written by Matthew Atanian
story by Matthew Atanian with Jason Bertovich
©2014 by Matthew Atanian and Jason Bertovich
Boy Scouts ½ created by Matthew Atanian
story by Matthew Atanian with Jason Bertovich
©2014 by Matthew Atanian and Jason Bertovich
Boy Scouts ½ created by Matthew Atanian
Meg Kataki looked at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. She pulled her thick, jet black hair apart and squinted as she regarded the roots. A hint of bluish green was definitely visible. She sighed. She hated that she had to keep her natural hair colour hidden. She really loved her hair, how thick and full it was, and how long she’d managed to grow it, down past her hips. (It helped that her hair grew pretty fast.) She was proud of it, and wished she could be proud of all aspects of it. Including its natural colour.
But no, her father wouldn’t have it. As far as most people outside of Japan knew, bluish green was not a natural colour. And certainly not a colour that would be found on someone of Asian descent. So it was no colour for her to be brashly displaying in public.
“Come on, dad!” she’d once pleaded. “It’s the 1990’s! Not the 1890’s! People dye their hair! Especially young people like me! No one will think twice about it. They’ll just assume that my natural colour is the dye job.”
His mind had not been changed.
She sighed. She turned to the bathroom door, made sure that it was locked, and then stripped nude. She smiled a bit as she caught her reflection in the mirror once more. One thing she was not was modest. She looked good, and she knew it. Not that she went about flaunting it, mind you. But she certainly didn’t feel ashamed of it either.
She turned on the faucet for the large bath tub, filling it with steaming hot water. She opened the bathroom closet and extracted two things from it. One was a large, fluffy towel which she got ready for when she would need it. The other was a small box containing black hair dye, which had a number of duplicates it left behind in the closet as she removed it. She set it on the floor by the side of the tub.
She dipped her big toe into the water as the tub approached being full. “Aaah!” she exclaimed. A bit too hot. She turned off the hot tap and let the cold run solo into the tub for a minute before turning that one off, as well.
She lowered herself into the steaming tub. She moved slowly so as to try to adjust herself to the temperature as the still hot water hugged its way up every inch of her smooth, pale skin. Finally, she felt her butt touch the bottom. She stretched her long legs out before her, relaxed all of her muscles, and then closed her eyes to enjoy a nice, long, relaxing soak before she had to attend to the business at hand.
It was at least an hour and a half before the bathroom door opened and Meg emerged from it clad only in her big, fluffy bathrobe with Lina Inverse embroidered upon the back of it, and a towel wrapped around her head which enveloped her still wet hair. She’d figured if she had to put her hair through torture, she may as well take her time and pamper the rest of herself while she’d been in there. Her skin tingled, feeling raw and clean. Life doesn’t get much better, she thought to herself.
She started heading towards her bedroom, planning to pick out her outfit for school the next day. Her father liked it best if she wore long skirts and a blouse with a blazer over it. And heck, sometimes she liked it, too. (She wondered idly if her father would still want her wearing those sorts of clothes if he knew that they drew extra attention from some types of guys...) But sometimes she’d just wear a t-shirt and jeans. And in summer months... gasp! She might want to wear shorts! Sometimes she did this because she just wanted to be comfortable, and sometimes she did it just because she knew it pissed her dad off.
Before she got to the bedroom, however, she heard her mother from the living room. “Megumi‑chan! Please come in here!” her mother called to her in their native tongue. Unless they had guests over, only Japanese was spoken in this house.
She turned away from her bedroom. Her father had been late in coming home from work today, she gathered he’d probably come home while she was in the bath, and he wanted to speak with her. As it turns out, she was correct.
He stood in the middle of the room. He must have only just come home, as he was still dressed from work with only his shoes removed as he wouldn’t dare walk upon the tatami mats with them still on. (Although the architecture of their house was distinctly American, the decor was entirely Japanese, including the fact that after they had moved in her father had had all of the carpets removed and tatami put in their place.) He hadn’t even removed the Mitsumoto Enterprises employee badge clipped onto his suit jacket.
“Good evening, father,” she said.
“Megumi-chan,” he responded. “I have good news I wish to share with the family.”
“Does it have to do with...?” her mother began to ask.
Her father finished for her by saying, “I have finally heard back from Vice President Yagami regarding my request.”
“What did he say?” Obviously, whatever this was was not something unexpected, Meg reflected. It was just something no one had bothered to tell her about. Typical.
“It is even better than I could have hoped. Not only is my request been granted, but I will be receiving a promotion along with it.”
“Oh, Katashi, that is wonderful!” her mother said. She seemed happy, but guarded.
Meg picked up on this, and became somewhat suspicious. “What request?” she asked.
“Megumi, my daughter, you know I have been concerned for your upbringing,” her father began.
Meg sighed.
“And so, I have requested a transfer back to Japan.”
“Oh,” Meg said flatly. There was a pause as realisation sunk in. “You what?”
“Megumi-chan, please listen to your father,” her mother pleaded. “This is for the best.”
“How soon?” Meg asked coldly.
“I am needed to start on Monday, so we leave on Saturday morning.”
“What?” Meg hollered. “That’s two days from now!”
“Megumi-chan,” her mother pleaded once more.
“Junko, please let me handle this,” her father stated.
“Dad, why do I want to go to Japan?” Meg said. “This is where all my friends are. I don’t know anyone in Japan!”
“You’ll learn to like Japan,” her father replied.
“I don’t dislike Japan,” Meg replied defensively. “Hell, I’m an otaku, dad.” (Her father winced at that word.) “I love stuff from Japan. But it isn’t my home! This is where I’ve grown up for as long as I can remember. We’ve lived here since I was like five!”
“That is part of the problem,” her father said. “This is not your home. You are Japanese. We’ve tried our best to raise you as such, but you still have become too shaped by outside influences. At best, you’re too American. At worst, you’re a caricature, a strange American idea of what a Japanese person is supposed to be. It shames me.”
That stung. That really stung. “And whose fault is that, then? If it was so important to you that I be raised to some stupid, outdated ideal of ‘pure Japanese,’ why did you drag the family off to America when I was so young, anyway?”
“It couldn’t be helped,” her father replied. “It was where the company needed me at the time, so it was where we went. But we stayed too long. My obligations to the family, and to your upbringing, were being strained. And so a year ago I started asking if there were any positions I might be able to take back at the home office, and one has finally been made available. This is for your welfare, Megumi, you should be hap...”
Meg didn’t let her father finish that blasphemous word. “A year? You’ve been planning this behind my back, without once letting on about it, for a year? Kind of too late to discuss it as a family!”
“Indeed,” her father replied. “You seem to be under the misapprehension that this is a discussion. It is an announcement. It is happening, so you need to prepare for it.”
“But school...”
“I visited your school this afternoon and made all of the necessary arrangements,” her father replied. “You have no need to return there.”
“Bullshit,” Meg replied. Her mother gasped at the expletive, but her father remained stoic. “I have personal items in my locker I’d need to collect.”
As she said this, she realized it implied resignation of the inevitable. Her father must have sensed the same, as the edges of his lips curled up slightly.
“And my friends! And my club! I can’t just leave my club!”
Her father, sensing that victory was his, put on an air of annoyance as he made the one concession he had obviously been prepared to make from the beginning. “You may go to school for one hour tomorrow afternoon, to pick up any possessions, and to make your farewells and arrangements for your... your club,” he said.
Meg turned to her mother. Her mother kept a carefully composed face, trying to look sympathetic but remaining silent. She turned back to her father.
“An hour?”
“Yes. That is all we can spare you,” he replied. “We will be packing most of tomorrow, as we leave the following morning.”
“This is so unfair!” Meg complained.
“Megumi, I am your father. You will do as I say. Be glad I am giving you the time I am tomorrow.”
“Mom!” Meg finally begged.
“I am sorry, Megumi-chan,” her mother said softly. “This is your father’s decision, and... and it is what is best for the family.”
Defeated, Meg turned, stormed off to her room, and slammed the door behind herself.
Christine Romanov was having a hard time concentrating as the teacher droned on and on about someone who had done something that was important for some reason in seventeen seventy‑something... She was too worried. She’d grown increasingly concerned as the day had gone on.
Where the heck had Meg been today? It was unlike her to be absent, and she had seemed fine yesterday. Heck, yesterday Meg had been looking forward to today’s club meeting, at which they were supposed to start making serious plans for the big convention trip this summer. Sure, the Samuel Clemens High School Anime Club had gone to a few small, local cons. But they’d decided to go all out this summer and go to something bigger! There were a few larger cons of note. The group seemed split 50/50 over driving down to Anime Expo in Anaheim, or making more of an event of it and traveling cross country to Otakon on the East coast. Meg had told her she planned on pushing for Otakon, and Meg usually got her way.
Chris smiled to herself. Of course Meg always her way. If she didn’t, Chris probably wouldn’t even be in the club in the first place. Strike that, there probably wouldn’t even be a club to be in.
Chris had first met Meg in Junior High School. They’d hung out some, but Chris had tried to not read too much into it. It had been fun and all, but Chris knew that Meg was way out of her league. Chris was nobody; she was the quiet kid in the corner, the one with her nose stuck in a book, the one that nobody talked to. The kid who only got invited to birthday parties because her mom was friends with the other kid’s mom. And Meg... Meg was one of the “other” kids. Everyone liked her. She was popular.
But still, they had hung out a few times even when Meg seemed to have no obligation to do so, and Chris had had fun. So, while she didn’t have any expectations, she did feel happy when she walked into her home room on the first day of High School and saw that Meg was there, too.
She didn’t have any expectations of anything, though. And so she made no attempt to approach Meg. She just looked for a desk in the corner of the back row, sat down, and started doodling a crude picture on the back of her notebook – a drawing of a character from some weird new show she’d caught on TV one day, when she’d been up particularly early and there had been nothing else on except dumb infomercials. The show had seemed pretty stupid at first, but for some reason she couldn’t stop watching it and had soon found herself hooked.
So engrossed was she with her drawing that she failed to notice that someone had approached her until she was startled to realize she was being embraced from behind. A pair of warm, slender arms wrapped themselves around her and a musical voice said to her, “Chris! We’re in the same class! Awesome!”
Chris couldn’t help but feel a bit flustered. “Meg,” she managed, “I hadn’t noticed you.” Not quite the truth, but it was easier then admitting she hadn’t felt comfortable to approach anyone herself.
“I missed you this summer,” Meg informed her. She then continued, speaking in a non-stop way such that Chris couldn’t figure out when Meg was breathing. “We should have gotten together, but I forgot to get your number. I was worried I wouldn’t see you again, so this is great! You’ll have to tell me all about your summer. Did you go anywhere special? Do anything exciting? Hey, is that Tuxedo Mask?”
“What?” Chris asked. She had been caught off guard by the speed of the questioning, the nature of the final question, and that anyone could even recognize anything from her doodle.
“Tuxedo Mask. From Sailor Moon?” Meg clarified.
“Um... You could tell that?” Chris asked.
“Of course! You’re style’s a bit rough, but the character shines through. You draw a lot?”
“A little,” Chris muttered.
“Well, you definitely should more,” Meg said. “I like your style. You could do some awesome stuff with a bit of refinement.”
“Th... thanks,” Chris said.
“Any time,” Meg said brightly. “Oh,” she then added as someone who was presumably going to be their homeroom teacher entered the room, “looks like class is about to start. Anyone claim this yet?” She pointed to the unoccupied desk in front of Chris.
Chris shrugged. “Not that I’ve noticed,” she replied.
Meg slipped into the seat in front of her. She spun around, showed Chris a wide smile, and then resumed facing forward as their High School careers came to a start.
Before the end of the first week, Chris started noticing some strange posters appearing in the hallways of school. “Come join the Japanimation Club!” it said in bold letters. Beneath that was a colourful illustration of three girls (two of them in outfits that looked similar to the school uniforms in Sailor Moon, the third in some kind of cringingly skimpy armour) in the foreground, and a background full of tanks and jets and explosions.
“The hell?” Chris asked no one in particular. So confused was she by the image that she failed to notice the text on the bottom that said, “For more information, see Meg Kataki, homeroom 114.”
Over the next few days she did note on a few occasions guys coming to talk to Meg during homeroom. But at the time she thought little of it. After all, Meg was gorgeous. And so, when Friday rolled around, and by that time with the encounter with the strange posters not being as fresh in her mind, it took Chris quite by surprise when Meg came up to her in the hall towards the end of the day and asked, “You’re going to join, right?”
“Join? Join what?”
“The Japanimation club I’ve started!”
Chris’s brow scrunched up with a lack of comprehension. “What’s ‘Japanimation’?” she asked.
“It’s animation from Japan. You know, like Sailor Moon?”
“Wait... Those weird posters... That was you?”
“Yup!” Meg replied proudly. She hopped slightly as she said it.
“They’re letting you start a club?”
“Yeah, can you believe it? When I went to the faculty office Monday afternoon to pitch it, they were rather reluctant at first since I was a freshman. But I won them over. They even gave me a club room!”
“For a club,” Chris asked, incredulous, “about cartoons?”
“Yeah...” Meg’s voice took a shifty turn. “I think they might have misheard ‘-imation’ as “-ization,’ and that they think that the club is more about Japanese culture in general... But I’m sure once we’re up and running that they’ll see the value of it! Besides, culture will be a part of it! Anyway, say you’ll join! So far it is a total sausage fest, and while I don’t mind having my own personal harem it would also be nice to have some female companionship!”
Chris’s confusion continued to grow. “You’re starting a Sailor Moon club, and only guys are joining?”
“Hey,” Meg said, “never underestimate the power of a show about teenage girls in very short skirts to attract a male audience.” She winked. “But there is more to Japanese animation then just Sailor Moon. For example, one guy mentioned becoming interested after seeing a film called Warriors of the Wind on cable. Another has a dad who has a bunch of stuff like Starblazers and Robotech recorded on Beta. On Beta! I mean, like, who ever sees Beta anymore?”
“What’s ‘Beta’?” Chris asked. This whole conversation was quite confusing.
“I know, right?” Meg continued, not missing a beat. “And one guy was really into Power Rangers, which, I know, isn’t animation... but what the hell, I’m sure once he’s in our grasp, we can expand his horizons a bit.” She giggled.
Chris sighed. She was unsure, but soon found Meg dragging her off to the door of a small, disused room off in a dark corner of the top floor of the school building. Meg reached forward, grasped the door, and thrust it open.
Inside the room was mostly bare. There was the usual florescent lighting on the ceiling, another door on one of the side walls in one of the corners opposite the doorway they stood in, and a single window looking out over the field behind the school. The only furniture was a simple table and some folding chairs around it. Five guys sat around the table. One of them stood chivalrously when he saw the pair of women entering the room. Meg burst in, followed silently by Chris. “Hi, guys!” Meg said, exuberantly. All five of them could not help but smile at her greeting. “All right,” she continued, “let’s get this party started!”
And thus was the Samuel Clemens Japanimation Club founded.
Chris’s reverie was broken momentarily as the final bell of the day rang. The teacher ceased his droning and tried in vain to spout off a homework assignment, but most of the class was too busy leaving to pay him any attention. Chris was not so quick to leave. Normally, she’d want to get to the club room as quick as possible, but with Meg absent she felt considerably less rushed. She supposed she’d swing by her locker first to drop off a few things, and maybe go by the library and look for that book she needed for her English assignment.
As she grabbed her bag and meandered out of the now otherwise empty (save for the teacher) room, her thoughts drifted to the past once more. It had been about two and a half years since the founding now, and what a whirlwind it had been!
Their club room had not stayed so empty for long. The walls were now lined with shelves, and those shelves were thick with toys, games, books, videos, snacks, and a collection of teas. The additional door had proved to be a surprisingly roomy closet which they did make some small use of, but what was the fun of having the things they had if they weren’t kept out on display? Posters lined the few bits of wall that weren’t covered with shelving, and there was even one poster covering up a good portion of the room’s window.
Early on, someone had procured an electric, self heating tea kettle, and with that the club was sure to remain well hydrated. (Fortunately, either the faculty did not know about the kettle, thought it was merely decorative, or had decided to turn a blind eye to it.) A small television was also present, having been one club member’s lucky tag sale find, and hooked up to the television was a pair of VCRs, a Sega Genesis, and a Super Nintendo.
The club had flourished. Of the original members, only Meg and Chris had been freshmen. Now, in their junior year, all but one of the other original members had graduated and he was due to leave at the end of the current year. But each year they got at least one or two new members to replenish things. Even though (Chris and Meg aside) all of the original members had been male, the club seemed to have a mostly female membership these days. The only currently remaining guys were Melchizedek, the other original member, and Sam, who was currently a Sophomore and had joined as a Freshman in the second year.
Of course, Sam kind of was considered one of the girls. Even he often referred to himself as such. As she turned into the library, Chris remembered one particular time, towards the end of last year, which had been particularly embarrassing...
Chris was sitting in the club room, waiting for everyone else to arrive. Meg was in a meeting with the faculty, and everyone else wasn’t due for an hour or so. It was a Saturday, not a typical day for them to be meeting, but since Meg had to come in anyways they thought they’d kill two birds with one stone. Chris had come to offer Meg moral support, and everyone else would be by later for a goodbye party for the club’s departing seniors.
The door opened. Chris looked up expecting Meg was returning, and was quite surprised when all she saw was an incoming blur, as Sam bounded into the room and wrapped her in an embrace. “Hello, sister!” Sam greeted her as he glomped onto Chris and gave her a big kiss on the forehead.
Chris frowned. Meg didn’t seem to mind it. A few of the other guys didn’t even seem to mind it. But as far as Chris was concerned, Sam really needed to work on his concept of personal space.
Chris gave Sam an annoyed shove. She’d stopped getting angry when Sam did such things... but it was still annoying, “Get off,” she grumbled.
Sam took the seat next to Chris. “Meg not back yet?” he asked.
“Not yet,” Chris replied. “What are you doing here? I thought you’d be with Melky and Casey, buying supplies for the party.”
“They said they could handle it themselves, which is good, ‘cause I had some stuff I wanted to talk about with Meg.”
As if on cue, the door opened. Meg stormed in and slammed it behind herself again. “Those idiots!” she fumed. “Every few months, it seems like they want to shut us down. Every time I have to tell those stuck up blowhards why we have value. Every stinking time! You’d think by now they could just play a tape recording of my last grilling by them.” She sank into the chair opposite Sam and Chris.
“So, how’d it go?” Chris asked.
Meg’s frown vanished in an instant, replaced with a wide grin as she gave them a double thumb’s up. “Looks like the Tea Club will have to find somewhere else to meet next year, ‘cause we aren’t going anywhere!”
“Tea Club?” Sam asks. “Our school has a Tea Club?”
Meg shrugged. “Apparently.”
Chris poked a finger towards a shelf behind her. The shelf was chock full of boxes, each a different blend of tea. “Do they know about this?” she asked.
Meg shrugged again.
“Well, fuck that,” Sam said. “We should just find this alleged Tea Club and recruit them to bolster our numbers. They can have a nice cuppa and watch some fine quality programming while they enjoy it.”
“I know, right?” Meg replied, exasperated.
“So anyway,” Sam said, changing the subject, “did you have a chance to talk to her about it?”
Meg’s eyes shifted to Chris for a moment before returning to Sam. “Not quite...”
Chris had caught the look. “‘Not quite,’ what?” she asked, suspiciously.
“Well...” Sam slowly began. “So, we were thinking... Meg and I...”
“You know the event we’re going to in a few weeks?” Meg asked. “We kinda had a thought...”
“Oh no,” Chirs replied, cutting Meg off. “No. No matter how many times you ask, you aren’t going to wear me down.”
“You don’t even know what we’re going to say!” Sam protested.
“You want me to play dress up with you two,” Chris replied.
“Okay,” Meg responded, “so you do know.”
“How many times have you two tried to get me to dress up with you, now? I keep telling you, it ain’t happening!”
“Come on!” Meg pleaded. “We have a pair of characters we want to do, and it would really work better as a trio.
“No,” Chris said. “No, no, no. Every time you ask, it’ll be the same. No.”
“But why?” Meg begged to know.
“Because I don’t like dressing up. And because... well...” Chris’s voice softened. “Well, you know...”
Sam leaned in close, and draped an arm over Chris’s shoulders. “Come on, it’s just us girls here,” he said. “You can talk to us.”
Meg leaned across the table.
“Well...” Chris said, “I mean, look at you two,” she said. “How could I wear a costume and stand next to you?”
“Why not?” Sam demanded to know.
“Why not?” Chris repeated. “Come on, Sam. You’re gorgeous. And Meg... Well, Meg is..” Chris averted her eyes from her friends. “Meg is just so beautiful...”
Sam stood and stormed off to one corner of the room, where next to a small rack of costumes stood a full length mirror. “Chris, come here.” When Chris failed to move quickly enough, Sam spoke again with extra emphasis. “Come. Here.”
Chris rose and walked over to Sam. Sam stood her in front of the mirror, grasped her waist, and stood behind her, off to one side a bit so that they were both visible in the mirror.
“Look at yourself,” Sam said. “What do you see?”
Chris muttered something unintelligible.
“What was that?” Sam asked.
“Nothing special,” Chris replied.
“Well, you said I was gorgeous,” Sam said, “and thank you for that, by the way.” Sam ran his hands down Chris’s sides, smoothing out her loose, frumpy clothing. “And you know what? I am gorgeous. And you know what else? Our body types aren’t too dissimilar.”
“Sam,” Chris said dryly, “you’re a boy.”
Sam blinked. “Oh,” he said, “yeah...”
Meg walked over. “Well, take it from a fellow real girl,” she said. “You are just as beautiful as us. You just need to, I dunno, smile more. Have more confidence! And to prove it...” Meg paused dramatically. “How about you dress up with us?”
“No,” Chris said. “Look, I’ll go to the thing with you. I’ll even be seen with you two in public while you’re dressed up, but I’m not...”
“No,” Meg said, cutting Chris off. “Not when we go out. Now. Here.”
Chris blinked. “What.”
“Yeah!” Sam said, getting into it. “We’ve got the costumes here,” he said, diving towards the costume rack. “Including the one we made for you!”
“You made me,” Chris said, “a costume.”
“Oh come on,” Meg asked. “Please? Just for us? And you’ll see, you’ll look great in it! And no one would ever have to know except us.”
Sam was pulling hangers off of the rack and dividing the removed articles into three piles.
“But what if anyone comes in?” Chris asked.
Meg looked at her watch. “Oh, come on, it’s at least an hour until the party,” she said. “Plenty of time.”
Chris sighed. “No one must ever know,” she said.
Meg squeed and lunged for Chris, wrapping her in an embrace.
“Well, let’s get changed!” Sam said excitedly, unbuttoning his shirt.
“Um... Sam,” Meg said, noticing a slight flaw in this plan. Chris blushed slightly.
“What?” A pause. “Oh. Hmm... Well.” He looked around a bit. The storage closet their room had caught his eye. With the costume rack and mirror out in the main room it would have plenty of space inside. “I guess I can just duck in there to change,” he said.
“Oh please,” Chris muttered, “like you’ve ever been in a closet in your life.”
Sam’s posture straightened and his voice lost its usual whimsical tone, becoming flat and emotionless. “For everything there is a first time, Lieutenant.” He turned to Meg. “Wouldn’t you agree, Admiral?”
Meg snickered. “Have you lost all sense of reality?”
“This isn’t reality,” Sam replied, gathering up his costume pieces in his arms. “This is fantasy.”
Chris sighed, and gave Sam a shove towards the closed. “Go on,” she said. She even opened the door for him.
“I’ll just get in the closet,” Sam said. He ducked inside, giggling as Chris pulled the door shut.
“I’m glad you’re on our side,” Megumi told Chris.
“Come on,” Chris replied. “Let’s do this before I change my mind. So what are these costumes, anyway?”
Oh My Goddess!” Meg said, excitedly, as she spread the assembled costume pieces out over the table. “I’ve been dying to cosplay as Belldandy!”
“So who am I then?” Chris asked.
“My sister Skuld, of course!” Meg began disrobing.
“Of course,” Chris said. “Well, may as well get this over with.”
She turned her back to Meg. While she was less uncomfortable changing in the same room with her then she would have been with Sam present... something about the thought of seeing Meg undressing still caused her to feel a bit... flustered. Anyway, it took a bit of time, but they both got into their costumes. Chris was rather surprised how elaborate they were. It was actually a bit startling when Meg even pulled out wigs, a long blonde one for herself and a black one for Chris. They were already rather intricately styled.
“Aw, man, we have to swap hair colours?” Chris asked.
“Well, it just wouldn’t be accurate to the characters, otherwise,” Meg insisted. “Now come on, let’s do your make-up!”
“My what?” Chris asked.
Meg didn’t verbally reply. She’d already pulled out a make-up kit and was just looking at Chris with expectant glee.
Chris sighed. In for a penny... “Fine,” she said. “Fine.”
It took them another ten minutes each to get their make-up applied. Chris particularly needed help with hers, not being as experienced with the application of such things as Meg. After they were finished with that, they donned their wigs, did a few last minute adjustments, and went to stand in front of the mirror.
“Well, what do you think?” Meg asked.
“You look great,” Chris said.
“No, about yourself!” Meg prodded.
Chris looked at herself in the mirror. Her instinct was to downplay her own appearance, but she stopped herself and tried to access the situation objectively. “I suppose... it’s not bad...”
“Not bad?” Meg said. “Not bad? Girl, you’re fabulous! Anyway, you have to admit, this is fun, is it?
“Well...” Chris smiled. “Okay. I suppose it isn’t bad. But this is just for now, and I’m definitely changing back before the party begins.”
Meg pouted. “Well, poop,” she said. “But fine.”
“What do you need a Skuld for, anyway? If you and Sam are going as Belldandy and Keiichi, wouldn’t I just be a third wheel?”
“Um...” Meg grinned. “No one ever said Sam was going as Keiichi...”
“Then who...?”
The closet door opened slightly, and out from it... emerged a leg. A long, smooth, bare, perfect leg, with just a hint of a very highly slit dress visible towards the top. “Oh, my little sisters,” a sultry voice said, “you wouldn’t be forgetting big sister Urd now, would you?”
The door opened more fully, and out emerged the goddess Urd.
“Holy shit,” Meg said.
“How did you...” Chris started. She turned to Meg. “How did she... er, he...” Chris stammered, while making cupped hand gestures in front of her chest. She turned back to Sam. “How!”
Sam slinked towards Meg and Chris, his hips swinging with every step, making for a walk that would've caused Jessica Rabbit to be envious.
“Oh, we have got to get a photo,” Meg said.
“Oh, no we don’t,” Chris replied.
“But when will the three of us do this again?” Meg asked.
“Never,” Chris assured her. “Besides, with only the three of us here, who’d take it? Well, come on, let’s get changed back before...”
And of course, it was then that the door to the club room opened up and the rest of the Samuel Clemens High Anime Club walked in. They were mid conversation, but that stopped as soon as they saw the sight that awaited them upon their arrival.
A silence hung over the club room during which Chris’s face continued to take on ever deepening shades of red.
The silence was broken by Ryan, one of the graduating seniors, who let out a cat call.
“All right, let’s get this party started!” Melky shouted out.
Chris couldn’t take it anymore. She was about to scream! And then...
“Looking good, Christine!” one of the other guys commented.
She blinked. Meg and Sam both threw their arms around her. Next thing you know, there was the telltale flash of a camera.
Chris sighed. She tried to frown, but it came out wrong and she found her lips curling up, instead. “Fine,” she said. “Fine.” She accepted a red solo cup full of soda that someone handed her, and took a sip. “But don’t ever ask me to do this again!” she decreed.
The room cheered, and the party got underway.
And now, as Chris stood before the door of that very room, she smiled in spite of herself. She wanted to hate that memory, but somehow she couldn’t. It was hard to see any of the memories inside of that room as anything other than good ones.
So with that as her frame of mind, she opened the door and strode in. As expected, Casey, Melky, Sam, Terry, and Vikki were all there waiting, seated around the table. Much to her surprise, Meg was there, too! She stood at the head of the table, on the side opposite the door. “Meg!” Chris greeted. But she fell silent, going no further. Something was off. The atmosphere in the room was all wrong. And Meg, usually the definition of cheer – if the red around her eyes and the lack of expression on her face were to be of any indication – today she most definitely was not.
And the others... You’d think someone had died! Sam was even dabbing at his eyes with a tissue. Something was very wrong.
“What happened?” Chris asked. Then it clicked. “Oh God, are they finally shutting us down?”
Meg swallowed. It was tough enough having had to spill the news once. She’d tried to wait for Chris to arrive, but so much time had passed since final bell, Meg had started to think Chris wasn’t coming for some reason. But now here she was.
Damn, this was harder then telling everyone else combined. Meg swallowed again. “Chris, I have to go.”
“Hey, I’m sorry I’m late,” Chris said, “but if they’re trying to shut us down, that’s worth sticking around a bit to discuss, eh?”
Damn, this sucked. “No, Chris. The club’s fine. It’s me... I’m leaving.”
“What?”
“I have to... it’s my father. He’s being transferred to another office... in Japan.”
Chris felt something she couldn’t quite identify. It was like the opposite of butterflies in the stomach... A hollow, empty feeling. A sinking feeling.
“When?” she asked.
Meg looked down at the table. She noticed she was shaking, and tried to still herself. After a moment, the shaking was replaced with a numbness. “Tomorrow. We leave in the morning. I only found out last night, it’s all happening so...”
Meg stopped talking when she heard the door open and shut once more. She looked up. Chris was gone.
Her arm reached out, grasping for something that wasn’t there. Part of her wanted to leap after her, even knowing that would likely end with her tripping over the table or those seated around it and landing flat on her face. Besides, her feet felt strangely glued to the ground, as if they wouldn’t listen to her even if she tried. So she remained there for a time, she knew not how long, her hand outstretched.
The moment was only broken when a tissue was placed in her hand. It was from Sam. Meg became aware that her face was wet. She brought her arm back towards her face, and in doing so she noticed the time on her wrist watch. She didn’t have much left, and there was still one piece of important business to take care of.
She took a moment to regain her composure, then spoke once more.
“Sam?” she said.
She didn’t need to say more. Sam nodded. “I’ll talk to her.”
“Okay. Well, I suppose there’s one more thing that needs taking care of. Succession. I’m sure you’ll all agree, there’s only one real choice...”
Meg walked out of the doors of Samuel Clemens High School for the final time. Everything about her posture said she did not want to be doing so, but somehow she managed to do it. It was easier when she saw that it was her mother who had come to pick her up.
“Did you manage to do everything you needed to?” her mother asked.
“Not really,” Meg replied, “but I suppose I did all I could.”
The two of them got into the car. “Megumi-chan, I know this is tough, but it will be okay. It isn’t the end of the world, you know.”
“What do you know about it?” Meg spat, hasher then she’d intended.
Her mother seemed to take no offence. “Meg,” she said to her, surprising her by using the nickname her parents never had warmed to, “you are a child of two countries. By birth you are Japanese. And I know your love for our culture, even if that love is expressed somewhat... interestingly. But you’re also a child of American culture, and you’re being asked to leave all of that and all of your friends behind. This was asked of me once, too, when your father was first transferred here. And in my case, I didn’t even have the advantages you have of knowing the language, or an affinity for the culture. America may as well have been an alien world to me, and I had to travel there leaving all of my friends, and my parents and siblings, behind.”
Meg looked into her mother’s eyes, and saw understanding. She still needed more, though. “But why couldn’t you tell me sooner that this was happening?”
“It was about a year ago that your father started expressing concern about you to me, and said he was going to try to arrange for us to return to Japan.” Junko sighed. “He thought it best if we didn’t tell you until it was actually going to happen. He said didn’t want you to concern yourself over ‘maybes’ and ‘might happens.’”
“More likely he wanted to avoid an argument before it was too late.”
Junko laughed. “My child, you are wise. But I assure you, even if you didn’t personally take part, an argument on your behalf did occur a year ago. However, your father would not hear of it.
“And then last night... he came home with the news. I am sorry, Megumi-chan, if I seemed less then sympathetic... I guess I got caught up in the excitement, the thought of going home again. It’s been so long.”
“No, mom, you didn’t...” Meg stumbled for words. “It’s just... It’s all happening so quick! Why does it have to be so quick?”
“It is rather sudden. Apparently the position that opened up in Japan was due to an unexpected death, so there really was no time to set up a more gradual transition. And if your father turned down the offer after lobbying for a year for a move back to Japan, well, it wouldn’t have looked good for him within the company.”
“Well, we couldn’t have that, now could we?” Meg asked. Her tone did little to hide her sarcasm.
“No, Megumi-chan, we couldn’t.” Her mother was being serious. “Everything you and I have is because of the hard work your father does, and even if it isn’t easy, sometimes we have to make sacrifices to thank him for that. I made my sacrifice years ago when we first came to America. Now, I fear, it is your turn.”
Meg sighed. “But it sucks ass,” she said.
“Yes,” her mother deadpanned, “it does suck ass.”
Hearing her mother speak like that caught her rather off guard, and Meg couldn’t help herself but to let out a giggle. She tried to stifle it, determined to maintain the dour mood she had so well constructed, but that somehow made it worse. There was no helping it, she was laughing now, and her mother joined her in it.
“That’s more like you,” her mother said when they had calmed down again. “Megumi-chan,” she then continued. “You’re still a child, and so you have to do this. I know it is hard for you. But someday, not too far in the future, you will be an adult. You’ll be able to make your own decisions. Including decisions on where you want to be.”
Meg looked at her mother again.
“And if where you decide you want to be happens to be somewhere other than Japan... Well, while you can be sure your father won’t like it, there won’t be much he can do to stop you. Especially,” Junko said, “if you have me baking you up on it.”
“Mom,” Meg said, “thank you.”
“As long as you promise to come visit us once in a while,” Junko added.
Meg grinned. “You got it.”
Junko grinned back. “Now then, we have a lot to do still, and your father is expecting us back shortly,” she said. “However, I think for the stress he has caused you, he can suffer a small delay if we don’t go straight home.” She turned on the car’s engine.
“Mother?” Meg asked, perplexed.
“Well now,” her mother explained, “you don’t expect me to go back home to Japan looking anything other than my best, do you? And so I’ve made one last appointment for us at our salon.”
“Dad’ll be pissed,” Meg said. “That’ll take a few hours!”
Junko pulled out into traffic. “Let it,” was all she had to say to that.
Chris hadn’t left her room since coming home. In fact, she hadn’t left her bed, where she was curled up in a foetal position. In the dark.
There was a soft knock at the door. “Christine? Honey?” Her mother sounded concerned. Of course, she had skipped dinner. “One of your club friends is on the phone. Do you want me to bring the phone in there for you?”
Chris didn’t answer. Her mother seemed to get the hint, and didn’t knock again.
In fact, no one knocked again until very early the next morning. Chris was startled awake, finding herself in much the same position she had been lying in the previous morning.
“Chris? Honey? I hope you’re decent, because I’m coming in!”
It was a good thing she was decent, otherwise it was likely Sam wouldn’t have lived to tell the tale. He walked into the room and sat on the edge of the bed. “Rough night?” he asked.
Chris didn’t respond.
“Look,” Sam said, “this is tough on all of us, Meg included,” Sam continued. “She doesn’t want to be leaving. She wasn’t given any choice, and hardly any time.”
“I’m not sure what I’d be without her, Sam,” Chris finally said, her voice barely above a whisper. “It’s all so easy for the rest of you. You all were someone even before you met Meg. Me, I’d just be the quiet girl in the corner no one wants to talk to.”
“Nonsense, girl. You’re not the only one who only fits in at school because of this club. Without it, I’d just be ‘the fag.’”
“We live in San Francisco. You’d hardly be the only one.”
“Still doesn’t make it easy sometimes,” Sam confided. “But it’s not so bad, because you and Meg and everyone else in the club accepted me for who I was. So don’t make it sound like you’re the only one with someplace to fit in at school because of the Anime Club. And you’re part of that, you know.”
“Only because Meg made the club, and insisted I join.”
Sam smiled. “Meg never told you why she formed the anime club, did she?”
“Not specifically, but it seemed kind of obvious. ’Cause she liked anime, and wanted to hang out with other people who did.”
“That is true, to some extent,” Sam said. “But there was one person in particular she wanted to hang out with. Someone she’d spent some time with the previous year, and felt a connection with, but didn’t quite know how to approach without an excuse.”
Chris looked up at Sam, a dumbfounded look upon her face.
“Meg told me once, when I asked her about the founding of the club,” Sam continued, “about the Sailor Moon doodle she saw you drawing your first day of High School.”
Chris looked up at Sam. “She did all of it,” she asked, “for me? Why?”
“‘Cause she wanted to hang out with you,” Sam said.
“But she was popular! She could hang out with whoever she wanted!”
“And she chose you.”
“Why all the elaborate trouble? She could have just asked!”
“Chris, honey, even the ‘popular girls’ can get nervous when it comes to wanting to be with someone they really like. What if you’d said no? Besides, the club was an extra added bonus. It was fun, wasn’t it?”
Chris felt something... Something new, she wasn’t sure what. But whatever it was... “Oh God, Sam, what did I do? All she’s done for all of us... For me! And I just walked out on her yesterday.” And now there was nothing she could do about it.
“You know, I happen to know when her plane is leaving this morning,” Sam said. He looked at his watch. “It’ll be close, but if we hurry, we might just be able to catch her before she leaves.”
Chris’s heart skipped a beat.
“You could tell her how you feel,” Sam said with an odd wink. “Tell her you’ll keep in touch. Anything. At least say goodbye. You leave things like you did yesterday, and you’ll only regret it.”
Chris startled Sam by bolting to her feet and dashing towards the door. Sam hadn’t even had time to react yet when Chris poked her head back in and said, “Come on, what are you waiting for? Oh, and you drove here, right? So you’ve got your car?”
Sam smiled. “Yup. Let’s go.”
Meg’s mind was pretty much blank as she followed her parents into the airport. She moved as if on auto pilot, following behind Junko and Katashi as they went to the ticket counter, confirmed their flights, got their boarding passes, and checked their luggage.
Since yesterday afternoon, she’d at least felt as if she had an ally in her mother, but that still didn’t change the fact that this was not something she wanted to be doing... She’d give almost anything to stop it from happening. And as she lay awake in the wee hours of the morning, the oblivion of sleep staying ever elusive, she realized the only way she would manage to survive the day would be to remove herself from it. To that effect, she had carefully cultivated a feeling of numbness, until she could almost believe that her life at the moment was something she was watching on television – a tale happening to someone else. Anyone else. But not her.
Her father went through the security checkpoint first. Then her mother. Meg placed her carry-on down on the little conveyer belt, and was about to step through the metal detectors herself, when she heard something... someone calling to her, off in the distance, back the way they had come.
Meg stopped.
Oh please, God, no, she thought. It was the one voice she most desperately wanted to hear... but it was a voice she could not hear. Not if she had any hopes of getting this intact.
“Megumi!” This time, it was from before her. Her father calling to her, urging her to come forward.
“Dear, please, give her a moment,” her mother said. Her father frowned and turned his back. Her mother smiled to her, a warm, reassuring smile. She nodded at Meg, almost as if she was telling her it would be all right.
Meg turned to face Chris. She also saw Sam off in the distance, further down the long corridor leading to the security checkpoint, almost lost amidst the crowd of people in the airport. He offered a smile and a thumb’s up, but otherwise kept his distance. He knew that even if he had helped to facilitate it, this was a moment that was not for him.
Meg felt so very conflicted inside. So many words buzzed through her brain, fighting to make their way out of her mouth. In the end, she just managed a weak, “Why are you here?”
Chris fidgeted for a moment. So desperate was she to see Meg one more time that, now that the moment was upon her, she wasn’t quite sure what she had wanted to do with it. “I... I had to see you before you left.”
Meg smiled. It took some effort, as while it was certainly one of the expressions vying for time on her face at the moment, it was not the only one. “Well,” she said, “here I am.”
“I almost didn’t recognize you from behind,” Chris admitted. “What did you do to your hair?”
Meg instinctively grabbed at her hair, but missed. There was much less of it then she was used to having. “I dunno,” she said. “I thought it might help, try to make a fresh start. Anyway, what are you doing here?”
“I... I don’t know what I want,” Chris admitted. “Only... I’m sorry, Meg. I shouldn’t have run out on you like that yesterday. Only... it hurt so much, I couldn’t stay.”
Meg took Chris into her arms for a hug. “I know what you mean,” she said. She then pulled away, but kept her hands on Chris’s shoulders. “I wanted to chase after you, but that would have hurt, too.”
The two of them couldn’t help but to laugh. It was short, and sounded somewhat less then mirthful, but it was something. “We’re a pair, aren’t we?” Chris asked.
“Two of a kind,” Meg replied. “Ever since junior high, it was you and me vs. the world. We’ve done a good job of it, too, these last few years.”
“Sam... Sam told me some things,” Chris said. “About why you have to leave so suddenly...” And about why you formed the club in the first place. “I... Don’t worry, we’ll all do our best for the club.”
“I know you will.” Meg smiled, a more genuine smile this time. “You’ll push for Otakon in the summer, right?”
“You know it,” Chris said. “It will be a voyage undertaken to honour our founding President!”
“Megumi.” Her father was calling to her, apparently having felt he had waited long enough.
Meg looked at Chris. She tightened her grip on her shoulders, and pulled her into a hug once more. “I guess this is it, huh?”
“Mmm hmm,” Chris said. She then opened her mouth to say goodbye, but was somewhat surprised when the wrong words came out. “I love you,” she softly spoke into Meg’s ear.
She then gasped. What had she just said?
Meg pushed her out again, once more holding her at arm’s length. She tried to look into Chris’s eyes.
“You’re not... you’re not just talking, ‘as a friend,’ are you?”
She could feel Chris trying to pull away from her grip, almost as if she wanted to flee, but Meg held firm. She definitely noticed Chris was unable to return her look, however.
Meg... Meg felt something welling up inside of herself...
“Megumi!” Her father’s voice again, much more insistent this time.
...and almost immediately it came crashing down again.
The numbness reasserted itself as she released her grip on Chris’s shoulders. Rather than flee, Chris just stood there, dumbfounded.
“I... I can’t...” She turned.
“Meg...” Chris replied softly, pleadingly.
“This can’t happen now,” Meg said in almost a monotone. She walked back towards the metal detectors. Then through them.
“Please...” Chris begged, trying to ignore that it was already too late.
Meg collected her carry-on and joined her parents. Chris watched her as, without ever turning back, Meg continued down the remaining length of the corridor, eventually disappearing around a corner.
Sam had come up to join Chris, and had placed an arm around her shoulders, reassuringly. For once, Chris didn’t mind the invasion of her space. She even placed her hand over Sam’s on her shoulder. She stood there for some time, continuing to watch the ever flowing crowd of people as they went on their way to their individual destinies.
“Oh hey, they’re boarding our group now,” Junko said. She rose from her vaguely uncomfortable plastic seat, and Meg rose along side her. They joined Meg’s father, who had been pacing closer to the door onto the airplane upon which they would be flying from San Francisco, leaving behind everything Meg knew for the unknown in Japan.
“Do you have everything?” Katashi asked, his own carry-on bag slung over his shoulder.
The women both nodded to this, and so he walked up to the ticket agent at the door to the airplane, handed her their tickets, and boarded. Meg and her mother followed.
The three of them took their seats, Katashi and Junko in one row and Meg in the window seat of the row behind them. A short time later, they were airborne for the journey to the country that would be their new home.
Meg reached into the pocket of her coat and took out a photograph. Next to her, the woman who was sitting there had already put on some headphones and settled back with her eyes closed. So Meg was unobserved as she looked at the photo of three people, a trio dressed as anime goddesses. Her attention was particularly focused on one person in the photo in particular.
A single tear fell upon the photo. Then another. She wiped the tears from the photo, and then she stuffed it into the pocket in the back of the seat in front of her. It would remain there amongst the magazines and emergency instructions even after she would eventually depart the plane. Meanwhile, her tears continued to fall as she silently cried until she felt she could do so no more.
In about eleven and a half hours, they would be landing in Tokyo. Not much else would happen during the flight, so Meg simply set about trying to prepare herself mentally for her new life she would lead after crossing the ocean.
But no, her father wouldn’t have it. As far as most people outside of Japan knew, bluish green was not a natural colour. And certainly not a colour that would be found on someone of Asian descent. So it was no colour for her to be brashly displaying in public.
“Come on, dad!” she’d once pleaded. “It’s the 1990’s! Not the 1890’s! People dye their hair! Especially young people like me! No one will think twice about it. They’ll just assume that my natural colour is the dye job.”
His mind had not been changed.
She sighed. She turned to the bathroom door, made sure that it was locked, and then stripped nude. She smiled a bit as she caught her reflection in the mirror once more. One thing she was not was modest. She looked good, and she knew it. Not that she went about flaunting it, mind you. But she certainly didn’t feel ashamed of it either.
She turned on the faucet for the large bath tub, filling it with steaming hot water. She opened the bathroom closet and extracted two things from it. One was a large, fluffy towel which she got ready for when she would need it. The other was a small box containing black hair dye, which had a number of duplicates it left behind in the closet as she removed it. She set it on the floor by the side of the tub.
She dipped her big toe into the water as the tub approached being full. “Aaah!” she exclaimed. A bit too hot. She turned off the hot tap and let the cold run solo into the tub for a minute before turning that one off, as well.
She lowered herself into the steaming tub. She moved slowly so as to try to adjust herself to the temperature as the still hot water hugged its way up every inch of her smooth, pale skin. Finally, she felt her butt touch the bottom. She stretched her long legs out before her, relaxed all of her muscles, and then closed her eyes to enjoy a nice, long, relaxing soak before she had to attend to the business at hand.
It was at least an hour and a half before the bathroom door opened and Meg emerged from it clad only in her big, fluffy bathrobe with Lina Inverse embroidered upon the back of it, and a towel wrapped around her head which enveloped her still wet hair. She’d figured if she had to put her hair through torture, she may as well take her time and pamper the rest of herself while she’d been in there. Her skin tingled, feeling raw and clean. Life doesn’t get much better, she thought to herself.
She started heading towards her bedroom, planning to pick out her outfit for school the next day. Her father liked it best if she wore long skirts and a blouse with a blazer over it. And heck, sometimes she liked it, too. (She wondered idly if her father would still want her wearing those sorts of clothes if he knew that they drew extra attention from some types of guys...) But sometimes she’d just wear a t-shirt and jeans. And in summer months... gasp! She might want to wear shorts! Sometimes she did this because she just wanted to be comfortable, and sometimes she did it just because she knew it pissed her dad off.
Before she got to the bedroom, however, she heard her mother from the living room. “Megumi‑chan! Please come in here!” her mother called to her in their native tongue. Unless they had guests over, only Japanese was spoken in this house.
She turned away from her bedroom. Her father had been late in coming home from work today, she gathered he’d probably come home while she was in the bath, and he wanted to speak with her. As it turns out, she was correct.
He stood in the middle of the room. He must have only just come home, as he was still dressed from work with only his shoes removed as he wouldn’t dare walk upon the tatami mats with them still on. (Although the architecture of their house was distinctly American, the decor was entirely Japanese, including the fact that after they had moved in her father had had all of the carpets removed and tatami put in their place.) He hadn’t even removed the Mitsumoto Enterprises employee badge clipped onto his suit jacket.
“Good evening, father,” she said.
“Megumi-chan,” he responded. “I have good news I wish to share with the family.”
“Does it have to do with...?” her mother began to ask.
Her father finished for her by saying, “I have finally heard back from Vice President Yagami regarding my request.”
“What did he say?” Obviously, whatever this was was not something unexpected, Meg reflected. It was just something no one had bothered to tell her about. Typical.
“It is even better than I could have hoped. Not only is my request been granted, but I will be receiving a promotion along with it.”
“Oh, Katashi, that is wonderful!” her mother said. She seemed happy, but guarded.
Meg picked up on this, and became somewhat suspicious. “What request?” she asked.
“Megumi, my daughter, you know I have been concerned for your upbringing,” her father began.
Meg sighed.
“And so, I have requested a transfer back to Japan.”
“Oh,” Meg said flatly. There was a pause as realisation sunk in. “You what?”
“Megumi-chan, please listen to your father,” her mother pleaded. “This is for the best.”
“How soon?” Meg asked coldly.
“I am needed to start on Monday, so we leave on Saturday morning.”
“What?” Meg hollered. “That’s two days from now!”
“Megumi-chan,” her mother pleaded once more.
“Junko, please let me handle this,” her father stated.
“Dad, why do I want to go to Japan?” Meg said. “This is where all my friends are. I don’t know anyone in Japan!”
“You’ll learn to like Japan,” her father replied.
“I don’t dislike Japan,” Meg replied defensively. “Hell, I’m an otaku, dad.” (Her father winced at that word.) “I love stuff from Japan. But it isn’t my home! This is where I’ve grown up for as long as I can remember. We’ve lived here since I was like five!”
“That is part of the problem,” her father said. “This is not your home. You are Japanese. We’ve tried our best to raise you as such, but you still have become too shaped by outside influences. At best, you’re too American. At worst, you’re a caricature, a strange American idea of what a Japanese person is supposed to be. It shames me.”
That stung. That really stung. “And whose fault is that, then? If it was so important to you that I be raised to some stupid, outdated ideal of ‘pure Japanese,’ why did you drag the family off to America when I was so young, anyway?”
“It couldn’t be helped,” her father replied. “It was where the company needed me at the time, so it was where we went. But we stayed too long. My obligations to the family, and to your upbringing, were being strained. And so a year ago I started asking if there were any positions I might be able to take back at the home office, and one has finally been made available. This is for your welfare, Megumi, you should be hap...”
Meg didn’t let her father finish that blasphemous word. “A year? You’ve been planning this behind my back, without once letting on about it, for a year? Kind of too late to discuss it as a family!”
“Indeed,” her father replied. “You seem to be under the misapprehension that this is a discussion. It is an announcement. It is happening, so you need to prepare for it.”
“But school...”
“I visited your school this afternoon and made all of the necessary arrangements,” her father replied. “You have no need to return there.”
“Bullshit,” Meg replied. Her mother gasped at the expletive, but her father remained stoic. “I have personal items in my locker I’d need to collect.”
As she said this, she realized it implied resignation of the inevitable. Her father must have sensed the same, as the edges of his lips curled up slightly.
“And my friends! And my club! I can’t just leave my club!”
Her father, sensing that victory was his, put on an air of annoyance as he made the one concession he had obviously been prepared to make from the beginning. “You may go to school for one hour tomorrow afternoon, to pick up any possessions, and to make your farewells and arrangements for your... your club,” he said.
Meg turned to her mother. Her mother kept a carefully composed face, trying to look sympathetic but remaining silent. She turned back to her father.
“An hour?”
“Yes. That is all we can spare you,” he replied. “We will be packing most of tomorrow, as we leave the following morning.”
“This is so unfair!” Meg complained.
“Megumi, I am your father. You will do as I say. Be glad I am giving you the time I am tomorrow.”
“Mom!” Meg finally begged.
“I am sorry, Megumi-chan,” her mother said softly. “This is your father’s decision, and... and it is what is best for the family.”
Defeated, Meg turned, stormed off to her room, and slammed the door behind herself.
Christine Romanov was having a hard time concentrating as the teacher droned on and on about someone who had done something that was important for some reason in seventeen seventy‑something... She was too worried. She’d grown increasingly concerned as the day had gone on.
Where the heck had Meg been today? It was unlike her to be absent, and she had seemed fine yesterday. Heck, yesterday Meg had been looking forward to today’s club meeting, at which they were supposed to start making serious plans for the big convention trip this summer. Sure, the Samuel Clemens High School Anime Club had gone to a few small, local cons. But they’d decided to go all out this summer and go to something bigger! There were a few larger cons of note. The group seemed split 50/50 over driving down to Anime Expo in Anaheim, or making more of an event of it and traveling cross country to Otakon on the East coast. Meg had told her she planned on pushing for Otakon, and Meg usually got her way.
Chris smiled to herself. Of course Meg always her way. If she didn’t, Chris probably wouldn’t even be in the club in the first place. Strike that, there probably wouldn’t even be a club to be in.
Chris had first met Meg in Junior High School. They’d hung out some, but Chris had tried to not read too much into it. It had been fun and all, but Chris knew that Meg was way out of her league. Chris was nobody; she was the quiet kid in the corner, the one with her nose stuck in a book, the one that nobody talked to. The kid who only got invited to birthday parties because her mom was friends with the other kid’s mom. And Meg... Meg was one of the “other” kids. Everyone liked her. She was popular.
But still, they had hung out a few times even when Meg seemed to have no obligation to do so, and Chris had had fun. So, while she didn’t have any expectations, she did feel happy when she walked into her home room on the first day of High School and saw that Meg was there, too.
She didn’t have any expectations of anything, though. And so she made no attempt to approach Meg. She just looked for a desk in the corner of the back row, sat down, and started doodling a crude picture on the back of her notebook – a drawing of a character from some weird new show she’d caught on TV one day, when she’d been up particularly early and there had been nothing else on except dumb infomercials. The show had seemed pretty stupid at first, but for some reason she couldn’t stop watching it and had soon found herself hooked.
So engrossed was she with her drawing that she failed to notice that someone had approached her until she was startled to realize she was being embraced from behind. A pair of warm, slender arms wrapped themselves around her and a musical voice said to her, “Chris! We’re in the same class! Awesome!”
Chris couldn’t help but feel a bit flustered. “Meg,” she managed, “I hadn’t noticed you.” Not quite the truth, but it was easier then admitting she hadn’t felt comfortable to approach anyone herself.
“I missed you this summer,” Meg informed her. She then continued, speaking in a non-stop way such that Chris couldn’t figure out when Meg was breathing. “We should have gotten together, but I forgot to get your number. I was worried I wouldn’t see you again, so this is great! You’ll have to tell me all about your summer. Did you go anywhere special? Do anything exciting? Hey, is that Tuxedo Mask?”
“What?” Chris asked. She had been caught off guard by the speed of the questioning, the nature of the final question, and that anyone could even recognize anything from her doodle.
“Tuxedo Mask. From Sailor Moon?” Meg clarified.
“Um... You could tell that?” Chris asked.
“Of course! You’re style’s a bit rough, but the character shines through. You draw a lot?”
“A little,” Chris muttered.
“Well, you definitely should more,” Meg said. “I like your style. You could do some awesome stuff with a bit of refinement.”
“Th... thanks,” Chris said.
“Any time,” Meg said brightly. “Oh,” she then added as someone who was presumably going to be their homeroom teacher entered the room, “looks like class is about to start. Anyone claim this yet?” She pointed to the unoccupied desk in front of Chris.
Chris shrugged. “Not that I’ve noticed,” she replied.
Meg slipped into the seat in front of her. She spun around, showed Chris a wide smile, and then resumed facing forward as their High School careers came to a start.
Before the end of the first week, Chris started noticing some strange posters appearing in the hallways of school. “Come join the Japanimation Club!” it said in bold letters. Beneath that was a colourful illustration of three girls (two of them in outfits that looked similar to the school uniforms in Sailor Moon, the third in some kind of cringingly skimpy armour) in the foreground, and a background full of tanks and jets and explosions.
“The hell?” Chris asked no one in particular. So confused was she by the image that she failed to notice the text on the bottom that said, “For more information, see Meg Kataki, homeroom 114.”
Over the next few days she did note on a few occasions guys coming to talk to Meg during homeroom. But at the time she thought little of it. After all, Meg was gorgeous. And so, when Friday rolled around, and by that time with the encounter with the strange posters not being as fresh in her mind, it took Chris quite by surprise when Meg came up to her in the hall towards the end of the day and asked, “You’re going to join, right?”
“Join? Join what?”
“The Japanimation club I’ve started!”
Chris’s brow scrunched up with a lack of comprehension. “What’s ‘Japanimation’?” she asked.
“It’s animation from Japan. You know, like Sailor Moon?”
“Wait... Those weird posters... That was you?”
“Yup!” Meg replied proudly. She hopped slightly as she said it.
“They’re letting you start a club?”
“Yeah, can you believe it? When I went to the faculty office Monday afternoon to pitch it, they were rather reluctant at first since I was a freshman. But I won them over. They even gave me a club room!”
“For a club,” Chris asked, incredulous, “about cartoons?”
“Yeah...” Meg’s voice took a shifty turn. “I think they might have misheard ‘-imation’ as “-ization,’ and that they think that the club is more about Japanese culture in general... But I’m sure once we’re up and running that they’ll see the value of it! Besides, culture will be a part of it! Anyway, say you’ll join! So far it is a total sausage fest, and while I don’t mind having my own personal harem it would also be nice to have some female companionship!”
Chris’s confusion continued to grow. “You’re starting a Sailor Moon club, and only guys are joining?”
“Hey,” Meg said, “never underestimate the power of a show about teenage girls in very short skirts to attract a male audience.” She winked. “But there is more to Japanese animation then just Sailor Moon. For example, one guy mentioned becoming interested after seeing a film called Warriors of the Wind on cable. Another has a dad who has a bunch of stuff like Starblazers and Robotech recorded on Beta. On Beta! I mean, like, who ever sees Beta anymore?”
“What’s ‘Beta’?” Chris asked. This whole conversation was quite confusing.
“I know, right?” Meg continued, not missing a beat. “And one guy was really into Power Rangers, which, I know, isn’t animation... but what the hell, I’m sure once he’s in our grasp, we can expand his horizons a bit.” She giggled.
Chris sighed. She was unsure, but soon found Meg dragging her off to the door of a small, disused room off in a dark corner of the top floor of the school building. Meg reached forward, grasped the door, and thrust it open.
Inside the room was mostly bare. There was the usual florescent lighting on the ceiling, another door on one of the side walls in one of the corners opposite the doorway they stood in, and a single window looking out over the field behind the school. The only furniture was a simple table and some folding chairs around it. Five guys sat around the table. One of them stood chivalrously when he saw the pair of women entering the room. Meg burst in, followed silently by Chris. “Hi, guys!” Meg said, exuberantly. All five of them could not help but smile at her greeting. “All right,” she continued, “let’s get this party started!”
And thus was the Samuel Clemens Japanimation Club founded.
Chris’s reverie was broken momentarily as the final bell of the day rang. The teacher ceased his droning and tried in vain to spout off a homework assignment, but most of the class was too busy leaving to pay him any attention. Chris was not so quick to leave. Normally, she’d want to get to the club room as quick as possible, but with Meg absent she felt considerably less rushed. She supposed she’d swing by her locker first to drop off a few things, and maybe go by the library and look for that book she needed for her English assignment.
As she grabbed her bag and meandered out of the now otherwise empty (save for the teacher) room, her thoughts drifted to the past once more. It had been about two and a half years since the founding now, and what a whirlwind it had been!
Their club room had not stayed so empty for long. The walls were now lined with shelves, and those shelves were thick with toys, games, books, videos, snacks, and a collection of teas. The additional door had proved to be a surprisingly roomy closet which they did make some small use of, but what was the fun of having the things they had if they weren’t kept out on display? Posters lined the few bits of wall that weren’t covered with shelving, and there was even one poster covering up a good portion of the room’s window.
Early on, someone had procured an electric, self heating tea kettle, and with that the club was sure to remain well hydrated. (Fortunately, either the faculty did not know about the kettle, thought it was merely decorative, or had decided to turn a blind eye to it.) A small television was also present, having been one club member’s lucky tag sale find, and hooked up to the television was a pair of VCRs, a Sega Genesis, and a Super Nintendo.
The club had flourished. Of the original members, only Meg and Chris had been freshmen. Now, in their junior year, all but one of the other original members had graduated and he was due to leave at the end of the current year. But each year they got at least one or two new members to replenish things. Even though (Chris and Meg aside) all of the original members had been male, the club seemed to have a mostly female membership these days. The only currently remaining guys were Melchizedek, the other original member, and Sam, who was currently a Sophomore and had joined as a Freshman in the second year.
Of course, Sam kind of was considered one of the girls. Even he often referred to himself as such. As she turned into the library, Chris remembered one particular time, towards the end of last year, which had been particularly embarrassing...
Chris was sitting in the club room, waiting for everyone else to arrive. Meg was in a meeting with the faculty, and everyone else wasn’t due for an hour or so. It was a Saturday, not a typical day for them to be meeting, but since Meg had to come in anyways they thought they’d kill two birds with one stone. Chris had come to offer Meg moral support, and everyone else would be by later for a goodbye party for the club’s departing seniors.
The door opened. Chris looked up expecting Meg was returning, and was quite surprised when all she saw was an incoming blur, as Sam bounded into the room and wrapped her in an embrace. “Hello, sister!” Sam greeted her as he glomped onto Chris and gave her a big kiss on the forehead.
Chris frowned. Meg didn’t seem to mind it. A few of the other guys didn’t even seem to mind it. But as far as Chris was concerned, Sam really needed to work on his concept of personal space.
Chris gave Sam an annoyed shove. She’d stopped getting angry when Sam did such things... but it was still annoying, “Get off,” she grumbled.
Sam took the seat next to Chris. “Meg not back yet?” he asked.
“Not yet,” Chris replied. “What are you doing here? I thought you’d be with Melky and Casey, buying supplies for the party.”
“They said they could handle it themselves, which is good, ‘cause I had some stuff I wanted to talk about with Meg.”
As if on cue, the door opened. Meg stormed in and slammed it behind herself again. “Those idiots!” she fumed. “Every few months, it seems like they want to shut us down. Every time I have to tell those stuck up blowhards why we have value. Every stinking time! You’d think by now they could just play a tape recording of my last grilling by them.” She sank into the chair opposite Sam and Chris.
“So, how’d it go?” Chris asked.
Meg’s frown vanished in an instant, replaced with a wide grin as she gave them a double thumb’s up. “Looks like the Tea Club will have to find somewhere else to meet next year, ‘cause we aren’t going anywhere!”
“Tea Club?” Sam asks. “Our school has a Tea Club?”
Meg shrugged. “Apparently.”
Chris poked a finger towards a shelf behind her. The shelf was chock full of boxes, each a different blend of tea. “Do they know about this?” she asked.
Meg shrugged again.
“Well, fuck that,” Sam said. “We should just find this alleged Tea Club and recruit them to bolster our numbers. They can have a nice cuppa and watch some fine quality programming while they enjoy it.”
“I know, right?” Meg replied, exasperated.
“So anyway,” Sam said, changing the subject, “did you have a chance to talk to her about it?”
Meg’s eyes shifted to Chris for a moment before returning to Sam. “Not quite...”
Chris had caught the look. “‘Not quite,’ what?” she asked, suspiciously.
“Well...” Sam slowly began. “So, we were thinking... Meg and I...”
“You know the event we’re going to in a few weeks?” Meg asked. “We kinda had a thought...”
“Oh no,” Chirs replied, cutting Meg off. “No. No matter how many times you ask, you aren’t going to wear me down.”
“You don’t even know what we’re going to say!” Sam protested.
“You want me to play dress up with you two,” Chris replied.
“Okay,” Meg responded, “so you do know.”
“How many times have you two tried to get me to dress up with you, now? I keep telling you, it ain’t happening!”
“Come on!” Meg pleaded. “We have a pair of characters we want to do, and it would really work better as a trio.
“No,” Chris said. “No, no, no. Every time you ask, it’ll be the same. No.”
“But why?” Meg begged to know.
“Because I don’t like dressing up. And because... well...” Chris’s voice softened. “Well, you know...”
Sam leaned in close, and draped an arm over Chris’s shoulders. “Come on, it’s just us girls here,” he said. “You can talk to us.”
Meg leaned across the table.
“Well...” Chris said, “I mean, look at you two,” she said. “How could I wear a costume and stand next to you?”
“Why not?” Sam demanded to know.
“Why not?” Chris repeated. “Come on, Sam. You’re gorgeous. And Meg... Well, Meg is..” Chris averted her eyes from her friends. “Meg is just so beautiful...”
Sam stood and stormed off to one corner of the room, where next to a small rack of costumes stood a full length mirror. “Chris, come here.” When Chris failed to move quickly enough, Sam spoke again with extra emphasis. “Come. Here.”
Chris rose and walked over to Sam. Sam stood her in front of the mirror, grasped her waist, and stood behind her, off to one side a bit so that they were both visible in the mirror.
“Look at yourself,” Sam said. “What do you see?”
Chris muttered something unintelligible.
“What was that?” Sam asked.
“Nothing special,” Chris replied.
“Well, you said I was gorgeous,” Sam said, “and thank you for that, by the way.” Sam ran his hands down Chris’s sides, smoothing out her loose, frumpy clothing. “And you know what? I am gorgeous. And you know what else? Our body types aren’t too dissimilar.”
“Sam,” Chris said dryly, “you’re a boy.”
Sam blinked. “Oh,” he said, “yeah...”
Meg walked over. “Well, take it from a fellow real girl,” she said. “You are just as beautiful as us. You just need to, I dunno, smile more. Have more confidence! And to prove it...” Meg paused dramatically. “How about you dress up with us?”
“No,” Chris said. “Look, I’ll go to the thing with you. I’ll even be seen with you two in public while you’re dressed up, but I’m not...”
“No,” Meg said, cutting Chris off. “Not when we go out. Now. Here.”
Chris blinked. “What.”
“Yeah!” Sam said, getting into it. “We’ve got the costumes here,” he said, diving towards the costume rack. “Including the one we made for you!”
“You made me,” Chris said, “a costume.”
“Oh come on,” Meg asked. “Please? Just for us? And you’ll see, you’ll look great in it! And no one would ever have to know except us.”
Sam was pulling hangers off of the rack and dividing the removed articles into three piles.
“But what if anyone comes in?” Chris asked.
Meg looked at her watch. “Oh, come on, it’s at least an hour until the party,” she said. “Plenty of time.”
Chris sighed. “No one must ever know,” she said.
Meg squeed and lunged for Chris, wrapping her in an embrace.
“Well, let’s get changed!” Sam said excitedly, unbuttoning his shirt.
“Um... Sam,” Meg said, noticing a slight flaw in this plan. Chris blushed slightly.
“What?” A pause. “Oh. Hmm... Well.” He looked around a bit. The storage closet their room had caught his eye. With the costume rack and mirror out in the main room it would have plenty of space inside. “I guess I can just duck in there to change,” he said.
“Oh please,” Chris muttered, “like you’ve ever been in a closet in your life.”
Sam’s posture straightened and his voice lost its usual whimsical tone, becoming flat and emotionless. “For everything there is a first time, Lieutenant.” He turned to Meg. “Wouldn’t you agree, Admiral?”
Meg snickered. “Have you lost all sense of reality?”
“This isn’t reality,” Sam replied, gathering up his costume pieces in his arms. “This is fantasy.”
Chris sighed, and gave Sam a shove towards the closed. “Go on,” she said. She even opened the door for him.
“I’ll just get in the closet,” Sam said. He ducked inside, giggling as Chris pulled the door shut.
“I’m glad you’re on our side,” Megumi told Chris.
“Come on,” Chris replied. “Let’s do this before I change my mind. So what are these costumes, anyway?”
Oh My Goddess!” Meg said, excitedly, as she spread the assembled costume pieces out over the table. “I’ve been dying to cosplay as Belldandy!”
“So who am I then?” Chris asked.
“My sister Skuld, of course!” Meg began disrobing.
“Of course,” Chris said. “Well, may as well get this over with.”
She turned her back to Meg. While she was less uncomfortable changing in the same room with her then she would have been with Sam present... something about the thought of seeing Meg undressing still caused her to feel a bit... flustered. Anyway, it took a bit of time, but they both got into their costumes. Chris was rather surprised how elaborate they were. It was actually a bit startling when Meg even pulled out wigs, a long blonde one for herself and a black one for Chris. They were already rather intricately styled.
“Aw, man, we have to swap hair colours?” Chris asked.
“Well, it just wouldn’t be accurate to the characters, otherwise,” Meg insisted. “Now come on, let’s do your make-up!”
“My what?” Chris asked.
Meg didn’t verbally reply. She’d already pulled out a make-up kit and was just looking at Chris with expectant glee.
Chris sighed. In for a penny... “Fine,” she said. “Fine.”
It took them another ten minutes each to get their make-up applied. Chris particularly needed help with hers, not being as experienced with the application of such things as Meg. After they were finished with that, they donned their wigs, did a few last minute adjustments, and went to stand in front of the mirror.
“Well, what do you think?” Meg asked.
“You look great,” Chris said.
“No, about yourself!” Meg prodded.
Chris looked at herself in the mirror. Her instinct was to downplay her own appearance, but she stopped herself and tried to access the situation objectively. “I suppose... it’s not bad...”
“Not bad?” Meg said. “Not bad? Girl, you’re fabulous! Anyway, you have to admit, this is fun, is it?
“Well...” Chris smiled. “Okay. I suppose it isn’t bad. But this is just for now, and I’m definitely changing back before the party begins.”
Meg pouted. “Well, poop,” she said. “But fine.”
“What do you need a Skuld for, anyway? If you and Sam are going as Belldandy and Keiichi, wouldn’t I just be a third wheel?”
“Um...” Meg grinned. “No one ever said Sam was going as Keiichi...”
“Then who...?”
The closet door opened slightly, and out from it... emerged a leg. A long, smooth, bare, perfect leg, with just a hint of a very highly slit dress visible towards the top. “Oh, my little sisters,” a sultry voice said, “you wouldn’t be forgetting big sister Urd now, would you?”
The door opened more fully, and out emerged the goddess Urd.
“Holy shit,” Meg said.
“How did you...” Chris started. She turned to Meg. “How did she... er, he...” Chris stammered, while making cupped hand gestures in front of her chest. She turned back to Sam. “How!”
Sam slinked towards Meg and Chris, his hips swinging with every step, making for a walk that would've caused Jessica Rabbit to be envious.
“Oh, we have got to get a photo,” Meg said.
“Oh, no we don’t,” Chris replied.
“But when will the three of us do this again?” Meg asked.
“Never,” Chris assured her. “Besides, with only the three of us here, who’d take it? Well, come on, let’s get changed back before...”
And of course, it was then that the door to the club room opened up and the rest of the Samuel Clemens High Anime Club walked in. They were mid conversation, but that stopped as soon as they saw the sight that awaited them upon their arrival.
A silence hung over the club room during which Chris’s face continued to take on ever deepening shades of red.
The silence was broken by Ryan, one of the graduating seniors, who let out a cat call.
“All right, let’s get this party started!” Melky shouted out.
Chris couldn’t take it anymore. She was about to scream! And then...
“Looking good, Christine!” one of the other guys commented.
She blinked. Meg and Sam both threw their arms around her. Next thing you know, there was the telltale flash of a camera.
Chris sighed. She tried to frown, but it came out wrong and she found her lips curling up, instead. “Fine,” she said. “Fine.” She accepted a red solo cup full of soda that someone handed her, and took a sip. “But don’t ever ask me to do this again!” she decreed.
The room cheered, and the party got underway.
And now, as Chris stood before the door of that very room, she smiled in spite of herself. She wanted to hate that memory, but somehow she couldn’t. It was hard to see any of the memories inside of that room as anything other than good ones.
So with that as her frame of mind, she opened the door and strode in. As expected, Casey, Melky, Sam, Terry, and Vikki were all there waiting, seated around the table. Much to her surprise, Meg was there, too! She stood at the head of the table, on the side opposite the door. “Meg!” Chris greeted. But she fell silent, going no further. Something was off. The atmosphere in the room was all wrong. And Meg, usually the definition of cheer – if the red around her eyes and the lack of expression on her face were to be of any indication – today she most definitely was not.
And the others... You’d think someone had died! Sam was even dabbing at his eyes with a tissue. Something was very wrong.
“What happened?” Chris asked. Then it clicked. “Oh God, are they finally shutting us down?”
Meg swallowed. It was tough enough having had to spill the news once. She’d tried to wait for Chris to arrive, but so much time had passed since final bell, Meg had started to think Chris wasn’t coming for some reason. But now here she was.
Damn, this was harder then telling everyone else combined. Meg swallowed again. “Chris, I have to go.”
“Hey, I’m sorry I’m late,” Chris said, “but if they’re trying to shut us down, that’s worth sticking around a bit to discuss, eh?”
Damn, this sucked. “No, Chris. The club’s fine. It’s me... I’m leaving.”
“What?”
“I have to... it’s my father. He’s being transferred to another office... in Japan.”
Chris felt something she couldn’t quite identify. It was like the opposite of butterflies in the stomach... A hollow, empty feeling. A sinking feeling.
“When?” she asked.
Meg looked down at the table. She noticed she was shaking, and tried to still herself. After a moment, the shaking was replaced with a numbness. “Tomorrow. We leave in the morning. I only found out last night, it’s all happening so...”
Meg stopped talking when she heard the door open and shut once more. She looked up. Chris was gone.
Her arm reached out, grasping for something that wasn’t there. Part of her wanted to leap after her, even knowing that would likely end with her tripping over the table or those seated around it and landing flat on her face. Besides, her feet felt strangely glued to the ground, as if they wouldn’t listen to her even if she tried. So she remained there for a time, she knew not how long, her hand outstretched.
The moment was only broken when a tissue was placed in her hand. It was from Sam. Meg became aware that her face was wet. She brought her arm back towards her face, and in doing so she noticed the time on her wrist watch. She didn’t have much left, and there was still one piece of important business to take care of.
She took a moment to regain her composure, then spoke once more.
“Sam?” she said.
She didn’t need to say more. Sam nodded. “I’ll talk to her.”
“Okay. Well, I suppose there’s one more thing that needs taking care of. Succession. I’m sure you’ll all agree, there’s only one real choice...”
Meg walked out of the doors of Samuel Clemens High School for the final time. Everything about her posture said she did not want to be doing so, but somehow she managed to do it. It was easier when she saw that it was her mother who had come to pick her up.
“Did you manage to do everything you needed to?” her mother asked.
“Not really,” Meg replied, “but I suppose I did all I could.”
The two of them got into the car. “Megumi-chan, I know this is tough, but it will be okay. It isn’t the end of the world, you know.”
“What do you know about it?” Meg spat, hasher then she’d intended.
Her mother seemed to take no offence. “Meg,” she said to her, surprising her by using the nickname her parents never had warmed to, “you are a child of two countries. By birth you are Japanese. And I know your love for our culture, even if that love is expressed somewhat... interestingly. But you’re also a child of American culture, and you’re being asked to leave all of that and all of your friends behind. This was asked of me once, too, when your father was first transferred here. And in my case, I didn’t even have the advantages you have of knowing the language, or an affinity for the culture. America may as well have been an alien world to me, and I had to travel there leaving all of my friends, and my parents and siblings, behind.”
Meg looked into her mother’s eyes, and saw understanding. She still needed more, though. “But why couldn’t you tell me sooner that this was happening?”
“It was about a year ago that your father started expressing concern about you to me, and said he was going to try to arrange for us to return to Japan.” Junko sighed. “He thought it best if we didn’t tell you until it was actually going to happen. He said didn’t want you to concern yourself over ‘maybes’ and ‘might happens.’”
“More likely he wanted to avoid an argument before it was too late.”
Junko laughed. “My child, you are wise. But I assure you, even if you didn’t personally take part, an argument on your behalf did occur a year ago. However, your father would not hear of it.
“And then last night... he came home with the news. I am sorry, Megumi-chan, if I seemed less then sympathetic... I guess I got caught up in the excitement, the thought of going home again. It’s been so long.”
“No, mom, you didn’t...” Meg stumbled for words. “It’s just... It’s all happening so quick! Why does it have to be so quick?”
“It is rather sudden. Apparently the position that opened up in Japan was due to an unexpected death, so there really was no time to set up a more gradual transition. And if your father turned down the offer after lobbying for a year for a move back to Japan, well, it wouldn’t have looked good for him within the company.”
“Well, we couldn’t have that, now could we?” Meg asked. Her tone did little to hide her sarcasm.
“No, Megumi-chan, we couldn’t.” Her mother was being serious. “Everything you and I have is because of the hard work your father does, and even if it isn’t easy, sometimes we have to make sacrifices to thank him for that. I made my sacrifice years ago when we first came to America. Now, I fear, it is your turn.”
Meg sighed. “But it sucks ass,” she said.
“Yes,” her mother deadpanned, “it does suck ass.”
Hearing her mother speak like that caught her rather off guard, and Meg couldn’t help herself but to let out a giggle. She tried to stifle it, determined to maintain the dour mood she had so well constructed, but that somehow made it worse. There was no helping it, she was laughing now, and her mother joined her in it.
“That’s more like you,” her mother said when they had calmed down again. “Megumi-chan,” she then continued. “You’re still a child, and so you have to do this. I know it is hard for you. But someday, not too far in the future, you will be an adult. You’ll be able to make your own decisions. Including decisions on where you want to be.”
Meg looked at her mother again.
“And if where you decide you want to be happens to be somewhere other than Japan... Well, while you can be sure your father won’t like it, there won’t be much he can do to stop you. Especially,” Junko said, “if you have me baking you up on it.”
“Mom,” Meg said, “thank you.”
“As long as you promise to come visit us once in a while,” Junko added.
Meg grinned. “You got it.”
Junko grinned back. “Now then, we have a lot to do still, and your father is expecting us back shortly,” she said. “However, I think for the stress he has caused you, he can suffer a small delay if we don’t go straight home.” She turned on the car’s engine.
“Mother?” Meg asked, perplexed.
“Well now,” her mother explained, “you don’t expect me to go back home to Japan looking anything other than my best, do you? And so I’ve made one last appointment for us at our salon.”
“Dad’ll be pissed,” Meg said. “That’ll take a few hours!”
Junko pulled out into traffic. “Let it,” was all she had to say to that.
Chris hadn’t left her room since coming home. In fact, she hadn’t left her bed, where she was curled up in a foetal position. In the dark.
There was a soft knock at the door. “Christine? Honey?” Her mother sounded concerned. Of course, she had skipped dinner. “One of your club friends is on the phone. Do you want me to bring the phone in there for you?”
Chris didn’t answer. Her mother seemed to get the hint, and didn’t knock again.
In fact, no one knocked again until very early the next morning. Chris was startled awake, finding herself in much the same position she had been lying in the previous morning.
“Chris? Honey? I hope you’re decent, because I’m coming in!”
It was a good thing she was decent, otherwise it was likely Sam wouldn’t have lived to tell the tale. He walked into the room and sat on the edge of the bed. “Rough night?” he asked.
Chris didn’t respond.
“Look,” Sam said, “this is tough on all of us, Meg included,” Sam continued. “She doesn’t want to be leaving. She wasn’t given any choice, and hardly any time.”
“I’m not sure what I’d be without her, Sam,” Chris finally said, her voice barely above a whisper. “It’s all so easy for the rest of you. You all were someone even before you met Meg. Me, I’d just be the quiet girl in the corner no one wants to talk to.”
“Nonsense, girl. You’re not the only one who only fits in at school because of this club. Without it, I’d just be ‘the fag.’”
“We live in San Francisco. You’d hardly be the only one.”
“Still doesn’t make it easy sometimes,” Sam confided. “But it’s not so bad, because you and Meg and everyone else in the club accepted me for who I was. So don’t make it sound like you’re the only one with someplace to fit in at school because of the Anime Club. And you’re part of that, you know.”
“Only because Meg made the club, and insisted I join.”
Sam smiled. “Meg never told you why she formed the anime club, did she?”
“Not specifically, but it seemed kind of obvious. ’Cause she liked anime, and wanted to hang out with other people who did.”
“That is true, to some extent,” Sam said. “But there was one person in particular she wanted to hang out with. Someone she’d spent some time with the previous year, and felt a connection with, but didn’t quite know how to approach without an excuse.”
Chris looked up at Sam, a dumbfounded look upon her face.
“Meg told me once, when I asked her about the founding of the club,” Sam continued, “about the Sailor Moon doodle she saw you drawing your first day of High School.”
Chris looked up at Sam. “She did all of it,” she asked, “for me? Why?”
“‘Cause she wanted to hang out with you,” Sam said.
“But she was popular! She could hang out with whoever she wanted!”
“And she chose you.”
“Why all the elaborate trouble? She could have just asked!”
“Chris, honey, even the ‘popular girls’ can get nervous when it comes to wanting to be with someone they really like. What if you’d said no? Besides, the club was an extra added bonus. It was fun, wasn’t it?”
Chris felt something... Something new, she wasn’t sure what. But whatever it was... “Oh God, Sam, what did I do? All she’s done for all of us... For me! And I just walked out on her yesterday.” And now there was nothing she could do about it.
“You know, I happen to know when her plane is leaving this morning,” Sam said. He looked at his watch. “It’ll be close, but if we hurry, we might just be able to catch her before she leaves.”
Chris’s heart skipped a beat.
“You could tell her how you feel,” Sam said with an odd wink. “Tell her you’ll keep in touch. Anything. At least say goodbye. You leave things like you did yesterday, and you’ll only regret it.”
Chris startled Sam by bolting to her feet and dashing towards the door. Sam hadn’t even had time to react yet when Chris poked her head back in and said, “Come on, what are you waiting for? Oh, and you drove here, right? So you’ve got your car?”
Sam smiled. “Yup. Let’s go.”
Meg’s mind was pretty much blank as she followed her parents into the airport. She moved as if on auto pilot, following behind Junko and Katashi as they went to the ticket counter, confirmed their flights, got their boarding passes, and checked their luggage.
Since yesterday afternoon, she’d at least felt as if she had an ally in her mother, but that still didn’t change the fact that this was not something she wanted to be doing... She’d give almost anything to stop it from happening. And as she lay awake in the wee hours of the morning, the oblivion of sleep staying ever elusive, she realized the only way she would manage to survive the day would be to remove herself from it. To that effect, she had carefully cultivated a feeling of numbness, until she could almost believe that her life at the moment was something she was watching on television – a tale happening to someone else. Anyone else. But not her.
Her father went through the security checkpoint first. Then her mother. Meg placed her carry-on down on the little conveyer belt, and was about to step through the metal detectors herself, when she heard something... someone calling to her, off in the distance, back the way they had come.
Meg stopped.
Oh please, God, no, she thought. It was the one voice she most desperately wanted to hear... but it was a voice she could not hear. Not if she had any hopes of getting this intact.
“Megumi!” This time, it was from before her. Her father calling to her, urging her to come forward.
“Dear, please, give her a moment,” her mother said. Her father frowned and turned his back. Her mother smiled to her, a warm, reassuring smile. She nodded at Meg, almost as if she was telling her it would be all right.
Meg turned to face Chris. She also saw Sam off in the distance, further down the long corridor leading to the security checkpoint, almost lost amidst the crowd of people in the airport. He offered a smile and a thumb’s up, but otherwise kept his distance. He knew that even if he had helped to facilitate it, this was a moment that was not for him.
Meg felt so very conflicted inside. So many words buzzed through her brain, fighting to make their way out of her mouth. In the end, she just managed a weak, “Why are you here?”
Chris fidgeted for a moment. So desperate was she to see Meg one more time that, now that the moment was upon her, she wasn’t quite sure what she had wanted to do with it. “I... I had to see you before you left.”
Meg smiled. It took some effort, as while it was certainly one of the expressions vying for time on her face at the moment, it was not the only one. “Well,” she said, “here I am.”
“I almost didn’t recognize you from behind,” Chris admitted. “What did you do to your hair?”
Meg instinctively grabbed at her hair, but missed. There was much less of it then she was used to having. “I dunno,” she said. “I thought it might help, try to make a fresh start. Anyway, what are you doing here?”
“I... I don’t know what I want,” Chris admitted. “Only... I’m sorry, Meg. I shouldn’t have run out on you like that yesterday. Only... it hurt so much, I couldn’t stay.”
Meg took Chris into her arms for a hug. “I know what you mean,” she said. She then pulled away, but kept her hands on Chris’s shoulders. “I wanted to chase after you, but that would have hurt, too.”
The two of them couldn’t help but to laugh. It was short, and sounded somewhat less then mirthful, but it was something. “We’re a pair, aren’t we?” Chris asked.
“Two of a kind,” Meg replied. “Ever since junior high, it was you and me vs. the world. We’ve done a good job of it, too, these last few years.”
“Sam... Sam told me some things,” Chris said. “About why you have to leave so suddenly...” And about why you formed the club in the first place. “I... Don’t worry, we’ll all do our best for the club.”
“I know you will.” Meg smiled, a more genuine smile this time. “You’ll push for Otakon in the summer, right?”
“You know it,” Chris said. “It will be a voyage undertaken to honour our founding President!”
“Megumi.” Her father was calling to her, apparently having felt he had waited long enough.
Meg looked at Chris. She tightened her grip on her shoulders, and pulled her into a hug once more. “I guess this is it, huh?”
“Mmm hmm,” Chris said. She then opened her mouth to say goodbye, but was somewhat surprised when the wrong words came out. “I love you,” she softly spoke into Meg’s ear.
She then gasped. What had she just said?
Meg pushed her out again, once more holding her at arm’s length. She tried to look into Chris’s eyes.
“You’re not... you’re not just talking, ‘as a friend,’ are you?”
She could feel Chris trying to pull away from her grip, almost as if she wanted to flee, but Meg held firm. She definitely noticed Chris was unable to return her look, however.
Meg... Meg felt something welling up inside of herself...
“Megumi!” Her father’s voice again, much more insistent this time.
...and almost immediately it came crashing down again.
The numbness reasserted itself as she released her grip on Chris’s shoulders. Rather than flee, Chris just stood there, dumbfounded.
“I... I can’t...” She turned.
“Meg...” Chris replied softly, pleadingly.
“This can’t happen now,” Meg said in almost a monotone. She walked back towards the metal detectors. Then through them.
“Please...” Chris begged, trying to ignore that it was already too late.
Meg collected her carry-on and joined her parents. Chris watched her as, without ever turning back, Meg continued down the remaining length of the corridor, eventually disappearing around a corner.
Sam had come up to join Chris, and had placed an arm around her shoulders, reassuringly. For once, Chris didn’t mind the invasion of her space. She even placed her hand over Sam’s on her shoulder. She stood there for some time, continuing to watch the ever flowing crowd of people as they went on their way to their individual destinies.
“Oh hey, they’re boarding our group now,” Junko said. She rose from her vaguely uncomfortable plastic seat, and Meg rose along side her. They joined Meg’s father, who had been pacing closer to the door onto the airplane upon which they would be flying from San Francisco, leaving behind everything Meg knew for the unknown in Japan.
“Do you have everything?” Katashi asked, his own carry-on bag slung over his shoulder.
The women both nodded to this, and so he walked up to the ticket agent at the door to the airplane, handed her their tickets, and boarded. Meg and her mother followed.
The three of them took their seats, Katashi and Junko in one row and Meg in the window seat of the row behind them. A short time later, they were airborne for the journey to the country that would be their new home.
Meg reached into the pocket of her coat and took out a photograph. Next to her, the woman who was sitting there had already put on some headphones and settled back with her eyes closed. So Meg was unobserved as she looked at the photo of three people, a trio dressed as anime goddesses. Her attention was particularly focused on one person in the photo in particular.
A single tear fell upon the photo. Then another. She wiped the tears from the photo, and then she stuffed it into the pocket in the back of the seat in front of her. It would remain there amongst the magazines and emergency instructions even after she would eventually depart the plane. Meanwhile, her tears continued to fall as she silently cried until she felt she could do so no more.
In about eleven and a half hours, they would be landing in Tokyo. Not much else would happen during the flight, so Meg simply set about trying to prepare herself mentally for her new life she would lead after crossing the ocean.
Author's Notes & Disclaimers
Hi, everybody! Matt here!
And thus concludes the "In Japan Origins" trilogy. Or, I suppose, begins it, if you happen to be reading it in chronological order. (And if you are reading them in chronological order, you may wish to hold off on these notes, as I shall likely have a few things to say about the trilogy as a whole, and I do not wish for you to accidentally come across anything that might be vaguely spoilery.)
So yes, as has already been mentioned, this whole thing started as an idea I once had, who knows when, but probably as far back as when I was even first thinking, "Hey, let's set year two in Japan!" And seeing as the foreshadowing for that was in place as early as Boy Scouts ½ part 6, that could have been quite a while ago! (Not sure if I really had Japan planned that far back, but I was certainly setting up something.) And once the Japan plans started forming, I remember thinking, "Well, that'll be a long plane ride, could make for an interesting closed environment in which to write a story!"
When Boy Scouts ½ in Japan began, however, I ended up starting with them getting off the plane. Made for a great call back to the very beginning of Boy Scouts ½, which started with our intrepid heroes debarking after returning from their fateful trip to China. Still, the basic idea, "story on an airplane," remained in the back of my head, perhaps as a side story?
Meanwhile, another story idea I'd had floating around my alleged brain for a while was, "Matt goes to a convention." Never really put a terrible amount of thought into it, just figured it could be a fun thing to do. Guess I never felt there was a right time for it in story. (Although thinking back on it now, in real life I once did go to a sci-fi con in Springfield with Mike Quadrozzi and the dubiously fictional Aaron "Abdowmassy." We got to meet Marcus Cole from Babylon 5! It was fun! Guess I could have worked that into a story, but oh well.)
Finally, in creating the new character of Meg, I obviously had a lot of back story floating through my head, and I suppose it was natural to want to explore that a bit. I figured, "As long as I don't end it with Meg encased in a life supporting suit of armour, shouting, 'Nooooooooooooooo!' it might be fun to write a bit of a prequel."
Then, I suppose, these three ideas coalesced in my brain into one big whole. Prequel trilogy. (And I would still avoid the bit with the big " Nooooooooooooooo!") And if I am going to a con in the summer, I could make it Otakon! (Sure, in real life, the first year I went was '99. But as Uhura once said, "This isn't reality, this is fantasy.") Fit in a bit nicer with Boy Scouts ½'s anime roots. And then I could have a fun story with Jason and Matt! (Of course, if you've hopefully read In Japan Origins: Matt before reading these notes, you know how well that plan went!)
Thinking it would be a Jason and Matt story, and knowing that Jason definitely has more con going experience then I (not that I have none), I wanted to offer that one to Jason. If Hughes had proved more reliable with Boy Scouts ½ in Japan, part 6 I may have offered him that one, even though his character is absent from the proceedings. (Do not take the comment of his lack of reliability as an insult. He had other priorities at the time, and they were ones I would agree with. I'd love to have him write more for me someday if he ever would like to, but I'd likely wait for him to offer his services if he wishes to do so.) So I suppose that defaulted that one back to me. And, of course, I had to write the Meg one. She is still a fairly new character who mostly exists only in my head. I couldn't (or rather, didn't wish to) trust her tale to anyone else!
For who knows what reason, I decided I wished to present this loosely connected trilogy of stories in reverse order of chronology. (If I wished to credit myself as being clever, I'd say I wanted to lure readers into the proceedings with more established characters and work our way back to the new one. But that would probably be more credit than is deserved!) As I pondered it, I felt it would be important to make sure that reading these stories could work well in either direction. Read chronologically, it would be fairly straightforward tale with occasional call backs to what came before. Read in order of publication, these call backs would instead become some nifty foreshadowing of what the reader had to look forward to. But, of course, one had to be careful that such foreshadowing didn't spoil too much what was to come.
As I suppose was inevitable, this brings us to talk more about what I said in my notes to In Japan Origins: Matt I'd get into more, later. Strangely, while you might think that the Matt and the The Boys stories, being much closer together in when they take place, would be more intertwined, it was actually the case that it was the Matt and the Megumi stories that were more closely interlocked in the writing process. A lot of it is a blur, with Jason and I communicating via phone and e-mail, shooting ideas back and forth. So much so that some of what happened is difficult to me to separate some of which ideas were whose. (Hence the fact that I've given each of these stories a "story by" credit with both of our names.) I think it went something like this:
I wrote the beginning scenes of Megumi, with Meg at home and getting the news they are moving.
Jason, knowing that the Megumi story would involve her being in an anime club at her school, wanted to involve some of her former club members in his story. I told him something along the lines of, "Come up with some characters, and let me know about them so I can include them in my story."
More mutual brain storming occurred. Pretty sure it was my idea to have the angle of a tragically-never-to-be love between Meg and Chris, but if Jason wants to dispute me on that, he can do so in his notes. But anyway, in the end it led to Jason writing into his story some material he was quite attached to, which included Chris going much more in depth as to her club's former president, and the circumstances of her departure.
My response to that was, to paraphrase, "Um, Jason, that's kinda the whole climatic scene of the story I'm working on. Anyone reading these in publication order are going to have the Megumi story completely spoiled! Could you, I dunno, vague the details up a bit in your story?"
If my memory is correct, he was not happy... but tried to do so. But so attached was he to the material (which I can quite understand) that this attempt did not take things nearly far enough in my opinion, and still came off quite spoilery. Jason's opinion, meanwhile, was one of, "I did my best, but this is the story I want to tell, darn it. I can't cut it back any more!" And then the stubbornness set in, on both sides. I suppose it was inevitable then that all there was for it was to let some time pass and let our heads cool, and fortunately that happened. In the end, Jason ended up excising anything I felt was excessively spoilery from his story, and in exchange I snipped one bit of dialogue from mine to facilitate some future plans that Jason has.
Onto the disclaimers! Most of them in this story should be fairly obvious, being people talking in-universe about some of the shows they like. It was difficult coming up with appropriate things to fit in with the timeline! One thing that was a big help was a book I have long had, which I had to dig out of a box buried deep in my parents' basement, The Complete Anime Guide: Japanese Animation Video Directory & Resource Guide, by Trish Ledoux & Doug Ranney, published in December of 1995. Back in the day, when I was first getting into anime as a genre, it was an invaluable book to see what was out there.
Today, it was just as invaluable for getting my head back into the mindset of a mid 90's anime fan. In particular, it was tricky to try and think what show Chris might have seen on TV in the summer of '95, a time period when there weren't many options! Fortunately, the book informed me that 1995 was when Sailor Moon was first shown in syndication in the U.S., so I thought I might be able to use that. Further research via Wikipedia gives the English airdate of the first episode as 28 August 28 1995, meaning a few episodes could have aired before school began in September. Of course, being a syndicated show, it is quite possible that it began airing in different markets at different times! But it is not unreasonable to assume a city such as San Francisco to be one of the earlier markets. (And if this would not quite match up to reality... Well, smeg it! It is close enough to what would have been possible to just declare this an acceptable break from reality which is true within the Boy Scouts ½ universe.)
Other shows mentioned were Warriors of the Wind (a very edited dub of Miyazaki's masterpiece Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind which, while Miyazaki has asked if we could all just please forget it ever existed, would have been the only version of the film available in North America at the time), Robotech and Star Blazers, and Power Rangers. (NOT a fan of that last one, but again... I had to stick with what might have been more commonly known about at the time.) And, of course, the epic Oh My Goddess! cosplay.
Also hinted at was The Slayers (via Meg's Lina Inverse bathrobe... Not sure such a thing would have existed back then, or even now! But perhaps it was home made?), Project A-ko (via the posters Meg put up to advertise the club), and, via some borrowed dialogue, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. Yes, Star Trek is not anime... but of course, there is no reason anime fans wouldn't also enjoy other stereotypically geeky pursuits!
Finally, the format of the titles of the stories in this trilogy may have been in reference to one of the less well received X-Men films.
In any event, any pre-existing properties mentioned or referenced are obviously the property of their respective owners.
So yeah... Chris and Sam... Jason was deliberately vague about their genders in his story. I am trusting that Sam was very convincing in his A-ko costume, or else Matt would have likely freaked out a bit more at the thought of having been kissed by a man! (Not, to use the cliché saying, that there is anything wrong with that... But still, even someone fully accepting of alternative life styles would not enjoy being unexpectedly kissed by an individual falling outside of his or her preferences!) I suppose it is just as well for his peace of mind that Matt remained ignorant of the truth in that scene.
I was a bit unsure about my use of the word "fag" when not describing a bundle of sticks or a British person asking for a cigarette... But given who is saying it and in what context, I hope it can be taken for what it is: acknowledged as a potentially ugly epitaph, being used by a man who is happy to have found a social group in which he can be himself without fearing that that is all his fellows will use to define him. And while he is definitely showing off some effeminate mannerisms, in both Jason's story and especially in my own, I truly hope Sam came off as a person, and not just as a camp stereotype.
A brief note on the chronology: Obviously the first two In Japan Origins stories are easy to place. They would both take place between the end of Boy Scouts ½ and the beginning of Boy Scouts ½ in Japan. But this story takes place much earlier in 1998, prior to Boy Scouts ½, part 14. (For more details, see the Timeline page.)
Well, not sure what else to say here. So, I suppose, I shall turn things over to Jason! See if he has any thoughts on the trilogy as a whole, or on this story in particular, or any additional insight regarding the behind the scenes shenanigans. And perhaps after that, if I think of anything else, I'll butt back in to wrap things up. But for now, I turn you over to the magnificent Jason!
And thus concludes the "In Japan Origins" trilogy. Or, I suppose, begins it, if you happen to be reading it in chronological order. (And if you are reading them in chronological order, you may wish to hold off on these notes, as I shall likely have a few things to say about the trilogy as a whole, and I do not wish for you to accidentally come across anything that might be vaguely spoilery.)
So yes, as has already been mentioned, this whole thing started as an idea I once had, who knows when, but probably as far back as when I was even first thinking, "Hey, let's set year two in Japan!" And seeing as the foreshadowing for that was in place as early as Boy Scouts ½ part 6, that could have been quite a while ago! (Not sure if I really had Japan planned that far back, but I was certainly setting up something.) And once the Japan plans started forming, I remember thinking, "Well, that'll be a long plane ride, could make for an interesting closed environment in which to write a story!"
When Boy Scouts ½ in Japan began, however, I ended up starting with them getting off the plane. Made for a great call back to the very beginning of Boy Scouts ½, which started with our intrepid heroes debarking after returning from their fateful trip to China. Still, the basic idea, "story on an airplane," remained in the back of my head, perhaps as a side story?
Meanwhile, another story idea I'd had floating around my alleged brain for a while was, "Matt goes to a convention." Never really put a terrible amount of thought into it, just figured it could be a fun thing to do. Guess I never felt there was a right time for it in story. (Although thinking back on it now, in real life I once did go to a sci-fi con in Springfield with Mike Quadrozzi and the dubiously fictional Aaron "Abdowmassy." We got to meet Marcus Cole from Babylon 5! It was fun! Guess I could have worked that into a story, but oh well.)
Finally, in creating the new character of Meg, I obviously had a lot of back story floating through my head, and I suppose it was natural to want to explore that a bit. I figured, "As long as I don't end it with Meg encased in a life supporting suit of armour, shouting, 'Nooooooooooooooo!' it might be fun to write a bit of a prequel."
Then, I suppose, these three ideas coalesced in my brain into one big whole. Prequel trilogy. (And I would still avoid the bit with the big " Nooooooooooooooo!") And if I am going to a con in the summer, I could make it Otakon! (Sure, in real life, the first year I went was '99. But as Uhura once said, "This isn't reality, this is fantasy.") Fit in a bit nicer with Boy Scouts ½'s anime roots. And then I could have a fun story with Jason and Matt! (Of course, if you've hopefully read In Japan Origins: Matt before reading these notes, you know how well that plan went!)
Thinking it would be a Jason and Matt story, and knowing that Jason definitely has more con going experience then I (not that I have none), I wanted to offer that one to Jason. If Hughes had proved more reliable with Boy Scouts ½ in Japan, part 6 I may have offered him that one, even though his character is absent from the proceedings. (Do not take the comment of his lack of reliability as an insult. He had other priorities at the time, and they were ones I would agree with. I'd love to have him write more for me someday if he ever would like to, but I'd likely wait for him to offer his services if he wishes to do so.) So I suppose that defaulted that one back to me. And, of course, I had to write the Meg one. She is still a fairly new character who mostly exists only in my head. I couldn't (or rather, didn't wish to) trust her tale to anyone else!
For who knows what reason, I decided I wished to present this loosely connected trilogy of stories in reverse order of chronology. (If I wished to credit myself as being clever, I'd say I wanted to lure readers into the proceedings with more established characters and work our way back to the new one. But that would probably be more credit than is deserved!) As I pondered it, I felt it would be important to make sure that reading these stories could work well in either direction. Read chronologically, it would be fairly straightforward tale with occasional call backs to what came before. Read in order of publication, these call backs would instead become some nifty foreshadowing of what the reader had to look forward to. But, of course, one had to be careful that such foreshadowing didn't spoil too much what was to come.
As I suppose was inevitable, this brings us to talk more about what I said in my notes to In Japan Origins: Matt I'd get into more, later. Strangely, while you might think that the Matt and the The Boys stories, being much closer together in when they take place, would be more intertwined, it was actually the case that it was the Matt and the Megumi stories that were more closely interlocked in the writing process. A lot of it is a blur, with Jason and I communicating via phone and e-mail, shooting ideas back and forth. So much so that some of what happened is difficult to me to separate some of which ideas were whose. (Hence the fact that I've given each of these stories a "story by" credit with both of our names.) I think it went something like this:
I wrote the beginning scenes of Megumi, with Meg at home and getting the news they are moving.
Jason, knowing that the Megumi story would involve her being in an anime club at her school, wanted to involve some of her former club members in his story. I told him something along the lines of, "Come up with some characters, and let me know about them so I can include them in my story."
More mutual brain storming occurred. Pretty sure it was my idea to have the angle of a tragically-never-to-be love between Meg and Chris, but if Jason wants to dispute me on that, he can do so in his notes. But anyway, in the end it led to Jason writing into his story some material he was quite attached to, which included Chris going much more in depth as to her club's former president, and the circumstances of her departure.
My response to that was, to paraphrase, "Um, Jason, that's kinda the whole climatic scene of the story I'm working on. Anyone reading these in publication order are going to have the Megumi story completely spoiled! Could you, I dunno, vague the details up a bit in your story?"
If my memory is correct, he was not happy... but tried to do so. But so attached was he to the material (which I can quite understand) that this attempt did not take things nearly far enough in my opinion, and still came off quite spoilery. Jason's opinion, meanwhile, was one of, "I did my best, but this is the story I want to tell, darn it. I can't cut it back any more!" And then the stubbornness set in, on both sides. I suppose it was inevitable then that all there was for it was to let some time pass and let our heads cool, and fortunately that happened. In the end, Jason ended up excising anything I felt was excessively spoilery from his story, and in exchange I snipped one bit of dialogue from mine to facilitate some future plans that Jason has.
Onto the disclaimers! Most of them in this story should be fairly obvious, being people talking in-universe about some of the shows they like. It was difficult coming up with appropriate things to fit in with the timeline! One thing that was a big help was a book I have long had, which I had to dig out of a box buried deep in my parents' basement, The Complete Anime Guide: Japanese Animation Video Directory & Resource Guide, by Trish Ledoux & Doug Ranney, published in December of 1995. Back in the day, when I was first getting into anime as a genre, it was an invaluable book to see what was out there.
Today, it was just as invaluable for getting my head back into the mindset of a mid 90's anime fan. In particular, it was tricky to try and think what show Chris might have seen on TV in the summer of '95, a time period when there weren't many options! Fortunately, the book informed me that 1995 was when Sailor Moon was first shown in syndication in the U.S., so I thought I might be able to use that. Further research via Wikipedia gives the English airdate of the first episode as 28 August 28 1995, meaning a few episodes could have aired before school began in September. Of course, being a syndicated show, it is quite possible that it began airing in different markets at different times! But it is not unreasonable to assume a city such as San Francisco to be one of the earlier markets. (And if this would not quite match up to reality... Well, smeg it! It is close enough to what would have been possible to just declare this an acceptable break from reality which is true within the Boy Scouts ½ universe.)
Other shows mentioned were Warriors of the Wind (a very edited dub of Miyazaki's masterpiece Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind which, while Miyazaki has asked if we could all just please forget it ever existed, would have been the only version of the film available in North America at the time), Robotech and Star Blazers, and Power Rangers. (NOT a fan of that last one, but again... I had to stick with what might have been more commonly known about at the time.) And, of course, the epic Oh My Goddess! cosplay.
Also hinted at was The Slayers (via Meg's Lina Inverse bathrobe... Not sure such a thing would have existed back then, or even now! But perhaps it was home made?), Project A-ko (via the posters Meg put up to advertise the club), and, via some borrowed dialogue, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. Yes, Star Trek is not anime... but of course, there is no reason anime fans wouldn't also enjoy other stereotypically geeky pursuits!
Finally, the format of the titles of the stories in this trilogy may have been in reference to one of the less well received X-Men films.
In any event, any pre-existing properties mentioned or referenced are obviously the property of their respective owners.
So yeah... Chris and Sam... Jason was deliberately vague about their genders in his story. I am trusting that Sam was very convincing in his A-ko costume, or else Matt would have likely freaked out a bit more at the thought of having been kissed by a man! (Not, to use the cliché saying, that there is anything wrong with that... But still, even someone fully accepting of alternative life styles would not enjoy being unexpectedly kissed by an individual falling outside of his or her preferences!) I suppose it is just as well for his peace of mind that Matt remained ignorant of the truth in that scene.
I was a bit unsure about my use of the word "fag" when not describing a bundle of sticks or a British person asking for a cigarette... But given who is saying it and in what context, I hope it can be taken for what it is: acknowledged as a potentially ugly epitaph, being used by a man who is happy to have found a social group in which he can be himself without fearing that that is all his fellows will use to define him. And while he is definitely showing off some effeminate mannerisms, in both Jason's story and especially in my own, I truly hope Sam came off as a person, and not just as a camp stereotype.
A brief note on the chronology: Obviously the first two In Japan Origins stories are easy to place. They would both take place between the end of Boy Scouts ½ and the beginning of Boy Scouts ½ in Japan. But this story takes place much earlier in 1998, prior to Boy Scouts ½, part 14. (For more details, see the Timeline page.)
Well, not sure what else to say here. So, I suppose, I shall turn things over to Jason! See if he has any thoughts on the trilogy as a whole, or on this story in particular, or any additional insight regarding the behind the scenes shenanigans. And perhaps after that, if I think of anything else, I'll butt back in to wrap things up. But for now, I turn you over to the magnificent Jason!
Jason's Notes:
Thanks, Matt. Glad to be here and I’m glad to have been part of the entire process involved in creating the Origins Trilogy. As I have been told that I am quite the verbose bastard to the point that even my end notes are becoming epic works, I will try to keep these rather simple and on task.
In terms of the background drama surrounding these tales, I got most of my feelings off my chest in the notes for the last story, but I am glad that Matt was able to do likewise. As I said, after it was all said and done, this was a positive experience and I’m happy with where we ended up, even if the ride there wasn’t always a smooth one.
Chris and Sam: In terms of Chris and Meg’s ill-fated goodbye and never-to-be relationship, Matt’s recollection of things is pretty much spot on at least in terms of the idea of Meg having a friend, who was a girl, that confessed her love for her before Meg left for Japan. But most of who that person was, as a person, was still very much up in the air. It took many conversations, drafts, redrafts, debates, arguments, speculations, more conversations, and possibly outright threats before Chris (and Sam as well, for that matter) began to take shape as the people who would be part of Meg’s past life.
Now, as Matt pointed out in his notes, I was deliberately vague concerning their genders when it came to their appearances in Origins: Matt. It was something I felt like I wanted to explore as a writer, in terms of, well not exactly playing with the reader’s expectations, but more so not specifically stating what those expectations should be.
While Chris was always to be a woman, Sam very easily could’ve ended up being another girl, probably somewhat akin to Wakaba from Utena or Tomo from Azumanga Daioh. Overly affectionate, boisterous, and highly excitable. It was during one of the many conversations we had during the creation of these stories, I suggested that maybe Sam was a highly effective crossplayer (crossdressing cosplayer) and from there, things started to really come together for who exactly these characters were and, more importantly to me, who they will be.
Yes, WILL. As Matt alluded to, I do have some future plans when it comes to the S.C.H.A.C. Sam and Chris’ story doesn’t end at an airport security checkpoint, it just diverges from Meg’s. However, I will leave that for another time.
Thanks for sticking with both Matt and I through this prequel trilogy. Take it home, Matt.
In terms of the background drama surrounding these tales, I got most of my feelings off my chest in the notes for the last story, but I am glad that Matt was able to do likewise. As I said, after it was all said and done, this was a positive experience and I’m happy with where we ended up, even if the ride there wasn’t always a smooth one.
Chris and Sam: In terms of Chris and Meg’s ill-fated goodbye and never-to-be relationship, Matt’s recollection of things is pretty much spot on at least in terms of the idea of Meg having a friend, who was a girl, that confessed her love for her before Meg left for Japan. But most of who that person was, as a person, was still very much up in the air. It took many conversations, drafts, redrafts, debates, arguments, speculations, more conversations, and possibly outright threats before Chris (and Sam as well, for that matter) began to take shape as the people who would be part of Meg’s past life.
Now, as Matt pointed out in his notes, I was deliberately vague concerning their genders when it came to their appearances in Origins: Matt. It was something I felt like I wanted to explore as a writer, in terms of, well not exactly playing with the reader’s expectations, but more so not specifically stating what those expectations should be.
While Chris was always to be a woman, Sam very easily could’ve ended up being another girl, probably somewhat akin to Wakaba from Utena or Tomo from Azumanga Daioh. Overly affectionate, boisterous, and highly excitable. It was during one of the many conversations we had during the creation of these stories, I suggested that maybe Sam was a highly effective crossplayer (crossdressing cosplayer) and from there, things started to really come together for who exactly these characters were and, more importantly to me, who they will be.
Yes, WILL. As Matt alluded to, I do have some future plans when it comes to the S.C.H.A.C. Sam and Chris’ story doesn’t end at an airport security checkpoint, it just diverges from Meg’s. However, I will leave that for another time.
Thanks for sticking with both Matt and I through this prequel trilogy. Take it home, Matt.
Taking It Home
Suppose that's my cue to come back in! I suppose not much else to say after all...
I suppose I am a bit amused, after last time pointing out the epic length of Jason's notes, that this time mine dwarf his! But I suppose, in my defense, as he pointed out he said most of what he wished to in that last epic batch. Also, I suppose what I had to say this time was also extended a bit as I had some notes pertaining to the trilogy as a whole.
I'd be interested to hear from readers (assuming that we have any these days!) as to their thoughts on this trilogy. I'd especially be interested to hear how opinions might differ between people who read this in the order they were published and chronological order. If anyone out there is reading these, feel free to leave a comment on the Site Blog!
Anyway, I suppose that's it. Hope you enjoyed reading this, and that it whetted your appetite for what it to come! Until then, faithful readers!
I suppose I am a bit amused, after last time pointing out the epic length of Jason's notes, that this time mine dwarf his! But I suppose, in my defense, as he pointed out he said most of what he wished to in that last epic batch. Also, I suppose what I had to say this time was also extended a bit as I had some notes pertaining to the trilogy as a whole.
I'd be interested to hear from readers (assuming that we have any these days!) as to their thoughts on this trilogy. I'd especially be interested to hear how opinions might differ between people who read this in the order they were published and chronological order. If anyone out there is reading these, feel free to leave a comment on the Site Blog!
Anyway, I suppose that's it. Hope you enjoyed reading this, and that it whetted your appetite for what it to come! Until then, faithful readers!