Yet Another Totally Untitled Series By Someone Who Hasn't Published Diddly
Over Squat Anywhere Before
by
Thane Walkup
C&C PLEASE!!!!
Note: The names and appearences of the characters in this story have been
changed in order to protect the innocent. Any resemblence of the characters
to real individuals above and beyond the point of satire is a mistake on
the part of the author, and should be pointed out immediately so that the
editors can haul out the bucket of soapy frogs. ;}
This is what happens, when at three in the morning, my brain decides to start
thinking. Now, it isn't unusual for my brain to start thinking, and it isn't
unusual for me to be up at three in the morning. HOWEVER, it is extremely
unlikely that I will BOTH be awake at three in the morning and still be
capable of thought. As you can see from what follows, this is a Good Thing.
All original ideas in this text are mine, any which someone else came up with
belong to them, natch. Anyone who's got a better legal disclaimer, please
help me!
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On my third week at the Unnamed University, I made what was widely
regarded at the time as a Bad Decision. At least, it was regarded as such by
the part of my brain that controls social interaction. The fact that the part
of my brain which controlled social interactions had never functioned properly
in the first place, and in fact seemed to have more in common with my
appendix than a functioning mass of nervous tissue, was of no concern to it.
"Mike, this is the *WORST* thing you could be doing here. You wanted
to start over fresh here, didn't you? You wanted to be POPULAR, didn't you?"
What the social side of my brain was trying to get me away from
becoming involved with was a flyer I had found near the computer center.
Very simply, it had a picture of a lightly clothed (Ok, almost naked) girl
drawn in anime style, carrying a RBG. (Really Big Gun) The caption read,
"Anime showing - Erewhon Building, Room 401, October 3rd."
What my Social Conscience was so concerned about was that I was going
to make the same mistake that I'd made in high school - waffling between
following my bliss and being popular. What it wasn't aware of was that this
time I had already made my choice. "Popularity's for losers," I thought
back, and marched, double-time, to the Erewhon building.
I'd dabbled a bit in anime when I was in high school, having had the
fortune to glomp onto several Miyazaki films, untranslated. Although still
unsure as towards the total meaning of the films, I still vastly enjoyed
watching the antics of Lupin and Totoro. I'd messed around with a couple
other series, renting from our local foriegn films video store, but I didn't
really understand much of it. However, the brief memories of the wonder that
Starblazers had brought to me as a child, and the wonderful stories that
Miyazaki Hayao had spun left me with a taste for more.
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My first impression, coming through the door, was that someone had
visited an asylum on halloween, and then promised all the inmates freedom,
if they would only wear their costumes year round. I did a quick double take
to pull in a second impression, and the two impressions had a brief heated
debate before pulling up together in front of me a sign which read
"Guaranteed 100% lunatics. Handle with care." Never being the one to pay
any attention to first impressions, I entered the auditorium.
The auditorium was immense. It looked like it could probably seat
about three hundred people. This was a good thing, as the number of people
in the room must have been pretty close to that already. As I looked around,
I began to notice that, despite being close to capacity, people had managed
to place themselves in distinct groups. Although some groupings were dead
giveaways, (The guys jumping around from desk to desk swinging swords at
each other were blatantly obvious) the purpose of some of the groupings were
totally obscure. I mean, why were a bunch of guys over in the corner bowing
down to a picture of a rather fetching young woman holding a giant spatula?
Bizzare. Really Bizzare. Grade A1 Beef Bizzare.
I found myself a relatively sane section of the auditorium and sat
down. There were about fifteen people on my left, all of whom seemed to be
arguing over something that made no sense whatsoever. I mean, who cares if
someone's name is spelled Rei or Raye? They were both pronounced the same,
so I just zoned out the argument and waited for things to get started.
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[SKEERWEEEEE-THOMP!]
Feedback raced through the auditorium, slamming into my ears and
jerking me back to consciousness.
Down at the front of the room, a shortish guy was tapping on the
microphone, looking pointedly at various people around the room. Silence
fell across the room like an anvil, suddenly and painfully. The man looked
satisfied. He began to read from some notes into a microphone.
"Welcome to the first public anime showing at the Unnamed Anime Club!
Greetings, Avatar! Know ye that a new age of enligh... Hey!" He cut short
his speech briefly, then pulled a large mallet out of the podium. Funny,
the podium didn't look big enough to hold a mallet that size.
"Um, 'scuze the interruption, guys! I gotta take care of some
personal business here. Frank, roll 'em!" With that, the guy started
running up the auditorium, leaping from desk to desk. He yelled, "I'm
going to kill you, Harlan!" and some guy in the back corner, with one of
the swords in his hand, took off at a dead run. Nobody else seemed even
mildly surprised, so I tried to blend with the locals, er, ignored the rather
obvious weirdness, and sat back as the lights went down and the first show
started.
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[Insert MST3K-style commentary on various flics. Or not, depending on my
mood/sense of humor/weirdness level...]
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Two hours later the lights came up. The short guy was up front
again, and he said into the microphone, "Half hour break, everyone! Go
get dinner! Oh, and if you want a membership, come talk to me during the
break." He turned and walked up the side stairway, until he reached the top
row of the auditorium, where he took a seat by one of the exits.
Having thoroughly enjoyed the entire first half of the showing,
including the hecklers, I decided that now would be a good time to go make
introductions and sign on to the group.
I got up out of my chair, made my way over to the walkway, and was
promptly trampled by a horde of ravening students.
"Ouch. That hurt." I decided that laying there in pain for a while
would be a good idea. However, someone else apparently had a different idea.
"Hey! Tired of being a footmat?" The voice was mildly obnoxious,
just annoying enough that I reached through my pain-filled haze, and lifted
my head.
"Go away, I'm dying here," was my typically witty response. Besides,
the guy was being annoying. Maybe if I made myself too much trouble, he'd
let me stay on the ground and suffer some more. That was not to be.
He looked at me, and I recognized him - he was the guy that the
announcer had chased out of the room earlier. He said, "I can't leave you
dying here... If you died in the room, it would be our fault." He reached
out with his hand. "Here. Let me drag you out into the hallway, and you can
finish dying there, ok?"
"Aw, and I was having so much fun laying here wallowing in my misery.
Well, I give." I reached up, and took his hand. "My name's Mike."
"Mine's Harlan. Welcome to our club! How do you like the insanity
so far?" he asked as he pulled me to my feet.
"Well, I'm kind of overwhelmed. I mean, the anime is cool and all,
but the people! The things!" I responded.
"The things," he said quietly, "are also people." (Sorry, Mr. Adams!)
"Still, it's a little strange. I mean, I really have no idea what
you guys have got going on around here. I came here to watch anime, and I
find something that would probably be worth a Doctoral Thesis to a Cultural
Anthropology major."
"Oh, don't worry about it. It's a little strange at first, but
you'll get used to it. Come on, I'll introduce you to the club president."
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Harlan led me up to the top of the auditorium, where the guy who
had done the announcing was sitting. He waved at Harlan, and glanced
inqiringly at me.
"Mike, this is David Erol, the president of our anime club." said
Harlan. "Dave, this is Mike, er..."
"Mike Davidson. Weird place ya got going here," I said.
"Thanks!" responded Dave. "Have you declared an alliegance yet?"
"Huh? Why do I need to declare an alliegance?"
Harlan broke in. "Sorry, Dave, I haven't had a chance to tell him
about that yet. Why don't you show him around and play Ota-king for a bit?
I'll watch the treasury for you. Must get boring up here all by your
lonesome self..."
"Yaright." Dave responded. "If you're sucker enough for the job,
YOU take it!" He got an evil look on his face, whipped out a pin, and stuck
it on Harlan's jacket before Harlan had a chance to even blink.
I looked closely at the pin, which read, "Official Club Nabiki,"
whatever the heck that meant. Dave then turned, walked down the aisle, and
motioned for me to follow.
"So, what's the deal with this alliegance stuff?"
"Well, we have close to four hundred members here. Even inside of
the anime club, there is plenty of room for variety. So a lot of groups
started forming up inside of the UAC. Eventually, there started to political
power plays from some of the groups, some people got pissed off, some people
who started the power plays got booted from the club. Then we found that we
were having so much fun with the clubs-within-a-club that we decided to keep
them. For example, over here," he waived at a large group of people who
seemed to be practically in the middle of a brawl, "we have the I.A.O.S.O.,
or the International Association Of Stormtroopers Of..."
I waited for him to finish the sentence, and when he didn't I asked,
"Of whom?"
"Nobody in particular, really. See, a lot of anime characters are
so extremely popular that they develop their own following. The group was
created so that all the different fans could have a common meeting ground.
Unfortunately, the various people tend to be a little... fanatic about
their favorite characters. Right now, I think they're arguing over who's
going to be their representative to the group at large."
I stared at the "argument." It was more like a full-scale riot!
"How long has this fight been going on?" I asked incredulously.
"Oh, two or three months now. Of course it's nowhere near as bad
as the fight they had over the official club mascot."
I shook my head in amazement.
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As we turned away from the I.A.O.S.O., the wall exploded near
the bottom of the auditorium. Standing in the man-sized hole the explosion
had created was a young asian male, wearing a yellow and black tigerstriped
headband and carrying an umbrella.
I'd had it. I'd finally gone over the edge. It didn't matter any
more how weird things got. I had seen the strange, the even stranger, and
the totally bizzare this evening. Nonchalantly, I turned to Dave, and in
a completely rational voice, asked him, "Don't tell me he's in this club,
too? What group is he a member of? The Psycho Demolition Squad?"
Dave's expression of utter terror clued me in on the answer to my
own question. The only words which escaped his mouth were, "We're all going
to die." He then proceeded to fall to the ground in the fetal position and
suck his thumb.
The man looked around the room. Finally, his eyes fell on me. There
was a feral intensity to those eyes, one that paralyzed me. A wave of
intense fury flew across his eyes.
"SAOTOME RANMA, SHI-NE!"
Suddenly, being afraid seemed like a Very Good Idea.
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Deep in the bowls of the college, the unnameable horror twisted it's
mighty bulk around so that it could see the scrying pool without having to
peer between the hundreds of tentacles streaming from what some people might
have mistaken for a face.
In the pool, the image of the auditorium filled with otaku rippled
through. All of them had their eyes focused on the unusual visitor, the one
who had just blasted his way through the wall. Quietly, then with growing
gusto to do Jinnai proud, the nameless horror cackled and thought of the
growing power to be harvested.
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Arrg, the first chapter is *DONE!!!* If you'll excuse me, I'm going
to go over in the corner, and laugh to scare Jinnai to death.
The comment at the top about thinking at 3:00am in the Oh my God,
what are we doing up this late 'ning is totally true. (Ten brownie points
to anyone who catches the reference!)
Hopefully, this will turn into some kind of ongoing series, with
crossovers from various series. I promise that this will be the *ONLY*
Ranma 1/2 crossover in the series, (Well, maybe one more. Ya see, there's
this guy in the club who gets along with cats just groovily. In fact, they
tend to follow him around. Say, around twenty to thirty... Are you
pondering what I'm pondering?) but just about every other series I've ever
heard of is fair game.
*PLEASE* post C&C. I could use it badly!
Fnord.