Mangatripper
By Ewen "Blackbird" Cluney
Episode 4

Where was I? Oh yeah. When I next awoke, I found myself in a
hospital bed. I had a headache, as though I'd slept a little too
long on a Sunday afternoon. I didn't seem to be bandaged, and I
wasn't really hurting anymore. I sat up and took a look around.
Sitting there, looking exhausted on a chair beside the bed, was
Kasumi. She was wearing a different school uniform than usual,
but a sailor fuku nonetheless. When she saw that I was up, she
blinked and rushed to my side.
	"Collins-sempai! You're awake!"
	At first I thought it was really odd that she was calling me
"sempai" - I might be older than her, but we never went to school
together so I could hardly be called her upperclassman. But
then... Have you ever had one of those dreams where you just
"know" something for no apparent reason; you see a man and you
know that he's been your friend for six years and you owe him
twenty bucks even though everything about him is an alien
fabrication of the unconscious. Well, it was like that; as I
tried to think back I started remembering things very
differently. I was her sempai after a fashion; I was an American
transfer student at the high school she went to. I'd been injured
trying to protect her from bullying by an infamous "bad girl"
gang in school, and...
	The relief was plain on her face. "Collins-sempai... I'm so
sorry that this happened to you. I-I'm glad that... that you
wanted to help me, but I never wanted-" It might've been foolish,
but I'd tried to protect her from them, and received a serious
beating for it. I'd been passing by the girls' locker room - I
remembered it was on the way from the archery range - when I'd
heard some commotion...
	"It's okay." I interrupted. "Really. I feel fine now." My
brain was trying to make sense of the conflicting memories that
were assaulting it. The pieces didn't quite match, as though my
left and right eyes were seeing two different but similar things.
"How long have I been here?"
	Kasumi let out a sigh. "Two weeks." It later occurred to me
that whatever bizarre effect had "integrated" the two of us into
this new world, it probably affected Kasumi much more than it did
me.
	I stood up and stretched. "I feel fine." I declared with a
smile. "It takes more than that to keep me down." If not for the
world messing with my memories, I would've probably just been
glad to have some rest after that whirlwind of an ordeal.
	It took some time to convince the hospital staff that I was
indeed feeling fine. Healing tended to be a rather nebulous thing
in anime; in one series a character can be beaten within an inch
of his life and recover a moment later because it's funny, while
in another a similar injury is a season-long tragedy, and in yet
another it's instant removal from the show due to character
mortality. But when all was said and done I was given a clean
bill of health by a rather nondescript doctor.
	As we walked outside the hospital it was late afternoon; the
sun was setting, casting orange and pink hues across the sky.
	"I came right after school." Kasumi said quietly. She was
avoiding my gaze, and seemed to be blushing. She'd had no way to
know that today would be the day I recovered, which meant...
She'd been coming every day.
	Inside I was elated that she liked me enough to do such a
thing, but a mixture of emotions and hormones was making it hard
to think straight, and I suspect my cheeks were as colored as
hers. I didn't realize it at first, but I had automatically
started walking towards home. Not my real home, but the place
where, in this world, I was living and had somehow come to think
of as home. Only half conscious of what I was doing I took a
different turn.
	"Are you really okay?"
	I blinked and realized that I hadn't said anything for a few
minutes. I nodded, and took hold of her hand without thinking
about what I was doing. "I-I'm fine, Kasumi-chan."
	She was too embarrassed to make any move one way or the
other, so her hand remained motionless in my grip. Then I
realized this and my hand became just as stiff as hers. It was
like going through the first time all over again. Falling in
love. To tell the truth, it had seemed as though I might never
feel that way again.
	"How is everyone?" I managed. Change the subject. Sure.
	Kasumi shrugged. "Daisuke and Touji are especially worried
about you, and... Everyone's been asking about you."
	We came to a small park. By that time my heart was pounding.
"Did anything interesting happen while I was asleep"
	Whatever she remembered made her blush even more brightly
than before, but she said, "Not really."
	We found ourselves sitting on a bench. The park was small
and mostly empty with the exception of a couple of children
playing in the sandbox and a man walking his dog. We sat there in
silence for... too long. Kasumi seemed to reach a decision; she
took a deep breath and turned to me.
	"Collins-sempai... P-please tell me... about me... do
you..."
	I could feel the uncomfortable warmth of a blush spreading
through my body. My beating heart seemed to pound against my
chest, and my hands trembled. Even under normal circumstances I
would've had a hard time answering, but having been turned into
an anime teenager it was proving nigh impossible.
	"I mean... Y-you protected me. You were so brave and...
and... Not many people would do that."
	This was about where things started to head straight for
Weirdsville, Japan. I'm pretty sure that what happened was... How
can I explain this? (I keep saying that...) It's like... anime is
made up of certain elements. They're not the molecules and stuff
that make up our world, they're stories and emotions and things
like that, only those things are a lot more fragile than
molecules, and whatever happened to Xavier's control panel caused
his "parachronic conveyor" to somehow "break" parts of the world
it transported us to.
	There I go getting way ahead of myself. At first it was just
like all the sound cut out for just a moment, and the world
seemed to tremble for just a moment.
	"Eetou... Anou... Boku... Boku wa..."
	Those words came out of _my_ mouth. I hadn't tried to speak
Japanese - I don't know all that much of it after all - it just
happened, like something was making words come out in Japanese in
the same way that gravity makes things fall towards the ground. I
blinked, wondering if my eyes were working right, because not too
far in the distance I could see words - English words - that
seemed to float in the air. The words were yellow with a black
outline and at that moment seemed so familiar yet totally foreign
at the same time. They were backwards too; I read, "Um... uh...
I... I..." and I realized that that was what I'd just said,
translated into English.
	"Korinzu-sempai. Onegai..."
	I pointed to the words and asked her if she could see them.
(It came out as "Ano... Kasumi-chan, sore o mite koto ga dekiru
ka?")
	She looked at where I was pointing for a long moment. The
words hung there in the air, plain to see, saying "Um... Kasumi,
can you see that?" After a long moment, she nodded. When she
turned back to look at me, her expression was different somehow.
She adjusted her glasses. At that moment, the conflict in my
memories started to become more and more obvious, like whatever
had pushed those fake memories into my brain was gradually
receding.
	"Gabriel," she said, suddenly returning to the English that
I had grown accustomed to hearing from her. "What's going on?"
She was looking more and more like the confident Kasumi I was
used to and less and less like a timid, blushing schoolgirl.
	I took a deep breath. "Yo no se." At that I did a double
take. Whatever language I was suddenly speaking, I couldn't even
understand it myself.
	"Gabriel," she replied. "Creo que este es... Espa�ol?"
Espa�ol, as I recalled, means Spanish. I know a lot of Latin
American countries are into anime (not to mention France and some
other parts of Europe, and quite a bit of Asia too for that
matter), but this was a bit much.
	I stood up and looked around. "Nani kono... kono baka na..."
Japanese again, this time without subtitles.
	"Concentrate." Kasumi said firmly - in English. Her voice
and accent seemed to be fluctuating as she spoke - sometimes in
clear English, other times the broken English of a typical anime
character - but the language stayed the same. "Ifu... IF you try
you can always speak Engrish. English."
	"Ua... WHAT is going on?" It was as though someone was
playing with the world's DVD remote, and as you might imagine I
wasn't exactly thrilled with the prospect. As if all that weren't
enough, the weirdness suddenly went up a notch.
	I was in some way dimly aware of colors and music suddenly
swirling around me, of posing, sometimes by myself and sometimes
with Kasumi. For that matter I could've sworn I'd seen words in
Japanese zipping by... and I think there was a funky-looking
Western name somewhere in there too.
	The next thing I knew, Kasumi and I were walking down the
street. I stopped short, though when I noticed that my arms and
legs were suddenly rather... stubby. Once glance at Kasumi
confirmed my rising suspicions.
	"Great. Now we're super-deformed." I muttered. I didn't
object to that kind of thing when I was watching it, but
experiencing it first-hand seemed somehow a bit less fun.
	"Super-deformed?" Kasumi blinked quizzically, making a loud
"piku" sound as she did so. "What's that?"
	For no apparent reason, a cute little girl with pigtails
chose that moment to appear and answer the question. "It's
simple, really, oneesan!" she proclaimed, pulling out a chart.
"Anime characters generally have three basic states, depending on
the nature of the Zone in which they are currently residing.
There's the baseline normal form, the childlike 'chibi' form
('chibi' is Japanese for 'little' by the way), and finally the
comedic extreme of the super-deformed state."
	"But what does being super-deformed actually do?" asked
Kasumi. I let out a sigh. This was shaping up to be a typical
omake.
	The girl grinned. "When in the super-deformed state, an
anime character is virtually indestructible-" This was about
where this whole SD business started to get unpleasant, because I
was evidently going to be used for demonstration purposes. To be
more specific, she clobbered me with a giant anime mallet. "-They
can feel pain-"
	The shock of the mallet's blow left me with a little bandage
on the top of my head, and I found myself unleashing a series of
super-deformed curses.
	"-But physical damage can ultimately be shrugged off very
quickly. On the other hand, super-deformed characters are
invariably more excitable and short-tempered."
	"I'll show you short-tempered!" I yelled. "What the heck do
you think you're doing smacking me on the head like that!"
	The girl ignored me. "And that's the basics of being Super-
Deformed! That's all for today!"
	The world seemed to shudder for a moment, and suddenly
Kasumi and I found ourselves standing in the park like before,
except that we were wearing our usual clothes and my backpack had
mysteriously returned, which was something of a relief; even when
I wasn't being flung to the far corners of an unknown and hostile
multiverse, for some reason I always felt a little bit off-
balance without my backpack.
	The little girl was still present, though. She looked up at
us with an expression of... confidence. "Are you two okay? Things
got really weird around here all of a sudden."
	Kasumi slowly nodded. "What the hell happened?"
	It seemed a bit out of character for her to swear like that,
but then I could hardly blame her after what had just happened.
	The little girl casually sat down on the bench. "My name is
Natsumi, by the way."
	With a sigh, I sat down and motioned for Kasumi to do the
same; she did so reluctantly. There was something...familiar
about her, but I couldn't place it.
	Natsumi began speaking with the same encyclopedic tone as
before. "So you want to know what happened? That was a big
dimensional disruption. A continuity divergence, a linguistic
fracture, and finally an omake shift, all within seconds of each
other."
	My first instinct was to demand to know what the hell she
was talking about, buy I stopped myself and tried to think about
what she'd said and the possible meanings behind it. My casual
musings about the structure of anime worlds from before seemed to
be very correct. The "linguistic fracture" sounded like the right
name for the bizarre subtitling and dubbing that we'd been
subjected to. And an "omake shift" was easily identifiable. "A
continuity divergence... that's like..." I floundered for the
right words. "Like when they make an OAV series and then they do
a TV series in a different continuity."
	Smiling and nodding, Natsumi replied, "Exactly. You're
pretty sharp."
	This "Natsumi" was definitely more than she seemed. The name
was generic enough; "natsu" for "summer" and "mi" for "beauty" -
the second most common suffix for a female Japanese name. But the
way she spoke and moved weren't particularly childlike. That left
one question; whatever she really was, was she on our side?
	I decided to take a chance. "Then... What do you call it
when someone from another dimension, where anime is just
something on video, comes here where it's real?"
	"You," Natsumi replied, "are what we call a Mangatripper."
	Aside from the obvious Rumic Theater reference... That term
made about as much sense as anything else around here. I realized
that Natsumi was gauging Kasumi's reaction; this latest
revelation was not a huge shock to her but simply a label for
what she already knew. It did not, however, give me any idea as
to whether or not to trust her. A part of me was convinced that
such a cute little girl couldn't possibly want to do anything
bad, but I knew that reaction wasn't my own. The ranks of cute
characters in anime included as many vicious little freaks as
they did kind, loving little girls. If not more.
	"Be that as it may," I replied. "Why exactly are you here?"
	Natsumi just rolled her eyes and smiled yet again. "I was
sent to investigate the dimensional anomaly; it's over now, but
that still leaves the question of the other ones that have been
detected lately."
	Again, what she was saying just didn't fit her persona. On
the other hand, given the... interesting disposition of our foes
so far (i.e., they had all been highly fruity bishounens), it
seemed unlikely that she was affiliated with them. "Have you ever
heard of a man named Valirion?" I asked pointedly.
	Silence reigned for a moment, and a breeze whispered
ominously through the trees. "How do you know that name?"
	I eyed her suspiciously. "It seems like I should be asking
you that question."
	With startling speed and intensity, Natsumi grabbed me by
the collar, pulling my head down until it was level with hers.
"Tell me."
	"His lackeys have come after us twice now. Once in Tokyo and
once on a spaceship."
	Natsumi let me go, seemingly ambushed by her own thoughts.
"That explains a lot. Disruptions were monitored in both Tokyo
Prime and somewhere in the Mecha Zones..."
	Kasumi frowned. "Do you think perhaps you could include us
in this discussion?"
	Natsumi turned to the pair of us, shuddering slightly.
"Look... Valirion is dangerous. Very dangerous. There are always
plenty of villains around, but when one of them starts hopping
dimensions he can usually become ten times as dangerous. And if
there's enough at stake that he wants something from you two...
You could be in deep already."
	Not what I wanted to hear. But then she was clearly speaking
in some kind of technical lingo, and using plenty of terms that I
couldn't understand.
	Kasumi, I realized, was restraining herself, keeping
considerable anger and fear bottled up. "Then what are we
supposed to do?"
	It was about then that I realized a tall, slender, and too-
familiar figure was standing behind us. "You will submit to the
will of Lord Valirion." It was the guy from Tokyo - the bare-
chested guy in a black trench with a silver cross. "He is not
unkind," he continued, "If only you knew the truth of why he
pursues this great errand."
	It seemed like Kasumi and I had begun to develop a rapport
of sorts; with barely a glance at each other I took Natsumi by
the arm and Kasumi and I scattered in opposite directions, coming
around to meet behind a stone statue of a dog. As I'd hoped,
Kasumi had already materialized her sword.
	"Remember his imitation power." I reminded her.
	A wave of crimson energy blazed into the statue, throwing
fragments of rock in every direction as the unfortunate stone
canine shattered. "It would be foolish to assume that mimicry is
my only power," explained the bishounen. "Assumptions can be your
downfall."
	It just had to be the same guy. My bluff from our first
meeting would never work a second time. Kasumi gave me a
reassuring smile and stepped forward to do battle. I was more
than a little concerned at this point; while we'd beaten him with
trickery the first time, a straight-up battle was likely to prove
more difficult, and the humiliation of being kneed in the groin
would put him on his guard. Not only that, but of the three girls
from Excelion, only Arisa had ever beaten a General single-
handedly, and that was with the motivation of seeing Hiro almost
killed.
	Kasumi's shimmering blue sword met his katana, which gleamed
a hungry, predatory crimson hue. The two swords clashed again and
again, throwing up multicolored sparks each time they struck, but
it was all too clear that the bishounen wasn't fighting
seriously. He seemed to be waiting for the right moment to bring
the battle to a close with one perfect blow, like a fighting game
player trying to land that one perfect level 3 super, smirking
all the while.
	I felt that same helplessness as I watched them go back and
forth. Kasumi would occasionally try a magical attack here or
there, but he invariably devised some counter. When I dared to
take my eyes off of the battle for a moment, I saw Natsumi was
watching the battle with an intensity that few adults could
manage, much less a child.
	"Damnit!" Kasumi growled. "What the hell do you freaks want
with me?!" She was getting angry, and losing her focus. She
sounded like me, actually.
	"Xavier made me promise to bring the boy back," the
bishounen explained casually, even as the clash of swords
continued, "but you... You are the final ingredient in the rite
that will allow Lord Valirion to fulfill his ambitions. A
sacrifice to his greater glory."
	She fought on harder than ever, but the bishounen seemed to
be growing weary of the battle, and finally he raised his sword
skyward and brought it down on the ground, sending out a massive
shockwave of energy. I found Natsumi pulling me to the ground as
the burning red energy washed over us. When I could see again -
when the red haze had at last cleared - Kasumi was lying
unconscious on the ground. With little regard for my own safety I
found myself rushing over to her side; she was out cold, and her
sword had faded back into the nothingness from which it had
appeared.
	That bastard was looming over the two of us, and I had
nothing to fight with. I let out a ragged breath. "Fuck. Now
what?"
	At that moment I hadn't been keeping my anime clich�s in
mind, because I was forgetting that this was another of those
dire moments when something incredible happened to pull the
heroes out of hot water.
	Natsumi stepped forward, putting herself between the
bishounen and myself. "I can't let you touch them," she declared
firmly. "You and your master are violators of the Dimensional
Accords, and as such it is my duty to arrest you, forcibly if
need be."
	Both the bishounen and I looked at her as though she'd been
struck by another "linguistic fracture." "What," he mused, "could
you possibly hope to do to me?"
	"I didn't want to have to do this just yet," she replied,
"but you leave me no choice." What happened next... Well, it
looked like one of those cool digital effects you see in some of
the newer anime series. It was like part of reality just unfolded
around her, revealing a very different person. The "new" Natsumi
was tall, probably in her early 20s, with short black hair, and
clad in a nearly skintight blue jumpsuit. I could make out the
words "D-POLICE" in English along the side of her leg. She
clenched her fists, and blue energy flared around them. "I am
Detective Natsumi Akamura of the Dimensional Police, and I am
hereby placing you under arrest on charges of trans-dimensional
terrorism, and complicity in Zonal genocide."
	I was trying to comprehend what could possibly be going on
when it dawned on me that this would be a poor place for the
unconscious Kasumi and I to be, so I carefully picked her up and
began to retreat. The bishounen watched us go out of the corner
of his eye, knowing, it seemed, that this was an opponent he
could not afford to underestimate.
	"So," he mused. "The Dimensional Police. I can't say I've
heard of such an organization, but I can't afford to take you too
lightly either. Prepare to die, at the blade of Folken."
	The wind rose as the two of them faced off, neither moving
in the least for a painfully long moment. The glow that
surrounded Natsumi's fists slowly intensified, and her eyes
seemed to burn with power. Though she had no real ties to myself
or Kasumi, she seemed to know too well the stakes of this fight,
and was prepared to give it her all.
	The new battle exploded into being when Natsumi leapt
backwards, unleashing two spheres of energy; Folken deflected the
first with his sword but took the second one on his leg. There
was a small explosion, but before the dust had cleared Folken
soared forward, coming at her with his sword. The blood-red blade
slashed again and again, Natsumi dodging and parrying as she
fought back in a precise, calculated series of movements. The
power blasts from her fists blazed as she assaulted him again and
again, but on those occasions when she did finally manage to land
a blow it seemed to have little effect.
	After what seemed like an eternity, there was a lull in the
battle as both fighters paused to catch their breath. Natsumi
seemed to mutter something to herself, and I immediately noticed
a change in the energy that seethed around her hands; it was as
though they left faint trails of blue as they moved. As though in
response, Folken held his sword horizontally in front of his
face, and used it to make a deep cut in his forearm. The sword
seemed to pull his blood into itself, taking on a malicious glow.
	 I held my breath as the world seemed to pulse in time with
their energies for yet another small eternity. Kasumi was coming
around, but not quickly enough. The two warriors blazed towards
each other; Natsumi brought two snaking spirals of seething blue
to bear on Folken, who returned the favor with a massive, sinuous
slash of angrily luminous crimson. The two attacks tore through
the air, clashing in a blast of pure white light that sent a
fierce wave of painfully hot air shooting out in all directions.
	The sound of a katana sliding into its sheath was like an
icicle rasping against my spine. I already knew too well how the
clash had turned out. When the dust finally cleared, Folken stood
there, smiling faintly.
	Natsumi had collapsed to the ground; the blue jumpsuit she
wore was torn and crackled with stray sparks of blue energy. She
looked up at him bitterly. "Jettison. Code Omega." she growled.
What remained of the tattered jumpsuit suddenly blurred and
twisted, forming a crackling ball that shot towards Folken. He
seemed to move into a brief blur of motion, and the two halves of
that ball sped past him and exploded in the distance as he
sheathed his sword again.
	By that time, however, Natsumi, wearing normal clothes and
wielding some kind of energy pistol, was upon him. What she
lacked in power she was evidently making up for with stunning
agility and quick thinking. Her gun sent a seething yellow beam
into Folken's shoulder - though it didn't seem to hurt him much -
and this was followed almost immediately by a kick to the face
that left him staggering. Unfortunately, Folken seemed determined
to persist in being an overpowered villain, because he spun
around, bringing his fist into her stomach so hard she was sent
tumbling over and over, skidding to a halt alongside Kasumi and
I.
	Why I hadn't run I couldn't say. Instead I picked up
Natsumi's gun and leveled it at Folken. I'd never held a gun
before, and I hope I'm never forced to again. I don't know how I
held it steady, but it didn't matter because that bastard did
some kind of 2-hit kick combo, first knocking it out of my hands
and then booting me in the face. Only able to see out of one eye,
I could only watch as he hefted Kasumi over one shoulder, raised
his sword, and slashed through the air. Reality itself was cut
open, and he stepped through. It took a moment for the full
implications of this to hit me.
	He had taken Kasumi.
	Desperately I grabbed Natsumi by her shirt collar. "Wake up!
We have to do something!"
	She blinked hazily.
	"You're supposed to be a cop! A professional!" I pleaded.
"Do something!"
	When she rose to her feet, she roughly shoved me aside and
retrieved her gun, holstering it. Her eyes seemed to take in
every detail of our surroundings. Without another word, she
grabbed my hand and dashed through the fading portal formed by
Folken's sword.

------------------------------------------------------------------
Ewen "Blackbird" Cluney                     blackbird@blackbird.nu
Blackbird's Domain                        http://www.blackbird.nu/
The Official Thrash Home Page          http://thrash.blackbird.nu/
Knight Kevlar of the Immortal Frog        Silver Knight of Mihoshi
              "Be nice to me; I might just develop
             psychokinetic powers and destroy Tokyo!"
------------------------------------------------------------------

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