========
Aino Minako and Her Amazingly Fabulous Search For A Boyfriend
A Minakofic
Authors: Moogle (moogle@fanforce.net)
Kate B (duncan@avenew.com)
========
Epilogue - Duh?
***
SOME TIME LATER
It was an average day in the tranquil city of Tokyo. A Saturday morning much like
every other Saturday morning. Except for one thing. On this particular Saturday morning, a
certain blind old woman was visiting a relative in Kobe. This certain blind woman had her
grandson at the house, also not an unusual thing. The young man was dogsitting like he
always did. The difference between what would previously happen and that day, was that
recently the young man had been set up with a certain young woman who lived across the
street from the blind woman.
And so, on that day, this couple of newly-made lovebirds sat jointly housesitting
the house which had played such a big part in their lives in the previous months. Perhaps
sat is not an accurate word - more like curled up on the couch watching the TV, with the
aforementioned dogs sleeping on the floor near their feet.
As she sat on the couch, cuddled in the arms of her Perfect Man (tm), Minako
couldn't help but let loose a contented sigh. Somehow, just watching the noontime news
news with the person she loved the most made all the torment, screw-ups, and near-death
experiences - quite literally, in one case - worth it.
The blonde scowled as she recalled being mistaken for a prostitute. Make that
"almost worth it."
"This has been another edition of the Noon News of Juuban!" The anchorwoman on the
television smiled pleasantly, brushing her long brown hair from her green eyes. "Thank you
for joining us. See you next time!"
On the screen, the typically cheesy closing theme of a news station began playing
as credits quickly scrolled up.
The young woman looked up to her boyfriend with a smile on her face. "I had no idea
watching the news could be that entertaining," she admitted.
"Hey, what can I say? It's all in the company," replied Asai with mock arrogance.
"Quiet, you," Minako said, smiling wider as she softly whapped Asai on the arm.
"Don't hit too hard, the Coach might come after you."
"Coach can do his worst, I can take it as well as I can dish it-"
Without warning the TV volume suddenly increased for several seconds, interrupting
the argument. They stopped and heard, "Next is TV's Blind Date. Stay tuned!"
Asai and Minako groaned simultaneously, then turned to look at one another.
"What was that for?" both asked at the same time.
"You, first," Asai insisted.
"No, you," Minako shot back.
"Fine. Well, I was on that show once, is all. It sucked."
"Really? I was on there once, too. And it sucked for me, too."
A quiet spawned by curiosity descended over both of them. Neither was quite sure
what to say about it. By silent agreement they decided to watch the episode, just in case
either of them happened to be on that particular show.
The theme show music kicked in, then as the logo appeared across the screen, the
camera panned across the audience. For a brief second there was a shot of the three
contestants.
Asai sat on the right of the three of him. His screen-self was the only one that
Minako noticed.
"Huh. So it's the one that I'm on," he noted dryly.
Minako giggled.
The host, Zenjirou, went on with his spiel, the same as he did at the start of
every show. The studio audience began screaming at random intervals throughout his asking
questions and telling somewhat lame jokes. Then, as he began to introduce the male
contestants, Minako looked at them closer. Her jaw dropped further as each one was named.
"Oh, my..." she whispered.
"What's that?" Asai asked.
"Nothing," she said quickly, not wanting to spoil the surprise that was about ten
seconds away.
When those ten seconds had passed, on the TV, Zenjirou announced the female
contestant... and Minako strolled out and took the bachelorette chair.
Her boyfriend gaped at the TV and whispered, "Oh, my..."
In the discomfiting quiet, Minako reached over and flicked off the TV with the
remote.
"You were Number Three..." she said in disbelief.
"You were the Bachelorette..."
Laughter filled the room. It was loud enough to wake up a certain white cat who also
slept behind them on the couch.
"Unnh," groaned Artemis as he stretched out. "Finally figured out all of your near
misses, huh?"
Minako nodded enthusiastically, but one of Asai's eyebrows started twitching. It
hadn't taken him long to get used to the talking cat, surprisingly enough. "Wait a minute,
what do you mean 'all' of our near misses?"
The cat chuckled nervously. "Ehe... um, Mina-chan, why don't you run down all of the
schemes of your 'amazingly fabulous search for a boyfriend' for Asai?"
The young man regarded his girlfriend with a curious look. She shrugged, then
started ticking off all of her schemes.
"Well, let's see," the girl began, holding out a fisted hand to count. "There was
the time that I started walking your grandmother's dogs..."
Asai's eyes shot wide. "YOU were the girl with the dogs?"
"Of course. Wait a minute, your grandmother told me about you?" She shrugged
helplessly, then continued. "Anyway... there was also this one night that I was going
through every club in Tokyo in reverse-alphabetical order. Except when I made it to..."
"Aijin Odori," supplied Asai.
Minako blinked. "How did you know?"
This time, Asai was the one to shrug helplessly. "I went there once, because it was
the first club alphabetically. Actually, I remember that right as I left, they were talking
about how some chick who looked like a hooker just got bounced."
The blonde's eye twitched. "Ehehehe... uh... well, y'see, that was me."
Asai grinned wide, then looked Minako up and down. He was about to say something,
but she pre-empted the comment.
"Don't ask. Long story," she offered meekly. "Well, anyway... after that, there was
TV's Blind Date." The girl chuckled a bit. "I think we saw how that turned out. And then,
hmm... oh! Then there was the time I took out a newspaper ad. Y'know, like, personals. All
that happened with that was some creepy old guy started stalking me and then he went to
jail, and-"
"The last four digits of your phone number are 8716," said her boyfriend suddenly.
"Yes... why?"
"Grandma was going to have me call someone for their personal ad, but the dogs
shredded the paper up before I could do it. All I saw were the last four digits."
"Figures." At this, Minako wagged her finger at the dogs. "You crazy bastards! You
prolonged me finally getting together with Asai-kun!" Both laughed, then the girl continued
again. "Right, well, after that was Datamatch... but they lost my results form."
"Of all of the... they lost my results form, too!" He paused. "At times like this, I
can see why you thought the kami were out to get you."
"What matters is that we finally found one another," she said sweetly, then leaned
up for a kiss.
Asai obliged, backing up to look at her when they were done.
She beat him to the punch in asking the eternal question that can strike terror into
the hearts of any man. "What do you want to do today?" This question strikes terror into the
hearts of man because there is no right answer. It implies that there is a choice present
for the man, when there never, ever is a choice, and really all the question is, is seeing
how long it takes him to divine the true desire of his significant other, who has given him
absolutely no clues, verbal or otherwise.
With a grimace, Asai replied, "Uhmm.... go to the park?"
"We do that every other day."
"Crown Fruit Parlor?"
"Not in the mood."
"The arcade?"
"Oh, THERE'S a good spot to spend quality time with your lover!"
"The movies?"
The question-answer session, with Asai making all sorts of suggestions
and his girlfriend deftly shooting each one down, continued to move along.
In fact, the duo was so busy arguing that they didn't notice Artemis sitting up and
laughing at their inability to decide upon anything.
But suddenly the boyfriend and girlfriend stopped arguing and looked at one another.
This look made Artemis extremely uncomfortable, because he'd seen it far too many times
before. 'No,' he thought to himself, 'it can't be-'
But it was. Minako leapt up into a dramatic pose, her hair beginning to fly around
like there was wind in the room. Background music even kicked in from somewhere - 'How did
the TV get on again?', the cat wondered. Asai mimicked the flair his girlfriend possessed,
though it was quite obvious that he was not as used to striking poses as she.
"For too long have we dated and gone to none but lackluster places!" Minako
proclaimed.
"But there must be one place in the world that is just perfect to go on a date!"
added Asai.
"And so begins the quest of - Aino Minako!"
"Kayama Asai!"
Perfectly in synch with one another, the two turned towards Artemis and pointed at
him, then shouted, "and Their Amazingly SUPER Fabulous Search For The Perfect Date Spot!"
Artemis - poor, tortured soul that he was - took a moment to reflect on his current
situation. He'd thought Minako finally finding a boyfriend would have been the end of it
all; belatedly, he realized it was only the beginning. And so, after months of behind-the-
scenes work for which he would never receive any credit, after all of the suffering and all
of the smitings, he finally realized that this was just his lot in life.
Resigned to his fate at last, the cat heaved a huge sigh and uttered the same two
words he uttered at the start of every mad scheme.
"Oh, boy."
***
FIN.
Well, here we are, at the end of our story. Roughly one year after the original conception
of it, in fact. This idea started when Moogle said to Kate, "We should write a fic where
Minako goes crazy trying to find a boyfriend!" At that point we had no idea of anything
beyond that. Then with the first chapter, Asai practically wrote himself in, and thus was
the fic of near-misses born as it is now recognized.
And then, there was that whole thing about Moogle completely taking over and being the fic
police, but we will just ignore that and continue. :P
There were gobs of obscure and not-so-obscure references and homages scattered throughout
the story that weren't mentioned in any end-of-chapter notes. If you spotted some or all of
them, more power to you. If you didn't... well, you're probably not as much of a geek as you
might think.
As a result of this epilogue, there may be some clamoring for a sequel. While such
clamoring would be flattering, please save your breath. This story has been told; the
epilogue merely is meant to show that there is no end to the insanity, and to solidify that
Artemis is doomed to suffer through no fault of his own. Poor guy. Beyond that, we've
inflicted such awful misadventures upon Minako and Asai already - we can leave the rest to
your imaginations.
What's that? You want to know what's up with the old woman? That, friends, is one mystery
deliberately left unsolved. Moogle prefers to think of her as Destiny personified. Which
was his original plan for that character, but that was lost in a creative
compromise. Well, we're sure you can come up with something. :)
We'll probably be working on our own stuff now. Kate's hard at work revising her Galactic
Sailors stuff before she gets into writing a third season of it, and Moogle... well, God
only knows what he'll be writing next, but one way or another it'll show up on either
fanfiction.net or moonromance.com, so stay frosty!
MOOGLE's Thank-yous:
Thanks to...
Everyone who has left a review or a critique on either FFN or ASMR, or e-mailed one or both
of us, especially those who have left multiple reviews on FFN - at the time of writing
this, that's Fire's Dew, Sword Master Supremia, natsumi, and Mikazuki. Reviews mean
especially more to me considering Kate already has mobs of fans for her work. Mobs, I tell
you. Mobs.
My online friends (you know who you are, and I suspect you'd rather remain nameless anyway,)
who have read parts of this fic along the way and encouraged me, and just generally been
cool people, helping me get inspiration flowing when otherwise it probably wouldn't have.
Andrea and George, the unsung heroes of ASMR, the best fic archive out there.
Kate, for being a good sport with this whole co-authoring thing, and lots of other stuff
besides.
Everyone who likes this story enough to still be reading our thank-you notes. :)
KATE's Thank-yous:
Thanks to...
My "mobs and mobs" of fans, who love me so much that I only ever hear from two of them.
(Take THAT, Mark-kun. :P)
Christina and Ginnie, who have listened to me rattle on about this fic several different
times as I tried to come up with ideas for it. After all, they didn't care about it in the
least, but they listened anyway.
Yumeko, the beta-sama who mused with me over why Shoga had a copy of Playboy on her kitchen
counter.
Andrea and George, even though THEY IGNORE MY TECH SUPPORT E-MAILS!!!
And to the Minako-fic bossman, Mark-kun, for putting up with me through this co-write,
others, and life itself.
(End of thank-you section.)
And that, as they say, is that. You know where to find us. Take care!
Signing off,
Mark "Moogle" Brown
moogle@fanforce.net
"The Force will be with you... always."
Kate "SuperKate" Butler
duncan@avenew.com
"I am much, much, much, much, MUCH l33ter than Mark is."
8 August 2002
Aino Minako and Her Amazingly Fabulous Search For A Boyfriend
A Minakofic
Authors: Moogle (moogle@fanforce.net)
Kate B (duncan@avenew.com)
========
Epilogue - Duh?
***
SOME TIME LATER
It was an average day in the tranquil city of Tokyo. A Saturday morning much like
every other Saturday morning. Except for one thing. On this particular Saturday morning, a
certain blind old woman was visiting a relative in Kobe. This certain blind woman had her
grandson at the house, also not an unusual thing. The young man was dogsitting like he
always did. The difference between what would previously happen and that day, was that
recently the young man had been set up with a certain young woman who lived across the
street from the blind woman.
And so, on that day, this couple of newly-made lovebirds sat jointly housesitting
the house which had played such a big part in their lives in the previous months. Perhaps
sat is not an accurate word - more like curled up on the couch watching the TV, with the
aforementioned dogs sleeping on the floor near their feet.
As she sat on the couch, cuddled in the arms of her Perfect Man (tm), Minako
couldn't help but let loose a contented sigh. Somehow, just watching the noontime news
news with the person she loved the most made all the torment, screw-ups, and near-death
experiences - quite literally, in one case - worth it.
The blonde scowled as she recalled being mistaken for a prostitute. Make that
"almost worth it."
"This has been another edition of the Noon News of Juuban!" The anchorwoman on the
television smiled pleasantly, brushing her long brown hair from her green eyes. "Thank you
for joining us. See you next time!"
On the screen, the typically cheesy closing theme of a news station began playing
as credits quickly scrolled up.
The young woman looked up to her boyfriend with a smile on her face. "I had no idea
watching the news could be that entertaining," she admitted.
"Hey, what can I say? It's all in the company," replied Asai with mock arrogance.
"Quiet, you," Minako said, smiling wider as she softly whapped Asai on the arm.
"Don't hit too hard, the Coach might come after you."
"Coach can do his worst, I can take it as well as I can dish it-"
Without warning the TV volume suddenly increased for several seconds, interrupting
the argument. They stopped and heard, "Next is TV's Blind Date. Stay tuned!"
Asai and Minako groaned simultaneously, then turned to look at one another.
"What was that for?" both asked at the same time.
"You, first," Asai insisted.
"No, you," Minako shot back.
"Fine. Well, I was on that show once, is all. It sucked."
"Really? I was on there once, too. And it sucked for me, too."
A quiet spawned by curiosity descended over both of them. Neither was quite sure
what to say about it. By silent agreement they decided to watch the episode, just in case
either of them happened to be on that particular show.
The theme show music kicked in, then as the logo appeared across the screen, the
camera panned across the audience. For a brief second there was a shot of the three
contestants.
Asai sat on the right of the three of him. His screen-self was the only one that
Minako noticed.
"Huh. So it's the one that I'm on," he noted dryly.
Minako giggled.
The host, Zenjirou, went on with his spiel, the same as he did at the start of
every show. The studio audience began screaming at random intervals throughout his asking
questions and telling somewhat lame jokes. Then, as he began to introduce the male
contestants, Minako looked at them closer. Her jaw dropped further as each one was named.
"Oh, my..." she whispered.
"What's that?" Asai asked.
"Nothing," she said quickly, not wanting to spoil the surprise that was about ten
seconds away.
When those ten seconds had passed, on the TV, Zenjirou announced the female
contestant... and Minako strolled out and took the bachelorette chair.
Her boyfriend gaped at the TV and whispered, "Oh, my..."
In the discomfiting quiet, Minako reached over and flicked off the TV with the
remote.
"You were Number Three..." she said in disbelief.
"You were the Bachelorette..."
Laughter filled the room. It was loud enough to wake up a certain white cat who also
slept behind them on the couch.
"Unnh," groaned Artemis as he stretched out. "Finally figured out all of your near
misses, huh?"
Minako nodded enthusiastically, but one of Asai's eyebrows started twitching. It
hadn't taken him long to get used to the talking cat, surprisingly enough. "Wait a minute,
what do you mean 'all' of our near misses?"
The cat chuckled nervously. "Ehe... um, Mina-chan, why don't you run down all of the
schemes of your 'amazingly fabulous search for a boyfriend' for Asai?"
The young man regarded his girlfriend with a curious look. She shrugged, then
started ticking off all of her schemes.
"Well, let's see," the girl began, holding out a fisted hand to count. "There was
the time that I started walking your grandmother's dogs..."
Asai's eyes shot wide. "YOU were the girl with the dogs?"
"Of course. Wait a minute, your grandmother told me about you?" She shrugged
helplessly, then continued. "Anyway... there was also this one night that I was going
through every club in Tokyo in reverse-alphabetical order. Except when I made it to..."
"Aijin Odori," supplied Asai.
Minako blinked. "How did you know?"
This time, Asai was the one to shrug helplessly. "I went there once, because it was
the first club alphabetically. Actually, I remember that right as I left, they were talking
about how some chick who looked like a hooker just got bounced."
The blonde's eye twitched. "Ehehehe... uh... well, y'see, that was me."
Asai grinned wide, then looked Minako up and down. He was about to say something,
but she pre-empted the comment.
"Don't ask. Long story," she offered meekly. "Well, anyway... after that, there was
TV's Blind Date." The girl chuckled a bit. "I think we saw how that turned out. And then,
hmm... oh! Then there was the time I took out a newspaper ad. Y'know, like, personals. All
that happened with that was some creepy old guy started stalking me and then he went to
jail, and-"
"The last four digits of your phone number are 8716," said her boyfriend suddenly.
"Yes... why?"
"Grandma was going to have me call someone for their personal ad, but the dogs
shredded the paper up before I could do it. All I saw were the last four digits."
"Figures." At this, Minako wagged her finger at the dogs. "You crazy bastards! You
prolonged me finally getting together with Asai-kun!" Both laughed, then the girl continued
again. "Right, well, after that was Datamatch... but they lost my results form."
"Of all of the... they lost my results form, too!" He paused. "At times like this, I
can see why you thought the kami were out to get you."
"What matters is that we finally found one another," she said sweetly, then leaned
up for a kiss.
Asai obliged, backing up to look at her when they were done.
She beat him to the punch in asking the eternal question that can strike terror into
the hearts of any man. "What do you want to do today?" This question strikes terror into the
hearts of man because there is no right answer. It implies that there is a choice present
for the man, when there never, ever is a choice, and really all the question is, is seeing
how long it takes him to divine the true desire of his significant other, who has given him
absolutely no clues, verbal or otherwise.
With a grimace, Asai replied, "Uhmm.... go to the park?"
"We do that every other day."
"Crown Fruit Parlor?"
"Not in the mood."
"The arcade?"
"Oh, THERE'S a good spot to spend quality time with your lover!"
"The movies?"
The question-answer session, with Asai making all sorts of suggestions
and his girlfriend deftly shooting each one down, continued to move along.
In fact, the duo was so busy arguing that they didn't notice Artemis sitting up and
laughing at their inability to decide upon anything.
But suddenly the boyfriend and girlfriend stopped arguing and looked at one another.
This look made Artemis extremely uncomfortable, because he'd seen it far too many times
before. 'No,' he thought to himself, 'it can't be-'
But it was. Minako leapt up into a dramatic pose, her hair beginning to fly around
like there was wind in the room. Background music even kicked in from somewhere - 'How did
the TV get on again?', the cat wondered. Asai mimicked the flair his girlfriend possessed,
though it was quite obvious that he was not as used to striking poses as she.
"For too long have we dated and gone to none but lackluster places!" Minako
proclaimed.
"But there must be one place in the world that is just perfect to go on a date!"
added Asai.
"And so begins the quest of - Aino Minako!"
"Kayama Asai!"
Perfectly in synch with one another, the two turned towards Artemis and pointed at
him, then shouted, "and Their Amazingly SUPER Fabulous Search For The Perfect Date Spot!"
Artemis - poor, tortured soul that he was - took a moment to reflect on his current
situation. He'd thought Minako finally finding a boyfriend would have been the end of it
all; belatedly, he realized it was only the beginning. And so, after months of behind-the-
scenes work for which he would never receive any credit, after all of the suffering and all
of the smitings, he finally realized that this was just his lot in life.
Resigned to his fate at last, the cat heaved a huge sigh and uttered the same two
words he uttered at the start of every mad scheme.
"Oh, boy."
***
FIN.
Well, here we are, at the end of our story. Roughly one year after the original conception
of it, in fact. This idea started when Moogle said to Kate, "We should write a fic where
Minako goes crazy trying to find a boyfriend!" At that point we had no idea of anything
beyond that. Then with the first chapter, Asai practically wrote himself in, and thus was
the fic of near-misses born as it is now recognized.
And then, there was that whole thing about Moogle completely taking over and being the fic
police, but we will just ignore that and continue. :P
There were gobs of obscure and not-so-obscure references and homages scattered throughout
the story that weren't mentioned in any end-of-chapter notes. If you spotted some or all of
them, more power to you. If you didn't... well, you're probably not as much of a geek as you
might think.
As a result of this epilogue, there may be some clamoring for a sequel. While such
clamoring would be flattering, please save your breath. This story has been told; the
epilogue merely is meant to show that there is no end to the insanity, and to solidify that
Artemis is doomed to suffer through no fault of his own. Poor guy. Beyond that, we've
inflicted such awful misadventures upon Minako and Asai already - we can leave the rest to
your imaginations.
What's that? You want to know what's up with the old woman? That, friends, is one mystery
deliberately left unsolved. Moogle prefers to think of her as Destiny personified. Which
was his original plan for that character, but that was lost in a creative
compromise. Well, we're sure you can come up with something. :)
We'll probably be working on our own stuff now. Kate's hard at work revising her Galactic
Sailors stuff before she gets into writing a third season of it, and Moogle... well, God
only knows what he'll be writing next, but one way or another it'll show up on either
fanfiction.net or moonromance.com, so stay frosty!
MOOGLE's Thank-yous:
Thanks to...
Everyone who has left a review or a critique on either FFN or ASMR, or e-mailed one or both
of us, especially those who have left multiple reviews on FFN - at the time of writing
this, that's Fire's Dew, Sword Master Supremia, natsumi, and Mikazuki. Reviews mean
especially more to me considering Kate already has mobs of fans for her work. Mobs, I tell
you. Mobs.
My online friends (you know who you are, and I suspect you'd rather remain nameless anyway,)
who have read parts of this fic along the way and encouraged me, and just generally been
cool people, helping me get inspiration flowing when otherwise it probably wouldn't have.
Andrea and George, the unsung heroes of ASMR, the best fic archive out there.
Kate, for being a good sport with this whole co-authoring thing, and lots of other stuff
besides.
Everyone who likes this story enough to still be reading our thank-you notes. :)
KATE's Thank-yous:
Thanks to...
My "mobs and mobs" of fans, who love me so much that I only ever hear from two of them.
(Take THAT, Mark-kun. :P)
Christina and Ginnie, who have listened to me rattle on about this fic several different
times as I tried to come up with ideas for it. After all, they didn't care about it in the
least, but they listened anyway.
Yumeko, the beta-sama who mused with me over why Shoga had a copy of Playboy on her kitchen
counter.
Andrea and George, even though THEY IGNORE MY TECH SUPPORT E-MAILS!!!
And to the Minako-fic bossman, Mark-kun, for putting up with me through this co-write,
others, and life itself.
(End of thank-you section.)
And that, as they say, is that. You know where to find us. Take care!
Signing off,
Mark "Moogle" Brown
moogle@fanforce.net
"The Force will be with you... always."
Kate "SuperKate" Butler
duncan@avenew.com
"I am much, much, much, much, MUCH l33ter than Mark is."
8 August 2002