Shinobu Miyake was a nice girl, really she was. She was sweet, she was kind, she was in love with a boy she had grown up with. She was also completely pissed off with him for reasons that were obvious to anyone that knew him.
He was energetic, imaginative and funny. He was also perverted, and really obvious about it. His eye wandered so much that it needed a leash. This was the kind of boy that couldn’t pass up the chance to stare at a hot chick even if a bus was heading right for him. Then again, knowing his luck the bus would only put him in a full-body cast for the next half year.
Oh yes, that infamous fortune. A bad luck magnet that very nearly deserved it. One might almost feel sorry for him at times when it was so very easy to forget what he was really like. Those certain times where he hadn’t actually brought it on his own foolish head could easily evoke a strong sense of sympathy. Then there were the times where he did bring it on himself, and oh boy, did he ever deserve it then!
Like earlier today, where he couldn’t keep his eyes off that one girl in the sundress. That boy was practically drooling over her! Oh, it just made her blood boil! So, she’d slapped him and run off home, willing to let him stew in his own juices for a while. Idiot! They could’ve had a good thing going, but noooo, he just couldn’t help himself! What sort of future did someone like that have? What sort of -
“Oh, hello, Shinobu dear!” her mother said. “A friend of yours from school arrived earlier. She’s up in your room. It sounded like she wanted to tell you something important.”
A friend from school? Shinobu rolled it over in her head. Who could that be? What could they have to say that couldn’t wait for tomorrow? Shinobu went upstairs with a small amount of trepidation, entered her room, and -
“Hel-lo, Miss Shi-nobu!”
And stared in bemusement at either the worst android costume she had ever witnessed in her entire life or - Well, to be blunt there was no “or” to be found no matter how hard she looked. Nobody from her school was that big a science fiction nerd, or at least none of the girls were, and what was with the voice?
“Apol-ogies for the dis-guise,” the phony android replica of a schoolmate she didn’t have bleeped and whirred. “Adop-ting true guise now!”
A strange shimmering effect filled the air, and suddenly Shinobu was looking at someone with more layers of clothing on a single body than she had ever witnessed before in her entire life. Right. So. She took the time to sit down, pinched herself really hard a few times, then concluded that someone was playing an elaborate practical joke on her. Fine. She’d play it through, just to find out who it was and to satisfy her curiosity over where this could possibly be going, because right now she had absolutely no idea.
“I am res-ist-ance mem-ber One Ex Alpha!” the truly bizarre visitor said, their voice not dropping that peculiar artificial tone. “We are in need of your assis-tance!”
“Is that so?” Shinobu said, a faint smile tugging at her lips. “Whatever for? Resistance member? What are you resisting?”
“The Multi-versal Emp-eror!” the voice bleeped. “Ataru Mor-oboshi!” Ah! So that’s where it was going. Actually, that was pretty funny. No, make that very funny. Or perhaps even ‘bust a gut’ levels. “Once you have fin-ished roll-ing around in laugh-ter, I should expl-ain!” Oh dear. The voice sounded quite upset by that.
“Ataru,” Shinobu said, wiping a tear from her eye. “You’re telling me that Ataru Moroboshi is going to wind up as the - What did you call it?”
“Multi-versal Emp-eror! Cont-roller of thou-sands of parall-el univ-erses! His name brings terr-or to those that know his repu-tation!”
“It certainly does,” Shinobu said, barely suppressing a giggle. “But not for the reasons you seem to be implying. What’s with the outfit, anyway? Isn’t it hot under all those?”
“It is nece-ssary! For the Emp-eror has disc-overed a way to weap-onise perv-ersion! Show-ing a hint of bare flesh is a dan-ger! This out-fit is a bas-ic safe-ty prec-aution! Even our gen-ders are con-cealed to limit ave-nues of att-ack! I am here to dis-cover how he came to pow-er and need your ass-istance!”
“Sure, you do!” Shinobu said, careful to keep the sarcasm she was feeling out of her voice. “I mean, it’s not as if you could go up to him and… I don’t know, kill him or anything. No, you need to talk to his girlfriend first.”
“We came to you bec-ause you were the first to att-empt to res-ist him! But… like all others, you too fell under his invi-ncible po-wer! We do not wish to kill him in this time zone bec-ause he has not yet commi-tted any crime, and be-sides it would not change the fact of our own fut-ure, only split it into a diff-erent set of uni-verses. We are here on a fact find-ing miss-ion to dis-cover the true means of his pow-er.”
“Of course you are,” Shinobu said, patting her guest reassuringly on the back of his… her… hand. They recoiled like she’d just dropped a pissed-off cobra on their arm. “So, what <i>exactly</i> did you need me to do again?” Best to humour them a little bit longer. This should be so much fun to see what they came up with next.
<hr>
One Ex Alpha left the Miyake home with higher spirits than she had felt in - Goodness knows how long. Certainly longer than it had been since the damned Emperor Moroboshi had appeared in the skies above her version of Earth and started to… Do things to people. But now there was a single shining ray of hope. Now, she might be able to find out exactly what it was Moroboshi was doing without actually sucumbing to it and becoming just another one of his soldiers. And, just in case, the device she had left should erase Shinobu’s memories of their meeting in case things played out as they did before…
At least, that was what she had hoped until she heard the sound of sarcastic applause. She slowly, slowly turned around and came face to face with none other than the Second Empress herself, clad in her fetishised schoolgirl uniform.
“Very clever,” the future Shinobu sarcastically said, roundly applauding. “Coming back to the past to try to change your own future. Why, it might even have worked, do you know that? If we hadn’t discovered time travel as well and decided to keep an eye on the past of our glorious Emperor! Did you really think we would leave this vulnerability open to be exploited? Did you think we were just that stupid? Seize her!”
Before she could hit her quick escape button the air around her shimmered and changed, revealing the conditioned footsoldiers of the Empire who wrapped their leotard-clad bodies against her limbs and rendered her completely immobile. Not that she needed to move to be able to do <i>this</i>! Electric energy pulsed through her suit as a defense mechanism, and the leotard footsoldiers dropped like flies, leaving her alone with the Second Empress -
Who, One Ex Alpha realised far too late, was standing in front of her with what looked like a can of perfume. She sprayed it all over the protective clothing, and before she could even blink One Ex Alpha was left standing in the middle of the street completely naked!
“But-” she said with her human voice. “No! No! You can’t do this!”
“Too late, dear!” Shinobu said as she extracted something from a concealed pocket. “Far, far too late! Speaking of which, we should hurry this up. Any moment now the Oni are going to make their presence known to the whole world…”
- What the hell is going on here?!
- Shinobu looks over the device she was given, and decides to hang onto it just in case.
- Shinobu dumps the item in the trash.
- Ataru finds a certain something that gives him special powers of some sort.
- Something else happens.
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