FV15.2: Birds of a Feather Flock Together
Continuation/part B of Chapter 15
A meet-up... They really had to be out of their minds now.
Karina had been trying to keep a mental list of who everyone was on the forum, but she was afraid she was losing track by now. It would have been a smart idea if she had started writing them down, but the thought just escaped her. She hadn't realized that so many of her fellow heroes would also end up on the site. Right now, she wished she knew how many of them to expect if she were to go...
It was a horrible idea - nothing was going to change that plain fact... But she was also really intrigued. Especially because it was getting hard to remember who was who, it would be interesting to see how many of them actually showed up at this party-thing. It would be a real shocker when they all figured out who had been saying what to each other on the internet. When she took a look at who had started this “bright idea” Karina added one of her friends to the immediate guest list.
kgoodman3958
She was really going to have to have a talk with Keith and explain to him why using his real name for his username wasn't a smart thing to do.
His plan was very last-minute, so she wouldn't have a lot of time to go out and get a new outfit to wear. It was probably going to feel like she was there with a bunch of her friends anyway, so there wasn't any point in getting too dressed up. After reading over this petition party plan of theirs again, she got up from her bed and started rummaging around in her closet for something that would make her presentable.
Did it really matter? It was going to be her... Keith... Ivan?
Was Ivan going? He sounded sort of interested yet unsure from what she had read in his comments. She knew how easily he got freaked out, but this seemed like it would be a good experience for him. It wouldn't do him any good to get cooped up in the house. Their last get-together had ended in moderate disaster, but this could be a good time for them to all let it go, right?
She dropped the top she was holding up to herself in front of her mirror and ran back to her laptop and quickly started to type out a private message.
Yo, Ivan
yukionna
Hey, are you going to go to this thing Keith is posting about? I'm thinking about going. Sounds like it could be good for everybody, you know? Who else do you think is going to go? I just don't want to go and then feel alone with a bunch of people I don't really know.
Re: Yo, Ivan
_origamically
Yeah, that's... Kind of my feeling about it, too. I'd feel sort of weird around a bunch of people I just 'kind of' know. At the same time, I kinda wanna know what my fans look like, you know what I meeeean~?
Re: Yo, Ivan
yukionna
No. I.
Okay, yes, I know what you mean. But I already know what a lot of my fans look like anyway and I don't care. (They're all middle-aged perverts who just like me while I'm Blue Rose. How would you feel if you have older men after you who only want to do bad things to you? It's disturbing!)
Anyway... It would be cool if you came. I'll let Pao-lin know in case she hasn't heard about it too, okay?
Re: Yo, Ivan
_origamically
Okay, whatevs. Not like I really caaaare...
Guh, I hope that Barnaby and Kotetsu-san are over that whole media thing by now. That was the most awkward night of my life. And I thought that the over 18 panel I did at Sternbild Anime Fest was the most awkward thing before so on a scale of 1 to WTF, I'd say that night out with everyone was pretty WTF+. （ ´_ゝ`）
Re: Yo, Ivan
yukionna
They're probably over it, knowing them. They're probably even...
REMIND ME TO NEVER THINK ABOUT THAT AGAIN.
Re: Yo, Ivan
_origamically
LMAO DID YOU JUST THINK ABOUT THEM FUCKING? OMG, GUUUURL.
Ahaha... That sucks, tho. For you. But you know I got my own man-problems. I gotta find me a date or something. Not sure I'm gonna be finding anyone I'm interested in from the forums, though. lol Everyone is crazyballs.
Re: Yo, Ivan
yukionna
Do you have man-problems? That's news to me. I didn't think there was anyone you were interested who wasn't 2D.
But anyway, seriously. I'll call around. You better show up.
It did... kind of sting to think that Barnaby and Kotetsu must have made up already. Karina felt terrible when she thought for even a split second that she would have been happier... if they hadn't made up. They deserved to be happy just as much as anyone - probably more than anyone else after some of the things they had gone through now, but... It was going to be a challenge to see them together if they both came to the meet-up.
She looked herself in the mirror and slapped both hands to the sides of her cheeks.
Come on, Karina. You can do it.
If Ivan was going to be there on the prowl, then she was going to try her best too. So when she returned to her closet, she pulled out all of her sexiest items to make an outfit. This was going to be her battle gear.
Not that she was... trying to battle Barnaby for Kotetsu's attention, but...
She was going to do her best. She liked having something to feel motivated about anyway and it wouldn't do her any good if she sat around feeling bad about them. She was going to go to that meet-up and grab everyone's attention. If Blue Rose could do it, then she could, too.
She was a little late. Karina knew when the 'festivities' were scheduled to begin, but she assumed that the party wouldn't be much of a party until some people showed up. Also, she had the feeling that things would be weird if she showed up early to a coffee shop of all places and sat around waiting. She waited at home for a while into the party time and then left once she felt like she wouldn't be alone there by herself.
It would have been nice if she had Pao-lin to go with, but Nathan told her that he would pick her up since she lived fairly close to his place. Hoping that they would be there already, Karina shot them a call. She got Nathan on his cell... and she could barely hear him.
“You sound like you're at a concert!”
“Well, you'll see when you get here...”
For some reason, that put memories of microphones and small stages in her head and she imagined Barnaby and Kotetsu doing a dance routine on the Buckstars register counter, but she really hoped that she was just going crazy and that nothing like that was actually happening. Were there really just that many people already?
Surprisingly, the answer was yes.
She had made herself up so nicely. Stepping into the coffee shop, she feared what would happen to her should she try to push her way through the gathered horde of people. If she walked in blindfolded, she would have been able to tell how many people were there based on the smell alone, which wasn't doing anything to help the mental image she already had of 'internet people'.
She would have poor luck trying to find a seat in the place, too. Most of the people were standing around, but that was because all the seats were already filled. It was surprising that anyone would even want to sit down in the middle with so many people hovering over them anyway. Whatever, that was their choice. Karina wasn't going to worry about other people; she was going to focus herself on making sure nobody touched her ass.
Once she got over the creepy shivers she got from all the unbathed attendees, she lifted her head and got up on her tiptoes and tried to look above the hundreds of heads to see if she could find her friends. She expected it to be harder than it was - it was actually pretty easy to find Nathan's tall, pink-haired self in a crowded room. She didn't even notice that Pao-lin was standing with him until she got close enough, she was so buried.
“You're late!” Nathan said as soon as she was close enough to hear. She still had to tilt her head to the side and think about what she thought she heard him say to figure it out. When she did, she furrowed her eyebrows at him and pouted.
“Not my fault! I didn't know there would be this many people here. I thought everybody would be too nervous about something like this to come to.”
“You obviously don't know anything about fans,” Pao-lin said, shaking her head.
“Hey, I have a lot of fans. I know what fans are like,” Karina tried to explain.
Pao-lin continued shaking her head and then waved around for her to take another look at the crowd. “Look around. These aren't really your kind of usual fans. It seems to me like everyone wanted to see what their online friends looked like in person. It's a good chance for people to talk in person about something they're really into, also.”
Nathan snickered. “Yes, there are a lot of Hero TV fans, but they aren't all into reading gay fanfiction about their favorite heroes, know what I mean?”
Coloring, Karina looked to the side. “That's... That's true.” He had a very valid point. Not everyone was an _origamically and not everyone was a hero. The Hero TV Forums gave a lot of people a place to talk about things they usually probably wouldn't talk about in person. When she glanced up, her eyes caught a nametag on Nathan's shirt that read blazinglory_, a name she found very familiar. “Wait...”
“Oh, my nametag?” he asked, noticing her interest in it. “Don't tell me you thought I was going to think this was just some good publicity or means of scouting out my fans. Of course I'm a member of the site.”
“Right... No, I sort of figured. I just didn't know that you were that blazinglory_... The one that writes all the Rock Bison and Fire Emblem stuff. But that figures.”
Nathan narrowed his eyes and huffed, one hand on his hip. “And? Got a problem with it? My stories are becoming pretty popular around the forums now, you know.”
How hard it was not to laugh at the ridiculousness. Nathan was a hero, not a writer. Sadly, she thought it showed - not that she was reading a lot of Bison/Fire Emblem stuff or anything... “Whatever you say. I know I'm not much of a writer so I don't even bother. I leave it all up to _origamically and I doubt anyone will be surpassing his popularity.”
Pao-lin bounced in between them. “You mean Ivan? I know he told me to stay away, but I couldn't help myself. I don't really post anymore, but I read some of his stories and they're great.”
Oh no... Karina wanted to hide her face in her hands. Pao-lin was so innocent sometimes and she didn't even realize the bomb she had just dropped by letting that secret slip in front of Nathan. She really wished that Ivan had been there himself to tell him first.
“_origamically...” Nathan muttered, so quietly that Karina couldn't hear him at first. “You're telling me that Ivan is the _origamically? You have to be kidding me!” A second later, his face paled and he looked down at his glittery shoes. “Oh. Well that explains his reaction to the group get-together we had...”
“Yeah,” Pao-lin sighed, looking like she was reliving it just by thinking about it. “He got mad when he saw me on the site. He thinks we should keep our business off the forums and I kind of have to agree. It's been making a mess for all of us.”
But there was a reason for that, wasn't there? It was because none of them had recognized each other when they all had different usernames. How were they supposed to know that he was Ivan or that she was yukionna? Of course they were bound to treat each other differently if they weren't aware that they were really speaking to people they were already close to. That was just natural.
“I think it'll be okay now if we know who's who,” Karina said, brightening up.
“Yes, good idea, Karina,” Nathan praised. He had on a devilish kind of smirk, though. “Now let me get you a nametag so I can solve this mystery of who you are for myself.”
Fantastic, she thought, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. Next to her, Pao-lin just smiled innocently and shrugged. Thankfully, at least she seemed to be over what had happened. Karina hadn't been there to see Nathan pick her up, but she assumed that the two of them must have talked about the night already and come to their own resolutions over it.
Now where was he getting this nametag from, exactly? She felt mildly impressed that he could even get himself around the place or that he'd even want to. She felt trapped already in her own little space next to the register with Pao-lin; she didn't want to think about wedging herself between all these sweaty bodies to get from one place to the other. Getting back up on her tiptoes, she scouted out Nathan's position and watched him shift and swerve his way carefully through the crowd until he reached...
Keith was there already! She hadn't even noticed him when she came in... Which, she realized, probably meant that their other friends might have been there around the place and she just hadn't noticed them yet. If Keith had been making as much of a fuss as he was right now when she walked in, then she was sure she would have noticed him. He was waving his arms animatedly at Nathan as he approached.
“Let's go see him, too!” Pao-lin suggested, tugging on the back of Karina's sleeve. “I'll hang on and follow you over,” she said, clinging to her shirt. That was a wise idea, lest the crowd try to separate them somehow. Pao-lin wasn't very tall and Karina had no doubt that she would completely lose her if they got pushed apart.
“Alright,” she said with a nod. “I'm not thrilled about moving in here, but let's do it. Can't sit in one spot at a party, can I?”
“Nope, you can't!” Pao-lin agreed.
And so began the somewhat difficult journey across the shop. As expected, they ran into a lot of sticky, sweaty people and had to apologize just as many times and they only got their feet stepped on a couple times before they finally reached Keith and Nathan's location toward the middle of the room. Keith had his 'kgoodman3958' nametag proudly displayed on his chest, waving to everyone who walked through the door. Around them, people whose names Karina didn't even recognize were greeting him back cheerfully.
“Wasn't this a good idea?”
Karina didn't know what to say. Yes? She hadn't been around for long enough to be able to tell yet if this was a good idea or not. Her instant reaction had been a big NO in all capital letters. She wasn't sure yet if Keith knew that Nathan had wanted to pair him up with other heroes in fanfics yet - though Keith did seem a little inept when it came to those kinds of things so who knew if he had ever figured out what that even meant.
“Our dear Karina needs a nametag, Keith sweety,” Nathan purred, holding out his hand.
Grinning, Keith pulled out a nametag from the stack he had in his shirt pocket and handed it over to Nathan, then Nathan handed it to Karina along with a pen.
She looked down at the small piece of sticker paper as if she had just been handed a gun. Instantly, she was flying through her memory, trying to remember if she had every said anything questionable to Keith online. No... No, she was pretty sure Nathan was the only one who had to worry. The only time she could remember talking to Keith herself was when he made his post about the meet-up.
Biting the bullet, she scribbled 'yukionna' across the nametag and stuck it to her chest.
Whatever. There. It was done now.
Pao-lin clapped her hands together next to her and then gave her a pat on the back. “You're one of us now!”
“I was always one of you. Both ways; online and off. D-don't talk to me like I've just become one of these internet people...”
“Oh, hohoho, sweety, but you are! For starters, I recall you being the one who wanted _origamically to help you make some Blue Rose fanfics. And...” Nathan had that dead-serious look on his face again suddenly, which then evolved into one of those terrifying faces that meant he was about to unleash his rage. In a deeper voice, he said very seriously, “That Ivan... He writes the Bison/Origami fics. That's who he likes? Ivan is after my Antonio?!”
Karina had immediate flashbacks to Ivan telling her about his 'man-problems'. Suddenly, that felt like it explained everything. Sort of. “Wait,” she said, waving her hands to try to calm him down. “What gives you the impression that he likes Antonio like that? I thought he was just writing these things because he wants to have internet popularity.”
Nathan shook his head sternly and Pao-lin and Keith followed him back and forth with curious, puzzled faces. “No. _origamically is a huge fan of that pairing and she... He has mentioned that there's someone he likes who is like Rock Bison. Who else would he mean? He knows the real guy!”
Oh my... Now they really had stumbled onto something troubling.
“You should ask him!” Keith supplied.
“You should!” Karina agreed quickly. One of their problems all along had been their unwillingness to find out about things at their real source. She didn't want Nathan to start thinking up terrible things before he knew what the truth really was.
Nathan sighed, worrying the end of an acrylic nail between his teeth. “Alright, I'll ask,” he said. “If he even shows up, that is.”
That was fair. They already had about half of them right there in one spot, which was more than Karina had been expecting. She didn't know whether Kotetsu or Barnaby had even heard about this little function, but she was pretty sure that they were involved in the internet thing like the rest of them. They were at the center and that was what had bothered Ivan so much about it when they got together as a couple. She wondered if he had any proof to say that they were members of the site, though...
Right as she was thinking about who they were missing, the bell on the door chimed for the million time it seemed, except this time, it was Antonio at the door. Not quite who she had been looking for, but Nathan seemed pretty excited about it.
“My date has arrived!” he crooned, clasping his hands together in a lovey-dovey kind of way over his heart. As quickly as one could move in a living sea of people, they watched Nathan wiggle his way between everyone to get to where Antonio was standing. The three of them watched, eyebrows raised, as Nathan chatted up an Antonio who was already looking skittish among a large group of unfamiliar people before he had Nathan all over him.
“Well he's not coming back,” Karina said, stating their silent, shared conclusion.
“He's going to keep him now, isn't he?” Pao-lin wondered.
Keith grinned and tilted his head. “Keep him? Oh! It's fine if they go talk to other people around the party. That's what a party is for!”
“That's not quite what we...” Karina started, then shook her head and smiled, giving up. “Yeah, that's fine.” She preferred to think about it the way Keith was thinking about it. A party in this place wouldn't be fun if they tried to stick together anyway. They all had their own awkward histories involving the site and she could tell what kind of other conversations they would hold if they continued to think about where else they had seen each other on the forums.
“I'm really glad that so many people showed up. I knew this would be a good idea. Agnes is here with Mary, one of the other girls who work with Hero TV, which means that they'll probably go back and tell whoever's in charge of the site that they can't take away the off-topic board!”
“Did you talk to them yet?” Pao-lin asked.
Keith frowned. “I haven't made it over to them yet. I've been trying to say hello to everyone but it's really hard. People just keep coming.”
Karina touched his shoulder gently and then curled her fingers in his jacket. “We'll go say hello to them to then! Come on, let's go find them.”
The real reason she wanted to see them was because she hoped Keith was right. She wasn't too sure Agnes had anything to do with the site, though. She was the producer which was indeed a Big Deal, but that didn't mean that she was going to have any influence over the site for the show.
This time, it was actually Pao-lin who managed to spot them first and she pointed them in the direction of where they stood up against the far wall.
“Good eye,” Karina said, impressed. When they were about halfway there, the doorbell rang. Her heart leaped to her throat every time she heard the sound now, expecting it to be Kotetsu, although... She was just as surprised to see Ivan there standing in the doorway. “Pao-lin, it's Ivan. Ivan's here now.”
Pao-lin looked back over her shoulder at her with a sore expression and pointed again adamantly in their producer's direction. “We can go see him in a minute. Walking around in here is hard enough.”
“I... guess...” She just felt bad leaving Ivan alone. She knew how uncomfortable he was likely to be when he was surrounded a bunch of strangers. She hoped it was a different story when they were clad in homemade hero costumes, though. Maybe it would feel like he was at one of those anime things... Conventions or whatever. It was similar, right?
Pao-lin was still trying to pull her along, but she waved her free arm in the air at him - and he totally didn't see her. He was standing at the door, his laptop hanging from his shoulder in his laptop bag and he looked like he wanted to leave already. But then, at least it seemed like he had noticed Nathan...
Nathan, who was standing with Antonio, still chatting with him like they were something serious.
And poor Ivan looked miserable when he saw that. By his reaction, it looked like what she'd heard from Nathan really was true. She didn't want to put any words in Ivan's mouth, but she felt bad for him if Antonio was the one he liked.
She didn't have much more time to think before Pao-lin stopped walking. Karina almost went crashing into her back, but she stopped herself just in time, even though she ended up standing awkwardly close to her from behind.
“Ah, Karina,” said their buxom producer, who reached out to grab her hand. “It feels good to see you here with the others. It's a tough business but it feels so good to see the fans, huh?”
At her side, Mary sulked with the kind of dreary black aura Karina had come to expect from her - at least where Agnes was concerned. “She's here for the same reason you're here. See the nametag?”
Karina's first instinct was to reach up and hide the name she had displayed on her shirt, but then she set her eyes on Agnes and Mary's nametags. These two were HeroLove and little_lamb? Then that meant that not only were they influential to the show, they were also influential on the forums. HeroLove's fanfiction was top tier stuff - not like Karina cared about what she wrote, but she had definitely seen her around a lot and had unwittingly talked to her a number of times herself.
And Mary was the biggest moderator there was. If a post started getting out of hand, she was always there to put her foot down. (And now that name 'little_lamb' was starting to make sense... It was a groan-worthy name in itself, though. She sort of doubted that Mary was the one responsible for it. She couldn't be that uncreative, could she?)
“I... hope that my activity on the site hasn't done anything to change your opinion of me now...” Karina said honestly, lowering her head.
Agnes and Mary sighed and shrugged in tandem. “We've known who almost everyone was as soon as we saw them on the site. Agnes and I have always been aware of each other, so this kind of thing isn't actually that weird to us... Just a little bit, uh...”
Agnes pouted. “A little what, huh?”
“Nothing, nothing,” Mary said. Her expression lightened at her partner's childish behavior. Even though Agnes seemed to annoy Mary a little, Karina thought they seemed a lot like sisters in a way. “I enjoy all of our members. You've been a really good sport on the site.”
It was a load off her shoulders to hear her say that for some reason, like being praised by a teacher. While that was reassuring, she didn't actually start talking to them because she cared about what their opinions on her were. She wanted Keith's question to be answered.
“Keith here had a question,” she said, pointing to him around Pao-lin.
Keith picked up his head as if he forgot he was even a part of the conversation. “Oh! Indeed, I have an inquiry.”
“Which is?” Mary asked.
“Now that you have seen how many people have come to the meet-up, do you think we'll be able to save the off-topic boards?”
“No idea,” Mary said dismissively. When Karina raised her voice and Pao-lin stomped her foot, she waved a hand at them both and looked back up at Keith. “Look. In case you forgot, I'm the one who said that I didn't have any control over it. I get my orders from elsewhere. I'm not even the person who is responsible for closing the board. If the switch were mine to pull, I'd hold my hand. However, there are other people who run the site and I'm not at the top of that totem pole. You just have to wait to see how this advance will affect their decision - if it does.”
“Look at you, sounding so official,” Agnes cooed, slinging an arm around Mary's shoulders, practically rubbing her chest up against Mary's side. “I bet that you could help them if you really tried. You're such a smooth talker.”
“Agnes, please...” she muttered, her cheeks getting red.
“Could you?” Keith asked, eyes wide with excitement. “Could you try to talk to the people in charge? The off-topic board is important to many people! They would be sad if it were gone.”
And how often was Keith on that part of the board...? Well, if he had to be on the forums at all, then it was probably best that he stick to the off-topic things where people didn't post all their explicit fanwork and theorize like crazy about the personal lives of the heroes. Off-topic was a much safer place for someone like him.
Mary shrugged a shoulder; partly at Keith's words and partly to try to get Agnes off of her. “We'll see, alright? I'm sure there will be a way to know how many people came here to the meet-up, so once I have a number or an approximation, I can tell the people in charge about it.”
“There you go, Keith,” Karina said, smiling.
“Indeed! I do hope that this will be-” He paused when he looked toward the door and if possible, his smile got even bigger. “More friends have arrived!”
More...
Oh, no. Just as Karina had dreaded, there was Kotetsu standing close to the entrance. Even worse than if he were there being escorted by Barnaby, he had a little girl with him. She was cute - adorable even, but she looked so much like Kotetsu that she knew that it was his daughter. And that was fine. Except now she was remembering that Kotetsu had a daughter who was probably a little more than half her age.
“Karina, let's go talk to Kotetsu,” Pao-lin suggested brightly with words that stabbed straight through Karina's heart unintentionally. “I think he has his daughter with him.” Double ouch.
“Uh... I was thinking of talking to Ivan first...”
She scoped out the room again, looking for where the little awkward otaku boy had gone. He wasn't where her eyes had left him last and she predictably didn't find him standing with Nathan and Antonio... She had to get back up on her toes to finally find him where he was sitting down against one of the other walls.
On the bright side, at least he hadn't completely left. She still probably had a chance to go talk to him, but who was the guy he was sitting with? A friend from the forums? There was something oddly familiar about him, but Karina couldn't place where she had seen him before so she let the thought go. He had a gaunt, but kind of handsome face from what she could tell from far away. If Antonio was Ivan's type, then this guy didn't look like someone Ivan would go after, but... He was holding himself and acting nervous in that girly sort of way that meant he wanted this guy to buy him a drink and...
Oh snap, the guy was getting up. He was buying him a drink! Ivan...
“Are you going to see him?” Pao-lin asked.
“N-no...” Karina said back, slowly tearing her eyes away from the mysterious guy as he approached the register. This had a chance of being excruciating, but she was going to have to find out how things were for Kotetsu and Barnaby anyway. Maybe it wouldn't be as painful as she expected it to be. Besides, she wanted to leave Ivan alone for now to see where this was going to go. If it was going to go anywhere.
She grabbed Pao-lin's hand and gave it a squeeze to let her know they could move. “Let's go see Kotetsu.”
INDEX
A meet-up... They really had to be out of their minds now.
Karina had been trying to keep a mental list of who everyone was on the forum, but she was afraid she was losing track by now. It would have been a smart idea if she had started writing them down, but the thought just escaped her. She hadn't realized that so many of her fellow heroes would also end up on the site. Right now, she wished she knew how many of them to expect if she were to go...
It was a horrible idea - nothing was going to change that plain fact... But she was also really intrigued. Especially because it was getting hard to remember who was who, it would be interesting to see how many of them actually showed up at this party-thing. It would be a real shocker when they all figured out who had been saying what to each other on the internet. When she took a look at who had started this “bright idea” Karina added one of her friends to the immediate guest list.
kgoodman3958
She was really going to have to have a talk with Keith and explain to him why using his real name for his username wasn't a smart thing to do.
His plan was very last-minute, so she wouldn't have a lot of time to go out and get a new outfit to wear. It was probably going to feel like she was there with a bunch of her friends anyway, so there wasn't any point in getting too dressed up. After reading over this petition party plan of theirs again, she got up from her bed and started rummaging around in her closet for something that would make her presentable.
Did it really matter? It was going to be her... Keith... Ivan?
Was Ivan going? He sounded sort of interested yet unsure from what she had read in his comments. She knew how easily he got freaked out, but this seemed like it would be a good experience for him. It wouldn't do him any good to get cooped up in the house. Their last get-together had ended in moderate disaster, but this could be a good time for them to all let it go, right?
She dropped the top she was holding up to herself in front of her mirror and ran back to her laptop and quickly started to type out a private message.
Yo, Ivan
yukionna
Hey, are you going to go to this thing Keith is posting about? I'm thinking about going. Sounds like it could be good for everybody, you know? Who else do you think is going to go? I just don't want to go and then feel alone with a bunch of people I don't really know.
Re: Yo, Ivan
_origamically
Yeah, that's... Kind of my feeling about it, too. I'd feel sort of weird around a bunch of people I just 'kind of' know. At the same time, I kinda wanna know what my fans look like, you know what I meeeean~?
Re: Yo, Ivan
yukionna
No. I.
Okay, yes, I know what you mean. But I already know what a lot of my fans look like anyway and I don't care. (They're all middle-aged perverts who just like me while I'm Blue Rose. How would you feel if you have older men after you who only want to do bad things to you? It's disturbing!)
Anyway... It would be cool if you came. I'll let Pao-lin know in case she hasn't heard about it too, okay?
Re: Yo, Ivan
_origamically
Okay, whatevs. Not like I really caaaare...
Guh, I hope that Barnaby and Kotetsu-san are over that whole media thing by now. That was the most awkward night of my life. And I thought that the over 18 panel I did at Sternbild Anime Fest was the most awkward thing before so on a scale of 1 to WTF, I'd say that night out with everyone was pretty WTF+. （ ´_ゝ`）
Re: Yo, Ivan
yukionna
They're probably over it, knowing them. They're probably even...
REMIND ME TO NEVER THINK ABOUT THAT AGAIN.
Re: Yo, Ivan
_origamically
LMAO DID YOU JUST THINK ABOUT THEM FUCKING? OMG, GUUUURL.
Ahaha... That sucks, tho. For you. But you know I got my own man-problems. I gotta find me a date or something. Not sure I'm gonna be finding anyone I'm interested in from the forums, though. lol Everyone is crazyballs.
Re: Yo, Ivan
yukionna
Do you have man-problems? That's news to me. I didn't think there was anyone you were interested who wasn't 2D.
But anyway, seriously. I'll call around. You better show up.
It did... kind of sting to think that Barnaby and Kotetsu must have made up already. Karina felt terrible when she thought for even a split second that she would have been happier... if they hadn't made up. They deserved to be happy just as much as anyone - probably more than anyone else after some of the things they had gone through now, but... It was going to be a challenge to see them together if they both came to the meet-up.
She looked herself in the mirror and slapped both hands to the sides of her cheeks.
Come on, Karina. You can do it.
If Ivan was going to be there on the prowl, then she was going to try her best too. So when she returned to her closet, she pulled out all of her sexiest items to make an outfit. This was going to be her battle gear.
Not that she was... trying to battle Barnaby for Kotetsu's attention, but...
She was going to do her best. She liked having something to feel motivated about anyway and it wouldn't do her any good if she sat around feeling bad about them. She was going to go to that meet-up and grab everyone's attention. If Blue Rose could do it, then she could, too.
She was a little late. Karina knew when the 'festivities' were scheduled to begin, but she assumed that the party wouldn't be much of a party until some people showed up. Also, she had the feeling that things would be weird if she showed up early to a coffee shop of all places and sat around waiting. She waited at home for a while into the party time and then left once she felt like she wouldn't be alone there by herself.
It would have been nice if she had Pao-lin to go with, but Nathan told her that he would pick her up since she lived fairly close to his place. Hoping that they would be there already, Karina shot them a call. She got Nathan on his cell... and she could barely hear him.
“You sound like you're at a concert!”
“Well, you'll see when you get here...”
For some reason, that put memories of microphones and small stages in her head and she imagined Barnaby and Kotetsu doing a dance routine on the Buckstars register counter, but she really hoped that she was just going crazy and that nothing like that was actually happening. Were there really just that many people already?
Surprisingly, the answer was yes.
She had made herself up so nicely. Stepping into the coffee shop, she feared what would happen to her should she try to push her way through the gathered horde of people. If she walked in blindfolded, she would have been able to tell how many people were there based on the smell alone, which wasn't doing anything to help the mental image she already had of 'internet people'.
She would have poor luck trying to find a seat in the place, too. Most of the people were standing around, but that was because all the seats were already filled. It was surprising that anyone would even want to sit down in the middle with so many people hovering over them anyway. Whatever, that was their choice. Karina wasn't going to worry about other people; she was going to focus herself on making sure nobody touched her ass.
Once she got over the creepy shivers she got from all the unbathed attendees, she lifted her head and got up on her tiptoes and tried to look above the hundreds of heads to see if she could find her friends. She expected it to be harder than it was - it was actually pretty easy to find Nathan's tall, pink-haired self in a crowded room. She didn't even notice that Pao-lin was standing with him until she got close enough, she was so buried.
“You're late!” Nathan said as soon as she was close enough to hear. She still had to tilt her head to the side and think about what she thought she heard him say to figure it out. When she did, she furrowed her eyebrows at him and pouted.
“Not my fault! I didn't know there would be this many people here. I thought everybody would be too nervous about something like this to come to.”
“You obviously don't know anything about fans,” Pao-lin said, shaking her head.
“Hey, I have a lot of fans. I know what fans are like,” Karina tried to explain.
Pao-lin continued shaking her head and then waved around for her to take another look at the crowd. “Look around. These aren't really your kind of usual fans. It seems to me like everyone wanted to see what their online friends looked like in person. It's a good chance for people to talk in person about something they're really into, also.”
Nathan snickered. “Yes, there are a lot of Hero TV fans, but they aren't all into reading gay fanfiction about their favorite heroes, know what I mean?”
Coloring, Karina looked to the side. “That's... That's true.” He had a very valid point. Not everyone was an _origamically and not everyone was a hero. The Hero TV Forums gave a lot of people a place to talk about things they usually probably wouldn't talk about in person. When she glanced up, her eyes caught a nametag on Nathan's shirt that read blazinglory_, a name she found very familiar. “Wait...”
“Oh, my nametag?” he asked, noticing her interest in it. “Don't tell me you thought I was going to think this was just some good publicity or means of scouting out my fans. Of course I'm a member of the site.”
“Right... No, I sort of figured. I just didn't know that you were that blazinglory_... The one that writes all the Rock Bison and Fire Emblem stuff. But that figures.”
Nathan narrowed his eyes and huffed, one hand on his hip. “And? Got a problem with it? My stories are becoming pretty popular around the forums now, you know.”
How hard it was not to laugh at the ridiculousness. Nathan was a hero, not a writer. Sadly, she thought it showed - not that she was reading a lot of Bison/Fire Emblem stuff or anything... “Whatever you say. I know I'm not much of a writer so I don't even bother. I leave it all up to _origamically and I doubt anyone will be surpassing his popularity.”
Pao-lin bounced in between them. “You mean Ivan? I know he told me to stay away, but I couldn't help myself. I don't really post anymore, but I read some of his stories and they're great.”
Oh no... Karina wanted to hide her face in her hands. Pao-lin was so innocent sometimes and she didn't even realize the bomb she had just dropped by letting that secret slip in front of Nathan. She really wished that Ivan had been there himself to tell him first.
“_origamically...” Nathan muttered, so quietly that Karina couldn't hear him at first. “You're telling me that Ivan is the _origamically? You have to be kidding me!” A second later, his face paled and he looked down at his glittery shoes. “Oh. Well that explains his reaction to the group get-together we had...”
“Yeah,” Pao-lin sighed, looking like she was reliving it just by thinking about it. “He got mad when he saw me on the site. He thinks we should keep our business off the forums and I kind of have to agree. It's been making a mess for all of us.”
But there was a reason for that, wasn't there? It was because none of them had recognized each other when they all had different usernames. How were they supposed to know that he was Ivan or that she was yukionna? Of course they were bound to treat each other differently if they weren't aware that they were really speaking to people they were already close to. That was just natural.
“I think it'll be okay now if we know who's who,” Karina said, brightening up.
“Yes, good idea, Karina,” Nathan praised. He had on a devilish kind of smirk, though. “Now let me get you a nametag so I can solve this mystery of who you are for myself.”
Fantastic, she thought, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. Next to her, Pao-lin just smiled innocently and shrugged. Thankfully, at least she seemed to be over what had happened. Karina hadn't been there to see Nathan pick her up, but she assumed that the two of them must have talked about the night already and come to their own resolutions over it.
Now where was he getting this nametag from, exactly? She felt mildly impressed that he could even get himself around the place or that he'd even want to. She felt trapped already in her own little space next to the register with Pao-lin; she didn't want to think about wedging herself between all these sweaty bodies to get from one place to the other. Getting back up on her tiptoes, she scouted out Nathan's position and watched him shift and swerve his way carefully through the crowd until he reached...
Keith was there already! She hadn't even noticed him when she came in... Which, she realized, probably meant that their other friends might have been there around the place and she just hadn't noticed them yet. If Keith had been making as much of a fuss as he was right now when she walked in, then she was sure she would have noticed him. He was waving his arms animatedly at Nathan as he approached.
“Let's go see him, too!” Pao-lin suggested, tugging on the back of Karina's sleeve. “I'll hang on and follow you over,” she said, clinging to her shirt. That was a wise idea, lest the crowd try to separate them somehow. Pao-lin wasn't very tall and Karina had no doubt that she would completely lose her if they got pushed apart.
“Alright,” she said with a nod. “I'm not thrilled about moving in here, but let's do it. Can't sit in one spot at a party, can I?”
“Nope, you can't!” Pao-lin agreed.
And so began the somewhat difficult journey across the shop. As expected, they ran into a lot of sticky, sweaty people and had to apologize just as many times and they only got their feet stepped on a couple times before they finally reached Keith and Nathan's location toward the middle of the room. Keith had his 'kgoodman3958' nametag proudly displayed on his chest, waving to everyone who walked through the door. Around them, people whose names Karina didn't even recognize were greeting him back cheerfully.
“Wasn't this a good idea?”
Karina didn't know what to say. Yes? She hadn't been around for long enough to be able to tell yet if this was a good idea or not. Her instant reaction had been a big NO in all capital letters. She wasn't sure yet if Keith knew that Nathan had wanted to pair him up with other heroes in fanfics yet - though Keith did seem a little inept when it came to those kinds of things so who knew if he had ever figured out what that even meant.
“Our dear Karina needs a nametag, Keith sweety,” Nathan purred, holding out his hand.
Grinning, Keith pulled out a nametag from the stack he had in his shirt pocket and handed it over to Nathan, then Nathan handed it to Karina along with a pen.
She looked down at the small piece of sticker paper as if she had just been handed a gun. Instantly, she was flying through her memory, trying to remember if she had every said anything questionable to Keith online. No... No, she was pretty sure Nathan was the only one who had to worry. The only time she could remember talking to Keith herself was when he made his post about the meet-up.
Biting the bullet, she scribbled 'yukionna' across the nametag and stuck it to her chest.
Whatever. There. It was done now.
Pao-lin clapped her hands together next to her and then gave her a pat on the back. “You're one of us now!”
“I was always one of you. Both ways; online and off. D-don't talk to me like I've just become one of these internet people...”
“Oh, hohoho, sweety, but you are! For starters, I recall you being the one who wanted _origamically to help you make some Blue Rose fanfics. And...” Nathan had that dead-serious look on his face again suddenly, which then evolved into one of those terrifying faces that meant he was about to unleash his rage. In a deeper voice, he said very seriously, “That Ivan... He writes the Bison/Origami fics. That's who he likes? Ivan is after my Antonio?!”
Karina had immediate flashbacks to Ivan telling her about his 'man-problems'. Suddenly, that felt like it explained everything. Sort of. “Wait,” she said, waving her hands to try to calm him down. “What gives you the impression that he likes Antonio like that? I thought he was just writing these things because he wants to have internet popularity.”
Nathan shook his head sternly and Pao-lin and Keith followed him back and forth with curious, puzzled faces. “No. _origamically is a huge fan of that pairing and she... He has mentioned that there's someone he likes who is like Rock Bison. Who else would he mean? He knows the real guy!”
Oh my... Now they really had stumbled onto something troubling.
“You should ask him!” Keith supplied.
“You should!” Karina agreed quickly. One of their problems all along had been their unwillingness to find out about things at their real source. She didn't want Nathan to start thinking up terrible things before he knew what the truth really was.
Nathan sighed, worrying the end of an acrylic nail between his teeth. “Alright, I'll ask,” he said. “If he even shows up, that is.”
That was fair. They already had about half of them right there in one spot, which was more than Karina had been expecting. She didn't know whether Kotetsu or Barnaby had even heard about this little function, but she was pretty sure that they were involved in the internet thing like the rest of them. They were at the center and that was what had bothered Ivan so much about it when they got together as a couple. She wondered if he had any proof to say that they were members of the site, though...
Right as she was thinking about who they were missing, the bell on the door chimed for the million time it seemed, except this time, it was Antonio at the door. Not quite who she had been looking for, but Nathan seemed pretty excited about it.
“My date has arrived!” he crooned, clasping his hands together in a lovey-dovey kind of way over his heart. As quickly as one could move in a living sea of people, they watched Nathan wiggle his way between everyone to get to where Antonio was standing. The three of them watched, eyebrows raised, as Nathan chatted up an Antonio who was already looking skittish among a large group of unfamiliar people before he had Nathan all over him.
“Well he's not coming back,” Karina said, stating their silent, shared conclusion.
“He's going to keep him now, isn't he?” Pao-lin wondered.
Keith grinned and tilted his head. “Keep him? Oh! It's fine if they go talk to other people around the party. That's what a party is for!”
“That's not quite what we...” Karina started, then shook her head and smiled, giving up. “Yeah, that's fine.” She preferred to think about it the way Keith was thinking about it. A party in this place wouldn't be fun if they tried to stick together anyway. They all had their own awkward histories involving the site and she could tell what kind of other conversations they would hold if they continued to think about where else they had seen each other on the forums.
“I'm really glad that so many people showed up. I knew this would be a good idea. Agnes is here with Mary, one of the other girls who work with Hero TV, which means that they'll probably go back and tell whoever's in charge of the site that they can't take away the off-topic board!”
“Did you talk to them yet?” Pao-lin asked.
Keith frowned. “I haven't made it over to them yet. I've been trying to say hello to everyone but it's really hard. People just keep coming.”
Karina touched his shoulder gently and then curled her fingers in his jacket. “We'll go say hello to them to then! Come on, let's go find them.”
The real reason she wanted to see them was because she hoped Keith was right. She wasn't too sure Agnes had anything to do with the site, though. She was the producer which was indeed a Big Deal, but that didn't mean that she was going to have any influence over the site for the show.
This time, it was actually Pao-lin who managed to spot them first and she pointed them in the direction of where they stood up against the far wall.
“Good eye,” Karina said, impressed. When they were about halfway there, the doorbell rang. Her heart leaped to her throat every time she heard the sound now, expecting it to be Kotetsu, although... She was just as surprised to see Ivan there standing in the doorway. “Pao-lin, it's Ivan. Ivan's here now.”
Pao-lin looked back over her shoulder at her with a sore expression and pointed again adamantly in their producer's direction. “We can go see him in a minute. Walking around in here is hard enough.”
“I... guess...” She just felt bad leaving Ivan alone. She knew how uncomfortable he was likely to be when he was surrounded a bunch of strangers. She hoped it was a different story when they were clad in homemade hero costumes, though. Maybe it would feel like he was at one of those anime things... Conventions or whatever. It was similar, right?
Pao-lin was still trying to pull her along, but she waved her free arm in the air at him - and he totally didn't see her. He was standing at the door, his laptop hanging from his shoulder in his laptop bag and he looked like he wanted to leave already. But then, at least it seemed like he had noticed Nathan...
Nathan, who was standing with Antonio, still chatting with him like they were something serious.
And poor Ivan looked miserable when he saw that. By his reaction, it looked like what she'd heard from Nathan really was true. She didn't want to put any words in Ivan's mouth, but she felt bad for him if Antonio was the one he liked.
She didn't have much more time to think before Pao-lin stopped walking. Karina almost went crashing into her back, but she stopped herself just in time, even though she ended up standing awkwardly close to her from behind.
“Ah, Karina,” said their buxom producer, who reached out to grab her hand. “It feels good to see you here with the others. It's a tough business but it feels so good to see the fans, huh?”
At her side, Mary sulked with the kind of dreary black aura Karina had come to expect from her - at least where Agnes was concerned. “She's here for the same reason you're here. See the nametag?”
Karina's first instinct was to reach up and hide the name she had displayed on her shirt, but then she set her eyes on Agnes and Mary's nametags. These two were HeroLove and little_lamb? Then that meant that not only were they influential to the show, they were also influential on the forums. HeroLove's fanfiction was top tier stuff - not like Karina cared about what she wrote, but she had definitely seen her around a lot and had unwittingly talked to her a number of times herself.
And Mary was the biggest moderator there was. If a post started getting out of hand, she was always there to put her foot down. (And now that name 'little_lamb' was starting to make sense... It was a groan-worthy name in itself, though. She sort of doubted that Mary was the one responsible for it. She couldn't be that uncreative, could she?)
“I... hope that my activity on the site hasn't done anything to change your opinion of me now...” Karina said honestly, lowering her head.
Agnes and Mary sighed and shrugged in tandem. “We've known who almost everyone was as soon as we saw them on the site. Agnes and I have always been aware of each other, so this kind of thing isn't actually that weird to us... Just a little bit, uh...”
Agnes pouted. “A little what, huh?”
“Nothing, nothing,” Mary said. Her expression lightened at her partner's childish behavior. Even though Agnes seemed to annoy Mary a little, Karina thought they seemed a lot like sisters in a way. “I enjoy all of our members. You've been a really good sport on the site.”
It was a load off her shoulders to hear her say that for some reason, like being praised by a teacher. While that was reassuring, she didn't actually start talking to them because she cared about what their opinions on her were. She wanted Keith's question to be answered.
“Keith here had a question,” she said, pointing to him around Pao-lin.
Keith picked up his head as if he forgot he was even a part of the conversation. “Oh! Indeed, I have an inquiry.”
“Which is?” Mary asked.
“Now that you have seen how many people have come to the meet-up, do you think we'll be able to save the off-topic boards?”
“No idea,” Mary said dismissively. When Karina raised her voice and Pao-lin stomped her foot, she waved a hand at them both and looked back up at Keith. “Look. In case you forgot, I'm the one who said that I didn't have any control over it. I get my orders from elsewhere. I'm not even the person who is responsible for closing the board. If the switch were mine to pull, I'd hold my hand. However, there are other people who run the site and I'm not at the top of that totem pole. You just have to wait to see how this advance will affect their decision - if it does.”
“Look at you, sounding so official,” Agnes cooed, slinging an arm around Mary's shoulders, practically rubbing her chest up against Mary's side. “I bet that you could help them if you really tried. You're such a smooth talker.”
“Agnes, please...” she muttered, her cheeks getting red.
“Could you?” Keith asked, eyes wide with excitement. “Could you try to talk to the people in charge? The off-topic board is important to many people! They would be sad if it were gone.”
And how often was Keith on that part of the board...? Well, if he had to be on the forums at all, then it was probably best that he stick to the off-topic things where people didn't post all their explicit fanwork and theorize like crazy about the personal lives of the heroes. Off-topic was a much safer place for someone like him.
Mary shrugged a shoulder; partly at Keith's words and partly to try to get Agnes off of her. “We'll see, alright? I'm sure there will be a way to know how many people came here to the meet-up, so once I have a number or an approximation, I can tell the people in charge about it.”
“There you go, Keith,” Karina said, smiling.
“Indeed! I do hope that this will be-” He paused when he looked toward the door and if possible, his smile got even bigger. “More friends have arrived!”
More...
Oh, no. Just as Karina had dreaded, there was Kotetsu standing close to the entrance. Even worse than if he were there being escorted by Barnaby, he had a little girl with him. She was cute - adorable even, but she looked so much like Kotetsu that she knew that it was his daughter. And that was fine. Except now she was remembering that Kotetsu had a daughter who was probably a little more than half her age.
“Karina, let's go talk to Kotetsu,” Pao-lin suggested brightly with words that stabbed straight through Karina's heart unintentionally. “I think he has his daughter with him.” Double ouch.
“Uh... I was thinking of talking to Ivan first...”
She scoped out the room again, looking for where the little awkward otaku boy had gone. He wasn't where her eyes had left him last and she predictably didn't find him standing with Nathan and Antonio... She had to get back up on her toes to finally find him where he was sitting down against one of the other walls.
On the bright side, at least he hadn't completely left. She still probably had a chance to go talk to him, but who was the guy he was sitting with? A friend from the forums? There was something oddly familiar about him, but Karina couldn't place where she had seen him before so she let the thought go. He had a gaunt, but kind of handsome face from what she could tell from far away. If Antonio was Ivan's type, then this guy didn't look like someone Ivan would go after, but... He was holding himself and acting nervous in that girly sort of way that meant he wanted this guy to buy him a drink and...
Oh snap, the guy was getting up. He was buying him a drink! Ivan...
“Are you going to see him?” Pao-lin asked.
“N-no...” Karina said back, slowly tearing her eyes away from the mysterious guy as he approached the register. This had a chance of being excruciating, but she was going to have to find out how things were for Kotetsu and Barnaby anyway. Maybe it wouldn't be as painful as she expected it to be. Besides, she wanted to leave Ivan alone for now to see where this was going to go. If it was going to go anywhere.
She grabbed Pao-lin's hand and gave it a squeeze to let her know they could move. “Let's go see Kotetsu.”
INDEX