By animeninjaNIPPON

Not long after Yoh accepted, Yugi stepped up. "We accept also." His group nodded in unity.

"We accept, too!" the straw-hat boy announced. A few others agreed to it, but most of them refused, demanding better terms. Personally, I felt a sense of victory.

One of the suits took Yoh, Yugi, and the straw-hat boy (who introduced himself as Monkey D. Luffy) aside, and the rest of us returned to our respective rooms. I felt excited, but at the same time worried – everything else that was promised to me turned out disappointing in some way. Then again, each experience had gotten progressively better.

I tried not to think too much about it. Apparently, no one else wanted to think about it in great detail either – we all trusted Yoh to do the right thing. As he always said, "Everything will work out."

Ren sat on the floor, serenely sipping a bottle of milk. (I was beginning to wonder if he really limited himself to three a day – it seemed more like 33 to me.) Faust – the real Faust VIII – sat in a distant chair with Eliza standing beside him. He appeared to be hooked up to that IV again… Everyone else was either packing or cleaning, which reminded me that I still had laundry to fold. I went to find Pirika, who was folding more laundry.

"Isn't this great?" she said cheerfully. "I mean, I'm not too fond of moving around all the time, but I can't wait to see this FUNimation place.

"Me neither," I agreed, picking up a pair of really cool-looking pants that were immediately snatched out of my hand.

"I'll take those," Hao mumbled.

That evening, Yoh gave us all the details of what we were to do. Some of us had to keep our English names (those individuals were to be revealed later), but we would also be performing in Japanese, using our real names. He didn't know everything that was going on, but he was optimistic about our future.

The next day, FUNimation executives came to interview us. A pretty young female exec with a clipboard led me into a room with two chairs. She sat down in one and I in the other.

"So, HoroHoro," she said, looking up from her clipboard, "tell me all about your past experiences in America."

"They're not all good," I admitted.

"That's OK." She smiled sweetly. "We at FUNimation want to know what we can do to make our employees feel at home. Tell me everything."

So I did – I told her every single detail I could remember. And that is what you have just read.

End of part twenty

End of story


Well, that's the end! I hope you had as much fun reading it as I did writing it. Don't worry – if FUNimation ever puts out the other SK DVDs, I'll write a sequel, complete with Hao vs. HoroHoro fire-and-ice battle! I'd like to extend special thanks to the members of the Shaman King Uncensored (SKU) Message Boards for their advice, ideas, and support on writing this fic. Thank you one and all.

animeninjaNIPPON