“Come on, everyone! We’re on a tight schedule here! Get moving, go go go!”
Ataru was still a little bit disoriented after his unexpected trip through a door. Where was he, exactly? And those tiny, high-pitched voices… Why did they sound so familiar? His vision soon cleared up and he nodded in understanding. Oh! Right! That actually makes perfect sense!
“You alright, boss?” the alligator asked, hovering a little above his head. “And what’s with all them pixies running about? Can I eat one?”
“No, I don’t think you should do that,” Ataru said, plucking one off the floor. It yelled through its tiny lungs at him, kicked and screamed and struggled as he peered closer at it. “They look kinda like Sakura, don’t they?”
A heavy object hit him from behind, forcing him to drop forward and drop the pixie while he was at it. “Oy, oy! What’re you doing standing around for?” a much deeper and louder voice said. Ataru turned around and came face to face with a rather larger pixie than the others, though still nowhere near as big as a person. Like the others, it was otherwise pretty much Sakura with wings and in this case a rolled up sheaf of papers. “Showtime’s any minute now, and you’re still not dressed!” the pixie yelled. “And I just bet you’ll be telling me you’ve not even read the script yet!”
Ataru took another look around the room at all the pixies scampering across the area, hammering wood, pushing stones into place and even putting people together piece by piece.
That last one was a little bit freaky, come to think of it.
“Hey, dumbass! You read the script or not?!” Ataru shook his head, and found that the papers were being stuffed into his hands. “Memorise this,” the pixie said. “And don’t do anything stupid like losing it or something, it’s our only copy.”
Only copy, huh? Ataru flicked through it. Pretty sappy romantic stuff featuring Sakura as a princess and some crummy prince out to rescue her from a - Whoa, wait a minute! This crummy prince was him!
“Hey, boss!” the alligator said. “Looks like they’re building a copy of you over here in that fancy getup you was wearing in that bubble!”
Huh! The floating blue alligator was right. Ataru stared at the script and licked his lips. Their only copy of the script, huh? He scooped up one of the pixies and brought it up to his face.
“So, you guys gotta do what’s in this here script. Right?”
“Yeah, yeah, you big bozo! Put me down already! Ya jerk!”
Oh ho. Oh ho ho ho! “Sure thing!” he said. “But hey, you don’t think it’d be too much trouble if I had, say, one of those ink erasers and a pen, do you?”
“Sure, sure! Whatever you say, you big loser!” the pixie snapped. Ataru let her go and she whistled, causing a cloud of pixies to swarm over towards her. It was kind of amazing watching them pull together. Inside a minute Ataru had an honest to goodness ink eraser and a pen sitting in the palm of his hand while the other held fast onto the script. After that it was simply a case of finding a corner to sit in and do a few… imaginative rewrites!
“Hey, boss! Whatcha doin’ there? Huh? Huh?” the alligator asked, hopping around Ataru’s body to peek at what he was writing with an energy level to rival Jariten on a sugar high.
“Just a little fun for later,” Ataru said with a manic grin. “Oh ho ho! If this really is Miss Sakura’s dream, she’s about to have the best of her life!”
- But he doesn’t get the chance to see it as he’s sucked into Ran’s dream, leaving the half-edited script for Sakura’s pixies to work from.
- Same as above, except he finished the edits.
- The script gets taken from him before he can finish his edits, and he stays to watch what happens.
- He finishes editing, and sticks around to watch.
- Something else
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