Almost instantly, she heard a thunk. She gasped as she looked at the arrow imbedded in the tree just inches from her head. "Ack! Sorry about breaking the fourth wall!" she cried out.
In the bushes behind her, a male voice responded. "Oh, don't worry about that; as long as it wasn't about another series, it's all right."
The ninja blinked several times. "Oops, forgot about that," she apologized.
"Don't apologize; why, I remember back in nineteen eighty-four, when-"
"Get on with it!" A dozen voices shouted out.
"Oh, fine," Misao huffed, before tugging on the sleeping cat-demon's ears. "Happy?" she shouted at the hiding archers.
Judging by the fifteen arrows that impacted around her, she supposed that they were.
* * *
"Hey! You didn't have to tie me up, you know!" Misao shouted.
The battered, mangled, and bruised men looked at each other, then back at the ninja. "Er... actually, we did," one of them said. "You could have came with us quietly."
Misao glared at the men. "What was I to expect, with all of you shooting at me?" One of the other men was preparing to argue, but a clamour interrupted him.
"Bring out your de- er, make way! Make way!" some guy in peasants clothing called out in an odd accent. "Lady Cherry, the priestess, comes!"
An eldery man wearing a straw hat whacked the man with his monk's cane. "I'm a man! And what are you doing here; you're not even Japanese!"
The man who sounded rather British shuffled his feet. "Well, that's a funny thing; you see, after the group broke up, alot of the characters were out of-"
"Never mind," Cherry grumbled, shuffling to the bound ninja. "Now, girl," he demanded of the bound ninja, "Why were you in the forest of Raninusao-yatomesha?"
Misao blinked several times at the woman- er, man, then asked, confusedly, "What?"
CHerry shrugged helplessly. "I'm getting confused with all of the names, nowadays," he explained as he leaned forward to examine Misao. Misao was justified in wondering what the hell she was thinking when she decided to fall into a well.
"Hmm... most ominous..." Misao rose an eyebrow, wondering if he was going to impart some weird and obscure wiseman mumbo jumbo.
"You look nothing like my older sister, Chizuru." Cherry turned to the crowding villagers and the Englishman, who had all facefaulted. "What?"
* * *
GET ON WITH IT!
Oh, right. Anyways, on the day of her death, fifty years ago, she asked me to burn the jewel along with her remains, in order to keep demons away from it. And she also asked for me to feed the cat, but one day I sort of forgot...
"Can you at least keep with the story?" Misao asked, looking annoyed.
Cherry coughed into his hand. "Well, I had already finished, so..." he trailed off as he watched Misao eat her rice. Using her feet to manipulate the chopsticks, despite them being tied. "... Flexible, are we?"
"Well, I know that I'm flexible," Misao said in between bites. "It's part of being a ninja, you know."
WAA! BAKK BAKK BAKK
Misao looked up, deeply disturbed. "Who the hell hired the sound effects director, anyways?"
"I suspect that it was someone involved with Monty Python," Cherry said grimly, before recieving a somewhat masticated horse on his head.
The archer from two scenes before stuck his head through the hole in the hut. "You know the rules, Lady Cherry. No references to other shows unless you're an extra," he admonished. "By the way, there's a demon attacking, if you were curious about all of the screaming and carnage and bloodshed."
Misao stared at the man. "Jeez, how the heck can you remain calm?"
"Oh, it's pretty easy; we're specially trained to act as we're supposed to in scenes like-"
"No, I meant your arm!" she shouted, pointing with her bound feet at his bleeding stump of a limb. The man looked at it, then looked back.
"Well, shit," he muttered, before collapsing. Misao stared for a moment longer, then looked outside to see the monster from the well.
Too bad the monster noticed her, too. "Gbb muh duh dooul!"
"What?" the ninja asked. M.C. quickly swallowed the flesh that she had in her mouth.
"Give me the Jewel of the Four Souls!" she cried, racing towards the hut on her hundred legs.
"You have the Shikon Jewel?" a voice asked right next to her ear. Shrieking in surprise, Misao turned to see Cherry, relatively unharmed from the flung horse.
"How the hell am I supposed to know?" she asked, before being forced to jump out of the way of the demon's charge. Crap, I just knew that this was a bad idea! Now demons want to get me! she thought frantically.
"Cherry! Lady-"
"I'm a man!"
"-Cherry!" several villagers cried out as they rushed to where the young ninja and the old monk. "Spears and arrows won't hurt it! We'll need to lure it to the old well, where, though it won't actually get trapped inside, it will be destroyed when the girl releases Ranma!"
"Hmm... most ominous, how you know the script so well," Cherry murmured.
"And you want me to go to where the forest is glowing?" Misao asked, her eye twitching.
"That would be nice," Cherry responded, the villagers agreeing with him.
Misao hopped to where the people could see her bound hands and feet. "And just HOW do you expect me to do that?" she asked viciously.
Cherry nodded sagely. "It would be recommended that you start hopping. Preferbally now," he mentioned, pointing at M.C., who was coming for a second pass.
They watched in awe as she broke several speed records, cursing in a manner that would make Dennis Leary proud.
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(Posted Sat, 04 Sep 2004 02:24)
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