Author’s note: The following mission is chronologically the second for Agents Sarah and Elaina, though it is the first to be published. While I would like this to be the product of a weird time-space mix up, it is really due to my own lazy nature and the challenging circumstances of their first mission. It is currently in progress and will be published shortly. The ’fic sporked in this mission belongs to Potential Schizophrenic, who may keep it. Said ’fic may be found here: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4656651/1/Ice, should you feel the need to read it. I would advise against doing so, but you are free to do as you wish. The PPC belongs to Jay and Acacia, and is being used with permission. Recognizable aspects not created by Jay and Acacia are the property of their respective owners and are being used with permission. Agents Sarah and Elaina belong to me.
Agent Sarah Vym leaned cautiously back in the red office chair that sat before the console of RC #1134. She knew better than to relax completely, but she could not help making herself slightly more comfortable, Laws of Narrative Comedy be damned. Behind her, in the bed which had been pushed into the left-hand corner of the RC, Sarah’s partner looked blankly up at the gray ceiling. Their last mission had not exactly been pleasant for either of them, but Elaina had taken the brunt of it and, anyway, it was her former partner currently sedated in FicPsych. Gloom was understandable.
As though sensing the need for a distraction, the console suddenly emitted an ear-splitting [BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!]. Sarah, sitting directly in front of it, jumped at the volume and pushed her chair hurriedly away from the thing, scowling. Elaina turned her head to look at the console, but did not otherwise move.
“Shut up!” Sarah snapped at the console, which continued to [BEEEP] at them. “I can’t do anything if I can’t get near you.”
While the console in RC #1134 was not known to be sentient, nor was it as cowed as those in RCs inhabited by assassins, it seemed to have at least a vague sense of self-preservation, and quieted almost instantly. Sarah nodded. “Thank you.” Gingerly, in case it should change its mind and start beeping once more, she rolled the chair closer to the screen and peered at it, examining the details of the mission to which they had just been assigned.
Her eyes widened, and she once more thrust herself away from the console, glaring at it. “No.”
[Bip?]
Sarah shook her head. “No!” she repeated. “I won’t do it. I can’t do it. I told the Lace that I couldn’t do anime continua, and I won’t.”
“Anime?” Elaina still had not moved from the bed, but at least she was looking at Sarah.
Sarah nodded. “Anime,” she agreed. “Something about which I know absolutely nothing. I told them that when they transferred me, just as I told them when I was first recruited.” She glared at the console. “So send it to someone else. I won’t do it.”
“Which anime?” Elaina asked, cutting off any offended beep the console might have emitted in response to Sarah’s glare.
“Does it matter?” Sarah wanted to know.
“It might. I know some anime continua, and you know, or I assume you do, that Upstairs doesn’t much care if only one partner knows the fandom.”
Sarah sighed, but she knew that her partner was right. She glanced again at the assignment. “Fruits Basket,” she said reluctantly. “Dare I hope that the plural is a typo?”
Elaina shrugged. “It is, sort of, but it was an original mistranslation, so it’s become the official title. And yes, you can assume by that that I do know the fandom.” She sighed. “Not that I am pleased to have to work in it.”
“Well, I won’t do it,” Sarah repeated. “It’s outside of my scope.”
Elaina’s eyes narrowed and she finally left the bed. However, as she did so to come and glare menacingly at Sarah and stand between Sarah and her stash of weapons, it was not really a good thing. “You are doing it,” the Bad Slasher hissed. “You are doing it and you are doing it without complaining. Trust me, I don’t want to lose another partner, but I will do it if you don’t shape up and just focus on the Duty.”
“How am I meant to do the Duty in a continuum about which I know nothing?” Sarah asked.
“Learn on the job. You can spot Bad Slash, yes?”
“Yes,” Sarah answered reluctantly, not pointing out that she had meant the question to be rhetorical.
“Then why do you even care about the continuum?” Elaina’s eyes narrowed further as she looked at Sarah. “It’s Draco, isn’t it?”
Sarah blinked, trying for innocent. “I don’t understand your meaning.”
“You just want to rescue Draco from badslashers, don’t you?”
Sarah tried the innocent blink again, but it clearly was not working. She settled for a scowl. “I do not,” she informed Elaina haughtily. “Why you think I would enjoy watching him be subjected to the horrors of bad slash, I cannot imagine.”
“I didn’t say that,” Elaina reminded her, glare not dimming in the least. “I said you want to rescue him.”
“Well, he needs rescuing,” Sarah muttered, then winced. She had not meant to say that out loud.
Elaina nodded grimly. “I thought as much,” she said. She backed up, and Sarah thought for a moment that the matter would just lie there. Sadly, Elaina was in no mood to allow that, and she returned moments later with a small dagger. “I don’t like Malfoys,” she informed Sarah. “I never did, and ever since a certain woman-who-shall-not-be-named, I dislike them even more. However, that doesn’t matter. What matters is that I do my Duty. Whether I like it or not, whether I care about the characters or not, whether I bloody feel like it or not. I like my job. I want to keep my job. I want to work with a partner who will not go bat shit insane when she sees someone she likes. I want to work with someone who will do what needs to be done regardless of her own feelings. If you’re not that person, and I don’t think you are, then you can leave right now and go back to wherever you came from, because I have no use for you here.”
Sarah looked at Elaina, then at the dagger, then at the console, and then back to Elaina. At last, she asked dryly, “Are you going to stay there all day holding a dagger to my throat, or are you going to let me gather my equipment?”
“Will you work?” Elaina wanted to know.
Sarah sighed. “I will work,” she said.
“Good.” Elaina nodded briskly and stepped back, allowing Sarah to go gather her things as Elaina dealt with the specifics of setting up the portal.
Moments later, Sarah slung her satchel over one shoulder and walked over to the console. A blue portal shimmered already in front of it, and she glanced over at Elaina, who had gone to gather her own things. Sarah wanted to tell her partner to make certain she had the RA this time, but she guessed that this would not be well received at the moment. If they forgot it, well, it would be Elaina’s problem. She herself had the few weapons she was allowed to carry, and a fully charged mp3 player. She left the gathering of canon material up to Elaina, as the other seemed to actually know the canon.
At last, Elaina joined her in front of the portal, and, with a pointed look at her partner, gestured Sarah through. Though Sarah considered asking what the look had been for, she kept her mouth closed and just stepped through the portal, landing in the gray mist of an author’s note. Moments later Elaina joined her, and the booming of the author’s voice filled both of their minds.
So, this is my first Fruits Basket fic. Tell me watcha think? The song I invisaged for the first dance mentioned was 'Angels' by Within Temptation, and the second was 'I'm The King Of Rock And Roll' by Daniel Lioneye. Also tell me how they fit?
Sarah blinked, shaking her head to try and clear the lingering buzzing in her ears from the volume of the a/n. “Dance?” she asked suspiciously. “Do characters in this continuum usually dance?”
Elaina shrugged. “They take turns doing a dance on New Year’s Eve, I believe, but certainly not to any of those songs. Additionally, we have a misspelling of ‘envisaged,’ meaning that she cannot be bothered to use spell check and a misplaced question mark.”
Sarah rolled her eyes. “I am not a newbie,” she informed Elaina, finally giving in to the temptation to be sarcastic with her partner. “I can see all of those things. You needn’t narrate for me as though this were my training mission.”
Elaina shrugged. “So you’ll do the Duty on your own?”
“Yes ma’am, I will do the Duty,” Sarah snapped. “I told you so in the RC, if you recall. I keep my word.”
“Good.” Elaina paused, then added, “Look out, the ’fic proper starts in a ’sec.”
Sarah braced herself as the gray mist dissolved, revealing a nondescript ice arena. She blinked. “Ice dancing?” she asked, sounding very much as though she hoped it would not be so. “She is writing about ice dancing?”
“It seems to be,” Elaina agreed. “Though the author has failed to mark this as an AU, and there is absolutely nothing in canon about ice skating, and certainly not competitive ice dancing.”
Sarah hardly heard her partner. She was far too busy staring at the fiasco on the ice before her. “This person has done no research,” she muttered through clenched teeth. “None. Is it that hard to Google ‘ice dancing’ and find out how the sport works? Is it that hard to have a little respect for the sport you are claiming to represent?”
Elaina frowned. “She is doing it incorrectly?”
Sarah blinked, turning towards her partner. “You… you’re kidding, yes? You think that the travesty before our eyes is in any way representative of actual ice dancing?”
“I know absolutely nothing about ice dancing,” Elaina informed Sarah. “So I am not qualified to judge it.”
“Nor is the author,” Sarah spat. She took a breath and, as a way to distract herself from the supposed ice dancing before them, began to explain to her partner how exactly the sport worked, starting with the crucial, and, she would have thought, obvious fact that ice dancing was always preformed with a partner.
By the time Sarah had finished her rant, the ice rink had dissolved into the gray of another author’s note.
If you didnt guess, the ice-skater from the first paragraph was Yuki. Akito is pushing him to compete so he can have money and fame etc. I dont know about reality, but in this theres 5 judges. I know that 6 is max points from each judge, which makes the perfect score 30. Akito is one picky guy, ne? I know i might have exadurated Yuki's feeling towards Akito a tinytiny bit, but not much. Yuki is terrified of Akito! R&R pleeease! I'm dying to know how I did!
“Horribly,” Sarah said vehemently. “Absolutely terribly. You clearly can’t be arsed to do any research, your chapters are less than 500 words long, or at least, this one is, and you haven’t introduced any of your characters.” She clenched her fists, almost wishing that she had not accepted her current position in the PPC. Had she not, she would have felt free to flame the living hell out of the author, whoever she might be.
Elaina sighed. “She can’t hear you,” she reminded Sarah. “And you’re not helping either of us by yelling at her. Besides, we have a chapter break coming up.” The moment she finished her sentence, the chapter break did indeed come, and the two were flung to the ground violently. When she could see again, Sarah noted that they were still in the gray mist landscape of the author’s note, though the mist seemed to have acquired a slightly pinkish tone to it. She frowned, then forgot all about the odd color of the mist as yet another author’s note caused her to go temporarily deaf.
“How many chapters are there?” Sarah demanded as the mist cleared to reveal the same generic ice rink as before.
“Eighteen,” Elaina informed her, after consulting the Words. Then she frowned. “Yuki has purple eyes,” she muttered. “Not silver.”
Sarah ignored that last and instead concentrated on the more horrific part of Elaina’s speech. “Eighteen?” she demanded. “We have to sit through eighteen chapters of this… this drivel?”
Elaina shrugged. “Probably,” she agreed. “Unless you can find reason to exorcise them before that.”
“Lack of research, description, and obnoxious author’s notes,” Sarah said instantly. “Can we kill it?”
Elaina glared at her. “You said you would work,” she snapped. “You promised me that you would do the Duty. Do I need to spell it out for you again?” Her hand inched towards her backpack, where Sarah suspected she had stashed the dagger. Sarah sighed.
“No,” she muttered. “But really, what do you need?”
“Evidence of slash, first of all,” Elaina informed her tightly. “And enough canon rupture to justify the exorcism.”
“Oh, and creating an unannounced AU isn’t enough?”
“Sadly, no. Now be quiet. We’re missing charges.”
Reluctantly, Sarah turned her attention back to the Words. The moment she did, she wished she had not. Yet again, the author was demonstrating her lack of knowledge of ice dancing or, indeed, ice skating in general. There had also, apparently, been some kind of scene switch, though it had been completely unannounced.
Sarah felt her stomach lurch, and she realized an instant too late that her noticing the scene break had caused the Word World to react. She clutched her midsection as her stomach threatened to expel its contents and firmly told her digestive system to behave. She had been through worse temporal distortions, and, anyway, there was no way she would allow herself to throw up in Elaina’s presence.
Once the world had steadied itself once again, Sarah slid her satchel off of her shoulder and extracted her MP3 player. “The only thing I’ll be good for is spotting skating errors, and you’ve said you don’t care about that,” she informed Elaina tightly. “And if I have to sit through any more of this gorram ’fic I’ll go mad. Since you said you didn’t want another mad partner, I thought I would spare you.” She shoved her earbuds into her ears and turned it up almost as high as it would go, not even caring what song came up. Elaina, still paying attention to the Words, only shrugged.
The music carried Sarah through approximately two paragraphs and, thankfully, allowed her to ignore another unmarked scene shift. Apparently Elaina had not noticed it either, and the world stayed mercifully stable.
Before them, Yuki and a black-and-white-haired boy apparently named Haru were kissing. Sarah’s eyes brightened and she removed her earbuds. “Slash!” she proclaimed. “And this boy was introduced three paragraphs ago. Can we kill it?”
Elaina sighed, but shook her head. Sarah saw that she was clenching her fists, and realized that her partner hated this as much as Sarah herself did. “Haru does have a crush on Yuki in canon, though Yuki doesn’t respond to it. You can charge for OOC behavior on Yuki’s part, though, because he’d never actually stand for that, and he doesn’t cry in canon.”
Sarah sighed. “I don’t get to kill them, so why bother charging?” she asked, once again rhetorically.
Elaina, who seemed not to be able to recognize rhetorical questions – or else willfully ignored them – shrugged. “Well, we do have to submit a list to Upstairs, you know.”
“I suppose.” Sarah dug through her satchel and withdrew a spiral notebook and purple pen and began writing down the charges thus far.
“Brace yourself,” Elaina warned. “Another chapter break.” She paused, then added, “And charge for the author having to tell us in an a/n that Yuki is rethinking his sexuality.”
Sarah scribbled that down, then sat and clutched her knees to her chest in preparation for the chapter break. It came just as violently as before, and the mist that swirled around them to signify their presence in the author’s note was even more tinged with pink than before. Sarah frowned. “Do I want to know why this mist is pink?” she asked warily. As an experiment, she waved her hand through it, but it simply dissipated and slowly came together again when she retracted her hand.
“Probably not,” Elaina assured her, sitting down as well. “And you might want to put those back in.” She nodded towards the earbuds. “More bad skating coming up.”
Sarah winced and pushed the earbuds back into her ears, turning the volume up even higher. She had unfortunately forgotten to pack a book, but at least she did not have to hear the Words, and she could close her eyes.
As the mist of the author’s note dissipated, Elaina poked at Sarah’s shoulder. Sarah scowled at her partner, and reluctantly removed one earbud.
“Sorry to disturb you,” Elaina said, not seeming sorry at all, “but are skating rinks usually open at midnight?”
Sarah blinked. “Beg pardon?”
“Are ice arenas open at midnight?” Sarah repeated.
“Not usually,” Sarah said cautiously. “Why do you ask?”
In response, Elaina gestured to the rink below. A glance at the words told Sarah that it was indeed midnight and that, worse, Yuki seemed to be completely alone. She hissed.
“Shall I assume, then, that it is not normal?”
“No,” Sarah managed, teeth and hands clenching simultaneously. “It is not. Actually, I believe what he is doing at the moment is illegal.”
“Oh?”
Sarah nodded. “There are liability issues. The rinks cannot afford to have skaters on the ice unsupervised for fear of lawsuits. Also, the lights would be on. Fluorescent lighting is your friend when you’re on the ice, and floodlights are mostly only used in exhibitions, and they don’t cover half the ice. And how in Mithros’ name did he get in?”
Elaina shrugged. “In canon he can turn into a rat.”
“Oh, so he snuck in. Very legal, that. Is he the type to engage in illegal activities?”
“Definitely not.”
“I thought not.” Sarah wrote down several new charges on the rapidly growing list. As an afterthought, she put her earbuds back in. Thus, she missed Kyo’s climbing into the rink while apparently wearing skates which, all things considered, was a good thing, as the sight would undoubtedly have sent Sarah into another rant about how the author had done no research at all.
Instead, she remained blissfully unaware of the happenings of the ’fic until Elaina poked her once again.
“Pay attention,” Elaina hissed. “I think this is where we can start charging again.”
Sarah sighed, but paused her music. She did not take the earbuds out, and Elaina did not comment. Instead, both agents watched the scene, growing increasingly nauseated by not only the attempted angst of the ’fic but at the author’s complete lack of description. Sarah, who knew nothing of the canon, was already thoroughly lost – not that she minded – and thus hardly noticed when the author made things even more confusing. Elaina, however, hissed.
Not until Kyo noticed a droplet of water on the bench. Yuki was crying? The prince, with all his self-assurance and money and fans- was crying? It had taken Kyo this long to realize: Yuki was not like that. His entire persona wasn't his- it was Akito's.
“No,” Elaina snarled.
Sarah frowned. “What’s wrong?” she wanted to know.
“The author has given us no reason for why Kyo should know any of this,” Elaina snapped. “Kyo and Yuki have just met, which leads me to believe that they do not live with Tohru and Shigure, which leads me to think that Kyo does not live with the rest of the Sohma family, which means that he should have no way of knowing any of this.”
Sarah blinked. “Since I understood absolutely none of that, shall I charge for God-modding?”
Elaina nodded tightly. “That will work,” she muttered.
Sarah wrote down the charge, then allowed her eyes to unfocus as she looked at the Words themselves. “They kiss in about two seconds,” she said. “And the author calls it love at first sight. Can we kill it?”
Elaina sighed, but nodded. “We can kill it,” she agreed. “Though, of course, there are far more crimes against canon in later chapters that we should technically catch.”
Sarah looked at her charge list. “Isn’t this enough?” She passed it over to Elaina, who examined it and frowned.
“I thought we had more than that,” she muttered.
Sarah scowled. “What, that’s not enough for you?”
“Not enough to justify killing it.” Elaina bit her lip. “What would you do if I told you we had to keep going?”
“Be extremely displeased,” Sarah snapped. “You said we could kill it.”
“And now I’m changing my mind. Duty, remember?”
“I did the Duty. I recorded the charges, I watched the stupid fic, I waited until there was proper slash and now I want to kill it.”
Elaina scowled. “Do you want to keep your job?”
“What if I said no?”
“Then I would say that I want to keep mine so it doesn’t matter what you think. We keep going.”
Sarah glared. Elaina looked back steadily. They kept this up through a badly done injury scene and two more author’s notes. Sarah did not even notice the pinkness of the mist. At last, just as Kyo was heard crying and screaming in the background, Sarah turned her MP3 player back on. Elaina, correctly interpreting that as an admission of defeat, allowed herself to scan the Words they had missed and recorded the charges as necessary.
Sarah did not even blink when it was announced that Yuki would be dancing with a gash across his head, a sure sign that she had crossed from despair into complete apathy. Of course, Sarah strove for apathy anyway, but it was rare that she actually achieved it, and the fact that she had now boded ill for the chapters to come. Elaina kept the charge list.
As none of the chapters were longer than a few hundred words, time passed relatively quickly, and Elaina had to scramble to record charges. Sarah could have spotted both errors against ice skating and crimes against common sense – such as Yuki’s deciding that it would be a good idea to run away in the middle of the night to find Kyo, even though the latter had just blinded their cousin and Yuki had no idea where he was – but the agent was glowering into her hands and Elaina did not want to risk disturbing her. One snapped partner was more than enough.
At last, having managed on her own for almost four chapters, Elaina was forced to poke her partner back into awareness. Sarah, glowering, turned her music down, though she neither turned it off nor removed an earbud. Elaina chose not to comment. Instead, she nodded towards the ice below. “How accurate is that?” she asked, though she suspected she knew the answer.
Sarah’s clenched fists and sharp intake of breath confirmed it. “Not at all,” Sarah snarled. “Why did the bleet-brained person pick ice dancing? What she wants is men’s freestyle, which, though she knows nothing about that either, would make more sense here. What she’s writing about is freestyle. And that doesn’t exist, nor is it actually possible,” she added darkly.
He leaped up, legs stretched in a split, and made a beautiful forward flip, bringing him to a kneeling halt before the judges.
Elaina winced as the world tried to make Yuki do the move as it had been described. “Doesn’t landing on your knees hurt?” she asked, watching as Yuki did just that.
“Yes,” Sarah informed her. “Excessively. In fact, it’s a good way to break one’s kneecaps, among other things.”
Elaina nodded and charged accordingly.
Moments later, they were thrown roughly to the ground as the ’fic underwent yet another temporal distortion. With both of them actively paying attention, the world could not help but react, and the agents were thus forced to endure a shift in both space and time, made all the worse by the author’s complete failure to identify it.
Sadly, Elaina recovered in time to see yet more evidence of the author’s not having done any research into anything at all.
As he saw the concerned face looking him directly in the eyes, Haru turned white again. His eyes widened, and he yanked the needle from his arm, casting it into the river. None of the poison had entered his skin.
She scowled. “Doesn’t work that way,” she snapped.
“What, drug usage?” Sarah wanted to know. “How would you know?”
“I’ve seen RENT,” Elaina informed her. “And they, unlike this author, did the research. Drug usage is not like that. If you’re that close to shooting up, it, a, means that you’ve done it before and are thus not averse to the idea and, b, means that you’re not about to stop because someone looks at you. Besides, drugs enter your bloodstream, not your skin.”
“Does that mean we can kill it?” Sarah asked hopefully.
Elaina sighed. Looking at the chargelist, she nodded. “Yes. When they’re together again, so that we can get them both. With them exorcised, the rest should snap back. They’re not too terribly out of character, all things considered, though Haru is admittedly borderline.”
“Don’t care,” Sarah said firmly. “Unless he’s been replaced, then we can just ignore it, right?”
Elaina sighed. “I’d rather not,” she said slowly. “But I think we’ll have to. We can just neglect to mention it to Upstairs and see if we get away with it. And if we don’t, it wasn’t my fault.”
Sarah nodded. “I will be more than pleased to take the blame if it means we can get out of here. When are they together again?”
“Next chapter, which happens…” Before Elaina could say, ‘now,’ the chapter break arrived and the two, who had not yet stood up, were once more flattened by its violence. Elaina reflected that maybe the ’fic wanted to be over as much as she and Sarah wanted it to be over. They endured the author’s note, though Sarah felt compelled to point out that the mist was far more pink than gray by now, a sure sign of canon possession, if not outright replacement. Elaina only shrugged, reminding herself that it would all be over soon.
Indeed, not even a paragraph into the ninth chapter, the two Bad Slashers saw their chance.
"Kyo" he began "Kyo, why…why did you do that to Shigure's eye? What…happened back there?"
“Doesn’t matter,” Elaina said briskly, emerging from the protection of the SEP field. Sarah followed her, satchel open as she rummaged for her candles and matches.
“Who are you?” Kyo demanded, staring at them.
“We’re people who are going to make this better,” Elaina announced. “You want Yuki to be happy, don’t you?”
“Of course!” Kyo said. “I love him!”
Sarah, still searching for the matches, snorted rather loudly, and Kyo scowled at her. “I do,” he snapped. “You’re stupid if you don’t see it.”
“Shut up,” Elaina snapped. “Sarah, hurry up!”
“You find your own things,” Sarah retorted. “I’m busy. Do you want to restrain them?”
Yuki’s eyes widened in fear at the mention of restraint, and Kyo began to hiss. Elaina sighed. “I think you’d better,” she said. “Did you bring rope?”
“Better.” Sarah finally pulled her head out of her backpack and, eyes closed, held something up. Elaina squinted to see it better, then wished she had not.
“What is that?” she asked in horror, looking away in a hurry.
“Urple duct tape,” Sarah said proudly. “Perfect for restraining canons. You might want to put on your sunglasses.”
“You could have warned me,” Elaina grumbled, taking her sunglasses out of her pocket and putting them on. Even through the tinted lenses, then duct tape hurt to look at.
“Sorry,” Sarah said, not sounding contrite at all.
With a sigh, Elaina turned back to Kyo and Yuki, who were still glaring. Thinking of how they would have reacted had canon still been in place gave her the necessary strength to restrain them – not that it was terribly difficult, as the author had neglected to mention anything at all about martial arts. Sarah, meanwhile, had finally found her matches and was busy setting out the candles and lighting them. Elaina took the first two volumes of the manga from her own backpack and started to hand one to each of the canons. She then remembered that their hands were bound and sighed.
“Sit down,” she ordered. When they seemed about to argue, she glared. “Do you want to make it better or not?” she demanded. “And, more importantly, do you want to do it the hard way or not?”
Kyo glared. Elaina glared right back. “You don’t scare me,” she informed him. “Though you might if you cooperated. As it is, you don’t scare anyone.”
Kyo started to object, but Yuki shook his head. “Let’s do it,” he said. He looked dangerously close to crying, and Elaina looked away in disgust. “Anything to make life better for us.”
Kyo’s objections stopped immediately and he sat. Yuki followed suit.
“Thank you,” Elaina said brightly. She laid a manga book on each of their laps. “Ready, Sarah?”
“I’ve been ready since chapter three,” Sarah muttered. “Go for it.” She picked up a bell and started to ring it.
Elaina looked at the chargelist, took a breath, and began to shout, “Avaunt spirit of bad slash! Be gone badly researched ice dancing! I summon the power of Tayaka and command canon to return to its original state!” She paused for breath. “I have reason for my demands, and ask that they be granted! For too long has this canon been warped, and I ask that the power of Tayaka come to my aid in removing the spirits of bad slash, bad research, annoying author’s notes, and OOCness from this previously unmarred canon! Get thee behind me elements of canon and allow the spirits putrefying it to come forth.” Even as she shouted, she removed the DVD of the anime from her backpack and held it at the ready.
Slowly, the author-wraith emerged from both Kyo and Yuki, coalescing into one form. “This hurts me as much as it hurts you,” it wailed, even as Elaina hit it with the DVD. DVD cases, admittedly, were not the greatest weapons, but it seemed to do the trick. The author-wraith screamed again and then dissipated. Elaina, looking suspiciously at Kyo and Yuki, hit them both upside the head with the DVD for good measure.
“Sunglasses,” Sarah warned. Elaina glanced back to see that her partner had the neuralyzer at the ready.
“Already wearing them,” Elaina replied. Sarah activated the device, and, moments later, both Kyo and Yuki were blinking in confusion.
Swiftly, Sarah unbound their wrists and picked up her books. “Right,” she said. “Yuki, Kyo, you do not love each other. You are not ice dancers, and you live with Shigure and Tohru. Yuki, Haru did not confess his love to you and you did not kiss him. Kyo, you did not stop Haru from using drugs. If I were you, I’d leave this building, as I don’t think it will exist for much longer. My partner and I are nothing but figments of your imagination. Thank you for your time.” She pulled the RA from her pocket and pressed a button. A portal appeared and she gestured for Sarah to step through. Once Sarah had vanished, Elaina followed suit, just in time to see Kyo and Yuki leave the un-canonical ice rink. She smiled as she saw them leave separately.
Sarah, having already dropped her satchel in her designated corner, collapsed onto her bed. Elaina noticed that she still had not removed her earbuds. “I’m going to sleep,” Sarah announced. “I don’t care what the stupid console does, leave me alone until I wake up.”
Elaina nodded, and Sarah closed her eyes. After sending the official chargelist to Upstairs, Elaina sat down on her own bed and took her copy of Gundam Wing’s Episode Zero from her pillow. Slowly, her own eyes closed and her head slumped forward, though she did not drop the book. For a time, silence reigned in the RC, and even the console did not dare break it save with a tentative and unanswered [bip?].