up in the air to look at a butterfly, which caused
Wufei to run straight under him and smash into another tree.
The pilot pulled out a gun at that point.
"Tsk tsk," our hero scolded. "Now I have to get mad... HITEN MITSURUGI RYU! RYU TSUI SEN!"
Impossibly fast, he soared into the air, sword drawn, flat side pointing out, then came down
in with wicked gravity-aided momentum, and cracked down on Wufei's head.
Mark clapped his hands and sheathed the sakaba-tou, then turned to walk away.
"I'm not done... yet..." Wufei proclaimed in a heavy voice, as he slowly clambered to his
feet.
"Dammit, won't you just go away? I'm about to get-"
Wufei rushed him again.
He sighed. "-mad."
The Chinese pilot came dashing forward. Mark simply stood there with a blank look on his
face, until suddenly he called out, "KACHUU TENSHIN AMAGURIKEN!" With unbelievable speed and
precision his fists darted out and struck Wufei dozens and dozens of times in his torso,
arms, and neck. The defeated one flew through the air and slammed into a tree, which toppled
on impact.
Mark: Hey, look, I'm just going to end this scene before the environmentalists are all over
my ass, 'cause that's the third tree I've taken out and all. Sorry.
Mark shrugged as he walked off the way Wufei had come. "I guess I am Ranma," he decided.
Looking back at the beating he had wrought on Wufei, he almost felt guilty for a second, but
then he said to himself, "Well... he's had it coming for a while."
'Damn right he has,' the voice in his head echoed.
For once, Mark and it were in perfect agreement.
***
Watching all of this from the palace of the Sekai no Ecchi were the two masterminds of it
all - the Jo'o-sama and DS themselves. Considering it was Angie's world and all, she could
watch events that were going on through a crystal ball in one of the rooms of the palace. It
was a centerpoint of convergence for all events, or something like that. She never really
thought of why it worked, just that she could spy on anyone at any time.
Naturally, at some times, it was more amusing than at other times. She chuckled at one
memory in particular...
Shinji: (on knees) But Lita! I love you! How can you walk away from me?
Makoto: How many more times to I have to tell you to piss off, AND THAT MY NAME IS MAKOTO?!
Shinji: But I... But...
Makoto: BAKA! (punts Shinji)
Shinji: KYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! (flies through the roof and off into space)
...of course, other times she just didn't want to know...
Mark: But since this story is about me, I'm not going to tell you about that one. Ha!
Either way, watching as Mark stumbled his way through the Sekai no Ecchi was quite amusing.
Yeah, she winced a bit when he fell into the spring, until she thought about all of the
ecchi possibilities. But, she was all laughs as Mark hurtled through the sky and
accidentally groped Kate-chan. And as the scene with Mark giving Wufei a good beatdown
unfolded, both she and the Ecchi Lord were impressed with the prowess of the newcomer.
So impressed that they launched into rapid dialogue!
DS: The Perv is strong with this one...
Angie: Hai hai! ^^ Moogie must court Kate-chan! Moogie must end the reign of Pokemon terror!
DS: Don't you think he needs to figure out where the fuck he is first?
Angie: He shall learn. He shall perservere.
DS: (sigh) Yare yare. He has to find his way here eventually.
Angie: (looking into crystal ball) Of course! Where do you think Pinky is leading him?
DS: Where does she figure into this?
Angie: Oh, I'm letting her pretend to be a voice in his head.
DS: (wince) He is of sterner stuff than even I first thought...
Angie: Hey, she's not THAT bad... (trails off) Okay, so yes she is, but she gets the job
done.
DS: How much longer until he gets here?
Angie: Hm... unless I miss my guess, right about... (knocking in distance) now.
DS: Impressive. Most impressive.
On the other side of the palace, the door was opened for Mark by Hino Rei. He stared at her
a second, as much at it being Hino Rei in the flesh as it being a stunningly attractive
female in the flesh.
After a minute's pause, he said, "Aren't you going to say 'Who the fuck are you?'"
The Shinto priestess laughed at him. "No, you're Mark, and you're expected. Come on." With
that she led him through the palace towards Angie and DS (although he didn't know that was
where he was going).
"Nice place," he remarked, at a loss for anything else to say as he walked through the
massive hallways.
"It's a lot of fun," Rei replied mischievously, and Mark immediately decided that he didn't
want to know.
He was right, of course. Though he didn't yet know that the palace belonged to Angie, and
even if he did know that he didn't yet know the ecchi nature of Angie, he still got the
feeling it would be better off not to ask. Luckily Rei didn't give details and break his
poor head at that crucial juncture.
"The Jo'o-sama will see you now," she informed him as they reached a grand-looking chamber,
then turned and disappeared back into the depths.
Mark called after her, "Who is Jo'o-sama?" but she either didn't hear him or didn't answer
him. He shrugged and opened one of the huge doors before him, stepping straight into rapid
dialogue.
DS and Angie: MOOGIE!
Mark: What the fuck? How did you guys get here?
DS: We're always here, Moogie!
Angie: How did YOU get here?
Mark: (deep breath) Well, nothing too out of the ordinary, unless you count falling through
a sidewalk and hurtling through the air and splashing into a cursed spring, then stepping
out of that and falling off of a ledge and being splashed with warm water and then falling
on some chick I'd never seen before in my life and being kicked into a tree by said chick.
Angie: Hm... that's the last time I'll leave something entirely up to the Plutos...
Mark: (blinks) Plutos?
DS: Setsuna, we unworthy peons require your services...
Setsuna: (strolls in with an omniscient aura) You called?
Angie: New guy. (points towards Mark) Give him the run-down.
Setsuna: Okay... well, you know how I'm Sailor Pluto?
Mark: (nodding slowly) Yeah...
Setsuna: The idea is that each universe that exists has it's own Pluto. Mine does, yours
does, and every other one does. They have, ah, varying degrees of sanity, to say the least.
Mark: This relating to me being here, how?
Setsuna: This place, the Sekai no Ecchi, was created by Angie over there. Which meant that
there wasn't a specific Pluto to mess with her, so... the entire lot of them have their fun.
Mark: (blinks) I don't get it.
Setsuna: (sigh) Know your Murphy?
Mark: Everyone knows the Murphster.
Setsuna: He's your world's Pluto. And this world? It has infinite Plutos. And they were
responsible for getting you here.
Mark: (falls over) Fuck, no wonder it was a nightmare.
Setsuna: Yes, well... others have had it worse.
Angie: No they haven't. We just had to make sure Moogie was worthy for our li'l
Hime-chan. ^^
Mark: Who?
DS: Never mind...
Setsuna: Well, if that's all, I will be going. (exits with omniscient aura in tow)
DS: Thank you!
Mark: Uh... so why am I here again?
DS: Because we want you to be here, baka!
Mark: What about home?
Angie: Oh, that. They won't miss you. See, you simultaneously exist here and there now.
Mark: How does that work?
Angie: I dunno, it does. Trust me. ^^
Mark: (shudder) Well, if that's it, I'll just be going.
DS: We'll find you when we need you, Moogie! And you'll find us if you need us.
Mark: See you around, then.
Without any further adieu he cleared out of there before anything else weird could happen.
As he left, the palace doors came closed behind him with a bang and he walked off into the
sunset.
"Guess I may as well make the best of it."
***
And that, people, is how I came to be in the Sekai no Ecchi with the unique affliction of
being an aquatransexual.
You want to know what happens next? Well stay tuned! The best is yet to come!
***
End.
4/25/02
Notes:
1. Hard to believe it's been almost two years since I met Angie, DS, and Scott at Otakon in
2000. Believe it or not, they actually did plan to hook me up with Kate from when they first
had met me like that.
2. We've been planning to have me as an official part of the cast for a while, but after the
disaster that started as the Halloweenfic, became "The Readwolf Affair" and then just kind
of died, it hasn't 'officially' happened in Plutos continuity yet, so I wrote this fic.
3. This has been the first thing we've put out for the public in ages, but hopefully that
will change now... *glares at those responsible for finishing up Season One*
4. Keep reading! The best really is yet to come! :)