Story: Drive

 

The situation that they had found themselves in grew yet more ridiculous, yet more ludicrous, and yet the stakes were also raising substantially. What else was going on here that she did not yet know of? They were spreading Drive across the multiverse? To strange and bizarre worlds, with their own systems of doing things?

Rei was familiar with multiverse theory. Not because she had an interest in quantum mechanics, but rather because several students in her vicinity were, how did they describe themselves again? Oh yes. Sci-fi nerds.

What was more, she had definitely heard of a few of these, and it dovetailed into something she vaguely remembered from their discussions: The idea that if the multiverse was infinite, then surely any work of fiction you can conjure is out there too, right?

The idea of Drive spreading across the multiverse like a sexy cancer - and isn't that a horrible combination of words - made Rei feel unwell. A corrupting influence that would spread and spread without anything to stop it. In truth, it was a dark and terrible heresy. A corruption of canon. Rei could almost appreciate that thought. Canon - it used to refer to 'the text that was literally in the Bible', but that meaning expanded further to 'what is literally in the work'.

Heresy, then, was to change and twist and corrupt that which was not canon, by necessity. She had to think long and hard about this. There had to be some means, some method to undo this. She looked around. Hoping for advice, only to see... A Rei dressed up like Asuka, wig and all, clung to Shinji, while another Rei dressed as herself... also wearing a rather obvious wig for some reason, embracing him from the other side.

"Mine!" the Asuka-Rei insisted.

"I beg your pardon, but he is mine," the Rei-Rei said.

And there it was. The means by which salvation could be reached. She scanned the room, and sought out what she needed. Yes, yes, there we go. There is Rei over there with a purple wig on her head, and a cheongsam wrapped around her body. Then, over there was another one wearing a wig with a long ponytail, a blue chef's uniform and an enormous spatula on her back. Then, there was the Akane-Rei, who was so thoroughly excited over her corruption of Akane that she had taken her eyes off of Rei.

She had to move quickly. If this was going to work, then...?

"Pardon me," Rei said to the Shampoo-Rei. "Is it true that the character you are cosplaying is a slutty bitch that only knows how to use her body to get what she wants?"

The Shampoo Rei was, understandably, shocked by the question. "Who said - I mean... Who say something that stupid about Shampoo?"

Rei pointed back towards the Akane-Rei, and casually strolled off towards the Ukyo-Rei.

"Can you give me advice on how to roleplay as a boy?" Rei asked. The Ukyo-Rei seemed happy for a moment there. "She told me that you were a boy, and I have trouble believing it."

She was, of course, pointing to Shampoo-Rei. Ukyo-Rei reacted much the way you would expect. Passing through several emotions, from passive surprise, to betrayed fury, hand already reaching for her spatula."

"'Scuse me, sugar!" Ukyo-Rei said, lowering her head and stomping off in the general direction of the argument about to break out. "I've got an airheaded Chinese bimbo to flatten into an okonomiyaki base!"

This is it, folks. This is the key weakness of a bunch of nerds getting together. There is little that geeks and nerds like to do more than correct one another on trivial points. Unless! Unless that something is a shipping war.

Oh yes, the shipping war! Though now it seems chaste and tame, you should have been there in the late 90s and 00s, when the Ranma shipping battles were waged across the Internet. Though, perhaps, you do not need to imagine too much what they looked like. Naruto certainly had its share too. More recently My Hero Academia flared up something fierce! Old habits die hard, though sometimes they take a different form. This writer particularly came in late to the Naruto fandom, and found the salt from the Naruto/Sakura shippers oddly delicious in the aftermath. Ah, it might have broken your heart at the time when it happened way back when, back in 2014, but surely enough time has passed that you can forgive that moment of schadenfreude?

No? Well ahem, let's - let's focus instead on the shared experience instead of the real life drama, shall we?

"Hey, what's this Shampoo hears about you call Shampoo airhead whore?"

"Huh? What did you say?"

Wham! Ukyo-Rei slammed her spatula right into the back of Shampoo-Rei's head, flattening her into the floor. Now, if you think that Rei was simply going to rest on her laurels here, then you would be sorely mistaken. She was here to stir it up, and get this fight going wider.

"Say," she asked a Sailor Jupiter cosplaying Rei. "Who do you think Ranma should wind up with by end of series?"

"Huh?" Jupiter-Rei grunted. "I dunno, I always kinda felt it was gonna be Akane, right?"

"Akane?" Ayaka-Rei interrupted. "Oh, do not be so absurd! Obviously, he would be far better off with Kasumi."

"Kasumi?" C.C.-Rei asked. "Surely not, she's not interested in him like that at all."

That's all it would take. Let the argument grow and grow. Nudge them along, get things nice and heated, keep the Reis distracted arguing with each other, while she discretely grabbed the rest of the group and led them out of here.

"Akane's a violent psychopath!"

"Yeah? Well, Shampoo never met a wall she didn't like turning into a door!"

"It's obvious Ukyo's the best fit for him, she's the most normal!"

"She's blatantly manipulative, and he sees her as a friend!"

This all felt very silly and something that she absolutely, 100% did not want anything at all to do with.