Act 17.5: On the Other Side of the Fourth Wall
Disclaimer: I still don't own the rights to Rurouni Kenshin. I do however have the right to say I just watched 31 hours of it in one sitting! And watched the hot springs scene like, 5 or 6 times in a row with some friends... ^^; Howled every time!
Notes: GOMEN NASAI DE GOZARU YO! My muse seems to have taken off on me, and real life waltzed up to me, smacked me upside the head, and yelled "BAKA! You only have 12 days until Anime Expo and your Battousai costume isn't even DONE yet!" So, yeah, I'm taking the cheap way out for the moment with a dinky not-really-an-update chapter. I'll track my muse down after AX, I promise! Anyway, on to the off-the-wall filler episode! OOCness ahead!
The trio resumed in silence, Shinta and Kaoru both thoroughly confused and worried now.
But oh boy, they had no idea just what they were going to discover.
"How long have we been staring at that closing
line?" Yumi crossed her arms in annoyance.
"Since January 18th, 2003, according to ff.net."
Kaoru responded from where she'd taken a seat. "Firefury's gotten to be
one lazy author, hasn't she?"
"I've been waiting since March LAST YEAR for the
next chapter! Everybody KNOWS it's the chapter the fans are waiting for!"
A voice complained loudly from offstage.
"Ne, Shishio-san, I think some of the readers are
waiting for the chapter where Saitou-san gets what for!" Soujiro smiled,
eyeing the agitated villain.
"I know I'm looking forward to that chapter, that
I am!" Shinta beamed happily. "But it's not a good idea to rush an author..."
"Maybe Firefury just needs a little reminder that
we're all sitting here bored to death!" Kaoru gripped her bokken.
"Let's go show that lazy bum of an author what for!"
Yumi agreed.
"Better than just wasting time here." Kaoru hopped
to her feet. "Who's in?"
A chorus of voices responded in an affirmative.
A little pale-haired boy came charging through the
set in a near-panic, a familiar and very spunky little girl chasing after
him moments later, brandishing a stick threateningly.
"Come back here!" Kumiko shouted, chasing after
one panicked Haru.
"I don't wanna! 'Tousan! Help!" Haru protested,
darting past Shishio.
A few moments later, one extremely bedraggled Enishi
caught up to the energetic little kids. The ex-psychopath looked, frankly,
like hell- a mudball lodged in his hair, dirt covering his attire, a few
twigs and leaves caught on his stuff. Aoshi also finally caught up, not
looking much better than Enishi.
"Kumiko, would you please stop threatening to beat
Haru-kun up?" Aoshi managed to say while catching his breath.
Kumiko razzed her father and stormed up to Shishio,
whom Haru was presently trying futilely to hide behind. (Probably thinking
that the mummy would scare Kumiko off.) Shishio eyed the spunky little
chibi with his best 'I'm an evil badass' look.
Granted, it totally failed as Kumiko glared up at
him. "Would you please move? Haru-kun said I couldn't fight because I'm
a girl. So I gotta prove him wrong!"
Shishio turned his evil badass glare on everybody
else who was snickering at the total failure of his death glare on the
little girl. "And if I don't move?"
"Then I'll just hafta beat you first!" Kumiko declared,
waving her stick for emphasis of her threat.
"Who do you think would win?" Ayame whispered to
Shinta and Kaoru.
"Kumiko, easy." Kaoru smirked. "You haven't seen
the damage she's capable off."
"Kumiko, don't pick a fight with him-" Aoshi was
about to stop the girl when the standoff broke, and the short little girl
swung her broomstick, catching Shishio by surprise, not to mention catching
him across both kneecaps with the solid chunk of wood.
"Itai-!" The abused mummy man yelped as he toppled
over, having not expected the child to actually attack, let alone be able
to swing that stick so hard.
"See that, Haru-kun? That's what happens when somebody
challenges my broomstick!" Kumiko crowed, taking off after Haru again.
"Shishio-sama! Are you all right?" Yumi was immediately
at his side.
"If that baka author would just write the rest of
the story, Tori-ko wouldn't have so much free time to kill." Hiko noted
dryly from the refreshments area, sake in hand.
"Let's go." Yumi growled.
Elsewhere, one frantic cosplayer was about to take
drastic measures in preparing her prop swords. With the flick of a switch,
the long disused device roared to life, the noise promising immense bodily
harm to anything that got underneath the rapidly spinning bit.
"Mwahahaha!" Firefury cackled, preparing her victim.
She lifted the styrofoam sheet up to the drill press, and went to work.
"Firefury Amahira, you are SO going to get it!"
An angry voice declared from the direction of the driveway. "Come out now,
or we're coming in!"
"Oro-?" Firefury glanced in the direction of the
voice, barely heard over the roar of the power tool. "Ano, who's there?"
She shut the drill press off and wandered to the
open portion of the garage.
"Oro!" She yelped upon finding out who her 'guests'
where.
"Oro-!" Shinta yelped upon seeing the short figure
absolutely covered in some powdery white substance.
"... THIS is the author?" Yumi eyed the styrofoam-snow
covered Firefury.
"Uh... hai?" Firefury guessed, dusting herself off.
Kaoru marched to the front of the group, bokken
in hand. "Why haven't you worked on Twisted Paradise?!"
Yumi also marched forward menacingly. "We've been
waiting for more than FIVE MONTHS! Shishio-sama is getting tired of waiting!
Especially when you don't make sure your original characters behave!"
"Oro?" Firefury oroed.
"Kumiko!" Aoshi declared. "She's completely wild
when we're off camera!"
"Um..."
"Let me deal with this weak author." Shishio declared
coolly, striding forward, sword in hand. (Though he winced with every step-
he was still feeling that crack across the kneecaps Kumiko gave him.)
"Oro!" Firefury yelped.
"Work on Twisted Paradise- I want my chapter." Shishio
leveled his badass evil guy look at the shrimpy girl. "Or else."
"Kiiiya-! I can't! I've got so much to do and not
enough time to do it in!" Firefury flailed. "Anime Expo is just 11 days
away, and I still have to finish my fake swords, get my costume from the
seamstress, wash my car, clean up the bathroom, pick up the game room,
write my to-do list, burn some CDs, watch the rest of Shaman King..." She
babbled, going through an extensive list of reasons why she couldn't work
on Twisted Paradise until after something called Anime Expo.
"Oro." Shinta stared. He couldn't make sense of
more than half of the babble. He knew what Shaman King was- Firefury had
recently gotten obsessed with it, and he was dreading what the inevitable
fruit of that obsession would be, when coupled with her obsessed for his
series.
"That's no excuse!" Shishio bellowed, interrupting
the author's babble, sword raised.
"Um... I don't suppose you guys would just go back
to waiting?" Firefury took a few steps backward, a sweatdrop rolling down
the back of her head.
"We've BEEN waiting!" Kaoru glared.
"I'm sick of waiting!" Shishio took a step toward
the panicked author.
"Eeep!" Firefury intelligently declared, diving
for one of her prop swords just as Shishio charged at her, murder clearly
his intent. She sprang to her feet, the balsa wood weapon held defensively
in front of her. "Stay away, I mean it!"
Shishio had no apparent intent to follow author's
orders. The rest of the mob cleared out to give the mummified madman some
room (and to avoid accidentally getting hit themselves). "If you won't
work on the damned story, I'll just end it here!"
"Oro.... Shouldn't we try and stop him?" Shinta
sweatdropped, eyeing the chaos about to commence.
"You mean you don't want to get off easy?" Aoshi
eyed the rurouni.
"I don't know who I should root for." Kaoru admitted.
Meanwhile, in the impromptu arena, Shishio charged
again, sword drawing sparks from the concrete floor. Firefury eeped and
blocked with her... ah.. sword, for lack of a better term.
Well, the stupid thing was swordy enough in appearance...
and that was about it. The fake weapon was sliced effortlessly in half
and the author tried to dive frantically out of the way, spewing an impressive
barrage of verbal abuse.
"Oro!" Shinta's eyes widened at the increasingly
vulgar torrent of abuse coming from Firefury, who was sprawled ungracefully
on the floor. That would be painful... that's just wrong... That isn't
even physically possible!
Even Shishio seemed taken aback by the...
inventive... things Firefury was saying. Kaoru and Yumi were both staring
in wide-eyed shock, turning a nice shade of beet red at what Shishio was
being told he could do, who and what he could do it with, where he could
put it when he was done, and that he could swivel on it after that. Aoshi
was covering Kumiko's ears, and Enishi had removed Haru from the area entirely.
"Ano... what did he do to merit... that?" Shinta
asked when the torrent of swearing was finally completed. Firefury slowly
got to her feet, back to the group of disgruntled fanfic characters, the
hilt end of her fake sword clutched in her right hand.
"Do you have any idea how long it took me
to build this?" She growled, holding up the broken weapon. "I have eleven
days to get more wood, carve the blade, shape it, carve out the hilt, paint
everything, and assemble it all. In addition to everything ELSE I still
need to get done."
Shishio recovered from being cussed out, and smirked.
"You're the fool who tried to use that thing in a fight."
"The sword isn't the only thing I'm pissed off about."
Firefury commented, her voice having dropped to a low, decidedly unpleasant
tone.
"Oro?" Shinta squeaked from the sidelines. The author's
ken ki (or 'swordsman's spirit' to you dubbies reading this!) had spiked,
taking on a sinister form, all but visible around the girl.
"I'm also pissed about you-" Firefury spun around,
pure venom in her voice. "-hitting me in the FACE!"
A collective gasp went up from the gathered characters
at the messy cut Firefury was pointing at on the left side of her face.
"Rats, I missed." Shishio seemed to completely miss
the evil intent in the angry author's tone and glare.
"You'll pay for this!" Firefury shrieked, throwing
down the broken sword and grabbing her notebook. "Don't you worry... I'll
work on the story, Shishio."
"Then it's settled-" Shishio smiled wickedly.
"AFTER Anime Expo." Firefury interrupted. "And you.
Will. Pay."
Shinta was suddenly quite glad he wasn't on the
receiving end of the grey-hazel eyed glare Firefury leveled at Shishio.
So was everyone else, for that matter. The fragile-looking girl scribbled
something in her notebook and set it down, grabbing the nearest bludgeoning
object.
Which happened to be a twenty-pound sledgehammer.
"Now GET OUT!" The crazed author lunged at Shishio, hammer in hand, and
swung at the stupefied villain.
.... And everybody thought Kumiko's broomstick had
been painful.
Some time later, after the Twisted Paradise cast
finished dragging the seriously maimed Shishio off, Firefury's sister came
into the garage.
"That bastard cut my face!" Firefury ranted while
working on fixing her prop sword.
"Look at it this way, Aneki-" One, her sister, pointed
out. "You won't need to use makeup for the scar for your Battousai cosplay
this year."
"IMOUTO NO BAKA!!!!!"
Closing notes: Yeah... that was bad. ^_^;;;; Gomen. Yes, I used a drill
press on styrofoam, and yes, it does make a huge mess. No, I do not have
a facial scar (thankfully!), and no, neither of my prop swords have been
broken. Yes, I will be sure to post pictures of my costume, and yes, I
do oro that much in real life. (Actually, I think I oro more than that
in real life!)
And who knows, Gochan and I might be meeting up
at Anime Expo. Who knows what madness may spring forth from two authors
meeting while under the influence of anime overdose? >=}
See you all after AX!