Reiko stared. Behind her, Otome screamed.
Startled, Reiko whirled around to see what had happened behind them that could have possibly distracted Otome's attention from what was in front of them.
But, Otome had already moved, she was behind Reiko once more, hovering inches from the boys, who were staring at her wide-eyed.
It had not been a scream of shock, or terror, it had been a fangirl scream.
"You're Heero Yuy! And Duo Maxwell! From GundamWing! And you are a couple! I knew it!" Otome exclaimed.
"Actually," said Duo, looking around in a manner that suggested, perhaps, that he had jumped out of some other fan-author's notebook at some other time. "We were never a couple in GundamWing. This particular writer," he nudged the notebook, which had fallen to the floor, with his toe for emphasis, "just happens to be the kind who likes to write us as a couple."
"Not that I mind," he added, kissing Heero on the cheek."
Heero smiled. "Our battles in the series were much harder than any that she's ever written us into, and at the end of hers, we're never lonely."
"Well," huffed Reiko, looking entirely displeased with these cheerful victims of LH-chan's writing, "we're her original characters, and she plans to kill us, so we need to find out where she keeps her awful ideas and get rid of them before it's too late."
Otome nodded her agreement, still looking rather star-struck over the Gundam boys.
Duo shrugged. "I haven't seen any awful ideas in our pages, but there's lots of other stuff in that book besides stories about Heero and I. I'd keep looking, if I were you."
"Fine," said Reiko firmly, and picked up the book, flipping pages until, with a little wave from Duo, the Gundam boys disappeared.
"Aww...did you have to do that so soon?" Otome whined.
Reiko stared open mouthed at the other girl, notebook pages slowly slipping from her hand, but before she could say anything, she was interrupted by the third burst of sound and light that didn't wake the kitties that day.
A tall, green haired, man stood in the room, blinking in a perplexed sort of way.
Much to Reiko's complete disbelief, Otome squealed with delight.
"Spike Spiegel! From Cowboy Bebop!" she exclaimed.
"Seriously...Spike? Who names their kid Spike?" asked Reiko incredulously.
Both Otome and Spike shrugged, and Reiko restrained the urge to beat her head against the wall.
"We're trying to find LH-chan's cruel ideas and get rid of them before they do more damage," Otome was explaining to Spike. "We asked Heero and Duo, back at the beginning of the notebook, but they hadn't seen any cruel ideas at all. Have you seen any?"
Spike nodded. "Sure have."
"Really!" exclaimed Reiko, excited that this very pointless search might actually be going somewhere after all.
"Really," said Spike, "she's written more stories about me than any other character, and every time I'm either injured, or suffering some sort of psychological torment. I've been forced to relive my own death so many times I can recite it by heart!"
He seemed as though he had been waiting to say this for a very long time.
"And," he continued, picking up the model figure of himself from a shelf inside the closet, "this doesn't look like me at all."
He picked up another item from behind where the figure had been sitting: a CD box with his picture on the cover, in the picture, he wore a fedora.
"And I'd never wear that hat."
"Er...can you really say that?" asked Otome. "I mean, it's official merchandise, so haven't you, er, technically already worn the hat...and doesn't the figure have to look like you?"
"Like I know," said Spike. "I just call it like I see it."
He tossed the figure and CD box into the pile of things the girls had already thrown out of the closet, where they landed on top of the broken glass chessboard and the, possibly also broken, Dreamcast.
"Argh!" growled Reiko, quite literally. "We aren't getting anywhere, and we don't know how much time we have left!"
"Then don't stand there talking to me," said Spike, "keep looking through this book. It just keeps getting worse from here."
Spurred on by Spike's rather dubious encouragement, Reiko and Otome continued flipping through the notebook, accompanied by flashes of light and sound, and brief encounters with various psychologically traumatized characters: An inconsolable, pink-haired, naked, girl; a broody boy with white-feathered wings; and, strangely, an anthromorphic squirrel, who was screaming quite loudly.
Reiko quickly turned the pages until the screaming squirrel returned to the notebook.
"What was all that?" she asked shakily.
"Tenjou Utena from Revolution Girl Utena, Van Fanel from Escaflowne, and..." Otome looked thoughtful for a moment, the third answer not coming as easily as the previous two, "...I think, Sally Acorn from the American Sonic the Hedgehog TV series."
"How the Hell do you know all that?" asked Reiko.
Otome shrugged. "LH-chan wrote me as an insufferable fangirl."
"Ooaah!" said Reiko, flipping through a group of blank pages toward the back of the notebook. "I think the rest might be empty...oh!"
As she spoke, there was another flash of light and rustle of pages, and a short boy with vivid golden and magenta hair was standing in the room.
The kitties, surprising no one at this point, slept, peacefully, on.
"Aaaah! Yami Yuugi!" exclaimed Otome, bounding over to him, and actually hugging him around the neck.
"Ya...mi... Yuu...gi?" said Reiko slowly. "Dark Game? That's an even stranger name than Spike."
"That's just his fangirl name," explained Otome, still hanging on the boy's neck, "he's really the spirit of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh who doesn't remember his real name."
"Ooaah!" said Reiko, then, annoyed. "That, is needlessly bizarre."
"Fine," said Otome, releasing the boy at last, "just call him Yugioh then, like the name of the series."
"That," said Reiko, further annoyed at the realization that they had been arguing over the guy's name, rather than searching before their time ran out, "is even more needlessly bizarre."
"Er," said Yugioh, looking perplexed—but perplexed in a dignified sort of way, because, well, this is Yugioh, "what's going on?"
"We're looking for LH-chan's cruel ideas," Reiko explained the preposterous plotline for the zillionth time since this ridiculous adventure began. "Have you seen any?"
"Plenty," said Yugioh, still dignified, but distinctly rumpled around the edges. "She's been doing cruel things to me, and my partner, from the start. The UST she's inserted between me and...almost everyone I've ever known, is stifling!"
Otome giggled. "I can't believe Yugioh said 'UST.'"
Reiko once again fought the urge to beat her head against the wall.
"I can't believe..."
She let the sentence hang, unfinished. With this level of absurdity, nearly anything could fill in the blank.
"The rest of this notebook is stories from my series," Yugioh ventured; having found himself in a situation he couldn't think of a suitable game to play his way out of, the Game King was, ironically, puzzled.
"Perhaps..." he continued bravely, "you should check some of the other notebooks."
He picked up a spiral-bound book from the desk, where it had been lying beside the computer, completely unnoticed by the ill-fated girls at the beginning of their search.
Reiko's emotions fought a brief but brutal battle, between pleasure at having direction in their, thus far, fruitless search, and irritation that they had done all that digging through LH-chan's closet, and needlessly broken so many of LH-chan's things, when there was a notebook sitting right on the desk where they had been looking.
Pleasure won the day, as Reiko figured she may very well be closer to the end of this adventure, and, thus, may as well look pleased about anything which might get her to that end faster.
Otome, for her part, just stood off to the side, looking thoughtful.
There's something, she thought, that's not quite right about that book.
"Well, lets open it and find out what's inside," said Reiko, gesturing to Yugioh.
He nodded, and pulled back the cover.
"Guys," Otome started, trying to voice her concern about the book's suspicious nature.
Suddenly, she realized what was wrong with the book, and her eyes went wide as she exclaimed:
"Wait! That's not a notebook..."
But it was too late, the pages rustled...
"...it's a..."
...the light flashed...
"...sketchbook!"
...and the three characters were joined by a fourth.