Llamarama: Chapter III

You know what? I really, really miss being allowed to give review replies in fics. It made me feel like people were reading my stories in a way that PM-ish review replies don't.

Smeh. At least chapter two got more reviews than chapter one did.

As far as I can tell, this story will be a little shorter than the original TEE, wrapping up in another chapter or two. I hope there will be a threequel, but I don't have any ideas yet. All I know is that I definitely want the next story to focus more on the canon characters than this one has. It feels so wrong to have a story with only OCs. How do you guys (and gals) who write this sort of thing do it?

And I finally got the inevitable review accusing Llama of being my self-insertion. To the person who gave this review, who didn't even leave a name, I just have to say:

Yes. Yes, Llama is a self-insertion. How so? It's very simple, really. We both have brown hair. That's right! By inserting a character with the same color hair as me, I have fulfilled my fantasy of becoming a TMM character! I just made her personality nothing like mine to disguise the fact that Llama's really me! BWAHAHAHA!

Heh. I'm just kidding, of course. Llama's not really a self-insertion at all. I am in this fic, but I always refer to myself as "the authoress." So that should debunk that myth.

The days passed uneventfully for Llama once she started working. It was really just like working in a regular video rental store, except that instead of dealing with people enraged over the fact that all the copies of Rocky XVII had been checked out, she only had to deal with authoresses too uncreative to come up with original ideas for their original characters.

That, and all her business was carried out over the phone. It was a little disturbing, really. She got a call from the receptionist asking for a Mary-Sue with certain features, and then searched for a suitable video for a couple hours. Oh, she'd tried to organize the videos, once, but they'd all shifted back to their original positions only moments later. So now she didn't even try, but resigned herself to long searches.

After she'd found the correct video (and she always did, eventually), Llama simply stuck it into a slot in the wall, where it was sucked up with a whoosh. That was all.

The monotony of the job sort of suited Llama, who rather liked working in a dimension where she could keep herself from tripping over things if she just thought about it hard enough. The work wasn't hard, once she'd gotten the hang of finding videos, and she had all her nights free, although the actual passage of time seemed to have little to do with when these "nights" happened.

Early on, Llama had discovered that food and sleep weren't necessary in what she liked to think of as the "video dimension." As a result of this, Llama spent most of her free time watching up on Mary-Sue videos and trying to imitate the qualities she saw displayed there.

Unfortunately, clumsy Llama might have been better off trying to learn from one of those impossible dance videos. Had anyone been around to hear, they would have heard Llama mumbling to herself almost constantly.

"My flaws are, um, well, I'm slow, and um—No! That's not right… My flaws?" She tried to affect a dashingly heroic smile, but just ended up looking vaguely ill. "I do have flaws—No! Um, no, I don't," she amended lamely, again attempting a heroic grin, "My eyesight is really good, but, um, boys don't really chase after me that much, because I'm not very pretty…"

Llama smacked herself in the head. "Arrgh, why can't I do this, um, right?" She sighed in resignation, and turned back to the video shelves just a bell rang, announcing that another request was coming in. Before she could even move, however, Llama heard something unexpected.

"Aw, heck, I thought we got rid of you!" whined a familiar voice. Llama whirled around, and what she saw surprised her so much that she whirled a little bit too far and fell over in a jumble of imperfect arms and legs.

There, somehow, in the middle of the video dimension, was Mew Ichigo and most of the rest of the regular Tokyo Mew Mew cast.

As Llama disentangled herself from herself, Keiichiro patiently explained to Ichigo about how, since there was no reason Llama should have had powers in the first place, she didn't lose them at the end of the first story, and therefore got to be the star of this one.

Finally, Llama managed to stand up.

"B-but how? How did you guys get here? I mean, um, I didn't think you could get here…"

Since Ichigo was still arguing with Keiichiro about how impossible it was for Llama to exist, Minto answered the OC's question.

"Some idiot authoress called sakuuya wrote about this place, so we found out it existed that way," the bird-girl explained. Seeing the look of disbelief that still graced Llama's face, she snorted and continued, "What? Do you think we don't have the internet? Don't even get me started on the weirdo stuff I read about me and Zakuro! Although," She paused for a moment, thinking hard, "I guess that wouldn't be that bad…"

Zakuro pretended not hear this.

That unfortunate bit of plot justification out of the way, all the canon characters turned to the video shelves.

Except for Kishu, who had apparently still not recovered from his run-in with his sister Kitty. All he was doing was floating drunkenly and singing, "Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch who watches over you, build a little birdhouse in your soul…"

No one but the authoress, who is, in fact, a They Might Be Giants fan, paid him any attention.

The other characters advanced on the shelves menacingly. When they were almost there, Llama jumped out in front of them in action-movie slow-motion.

"Ummmm, noooooooo!"

The cannon characters stopped in confusion as Llama, still in slow-mo, landed on her side in front of them.

"What the heck? What are you doing, er…" Minto trailed off.

"Llama," Llama supplied. "I was in Tokyo Ew Ew, rember?" Minto appeared to think hard about this.

"Oh. Yeah. Llama. Right. Anyway, WHAT ARE YOU DOING? If you were in that Ew Ew fic, you should know how annoying these OCs are! We need to destroy them while we have the chance!"

"Um… but I work here. This is, um, my job."

"Well, think of it this way," Purin piped up, "if you let us get rid of all the videos, then you'll be the only OC left! You won't have to work here any more!"

"Yeah, um, but, I'm not a very good Mary-Sue. Wouldn't all the fanfictions kind of um, suck then?"

"Yeah. You're right. Never mind," Zakuro conceded, but nodded almost imperceptibly to Masaya and Pai, who had inched around Llama while the OC was occupied. At Zakuro's signal, the boys began tipping over shelves.

"No! You can't, um, you can't do that!" But the cannon characters ignored Llama's protests and continued making mess of the videos.

"What is going on here!" Everyone turned to see who had spoken and everyone's, even those who had never seen her before, eyes widened in shock.

The receptionist had arrived.

And that's where I'll leave it! There's no use getting mad at me, because I actually wrote this chapter in a timely manner! So don't you dare whine! Unless you wanna whine in a review, in which case I'm all for it.