Meanwhile, so much as the term means anything when crossing dimensions that operate on entirely different rates of time, there was an irate girl tapping her feet outside a bookstore. She was in a mood that an optimist might well describe as “philosophical”, which meant that she was conjuring hypotheticals and asking questions of herself that she currently had no answer for or indeed any way to answer at all. Questions like: “Why is the bookstore locked?” “What is going to happen to Kotori when I get my hands on her?” and “How much pressure can be applied to a human neck without actually breaking it?”
With a heavy sigh, she dug into her own pocket and pulled out a spare key with the intention of inflicting the righteous punishment of heaven later on. It was so strange. Kotori wasn’t the type to run out on work like that. Yumi Nakadan strode inside and rolled her eyes when she saw that the Sailor Moon series had been disturbed. Honestly. That girl liked that series a little too much. Not so much Yumi. It wasn’t really her scene at all. She more enjoyed things like the Gundam series, giant mechs in particular… Though she did have a bit of a soft spot for Ten-
“I beg your pardon,” said the living ghost of Princess Ayeka Masaki Jurai. “I appear to be regrettably misplaced. If it would not be an inconvenience, would it be possible for you to direct me towards the Masaki Shrine?”
Yumi was not the kind of person to undergo a rather dramatic reaction to something impressive. She would not, for example, let her jaw slacken or fall over. She would not even gasp. All she did was raise an eyebrow, and had anyone that knew her been present they would probably have fallen over, etc, at the very sight of it.
“Not bad,” Yumi said, taking the time to walk around the cosplayer and examining the outfit. “The hair colour is dead on, the voice is pitch perfect. These robes must have taken weeks to stitch together, and it even feels expensive. If they were to do a live-action adaptation, you’d be my pick hands down.”
“My gratitude for the compliment,” the cosplayer said with a small lilt of confusion. “Though I concede that I fail to comprehend the meaning behind it, it is still appreciated. Additionally, is it perhaps my imagination or does everything appear to be rather more… nuanced than it was a few minutes prior?”
Yumi shrugged. Probably looking for the convention, didn’t want to get lost. If there was a contest, she was gonna win it. No question. People would be lining up to take pictures, which was kind of a shame, really. She was gonna miss out on the whole experience simply because of how much work she’d put into the costume. Then again. If she was anything like the Princess, then she’d probably love being the centre of attention.
“Take a right,” she began. “Then go until you see the fountain, and turn left. You can’t miss it after that.”
“You and your humble little store have my eternal gratitude,” the cosplayer bowed. Shame she wasn’t gonna buy anything, but what can you do? Honestly, it was astounding. The amount of work and effort that person must have put in to get it <i>so accurate</i> was astounding, and -
Hang on. Right where she’d been standing, there was something lying on the ground. Looked like a photograph. Yumi scooped it up, stared at it for a half second… And then her jaw dropped, she gasped, and she fell over all at once.
“This -” she stammered. “This picture! That- That’s not! But how?! How could she -”
It was, let us say, a family picture. Taken from the “cosplayer’s” home. She. Her sister. Standing in front of a certain building in a certain place that <i>couldn’t possibly exist</i>. Wait! Wait, wait, wait! Be rational here. This can’t be a real thing. Obviously it’s just a practical joke. Yes, that was the ticket. Yumi straightened herself up and hurried out of the store. The cosplayer wouldn’t have been able to get particularly far, so she ought to be able to catch up and return the photogr-
“Uh… Princess?” she called, waving the photograph in the air. “Excuse me, you dropped something? Huh? Wait a minute… Where did she go? She couldn’t possibly have gone already!”
Well… Shoot. Not much else for it, sadly. She was tempted to dash off to the convention and return the photograph. They’d obviously put a lot of time and effort into it… No, no. The best thing to do would be to, maybe… Scan it online and share it with the world. Because she would be damned if she left the store to indulge in a little bit of fangirlism. Honestly, Kotori, wherever you are now, you’d better be in hell on Earth!
<hr>
Kotori woke up in hell on Earth. Or, at the very least, this was her first impression of it. So dark and nasty looking in here. Like someone had called up Queen Beryl herself for feng shui advice.
“Ah, awake at last,” said a voice that sent shivers right the way down her spine, and even past that down into the floor. “I suppose Jedite believed an offering like this would serve as a way to make up for his recent spate of failures. To which I say: It’s a good start, but not nearly good enough.”
Kotori turned her head. Slowly. Slowly enough that it was imperceptible. She was genuinely, utterly terrified of what she might see when there was nothing else to do but look. She knew that voice. She knew the implications, and come to it, she knew the room that she was sitting in. She could see whips in the corner, a little drawer with the label “nipple clamps”, and another one below that which read “safeword muffler”. Unfortunately, her dread and her imagination only went so far, and when she finally relented to turning around she saw <i>her</i>. Beryl. Queen Beryl. The first big bad that her sexy heroes would ever face. How appropriate it was that she, in turn, was capable of matching all five of them at once in the sexual arena. Kotori remembered the season one climax all too well, and the various climaxes that transpired along the way.
And there she was. Queen Dom herself, reclining on a couch wearing naught but whipped cream and a smile. Not even a seductive smile. Just the same sort of smile that a predator had before pouncing on its prey.
“Now, now,” Beryl began, adopting a tone that served as a counterargument to what she said next. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. You must be hungry. Come over here and have a snack.”
Kotori very nervously and very exaggeratedly swallowed. She remembered what kind of magic and technique Beryl tended to adopt. The second she licked a tiny bit of that cream from her completely nude body, she’d be hooked. Addicted. Enchanted. Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be any kind of door to this room and even if there were there would be more youma outside it as guards than she could realistically count before they all just became a single massive wall. She was trapped with one of the most dangerous beings she could think of.
The most damning part of all? She was ravenous. And growing hungrier by the moment.
- Meanwhile, the conversation with Rei goes… badly.
- The replacement Kotori starts doing obviously evil things.
- Yumi somehow winds up in Tenchi Muyo… While carrying a bunch of Tenchi doujinshi.
- Princess Ayeka winds up in Sailor Moon. Well, she found <b>a</b> shrine, right?
- Another unbelievably good cosplayer winds up at the bookstore.
- Something else.
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