The Pit of Voles is Made of Sues...
... Pit of Voles is made of Sues, Sues, Sues, Sues, Sues, Sues the Pit of Voles is made of Suuuues. And, having said that, I would like to apologize both to the folks at RatherGood and to everyone who has never heard The Internet is Made of Cats and has no idea what I'm blathering on about. The link will provide the song, this walkthrough the context for my gibbering.
Story Title: The Last Rose of Summer
Perpetrator: Lenihan
Summary: 'A story about Aya and Keiko, who slowly fall in love with each other. And that all while they have to try to get away from the fantasy world they're in. COMPLETED!'
Rating:
The Walkthrough:
All right then, people! I am still back (really) and not shutting up, and to prove it it's time for another one of these. Today's target: 23,144 words of Aya falling in love with his umpteenth shiny Mary Sue (okay so it is actually his fifty-ninth, not counting the ones where he hooks up with some Sue and it is not the main event, but who's counting apart from me). What I know about this fic from the start, then: it's got a special snowflake called Keiko in it whom I am probably going to hate, and it's stranding Weiss in a Generic Fantasyverse for no reason that I can make out. Let us see if the fic sheds any light on why ANY OF THIS SHIT IS HAPPENING, LIKE AT ALL, or if I'm supposed to take it for granted that it just totally is now again. Onto Chapter One.
First up the disclaimer and here's something a little odd - the ficcer is claiming that not only does she not own Weiss, she didn't come up with the Sue either. Uh, you are aware anyone can create a Sue, right? This Sue, Keiko, is actually the creation of an author called Chisha. Why you'd want to write over 20,000 words about someone else's wish-fulfillment stand-in character, no matter how much you liked them as a person, when you could be having a perfectly adequate fangirl fantasy of banging Aya all by yourself I have no idea. Great, this ficcer's already completely lost me and I haven't even finished reading the damn disclaimer yet.
Chisha, Keiko Sue's actual creator, now posts as Nemu and hang on wait a minute that means this Sue's the horrible brainsister of Emily motherfuckin' Crawford and that this Keiko is the impeccably purple-haired, magenta-eyed 'little mistreated sad girl' Emily Sue's creator was talking about back then...
Oh, this is going to hurt.
I can but hope that being written by a different author means less whining from Keiko Sue about how impeccably tragic and wangst-ridden her past is and how she suffers, dammit, SUFFERS. Let's move on.
Blah blah author's notes. Ficcer was inspired to write about Aya by a Clannad song called The Last Rose of Summer but didn't know who to pair Aya with (uh, nobody?) so her Suethor mate 'jokingly' suggested that she pair Aya with... her own Mary Sue. The sad part of it is our fangirl author genuinely thought her friend was teasing, not dropping a huge and blatant clanger of an anvil-sized hint about what she was hoping to see in an Aya shipfic... and then she went and wrote a fic about Aya hooking up with her BFF's Mary Sue anyway. Who she thanks for letting her use the character. No, Suethor over there should be thanking you for thinking her whiny, vapid, purple-haired, Aya-humping ninny was worth going on about for almost 25,000 words. Something she herself couldn't be bothered to do.
Then we get this.
Warnings: Original character is paired up with Aya, heterosexual relationships
At least she knows to warn for it, I guess. Onto Chapter One, which has been imaginatively named Chapter One.
Ignoring the song lyrics about how the last rose of summer is blooming alone, all alone, angstcrysobwail, we open on... there is nothing interesting to be said about this. It's just a version of Aya Fujimiya who sounds suspiciously like a whiny teenage girl filling the entire fandom in yet again on how his sister is totally in a coma so now he has ANGST. Just in case we missed it the five billion times it cropped up in the actual show. It's literally just a first-person retelling of the tragic bits from Aya's flashback in Episode 13 with all the angsty flair and emo-osity amped up to eleven, and is therefore boring.
Not a good start. Or a good place to start. Moving on until something that hasn't been done to death happens...
Oh. Aya was actually having an angsty flashback nightmare, and now he's being woken up by 'the only female member of Weiss'. This is of course Keiko Hashishita, Resident Mary Sue, who is inexplicably just there and no doubt due to be treated throughout as if she's got every bit as much right to be present as Ken has and probably rather more. Looks like we're not going to be getting anything like originality out of this scene either. Or any kind of explanation for why Weiss have sprouted yet another extraneous Sue teammate. Or any real reason why Aya's started falling asleep in the shop, for that matter, though the way this fic is going it's probably 'so Keiko can wake him up and be adorably concerned and make him blush and also not get her arm bitten off for it because SPESHUL'.
Youji teases Aya about having been up all night with a LADY and Keiko gets all scowly because oh come on can't you guess. Youji makes lame jokes about Aya's nightlife which Omi finds hilarious, presumably because he put nitrous oxide on his cornflakes, and Aya (who is not only Weiss's leader but the bestest of the best at flower arranging!) gets disproportionately enraged about it and crushes the stem of a rose, just in case you the reader were in any doubt about how totally dramatic this was all supposed to be. And... that's it. That's all that happens. Youji teases our Chaste Hero Aya about women and the Sue gets passive-aggressively upset because she's a female caricature who Just Can't Spit It Out.
The next scene opens with a reminder of two insanely important points, to whit:
She sighed and turned back to her work, gazing at the hordes of schoolgirls, all around fifteen years old, swarming into the little flower shop. The only reason why they came was because of the four boys working in the flower shop. And no one, of course, had any interest in her. She was just a girl. She wasn't even good-looking, like the rest of Weiß. She was a nothing, just good enough to do the little jobs like cleaning the floor and moving the flowerpots.
YOU WILL FIND KEIKO CHARMINGLY UNSELFCONSCIOUS AND INSECURE NOW.
(This self-centered, Not-Like-The-Other-Girls whine is rendered all the more obnoxious by Keiko's status as a Sue, so very definitely not hideously deformed. The Suethor's own fanart confirms Keiko as a long-haired, narrow-waisted, boobtacular cutie pie who just happens to be a bit of a tomboy, so... either she's got body dysmorphic disorder or she's blatantly fishing for compliments inside her own head.)
As Obligatory Love Interest Aya is contractually obliged to swoop in here and swoop he does, asking the Sue to come and help him with the flower arrangements he's working on. Since Keiko here is by her own admission bloody awful at them - especially, since the presence of her love interest renders Keiko charmingly incapable, when Aya's staring at her like oh em golly gee tee hee hee he's such a hottie - it's blatantly obvious he's only doing this to stop her getting her mope on. Keiko berates herself a bit more because Aya's flower arrangement is like the most beauteous thing ever but hers sucks, then Aya comes and shows her how to fix hers up properly and tells her he thought hers was deeply okay anyway. So it's basically exactly like that one scene in Ghost, just with flowers and no ghost.
Keiko timidly asks Aya if he's still mad at her and Aya is all OMG I could never be mad at you, Mary Sue (because you are different and speshul and not like the other girls, and also I totally love you 5eva but am not allowed to realize that yet because the minute I actually say it the story will end).
There's another scene break, but I'm beginning to wonder if the ficcer knows how these work because we're back to the same five seconds later again and Aya reflecting some more on how he could never be mad with Keiko Sue and staring at her some more because goodness knows that's not getting old at all. No, he's actually mad with Youji because... this is news or something? Also Youji is disrespectful and scorns the sacred-ness of Aya's endless internal monologues about how his SISTER is IN A COMA and now he has ANGST and GRIEVING, and is also shockingly not actually psychic.
If there was anyone he was angry with, it was Yohji. He gazed darkly at the flower arrangement before him as he replayed the sentences Yohji had said to him in his mind. How dared he? How dared he to suggest he, Aya, had sex while he had spent the whole night next to his sister? Had he no respect for the grief of others?!
Of course, Yohji didn't know about his sister. No one did of Weiß. Only Manx and Persia knew about her existence, because they provided a place for her to stay. But no one else knew about Aya-chan. And they didn't have to.
Yes, Youji, how dare you suggest Aya was tired because he was out doing something perfectly ordinary and unremarkable when he was actually spending the entire night hamstrung over the secret angst he hasn't told you about and you have no way to know is even an issue? You callous plebe. You should magically know all about how Aya is suffering even though he hasn't told you anything about it and doesn't want to because... uh, because Aya's angst is sacrosanct? I got nothin'.
Aya is distracted from this latest wangst-fest by oh goodie it's Keiko again and she's staring at him in awestruck fascination and devotion and love because it's not like any of these people actually do any work at work. Nope, it's just longing looks, pointless and nonsensical disagreements, and wangst-breaks. That sound you just heard was Omi and Youji going to join Ken on the couch to bicker over the remote. Is anything actually going to happen here or is it just going to be endless iterations of Aya and Keiko staring at one another in awestruck devotion and completely failing to do anything about it because they're both secretly in eighth grade?
Short answer: Nope.
Long answer: Nope with significant glances, maidenly blushes mantling Keiko Sue's porcelain cheeks, 'sakura festivals' and yet more Aya-angst because HIS SISTER IS IN A COMA.
Next scene: nothing continues to happen. Weiss clear up the shop, the Sue sulks because apparently she's too snowflakey to be involved in cleaning-up and... this means Weiss are totally excluding her? Ken and Omi reappear from whatever plot hole they vanished down while all this angsting and staring go on and have some kind of sparring match... with brooms... in the middle of the shop... and Sue pouts because she wants to play but doesn't actually say anything to the effect because who even fucking knows at this point, but Omi's Sue-Wangst-Dar goes off and he invites her to join in. Ken drags Youji into it, then Daddy Aya shows up and spoils everyone's fun by being a colossal party-poop. Keiko angsts about this as well but cheers up when she realizes Aya brought her a special order of take-out tempura which he magically knows she loves OMG Aya/Keiko OTP he knows her take-out order they r ment 2 b u gaise!
Then Manx shows up to give the team a mission, finally injecting some momentum into this exceedingly torpid string of scenes in which not very much happens at length. But first, here's yet another tedious paragraph of Aya angsting because HIS SISTER IS IN A COMA. But at least something might actually be about to happen now, right? Right?
Except... the story seems remarkably vague about what that something actually is.
"Persia has another mission for you guys." She showed the tape, handing it over to Omi. The young assassin sprinted to the video recorder and a moment later, they all listened intensely to Persia's orders.
"So that's it?" Yohji sounded slightly surprised. "That's all we have to do? Most missions Persia gives to us are more difficult." He raised his eyebrows and gazed expectantly at Manx.
"If you want to say it that way, yes, this is all you have to do. But," she said in a warning voice, letting her gaze wander among the members of Weiß, "don't underestimate it. You might find it more difficult in the end than any other mission you've had so far."
So this briefing, in brief, would appear to run:
PERSIA: Men of Weiss, go and do a thing.
WEISS: Oh my God, this thing we have to do may be the most dangerous thing we have ever done!
Let me see if I've got this straight. Weiss have been given a mission, and it's supposedly easy, but it could also be very dangerous, and the team are all reacting like they're surprised to know it's dangerous because it looks so routine, and they all seem to know exactly what they've been asked to do... and the only problem is that at no point does the story feel the need to let the readers in on any of it. Seriously story, what are Persia's orders and what is happening. I mean, did you get an actual briefing out of any of that? Because if you did please let me know, I've read it three times and am still none the wiser about what the tits is supposed to be going on - except, as is standard for Suefic missions, it's like really dangerous and awesome and also has to be tonight because actually taking time to prepare for these things is for losers.
Manx vanishes, Aya goes upstairs to angst and plan the mission, except not because it's already been planned and Aya knows this because he's an author's pet and read the adventure pack while the GM was getting the pizza. The end. All right and that made no sense at all. Onward.
Right, the ficcer still doesn't know what scene breaks are for because once again we're opening on the same scene five seconds later. The rest of the team plus Mary Sue adjunct decide it might not hurt to actually read the frickin' data pack Aya - or as Youji calls him, their 'ice-cold leader' - is too awesome to bother with, perhaps in the hope that they might find some actual plot in there. What they actually find is yet more confirmation that Aya has every right to be obnoxiously above-it-all because he knew everything that was on there already without having to look at it, total omniscience and the ability to read briefing papers through sealed envelopes being yet another of his formidable array of author's-pet powers. Ken goes after him to tell him to read the fucking things anyway. You tell him, Ken! This leaves Omi in the basement with the Sue and what's she doing? She's angsting of course!
"Scared, Kei-chan?" The young boy walked next to her, his eyes filled with sympathy and friendliness.
Keiko shook her head. "Not scared, just confused," she confessed quietly. "I don't understand anything of what has happened in the basement."
Nor do I, Keiko. Yup, in an entirely artificial attempt to generate suspense, we the readers are still not being let in on what the actual fucking mission is. Ho hum.
The rest of the scene is just Keiko getting changed, seeing Aya leave the shop and drive away from her bedroom window, then angsting about it because she's decided, for some utterly inexplicable reason, that with about an hour to go before a mission His Lordship is insisting must be done now for I Am The Master And Commander Of All You Bitches Aya has randomly decided now is the moment to leave her (and also the rest of the team) forever. Omi swoops in to comfort Keiko's entirely self-inflicted hurts again since, because she's a Sue, she gets coddled for this display of self-indulgent, adolescent emo instead of being told to borrow a clue, get a grip and stop being so obnoxiously needy all the time. It's about as fascinating as it sounds. Next!
Next up we've got Aya again and in a massive break with tradition, he is angsting. Anyone with an even tentative grasp of series canon, never mind fanfic cliche, has probably worked out that he was headed to the hospital when Keiko saw him leave. Didn't you guys get the circular? HIS SISTER IS IN A COMA!
This means we're all set for the standard Angsty Hospital Scene as Aya brings flowers to his sister's bedside and talks to her about His Fucking Problems for a bit because he's seen soap-operas, he knows how this works. He tells her about the Vague Mission of Vagueness they're all going on - no, we mere readers have still not been made privy to any actual information about this - and that he might not be coming back. Then he wishes her farewell and leaves with his lineface screwed firmly into position, though we are assured that internally he crying bitter tears of the deepest and most heartfelt angst. In a better story this might actually be quite a touching scene but I'm so bored and annoyed by this fic's take on Aya and the endless harping-on about Aya's Fucking Problems that I just can't care.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch Weiss are sitting round gathering dust and waiting for their Lord and Master to return so he can tell them if they're allowed to go out after curfew or not. Aya reappears, the team all express massive relief that he is too cool to acknowledge and he goes upstairs to get ready for the mission for the second time. But wait, this time it's Ken's turn to shill for Keiko's nonsensical Aya-Is-Leaving-Me angst so he goes after Aya and tells him that... well, Keiko was angsty because she thought he was leaving her. Aya tells him, in almost as many words, that she's being stupid and thank God someone finally said something is all I can say.
Back at the shop Keiko is unsure if she should be relieved or annoyed that Aya didn't actually leave them forever because he dared to leave the house alone, like absolutely nobody but her thought was even a possibility. Co-dependency, thy name is Keiko Hasibashitsashi... oh, Hell, it begins with an H. Oh, and now Aya's katana makes him He-Man because Keiko can barely lift the bloody thing (the average weight of a katana, by the by, is usually between two and three pounds). I don't know if I'm more annoyed by Keiko's constant insistence that everything Aya does makes him an earth-bound man-god, or if I'm more annoyed that the narrative can't go more than a few hundred words without desperately trying to back her up...
Right, off Weiss go on their incredibly awesome but also massively vague mission of mission-ness. No surprises, this is happening:
She felt rather nervous about the prospect she would team up with Aya for this mission. Once again, she was overwhelmed with an internal conflict. A chance to work together with Aya and to show him what she was capable of filled her with excitement. Perhaps he would finally start to notice her. On the other hand, the quiet, mysterious young man terrified her. She wasn't much of a talkative person herself, but Aya was even worse and his silence always worked on her nerves.
Okay. So, Aya and Keiko are heading off on a mission together because Plot Contrivance, one they have been informed could easily lead to both their deaths, and she's sitting there blushing and rubbing her knees together because KYAAAA I HOPE SENPAI NOTICES ME TODAY? Case closed, Keiko is a fifteen-year-old girl who hasn't quite worked out that being a member of an elite team of assassins is not exactly the same as being placed in the same class as that kawaii bishie you've had your eye on since middle school.
The journey passes with Keiko drooling all over everything from Aya's tendency to wildly break the speed limits but still look like he's amazingly confident of his ability to not get pulled over while wearing bad-ass assassin gear with a live sword in the trunk, and his devil-may-care disregard of seat belt laws. Oh em gee, Keiko, bad boys are so dreamy. Fortunately for Persia's blood pressure Aya does not get pulled over for his flagrant and pointless disregard of traffic safety and meets up with Ken at the site. Considering that Aya broke the speed limit all the way to the site, Ken must have traveled by portal to have gotten there with enough time to check out the site and tell Aya that the guards pass the gate every ten minutes. Here the ficcer finally deigns to explain what 'the site' actually is and about the only surprise is it's not an abandoned warehouse - it's actually just a generic two-storey building which may or may not have 'laboratories' underground. Then Aya points out that Omi and Youji have arrived and the mission actually begins.
So, does this mean anything's actually going to happen? Well... no, not really.
Okay, so Aya and Keiko infiltrate the building together, blah blah blah. To spare the ficcer having to come up with anything for Youji, Omi and Ken to do, they all immediately vanish, leaving the comm to go dramatically dead. DUN DUN DAH. Keiko also vanishes about two paragraphs later. Aya then declares there are only three minutes for them to find the target in - why? Why three? What's going to happen after then that's going to make the mission impossible? Is the target expecting company? Is the security system going to come back on? Is a bomb going to go off? Is the entire complex filling with a deadly neurotoxin that will kill Aya dead if he's not out in precisely three minutes? Are the three readers all going to give up in boredom and frustration if nothing's happened by then? It's never explained, there just are - so he just has to go ahead and find and kill the target himself.
Spoiler: He fails. You suck, Fujimiya!
So what exactly does happen? Well... not much. It's clearly supposed to be creepy and eerie but mostly it's just boring and kind of a letdown. The three minutes run out and absolutely nothing happens at the end of them except Aya walks into a room sunk into dramatic darkness where he's spoken to by the standard Ooky Disembodied Voice of Evil. Said voice quotes Clannad lyrics at him (yes, more Last Rose of Summer nonsense) and tells Aya it's his song because did you know I've got your Sue and also all your other friends, but mostly just your Sue?
There was a stunned silence from Aya's side as the words silently seeped into his mind. All her lovely companions are faded and gone. Anger welled up in him. "What have you done to them?!" he shouted. Omi. Ken. Yohji. Keiko… "What have you done to them?!" he repeated again, running without knowing into which direction, trying to ignore the sharp pain in his heart when he thought of Keiko.
The voice laughed again. "Run, you fool. Run until the end of days. You'll never catch me."
Left utterly bereft at the loss of his Sue (and also the others but they don't really count in the face of Keiko's shy purple-haired loveliness, amirite?) Aya collapses, apparently catches fire (except not), then passes out. End of chapter.
Next time on The Last Rose of Suethor: something actually happens?
So that was Chapter One, in which Weiss grew a Sue, took a curiously ill-defined mission, then collectively vanished into a plot hole. In Chapter Two, also known as Chapter Two, we find out what's on the other side of that plot hole whether we want to or not. But first we have to brave more author's notes, in which our Proxy Suethor pats herself on the back for writing so much so quickly - again, all this means is you put a lot of words onto paper, not that any of those words are necessarily any good or in this case remotely interesting - and then warns us that Aya's going to be going even more OOC than he was last chapter. Presumably because if he was IC he wouldn't want to pitch woo at Keiko and that would never do.
Once again we get that warning that Aya's hooking up with a Sue and some more Clannad lyrics before the actual chapter kicks off with... oh, boy. More first-person Aya-angst. Thanks, story!
So, what's Aya actually angsting about? He's having yet another stupid dream sequence in which he floats about the place angsting because he's a killer and all his family and friends are dead and so is Keiko Sue, but mostly Keiko because SHE IS THE IMPORTANT ONE HERE BITCHES. Oh Keiko. Fairest and most beauteous of Sues. Why, she gave him tingly feelings in his no no place and oh how he wishes he'd had the courage to tell her that he liked her, you know, like that, but now she is dead, dead, dead. Why, just thinking of her beauteous name gives Aya stabbings of angst and pain deep inside his breast, or just perhaps heartburn.
Fortunately for him Keiko Sue appears to him in a glowing cloud of purple light though for Maximum Dramaz he has magically forgotten both the sound of her voice and what she looks like, even though he was harping on about how totally fucking significant she was to him two paragraphs before. Anyway Keikosprit reaches to Aya, who takes her hands, and the ficcer takes a moment to remind us that she totally has dark red eyes before the first-person dream sequence is mercifully curtailed by a row of asterisks.
Aya wakes up again, this time in bed in a fantasy bedchamber and runs through various iterations of Oo Me Head and Oo Me Arms and Oo Me Tongue is Sticking to the Upper Part of Me Mouth. Keiko Sue is of course holding his hand and mooning all over him, though the ficcer's under the impression that not mentioning her name might make who had been watching over Aya While He Was Sleeping a mysterious mystery trying to be charmingly vague about that as well, and the minute he wakes up she nags Ken, who's been promoted from 'Sir Barely Appearing in this Fic' to 'Florence Nightingale, Except She's Like A Guy And Keeps Being Called a "Soccerboy" For Some Reason As If That Was Actually A Thing', to come tend to Aya even though he's already busy. Oh, and he's still having trouble remembering who the Sue is even though he's totally fucking obsessed with her and her well-being:
In the doorway stood a young woman, with long purple hair, a white nightdress and bandage around her head. It took a while before he realized who she was. He wanted to call her, to ask her what had happened, but there came no sound over his lips. When he noticed he was unable to speak, he just laid, watching Keiko until she turned around to let Ken in.
Right, so Aya gawks at the Sue and her nightgowned hot for a bit. Ken then wanders in and, um...
Ken didn't say a word as he gently, but professionally started to change the bandage.
Yeah, this is what I mean about Ken's Florence Nightingale impersonation and it only gets worse when we find out that being in a generic fanatsy fanfic means he suddenly has lame healing magic powers as well now. I know you don't know what the Hell to do with him, story, but trust me - THIS IS NOT THE ANSWER.
Aya and Ken talk while Ken's doing his Hi Hi Magical Nurse-Chan Creamy Angel Kenken bit, with Ken telling Aya that they've all been transported into a Bland Deodorized Fantasyverse by the magic of plot contrivance, and Aya just kind of accepts this like he'd been told they'd all gotten food poisoning from shitty take-out. Keiko shows up again while they talk with a glass of water and Ken clearly notices that Aya's drooling all over her nightgowned hot again like a Tex Avery wolf, because he very quickly shooes her out again so he can carry on explaining that the building they were in was some kind of 'insubstantial portal' and you're not allowed to say this sounds like BS because this is Omi's idea and everyone knows Omi is TOTALLY SMART so THERE.
(There's also some bonus Ken-bashing for those as care to look for it, as Ken says Omi explained the BS theory behind teleportation to him for two hours and he still doesn't get it because Ken is stupid. He also uses words like 'zipped' instead of pseudoscience terms, which only proves it.)
Keiko shows up to deliver the dramatic explanation that Aya is covered in burns because he was burnt. There's another scene break but the ficcer still doesn't know what those are for so this is just a bit of decoration before Keiko explains (all of two seconds later) that Weiss found Aya in the middle of a napalm strike which means he can control fire. Just not very well, apparently, if he very nearly cripsy crittered himself along with half the landscape. Ken then goes onto explain that arriving in the Generic Fantasyverse has given them all equally generic elemental-style speshul powers of speshulness - Ken getting earth, which in this lame fantasyverse means Disney-Princess-Style Friend-to-Nature treehugging hippy crap rather than anything Toph Bei Fong would care to lay claim to; Omi, meanwhile is getting air while Youji ends up with water. So, you probably aren't asking, what of Keiko Sue, then? Doesn't she get lame fantasy powers too? To which the answer is, of course, but she's a beautiful and unique Mary Sue snowflake so she's getting a beautiful and unique elemental power to match.
The redhead stared blankly at her, clearly not understanding what the relation was with one of the four known elements. That was probably because she didn't have one of the four known elements, but a rather special one. "M-my element is light," she continued softly.
Of course it is.
Yup, Keiko here is embodying the sparkly Mary Suetastic element of light. Specifically, purple light. 'cause she's a Sue. This scene is excerpted in full over at the spork proper so if you're really curious for the full fascinating story of how Keiko came to discover her awesome snowflake powers (long story short, SHE TRIPPED OVER A STONE) that's where you can read it. If you don't, uh... well, carry on, I guess.
We close the scene on a note of obscene horror as Aya tells the Sue he thinks her nightdress is nice and she blushes like a twelve-year-old and notes that she could almost 'explode with happiness'. Sadly she doesn't and so the fic continues.
Next scene (picking up one rather severe RL upheaval later - let's just say it involved shifting a lot of furniture up a flight of stairs and was still massively preferable to the Sue). So, what's happening in the fanfic, then? Well, here as well we see that time is passing and stuff is happening. Why don't we get to see any of it? Because it doesn't involve Aya or the Sue, that's why. Anyway Aya spends an amazing ho-hum length of time lying in bed and being told what a snowflake he and his powers are but he thinks he's going insane because HE JUST DOES OKAY SHUT UP IT'S ANGSTY except Keiko totally makes him feel 110% better because she is such a speshul Sue. Nobody else does, mind - the fic takes pains to mention that even Omi is grating on Aya's nerves - it's just the Sue. Yes, yes, okay, Keiko is amazing and Aya adores her, get on with it.
Spoiler: They don't.
Yeah, the rest of this scene is just Aya mooning all over Keiko's hot, grabbing her hands, stammering her name, then slumping back into a pallid Victorian lethargy because he's so overwhelmed by the depth and purity of his FEELS for her beautiful face and shapely Sue ass. You know, if your romantic leads were more emotionally mature than a pair of blushing, tongue-tied middle-schoolers, this scene would have been about half the length and about ten million times less nauseating. Pro Tip, fangirl: this isn't romantic, it's just stupid. This doesn't make Aya's love look true and amazing or whatever the fuck you were going for, it makes him look like a stammering moron. Sad but true.
While we're here I've had just about e-fucking-nough of Keiko's blushing virgin routine - too bad for me that's about all we're getting from the next scene, which kicks off with Keiko mooning over Aya's sleeping beauty and going on and on about his 'true emotions' and the fact that she only dares touch him while he's too unconscious to notice it which is of course totes romantic and not creepy or inappropriate at all. Oh, and speaking of creepy and inappropriate...
Keiko reluctantly got up. She wanted to stay with this mysterious and beautiful young man, who she secretly feared and adored.
Right, so this genuinely is a cheesy category romance right down to the unfortunate implications. Glad we cleared that up.
Oh, and even Aya's katana's been Mary Sued right up and now has a huge chunk of ruby bling in its hilt, which (oh the originality!) reacts to his emotional state. Keiko then further proves she has no idea who the fuck Aya Fujimiya even is by deciding that if he'll listen to anyone, he'll totally listen to Ken. Yup. So she goes to find Ken who's standing in the garden dressed like Radagast the freakin' Brown (just without the awesome beard) being a Friend to All Living Things. He even has the adorable animal companions to prove it!
She found the soccerboy in the garden, surrounded by a greenish aura. Several animals were sitting around him and Keiko was ready to run away when she noticed there were also wolves and bears among the animals.
"Don't worry, Keiko, they won't hurt you," Ken said. "They are our guardians and they would rather die than attack us." The green light disappeared and Ken turned around with a friendly smile. "Is there something I can help you with? You seem to be troubled."
Keiko approached the group of animals apprehensively. No matter what Ken had said about those savages not attacking her, she rather didn't try it out. "Can we uh… talk somewhere privately?" she asked nervously.
Ken understood her fear and looked at a fierce grey wolf. No words were spoken - this was a conversation held at a higher level than with just words - and the wolf loped away, followed by the other animals. Ken waited until they were all out of sight before he turned to Keiko. "What's your problem, Keiko?"
No, really, this is actually happening. In this fanfic Ken Hidaka is a Disney Princess who has psychic one-to-ones with cute forest creatures.
He's also taking Omi's place as the Sue's trusted friend and confidant and it's now his job to prop up Keiko's ego and reconfirm her in her belief that Aya is absolutely the most fucking significant thing around. See, he magically just knows exactly what Keiko has come to talk to him about, HOW AMAZINGLY CONVENIENT, and instantly agrees to go and talk to Aya about his endless fucking issues. Which, in what must count as a rare act of restraint, we won't actually be seeing happen.
Right, so Aya finally drags himself out of his wangst-pit and spends several paragraphs infodumping at himself about the interior decorating he was apparently too emo to notice before, paying special attention to the Sue's favorite cushion-stuffed chair which is still redolent with the warm vanilla aroma of Sues everywhere. He then spends a way too long amount of time about taking a rose-scented, girly bubble bath and changing his smeggy pants, turning down the Maia Collection '98 because the Suethor doesn't think he'd look sexy enough like that and... that is it. What a very vital scene that was.
Next up, Omi finally reappears from whatever plot hole he fell down so that he can marvel over Keiko's shiny purple Sue powers and reassure her that she doesn't need to understand them, just use them. Oh, and he's so fascinated by Keiko and her whiny, co-dependent love for Aya that when she claims she isn't actually completely hamstrung by how much she loves him and tries to leave the room, Omi pushes her back into her chair and refuses to let her leave until she confesses that - shock of all shocks - she wubs Aya twuly. This is, of course, Keiko's cue to dissolve into a useless flub of emo again because having to (wo)man up and actually admit that she's interested in the guy she's been mooning over for the last 13,000 words is just so emotionally draining you guys!
Oh, and Omi can now turn into a fucking dove. Because STUPID FANTASYVERSE of course he can SHUT UP.
Omi leaves, Youji gets briefly namedropped (he totally still exists guys!) and then we're back to the main event i.e.: Keiko moons over Aya some more. Anyway, she goes to find him and is shocked to learn he's dragged his whiny ass out of bed and - courtesy of picking up Aya's magic ruby katana - is now in the garden (but first she's going to blush like a schoolgirl over the thought of Aya taking a bath because she's so adorably virginal and coy). So she goes into the garden and marvels over his angst-ridden hot for a while and gthen has a fit of the vapors because Aya's holding a flower and MAYBE HE'S THINKING OF SOME OTHER GIRL OHNOES blah blah fucking blah get on with it you pair of unutterably tedious and snoreworthy specimens.
Can you guess what Aya is wangsting about this time?
Yuuup. Not that the ficcer can just come out and say that, no, first we have to have yet another scene in which a pair of grown adults behave like stammering adolescents in the grip of their first crush, complete with lengthy silences, furious blushing and complete lack of eye contact. Yes, yes, we get it, Keiko is a blushing virgin and so is Aya for some godforsaken reason, can we move on now, plea--oh, wait, that means a ringside seat for the lame fantasyverse IMAX Motionmaster Cinema presentation of AYA'S GODDAMN PROBLEMS (Cert PG-13), I take it back!
"My family…" He broke himself of, trying to find a better way of starting his story. "My sister and I…" He paused again. "Give me your hand." Startled, Keiko extended her hand and Aya enclosed it protectively in his own big hand. Her hand was petite and warm and the touch of it was comforting. With his other hand, he gripped his katana, lifting it, with the hilt upwards. The ruby began to glow and the surroundings changed.
"It was summer when it all happened," Aya said softly. "It was the day before my sister's birthday. She would turn sixteen." The face of his sister appeared in front of them, like he had remembered it. "I admit I loved, and still love, my younger sister. She always managed to cheer me up." Aya closed his eyes, while before them, the story continued.
BY THE POWER OF GRAYSKULL, AYA HAS THE POWER!
Please also note that Aya is apologizing to the Sue for daring to find another woman at all significant.
Right, so Aya woos Keiko by taking her to a 3-D movie version of his own tragic past, blah blah tedious blah we've all seen the show thank you skimming forward until something new happens. Being a whiny angst-whore herself, Keiko of course eats this up and asks for dessert but oh noes she is adorably chilly, Aya, quick, tell her it's time to go inside because she's such a co-dependent idiot she won't do anything unless someone with a penis tells her it's okay! Then Omi shows up and cheerfully announces that they have a mission because yeah, everything's coming up Dungeons and Dragons but Kritiker are still totally a thing here. WORST FANTASYVERSE EVER. End of chapter.
Okay, so in this fanfic Aya has sat around and stared at a Sue, then was randomly zapped into a fantasyverse where he sat around and stared at the Sue some more. Since Chapter Three supposedly brings this tedious nonsense-pile to a close, that means something has to happen this time that isn't just staring at the Sue some more, right? I mean, right?
Skimming the disclaimer, the author's notes - no, fangirl, things are not going fast and could in fact not be moving more glacially slowly if you tied the fic to the back of a fuckin' glacier - and the thing about floral language, and yet more Clannad lyrics, we commence Chapter Three. Or, as the author knows it, Chapter Three. And, in a massive and shocking break with tradition, we... no, wait, we're just going to be opening on Aya throwing himself a one-man first-person pity party again, aren't we.
Thought so. There's nothing interesting to be said about this one either. Aya still has ridiculous self-pity problem and the cure for this is obviously going to be finding Twu Wub with the Mary Sue because applying a Sue to the affected parts three times a day makes everything better, and to prove it here's Keiko's beauteous voice of beauty quoting, yup, Clannad lyrics at him. Onward.
So Youji's still AWOL and the fangirl takes this opportunity to bash him a bit for it. I guess it slipped your notice while you were staring at Aya's hot, fangirl, but Youji is not actually stupid and does not make a habit of doing stupid things, also Ken and Omi actually like him so quit using them to editorialize. Ken is apparently attempting to find Youji with his brain and giving himself a headache in the process... but the presence or absence of Youji is, of course, of minor importance next to Keiko's soggy socks which she hasn't changed, seemingly simply so Aya can fret about it. Then she does change them. And then everyone wonders how in the Hell they could have a mission in a lame fantasyverse and... well, and then this happens, and it's stupid:
"In here." Omi opened a heavy door and they all walked quietly into the room. "You'd better take a seat," the boy suggested. "It might be quite a shock for you."
Right, so they go in and DUN DUN THEATRICAL BULLSHIT DRAMA BUTTON DAAAAH--
From a shadowy corner, a woman stepped further into the room. She had stunningly bright red hair, much like Aya's hair, and piercing green eyes. Her crimson hair fell down in large, elaborate curls. She wore a red silken robe and she carried an ornated crafted staff. But she was still the same Manx they knew from the other dimension.
"Manx!" Ken exclaimed with a startled gasp. "What are you doing here?!"
Yeeeeeah totally unsurprisingly it's Manx. This is, like, the precise opposite of shocking, story. Weiss find themselves in an alternate universe and are mysteriously assigned a mission BY THE SAME PERSON WHO ALWAYS ASSIGNS THEM MISSIONS. Shocking would be, I don't know, a giant marmot in a blue fez, maybe, but not the one person they could reasonably have expected to be involved in assigning them a freaking mission! Geez!
Right, so Manx shows up and inexplicably knows fucking everything about Weiss and their mission and also about the fact she totally has an identical twin sister in the non-lame-fantasyverse canon setting. All this comes out in a lengthy and nonsensical infodump, which is quickly followed by their actual mission. So, 16,632 words in, with a mere 6,512 words to go, an actual plot shows up. And it's rubbish. Basically there are some baddies - here called 'Shadow Wizards' - who want to cause worldwide chaos because I 'unno, and Weiss have to stop them with their snowflake powers. Omi has a sobbing meltdown because Lame Fantasyverse Persia was delivering this briefing courtesy of, uh, wobbly... column thing. Everyone else stays behind to comfort him while Manx rounds off the infodump for Aya and Aya alone regardless of how many 'mild glares' he shoots her for, uh, considering him worthy of actually getting shit explained to him. Aya Is Weiss's Daddy, Fuck Their Actual Leader.
What this basically means is that Manx leads Aya into a corridor and delivers another string of lengthy infodumps about how all of Weiss's Lame Fantasyverse Counterparts are dead, dead, dead. Because, you know, three trained killers who've all been repeatedly placed in harm's way would be completely incapable of contemplating their own mortality because they all have really big eyes. This. Is. Stupid.
No less stupid are the actual backstories. They've been excerpted here. Read on for the Cliffs Notes versions.
(But first we've got to sit through a dull, tedious scene between Omi, Ken and Keiko that serves to do absolutely nothing but waste time, go nowhere and establish once again that Aya is the most important thing ever and the Sue, as his handmaid, is second only to him. Even when they're safely by themselves Omi and Ken have nothing on their minds but propping up Keiko's ego by giving her endless buttpats and going on about her unending, tedious relationship angst that SIMPLY WOULD NOT BE AN ISSUE IF EITHER SHE OR AYA COULD ACT LIKE GROWN-UPS FOR FIVE MINUTES ARGH. The idea that either of these characters might have anything going on in their lives that did not immediately involve Aya or the Sue is, apparently, too radical to contemplate.)
Right, lame fantasyverse backstories. These are basically identical to Weiss's canon backstories, they just all tragically die during the event that canonically precipitated them onto the team... except when you're looking at Ken. See, instead of giving lame fantasyverse Ken a past that sounds even remotely like what happened to him in the series, the ficcer instead decides she's going to go with this ridiculous heap of totally irrelevant twaddle:
Ken was a knight of the king, son of a noble family and a promising swordsman. In fact, his life had been quite pleasant, with all the courts and training. His death, it seemed, was only an accident. When he was with a friend, a group of knights, young men as well, had challenged Ken for a duel. Ken couldn't refuse that, and although he had drank a bit too much and was quite unsteady on his legs, he had accepted the challenge. It proved to be fatal when a sword slit through his armour and through his heart.
See? SEE? What the flaming fuck was that? I don't care how hammered he was, ARMOR DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!
Right, so we breeze past Aya, Youji, Omi and (apparently) Ken's backstories and onto Keiko's. Which, because the ficcer doesn't want to leave anything to chance, we are immediately informed is the angstiest and most tragic of the lot! You vill pity this character mach schnell, schweinhund!
Yeah, this is kind of a tall order because not only is Keiko an annoying Sue her backstory is also by far the stupidest and is far too busy being wangst-filled and tragic to remember to make sense. Long story short daddy got a Sue instead of a son, so, uh... he decided to keep her alive for eleven years so he could use her as a stress doll then off her, instead of offing her immediately and saving a lot of time and money. But it served to make Aya predictably enraged and that's all these emotastic Sue backstories are ever really aiming for so, uh, mission accomplished, I guess?
Then Aya goes to put on his asskicking gear and discovers Keiko left him a significant flower. Aww, how puke-tastically adorable of her.
Next up, Weiss are looking for Youji and Ken has given up on using lame magic to try and find him because he's getting a headache but doesn't want to admit it, which is funny because I seem to remember him actually saying 'this lame power is giving me a headache' - or words to that effect, anyway - at the beginning of the freaking chapter. Of course, the Sue's gone one better and is using a map to create a flashing 'THIS WAY TO THE OTHER GUY' marker. Except that's not working either because Snowflake Powers. Aya orders them all to get ready for the mission and says he'll look for Youji himself, but not before he asks Keiko to label 'all the taverns' on her Map of Speshul then thanks her for the flower and makes her blush like a ten-year-old and tremble. Once again, this character is supposed to be an adult.
Moving on, and... oh, it's this bit. Damn this is gonna hurt. Here goes.
So Aya - who not only has a horse but can ride it too, because being bamfed into a lame fantasyverse means you get the trade skills to match, apparently - goes on a whistle-stop tour of all the drinking holes in the town and of course finds Youji propping up the bar at the shittiest of the shittiest, because... uh, because Youji, I guess. Aya rocks up and asks Youji where he is so Youji tells him to leave him alone (this all happens magically, for the usual why-the-fuck-not reason). Aya, soul of tact and delicacy that he is, storms over, berates Youji for 'sinking so low' and 'abandoning his friends' because feeling low and going out for a drink is forbidden now, of course, and...
Well. And this happens.
The enraged Fire Mage grabbed the Water Mage at his shirt and lifted him up from his place. "You traitor."
That was enough to pull back Yohji from the drunken state he had been in. His fierce, green eyes flashed with anger and he pushed Aya away from him. "What did you call me?" His voice had dropped to a low, threatening tone.
"Traitor," Aya's deep voice repeated slowly. There was a silent contest between the redhead and the drunken blond man. Yohji finally raised his fist to smash it in Aya's face, but drunk as he was, he staggered backwards and he had would've fallen over the chair if Aya hadn't grabbed his wrist.
"Yohji, I know the story. It's sad, but this isn't the time for mourning over such things. There's a mission and if we succeed that, we can go back home."
Yohji blinked, then his expression grew one of deep guilt and sadness. "She died again, Aya. You don't know it. You don't understand it. She died. I'm responsible for her death… again."
Aya's bare hand slapped Yohji in his face and two amethyst eyes glared angrily at him. "Stop drowning in this self-pity!" He panted slightly of this outburst and regained his self-control. "We don't belong in this dimension," he continued in his normal, emotionless tone. "What happened here isn't your fault. We're only here to solve a problem."
You'll have to excuse me a minute, but WHAT THE FLYING FUCK?!
So, story, lemme see if I've got this straight. Aya spends the entire fic from start to... well, pretty much where we are now - that's a sizable chunk of the 18,549 words that have comprised the fic so far - whinging on and on and bloody on about how his life is a dark and tragic pit of tragic darkness because his sister is a coma and his hope is shattered and he doesn't know if he will ever be able to love again and blah blah blah blah freaking blah. He even gets first-person segments at the beginning of every single chapter just so he can whine about his fucking problems some more. This is not only perfectly okay, it's completely understandable. His past is a never-ending cavalcade of angst, pain and tragedy and should be treated with respect.
Youji vanishes into a plot hole toward the end of Chapter Two to do what I know not because the fic never goes into it. During this time he finds out that the woman he loved is dead in both his reality and the lame fantasyverse he's stuck in. He goes to get miserably drunk then spends 32 words explaining why he's drowning his sorrows, and for his pains he gets branded a 'traitor', slapped in the face and told to get over it. By Aya. Who's spent most of the rest of the fic... yeah, see above.
Right.
Okay.
This isn't annoying or hypocritical of characters or author at all.
Oh, and while he was drinking Youji's horse was made into glue. What is this, Let's All Shit On Youji: The Musical? This is the most obnoxious thing I've read since... well, probably since the last fic I read where Youji got gratuitously shat on while the ficcer sung Aya's praises and heaven knows I'm not exactly short on those. Let's move on.
Youji gets cleaned up and Ken gives him a magic drunkenness cure that just leaves him with a massive hangover because sure, that's exactly what you need when you're going off to fight 'shadow wizards', whatever they are. Aya is apparently acting friendly to him (that's why he slapped him in the face!), and everyone goes and grabs more horses and rides off into the pale midnight moonlight to the dramatic climax, while Keiko angsts about Aya knowing it was her who left Aya a flower (um, did she really believe he'd assume, say, Ken did it? Think, girl!) and otherwise babbles on and on about Aya Aya Aya Aya Aya. Then she nearly gets thrown by her horse which magically brakes because... uh, Aya told it to or something? Anyway, everyone has to dismount and walk because Aya says so and he's a totally caring horsie-dad now as well and--
--yeah, you know I think I've just realized what's been bugging me about this. This scene is a really perfect example of the ficcer's failure to show rather than tell. We know Aya is supposed to be treating Youji like a friend and he totally loves and cares for his horsie because Keiko has decreed it is so, not because we've actually seen any evidence that Aya's doing anything of the sort. We're just supposed to take the Sue's word for it. Because it's not like she's sickeningly infatuated with him and could possibly be at all bias-- oh wait.
ANYWAY. Shadow Wizards. Beware, Weiss! For Keiko's snowflake powers have revealed that they are... really kinda fuckin' generic.
Glimpses of amorphous, spectral creatures dwelling in murky places flashed through her mind. They had no faces, no limbs, nothing that could identify them as human beings. She glanced at Omi, who still walked further with no trace of anxiety on his face. The others also appeared unconcerned, which meant only she had seen it. She bit her lip and hobbled a bit faster, until she walked next to Aya.
"Aya-kun?"
"Hm?"
"The creatures we're going to fight aren't human," she blurted out before she lost all her courage she had just scraped together.
KEIKO'S INABILITY TO STAND UP FOR HERSELF OR EVEN HOLD A FRICKIN' CONVERSATION WITHOUT TURNING INTO A FRIGHTENED LITTLE BUNNY IS. NOT. CUTE wait, what was I actually talking about here? Oh yeah, boring generic monsters! Oh, and once again we see a fanfic version of Weiss doing precisely no groundwork at all before running after the Badnasty of the Day. Great. You go, guys, that won't backfire on you at all.
Aya decides he can't be bothered to listen to that, which throws Keiko back into a self-pitying flub. Omi comforts her and they all go to rock up at the - okay, we're at the villains' evil castle of evil and not only are Weiss going to just walk in and attack them with no problems at all, the world-fuckingly evil bad guys are apparently all hanging out in one room. And they're just shadows. And they're weak against sunlight. And they're ten times stronger at night but no we're gonna just roll in and attack them at fucking midnight anyway because Aya says so and everyone has to do what he says or else. Oh, and apparently there are only five of them.
Getting the impression that these villains 1) suck, 2) were winged in at the last moment when the ficcer realized that something ought to actually be freakin' happening in this stupid damn fanfic and 3) suck? Go with it. We've struggled through 21,204 words of fuck-all happening at painful length oh and also some baddies are doing bad things, stop them, and now we've finally reached the pasted-on final showdown between good and evil, well...
Okay, you ready for this? Because this, in its entirety, is the final showdown.
They were sinister, dark, and horrible. There were five of them, scattered through the room, mixing with the current shadows or glibbering over the walls and ceiling to dark places. There was hardly any light, but they made enough slithering noise to locate them.
The five assassins of Weiß stood transfixed to the ground. It was as if a spell had been cast upon them, that let fear creep into their hearts. But Aya shook it away and barked, "Keiko! Create light!" The Fire Mage lifted a hand and a flaring colomn of fire shot through the gloomy room.
Aya's voice brought her back to reality and she flushed slightly for not thinking of it herself. As she had explained not that long ago, the shadows couldn't stand light. And light was, after all, her element.
The Light Mage rose her hand as well, and a radiating glow surrounded her, intensifying with the second. The rest broke free from their spell as well, grabbing for their weapons or using their magic. Keiko let the bright light fill the room. She couldn't use it for offensive meanings, but she could make it impossible for the Shadow Wizards to find a shadowy place to hide.
The Shadow Wizards shrieked with pain, as light threatening to evaporate them. Aya continued casting beams of fire to the creatures, and the other three had started to use their powers as well. Trees, plants and forest animals appeared out of nowhere, the Air Mage tried to blow up walls and the Water Mage created huge streams to wash away the Shadow Wizards of the room. Keiko had nearly covered the whole room with her purple light and their opponents started to panic.
POOF! One by one, the dark Wizards exploded into nothingness. When the last one disappeared, a tear formed itself in the middle of the room. It was the portal they needed to go back to their own dimension.
Right. So, in this dramatic finale:
Okay, so everyone jumps through the Magic Time Tunnel and Aya wakes up back in his own bed where Ken casually reveals that he's been comatose for days and nobody thought to take him to a hospital because... uh, no idea. Maybe it was a special coma. Ken then says he needs to stay in bed for two weeks because he has a concussion, but this must be a special concussion too because Aya doesn't seem to realize he has it. Ficcer? I have been concussed twice. Trust me, you want to stay in bed. Aya asks for water, Ken leaves, calls Aya his best friend then and takes his OOC with him, and Aya... yeah, so the others show up to talk to him but they don't count because Not The Sue, where is the speshul Sue?!
Sadly, she takes this as her cue to arrive and being instrumental in saving the world with precisely no effort at all hasn't led her to grow a spine: she's still blushing and stammering and acting like normal social interactions are totally beyond her. Again, NOT CUTE. Anyway Keiko asks Aya what happened when he dived into the Time Tunnel and oh look it's some late-arriving wangst and speshul. Just what Aya needed.
The creature laughed. "You fool. You think you can eliminate us. But as long as there is light, there are shadows. You provided a perfect hiding place for us, friend." More and more slithering and hissing sounds emerged from my own shadow.
I took a few steps back, drawing nearer towards the closing portal. It was futile, the Shadow Wizards simply moved along with me. I cast a glance over my shoulder. It wasn't completely futile. Yet. If I only could use my power to hold the portal open…
"Welcome to our group… Fire Mage!"
A Shadow Wizard leaped forward, but I quickly raised a shield of fire. Dimmed cries of agony and choking sounds reached my ears, but I ignored them. The portal was almost gone now. In a desperate attempt, I hurled all the power I possessed towards it, then pushed myself through it, with only one thought flashing through my mind.
Keiko…
... which is all very ooky and creepy and all, but there's one problem: we already know Aya is home safe. This? It's an entirely gratuitous drama bomb that adds nothing, goes nowhere, and has absolutely no relevance to anything at all - because Aya decides that he can't possibly tell Keiko any of it and then tells her he wants to sleep and she goes away all angsty and emo because ohnoes he's rejecting me - but wait, Aya's left a bunch of deeply fucking significant flowers in her room (their meanings, respectively, are I love you, first love, your presence soothes me, I can't live without you, I'll always be true, thank you for understanding, take care of yourself for me and everlasting love because we haven't over-egged this pudding significantly enough yet) and he tags along after her because as an assassin Keiko has no peripheral vision and is entirely incapable of hearing that she's being followed.
And that, apart from the inevitable confession of love and the equally inevitable kiss scene is - finally, mercifully - THE END.
Story Title: The Last Rose of Summer
Perpetrator: Lenihan
Summary: 'A story about Aya and Keiko, who slowly fall in love with each other. And that all while they have to try to get away from the fantasy world they're in. COMPLETED!'
Rating:
The Walkthrough:
All right then, people! I am still back (really) and not shutting up, and to prove it it's time for another one of these. Today's target: 23,144 words of Aya falling in love with his umpteenth shiny Mary Sue (okay so it is actually his fifty-ninth, not counting the ones where he hooks up with some Sue and it is not the main event, but who's counting apart from me). What I know about this fic from the start, then: it's got a special snowflake called Keiko in it whom I am probably going to hate, and it's stranding Weiss in a Generic Fantasyverse for no reason that I can make out. Let us see if the fic sheds any light on why ANY OF THIS SHIT IS HAPPENING, LIKE AT ALL, or if I'm supposed to take it for granted that it just totally is now again. Onto Chapter One.
First up the disclaimer and here's something a little odd - the ficcer is claiming that not only does she not own Weiss, she didn't come up with the Sue either. Uh, you are aware anyone can create a Sue, right? This Sue, Keiko, is actually the creation of an author called Chisha. Why you'd want to write over 20,000 words about someone else's wish-fulfillment stand-in character, no matter how much you liked them as a person, when you could be having a perfectly adequate fangirl fantasy of banging Aya all by yourself I have no idea. Great, this ficcer's already completely lost me and I haven't even finished reading the damn disclaimer yet.
Chisha, Keiko Sue's actual creator, now posts as Nemu and hang on wait a minute that means this Sue's the horrible brainsister of Emily motherfuckin' Crawford and that this Keiko is the impeccably purple-haired, magenta-eyed 'little mistreated sad girl' Emily Sue's creator was talking about back then...
Oh, this is going to hurt.
I can but hope that being written by a different author means less whining from Keiko Sue about how impeccably tragic and wangst-ridden her past is and how she suffers, dammit, SUFFERS. Let's move on.
Blah blah author's notes. Ficcer was inspired to write about Aya by a Clannad song called The Last Rose of Summer but didn't know who to pair Aya with (uh, nobody?) so her Suethor mate 'jokingly' suggested that she pair Aya with... her own Mary Sue. The sad part of it is our fangirl author genuinely thought her friend was teasing, not dropping a huge and blatant clanger of an anvil-sized hint about what she was hoping to see in an Aya shipfic... and then she went and wrote a fic about Aya hooking up with her BFF's Mary Sue anyway. Who she thanks for letting her use the character. No, Suethor over there should be thanking you for thinking her whiny, vapid, purple-haired, Aya-humping ninny was worth going on about for almost 25,000 words. Something she herself couldn't be bothered to do.
Then we get this.
Warnings: Original character is paired up with Aya, heterosexual relationships
At least she knows to warn for it, I guess. Onto Chapter One, which has been imaginatively named Chapter One.
Ignoring the song lyrics about how the last rose of summer is blooming alone, all alone, angstcrysobwail, we open on... there is nothing interesting to be said about this. It's just a version of Aya Fujimiya who sounds suspiciously like a whiny teenage girl filling the entire fandom in yet again on how his sister is totally in a coma so now he has ANGST. Just in case we missed it the five billion times it cropped up in the actual show. It's literally just a first-person retelling of the tragic bits from Aya's flashback in Episode 13 with all the angsty flair and emo-osity amped up to eleven, and is therefore boring.
Not a good start. Or a good place to start. Moving on until something that hasn't been done to death happens...
Oh. Aya was actually having an angsty flashback nightmare, and now he's being woken up by 'the only female member of Weiss'. This is of course Keiko Hashishita, Resident Mary Sue, who is inexplicably just there and no doubt due to be treated throughout as if she's got every bit as much right to be present as Ken has and probably rather more. Looks like we're not going to be getting anything like originality out of this scene either. Or any kind of explanation for why Weiss have sprouted yet another extraneous Sue teammate. Or any real reason why Aya's started falling asleep in the shop, for that matter, though the way this fic is going it's probably 'so Keiko can wake him up and be adorably concerned and make him blush and also not get her arm bitten off for it because SPESHUL'.
Youji teases Aya about having been up all night with a LADY and Keiko gets all scowly because oh come on can't you guess. Youji makes lame jokes about Aya's nightlife which Omi finds hilarious, presumably because he put nitrous oxide on his cornflakes, and Aya (who is not only Weiss's leader but the bestest of the best at flower arranging!) gets disproportionately enraged about it and crushes the stem of a rose, just in case you the reader were in any doubt about how totally dramatic this was all supposed to be. And... that's it. That's all that happens. Youji teases our Chaste Hero Aya about women and the Sue gets passive-aggressively upset because she's a female caricature who Just Can't Spit It Out.
The next scene opens with a reminder of two insanely important points, to whit:
- The Sue's full name is still Keiko Hashishita; and
- She remains THE ONLY GIRL in the entire team.
She sighed and turned back to her work, gazing at the hordes of schoolgirls, all around fifteen years old, swarming into the little flower shop. The only reason why they came was because of the four boys working in the flower shop. And no one, of course, had any interest in her. She was just a girl. She wasn't even good-looking, like the rest of Weiß. She was a nothing, just good enough to do the little jobs like cleaning the floor and moving the flowerpots.
YOU WILL FIND KEIKO CHARMINGLY UNSELFCONSCIOUS AND INSECURE NOW.
(This self-centered, Not-Like-The-Other-Girls whine is rendered all the more obnoxious by Keiko's status as a Sue, so very definitely not hideously deformed. The Suethor's own fanart confirms Keiko as a long-haired, narrow-waisted, boobtacular cutie pie who just happens to be a bit of a tomboy, so... either she's got body dysmorphic disorder or she's blatantly fishing for compliments inside her own head.)
As Obligatory Love Interest Aya is contractually obliged to swoop in here and swoop he does, asking the Sue to come and help him with the flower arrangements he's working on. Since Keiko here is by her own admission bloody awful at them - especially, since the presence of her love interest renders Keiko charmingly incapable, when Aya's staring at her like oh em golly gee tee hee hee he's such a hottie - it's blatantly obvious he's only doing this to stop her getting her mope on. Keiko berates herself a bit more because Aya's flower arrangement is like the most beauteous thing ever but hers sucks, then Aya comes and shows her how to fix hers up properly and tells her he thought hers was deeply okay anyway. So it's basically exactly like that one scene in Ghost, just with flowers and no ghost.
Keiko timidly asks Aya if he's still mad at her and Aya is all OMG I could never be mad at you, Mary Sue (because you are different and speshul and not like the other girls, and also I totally love you 5eva but am not allowed to realize that yet because the minute I actually say it the story will end).
There's another scene break, but I'm beginning to wonder if the ficcer knows how these work because we're back to the same five seconds later again and Aya reflecting some more on how he could never be mad with Keiko Sue and staring at her some more because goodness knows that's not getting old at all. No, he's actually mad with Youji because... this is news or something? Also Youji is disrespectful and scorns the sacred-ness of Aya's endless internal monologues about how his SISTER is IN A COMA and now he has ANGST and GRIEVING, and is also shockingly not actually psychic.
If there was anyone he was angry with, it was Yohji. He gazed darkly at the flower arrangement before him as he replayed the sentences Yohji had said to him in his mind. How dared he? How dared he to suggest he, Aya, had sex while he had spent the whole night next to his sister? Had he no respect for the grief of others?!
Of course, Yohji didn't know about his sister. No one did of Weiß. Only Manx and Persia knew about her existence, because they provided a place for her to stay. But no one else knew about Aya-chan. And they didn't have to.
Yes, Youji, how dare you suggest Aya was tired because he was out doing something perfectly ordinary and unremarkable when he was actually spending the entire night hamstrung over the secret angst he hasn't told you about and you have no way to know is even an issue? You callous plebe. You should magically know all about how Aya is suffering even though he hasn't told you anything about it and doesn't want to because... uh, because Aya's angst is sacrosanct? I got nothin'.
Aya is distracted from this latest wangst-fest by oh goodie it's Keiko again and she's staring at him in awestruck fascination and devotion and love because it's not like any of these people actually do any work at work. Nope, it's just longing looks, pointless and nonsensical disagreements, and wangst-breaks. That sound you just heard was Omi and Youji going to join Ken on the couch to bicker over the remote. Is anything actually going to happen here or is it just going to be endless iterations of Aya and Keiko staring at one another in awestruck devotion and completely failing to do anything about it because they're both secretly in eighth grade?
Short answer: Nope.
Long answer: Nope with significant glances, maidenly blushes mantling Keiko Sue's porcelain cheeks, 'sakura festivals' and yet more Aya-angst because HIS SISTER IS IN A COMA.
Next scene: nothing continues to happen. Weiss clear up the shop, the Sue sulks because apparently she's too snowflakey to be involved in cleaning-up and... this means Weiss are totally excluding her? Ken and Omi reappear from whatever plot hole they vanished down while all this angsting and staring go on and have some kind of sparring match... with brooms... in the middle of the shop... and Sue pouts because she wants to play but doesn't actually say anything to the effect because who even fucking knows at this point, but Omi's Sue-Wangst-Dar goes off and he invites her to join in. Ken drags Youji into it, then Daddy Aya shows up and spoils everyone's fun by being a colossal party-poop. Keiko angsts about this as well but cheers up when she realizes Aya brought her a special order of take-out tempura which he magically knows she loves OMG Aya/Keiko OTP he knows her take-out order they r ment 2 b u gaise!
Then Manx shows up to give the team a mission, finally injecting some momentum into this exceedingly torpid string of scenes in which not very much happens at length. But first, here's yet another tedious paragraph of Aya angsting because HIS SISTER IS IN A COMA. But at least something might actually be about to happen now, right? Right?
Except... the story seems remarkably vague about what that something actually is.
"Persia has another mission for you guys." She showed the tape, handing it over to Omi. The young assassin sprinted to the video recorder and a moment later, they all listened intensely to Persia's orders.
"So that's it?" Yohji sounded slightly surprised. "That's all we have to do? Most missions Persia gives to us are more difficult." He raised his eyebrows and gazed expectantly at Manx.
"If you want to say it that way, yes, this is all you have to do. But," she said in a warning voice, letting her gaze wander among the members of Weiß, "don't underestimate it. You might find it more difficult in the end than any other mission you've had so far."
So this briefing, in brief, would appear to run:
PERSIA: Men of Weiss, go and do a thing.
WEISS: Oh my God, this thing we have to do may be the most dangerous thing we have ever done!
Let me see if I've got this straight. Weiss have been given a mission, and it's supposedly easy, but it could also be very dangerous, and the team are all reacting like they're surprised to know it's dangerous because it looks so routine, and they all seem to know exactly what they've been asked to do... and the only problem is that at no point does the story feel the need to let the readers in on any of it. Seriously story, what are Persia's orders and what is happening. I mean, did you get an actual briefing out of any of that? Because if you did please let me know, I've read it three times and am still none the wiser about what the tits is supposed to be going on - except, as is standard for Suefic missions, it's like really dangerous and awesome and also has to be tonight because actually taking time to prepare for these things is for losers.
Manx vanishes, Aya goes upstairs to angst and plan the mission, except not because it's already been planned and Aya knows this because he's an author's pet and read the adventure pack while the GM was getting the pizza. The end. All right and that made no sense at all. Onward.
Right, the ficcer still doesn't know what scene breaks are for because once again we're opening on the same scene five seconds later. The rest of the team plus Mary Sue adjunct decide it might not hurt to actually read the frickin' data pack Aya - or as Youji calls him, their 'ice-cold leader' - is too awesome to bother with, perhaps in the hope that they might find some actual plot in there. What they actually find is yet more confirmation that Aya has every right to be obnoxiously above-it-all because he knew everything that was on there already without having to look at it, total omniscience and the ability to read briefing papers through sealed envelopes being yet another of his formidable array of author's-pet powers. Ken goes after him to tell him to read the fucking things anyway. You tell him, Ken! This leaves Omi in the basement with the Sue and what's she doing? She's angsting of course!
"Scared, Kei-chan?" The young boy walked next to her, his eyes filled with sympathy and friendliness.
Keiko shook her head. "Not scared, just confused," she confessed quietly. "I don't understand anything of what has happened in the basement."
Nor do I, Keiko. Yup, in an entirely artificial attempt to generate suspense, we the readers are still not being let in on what the actual fucking mission is. Ho hum.
The rest of the scene is just Keiko getting changed, seeing Aya leave the shop and drive away from her bedroom window, then angsting about it because she's decided, for some utterly inexplicable reason, that with about an hour to go before a mission His Lordship is insisting must be done now for I Am The Master And Commander Of All You Bitches Aya has randomly decided now is the moment to leave her (and also the rest of the team) forever. Omi swoops in to comfort Keiko's entirely self-inflicted hurts again since, because she's a Sue, she gets coddled for this display of self-indulgent, adolescent emo instead of being told to borrow a clue, get a grip and stop being so obnoxiously needy all the time. It's about as fascinating as it sounds. Next!
Next up we've got Aya again and in a massive break with tradition, he is angsting. Anyone with an even tentative grasp of series canon, never mind fanfic cliche, has probably worked out that he was headed to the hospital when Keiko saw him leave. Didn't you guys get the circular? HIS SISTER IS IN A COMA!
This means we're all set for the standard Angsty Hospital Scene as Aya brings flowers to his sister's bedside and talks to her about His Fucking Problems for a bit because he's seen soap-operas, he knows how this works. He tells her about the Vague Mission of Vagueness they're all going on - no, we mere readers have still not been made privy to any actual information about this - and that he might not be coming back. Then he wishes her farewell and leaves with his lineface screwed firmly into position, though we are assured that internally he crying bitter tears of the deepest and most heartfelt angst. In a better story this might actually be quite a touching scene but I'm so bored and annoyed by this fic's take on Aya and the endless harping-on about Aya's Fucking Problems that I just can't care.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch Weiss are sitting round gathering dust and waiting for their Lord and Master to return so he can tell them if they're allowed to go out after curfew or not. Aya reappears, the team all express massive relief that he is too cool to acknowledge and he goes upstairs to get ready for the mission for the second time. But wait, this time it's Ken's turn to shill for Keiko's nonsensical Aya-Is-Leaving-Me angst so he goes after Aya and tells him that... well, Keiko was angsty because she thought he was leaving her. Aya tells him, in almost as many words, that she's being stupid and thank God someone finally said something is all I can say.
Back at the shop Keiko is unsure if she should be relieved or annoyed that Aya didn't actually leave them forever because he dared to leave the house alone, like absolutely nobody but her thought was even a possibility. Co-dependency, thy name is Keiko Hasibashitsashi... oh, Hell, it begins with an H. Oh, and now Aya's katana makes him He-Man because Keiko can barely lift the bloody thing (the average weight of a katana, by the by, is usually between two and three pounds). I don't know if I'm more annoyed by Keiko's constant insistence that everything Aya does makes him an earth-bound man-god, or if I'm more annoyed that the narrative can't go more than a few hundred words without desperately trying to back her up...
Right, off Weiss go on their incredibly awesome but also massively vague mission of mission-ness. No surprises, this is happening:
She felt rather nervous about the prospect she would team up with Aya for this mission. Once again, she was overwhelmed with an internal conflict. A chance to work together with Aya and to show him what she was capable of filled her with excitement. Perhaps he would finally start to notice her. On the other hand, the quiet, mysterious young man terrified her. She wasn't much of a talkative person herself, but Aya was even worse and his silence always worked on her nerves.
Okay. So, Aya and Keiko are heading off on a mission together because Plot Contrivance, one they have been informed could easily lead to both their deaths, and she's sitting there blushing and rubbing her knees together because KYAAAA I HOPE SENPAI NOTICES ME TODAY? Case closed, Keiko is a fifteen-year-old girl who hasn't quite worked out that being a member of an elite team of assassins is not exactly the same as being placed in the same class as that kawaii bishie you've had your eye on since middle school.
The journey passes with Keiko drooling all over everything from Aya's tendency to wildly break the speed limits but still look like he's amazingly confident of his ability to not get pulled over while wearing bad-ass assassin gear with a live sword in the trunk, and his devil-may-care disregard of seat belt laws. Oh em gee, Keiko, bad boys are so dreamy. Fortunately for Persia's blood pressure Aya does not get pulled over for his flagrant and pointless disregard of traffic safety and meets up with Ken at the site. Considering that Aya broke the speed limit all the way to the site, Ken must have traveled by portal to have gotten there with enough time to check out the site and tell Aya that the guards pass the gate every ten minutes. Here the ficcer finally deigns to explain what 'the site' actually is and about the only surprise is it's not an abandoned warehouse - it's actually just a generic two-storey building which may or may not have 'laboratories' underground. Then Aya points out that Omi and Youji have arrived and the mission actually begins.
So, does this mean anything's actually going to happen? Well... no, not really.
Okay, so Aya and Keiko infiltrate the building together, blah blah blah. To spare the ficcer having to come up with anything for Youji, Omi and Ken to do, they all immediately vanish, leaving the comm to go dramatically dead. DUN DUN DAH. Keiko also vanishes about two paragraphs later. Aya then declares there are only three minutes for them to find the target in - why? Why three? What's going to happen after then that's going to make the mission impossible? Is the target expecting company? Is the security system going to come back on? Is a bomb going to go off? Is the entire complex filling with a deadly neurotoxin that will kill Aya dead if he's not out in precisely three minutes? Are the three readers all going to give up in boredom and frustration if nothing's happened by then? It's never explained, there just are - so he just has to go ahead and find and kill the target himself.
Spoiler: He fails. You suck, Fujimiya!
So what exactly does happen? Well... not much. It's clearly supposed to be creepy and eerie but mostly it's just boring and kind of a letdown. The three minutes run out and absolutely nothing happens at the end of them except Aya walks into a room sunk into dramatic darkness where he's spoken to by the standard Ooky Disembodied Voice of Evil. Said voice quotes Clannad lyrics at him (yes, more Last Rose of Summer nonsense) and tells Aya it's his song because did you know I've got your Sue and also all your other friends, but mostly just your Sue?
There was a stunned silence from Aya's side as the words silently seeped into his mind. All her lovely companions are faded and gone. Anger welled up in him. "What have you done to them?!" he shouted. Omi. Ken. Yohji. Keiko… "What have you done to them?!" he repeated again, running without knowing into which direction, trying to ignore the sharp pain in his heart when he thought of Keiko.
The voice laughed again. "Run, you fool. Run until the end of days. You'll never catch me."
Left utterly bereft at the loss of his Sue (and also the others but they don't really count in the face of Keiko's shy purple-haired loveliness, amirite?) Aya collapses, apparently catches fire (except not), then passes out. End of chapter.
Next time on The Last Rose of Suethor: something actually happens?
So that was Chapter One, in which Weiss grew a Sue, took a curiously ill-defined mission, then collectively vanished into a plot hole. In Chapter Two, also known as Chapter Two, we find out what's on the other side of that plot hole whether we want to or not. But first we have to brave more author's notes, in which our Proxy Suethor pats herself on the back for writing so much so quickly - again, all this means is you put a lot of words onto paper, not that any of those words are necessarily any good or in this case remotely interesting - and then warns us that Aya's going to be going even more OOC than he was last chapter. Presumably because if he was IC he wouldn't want to pitch woo at Keiko and that would never do.
Once again we get that warning that Aya's hooking up with a Sue and some more Clannad lyrics before the actual chapter kicks off with... oh, boy. More first-person Aya-angst. Thanks, story!
So, what's Aya actually angsting about? He's having yet another stupid dream sequence in which he floats about the place angsting because he's a killer and all his family and friends are dead and so is Keiko Sue, but mostly Keiko because SHE IS THE IMPORTANT ONE HERE BITCHES. Oh Keiko. Fairest and most beauteous of Sues. Why, she gave him tingly feelings in his no no place and oh how he wishes he'd had the courage to tell her that he liked her, you know, like that, but now she is dead, dead, dead. Why, just thinking of her beauteous name gives Aya stabbings of angst and pain deep inside his breast, or just perhaps heartburn.
Fortunately for him Keiko Sue appears to him in a glowing cloud of purple light though for Maximum Dramaz he has magically forgotten both the sound of her voice and what she looks like, even though he was harping on about how totally fucking significant she was to him two paragraphs before. Anyway Keikosprit reaches to Aya, who takes her hands, and the ficcer takes a moment to remind us that she totally has dark red eyes before the first-person dream sequence is mercifully curtailed by a row of asterisks.
Aya wakes up again, this time in bed in a fantasy bedchamber and runs through various iterations of Oo Me Head and Oo Me Arms and Oo Me Tongue is Sticking to the Upper Part of Me Mouth. Keiko Sue is of course holding his hand and mooning all over him, though the ficcer's under the impression that not mentioning her name might make who had been watching over Aya While He Was Sleeping a mysterious mystery trying to be charmingly vague about that as well, and the minute he wakes up she nags Ken, who's been promoted from 'Sir Barely Appearing in this Fic' to 'Florence Nightingale, Except She's Like A Guy And Keeps Being Called a "Soccerboy" For Some Reason As If That Was Actually A Thing', to come tend to Aya even though he's already busy. Oh, and he's still having trouble remembering who the Sue is even though he's totally fucking obsessed with her and her well-being:
In the doorway stood a young woman, with long purple hair, a white nightdress and bandage around her head. It took a while before he realized who she was. He wanted to call her, to ask her what had happened, but there came no sound over his lips. When he noticed he was unable to speak, he just laid, watching Keiko until she turned around to let Ken in.
Right, so Aya gawks at the Sue and her nightgowned hot for a bit. Ken then wanders in and, um...
Ken didn't say a word as he gently, but professionally started to change the bandage.
Yeah, this is what I mean about Ken's Florence Nightingale impersonation and it only gets worse when we find out that being in a generic fanatsy fanfic means he suddenly has lame healing magic powers as well now. I know you don't know what the Hell to do with him, story, but trust me - THIS IS NOT THE ANSWER.
Aya and Ken talk while Ken's doing his Hi Hi Magical Nurse-Chan Creamy Angel Kenken bit, with Ken telling Aya that they've all been transported into a Bland Deodorized Fantasyverse by the magic of plot contrivance, and Aya just kind of accepts this like he'd been told they'd all gotten food poisoning from shitty take-out. Keiko shows up again while they talk with a glass of water and Ken clearly notices that Aya's drooling all over her nightgowned hot again like a Tex Avery wolf, because he very quickly shooes her out again so he can carry on explaining that the building they were in was some kind of 'insubstantial portal' and you're not allowed to say this sounds like BS because this is Omi's idea and everyone knows Omi is TOTALLY SMART so THERE.
(There's also some bonus Ken-bashing for those as care to look for it, as Ken says Omi explained the BS theory behind teleportation to him for two hours and he still doesn't get it because Ken is stupid. He also uses words like 'zipped' instead of pseudoscience terms, which only proves it.)
Keiko shows up to deliver the dramatic explanation that Aya is covered in burns because he was burnt. There's another scene break but the ficcer still doesn't know what those are for so this is just a bit of decoration before Keiko explains (all of two seconds later) that Weiss found Aya in the middle of a napalm strike which means he can control fire. Just not very well, apparently, if he very nearly cripsy crittered himself along with half the landscape. Ken then goes onto explain that arriving in the Generic Fantasyverse has given them all equally generic elemental-style speshul powers of speshulness - Ken getting earth, which in this lame fantasyverse means Disney-Princess-Style Friend-to-Nature treehugging hippy crap rather than anything Toph Bei Fong would care to lay claim to; Omi, meanwhile is getting air while Youji ends up with water. So, you probably aren't asking, what of Keiko Sue, then? Doesn't she get lame fantasy powers too? To which the answer is, of course, but she's a beautiful and unique Mary Sue snowflake so she's getting a beautiful and unique elemental power to match.
The redhead stared blankly at her, clearly not understanding what the relation was with one of the four known elements. That was probably because she didn't have one of the four known elements, but a rather special one. "M-my element is light," she continued softly.
Of course it is.
Yup, Keiko here is embodying the sparkly Mary Suetastic element of light. Specifically, purple light. 'cause she's a Sue. This scene is excerpted in full over at the spork proper so if you're really curious for the full fascinating story of how Keiko came to discover her awesome snowflake powers (long story short, SHE TRIPPED OVER A STONE) that's where you can read it. If you don't, uh... well, carry on, I guess.
We close the scene on a note of obscene horror as Aya tells the Sue he thinks her nightdress is nice and she blushes like a twelve-year-old and notes that she could almost 'explode with happiness'. Sadly she doesn't and so the fic continues.
Next scene (picking up one rather severe RL upheaval later - let's just say it involved shifting a lot of furniture up a flight of stairs and was still massively preferable to the Sue). So, what's happening in the fanfic, then? Well, here as well we see that time is passing and stuff is happening. Why don't we get to see any of it? Because it doesn't involve Aya or the Sue, that's why. Anyway Aya spends an amazing ho-hum length of time lying in bed and being told what a snowflake he and his powers are but he thinks he's going insane because HE JUST DOES OKAY SHUT UP IT'S ANGSTY except Keiko totally makes him feel 110% better because she is such a speshul Sue. Nobody else does, mind - the fic takes pains to mention that even Omi is grating on Aya's nerves - it's just the Sue. Yes, yes, okay, Keiko is amazing and Aya adores her, get on with it.
Spoiler: They don't.
Yeah, the rest of this scene is just Aya mooning all over Keiko's hot, grabbing her hands, stammering her name, then slumping back into a pallid Victorian lethargy because he's so overwhelmed by the depth and purity of his FEELS for her beautiful face and shapely Sue ass. You know, if your romantic leads were more emotionally mature than a pair of blushing, tongue-tied middle-schoolers, this scene would have been about half the length and about ten million times less nauseating. Pro Tip, fangirl: this isn't romantic, it's just stupid. This doesn't make Aya's love look true and amazing or whatever the fuck you were going for, it makes him look like a stammering moron. Sad but true.
While we're here I've had just about e-fucking-nough of Keiko's blushing virgin routine - too bad for me that's about all we're getting from the next scene, which kicks off with Keiko mooning over Aya's sleeping beauty and going on and on about his 'true emotions' and the fact that she only dares touch him while he's too unconscious to notice it which is of course totes romantic and not creepy or inappropriate at all. Oh, and speaking of creepy and inappropriate...
Keiko reluctantly got up. She wanted to stay with this mysterious and beautiful young man, who she secretly feared and adored.
Right, so this genuinely is a cheesy category romance right down to the unfortunate implications. Glad we cleared that up.
Oh, and even Aya's katana's been Mary Sued right up and now has a huge chunk of ruby bling in its hilt, which (oh the originality!) reacts to his emotional state. Keiko then further proves she has no idea who the fuck Aya Fujimiya even is by deciding that if he'll listen to anyone, he'll totally listen to Ken. Yup. So she goes to find Ken who's standing in the garden dressed like Radagast the freakin' Brown (just without the awesome beard) being a Friend to All Living Things. He even has the adorable animal companions to prove it!
She found the soccerboy in the garden, surrounded by a greenish aura. Several animals were sitting around him and Keiko was ready to run away when she noticed there were also wolves and bears among the animals.
"Don't worry, Keiko, they won't hurt you," Ken said. "They are our guardians and they would rather die than attack us." The green light disappeared and Ken turned around with a friendly smile. "Is there something I can help you with? You seem to be troubled."
Keiko approached the group of animals apprehensively. No matter what Ken had said about those savages not attacking her, she rather didn't try it out. "Can we uh… talk somewhere privately?" she asked nervously.
Ken understood her fear and looked at a fierce grey wolf. No words were spoken - this was a conversation held at a higher level than with just words - and the wolf loped away, followed by the other animals. Ken waited until they were all out of sight before he turned to Keiko. "What's your problem, Keiko?"
No, really, this is actually happening. In this fanfic Ken Hidaka is a Disney Princess who has psychic one-to-ones with cute forest creatures.
He's also taking Omi's place as the Sue's trusted friend and confidant and it's now his job to prop up Keiko's ego and reconfirm her in her belief that Aya is absolutely the most fucking significant thing around. See, he magically just knows exactly what Keiko has come to talk to him about, HOW AMAZINGLY CONVENIENT, and instantly agrees to go and talk to Aya about his endless fucking issues. Which, in what must count as a rare act of restraint, we won't actually be seeing happen.
Right, so Aya finally drags himself out of his wangst-pit and spends several paragraphs infodumping at himself about the interior decorating he was apparently too emo to notice before, paying special attention to the Sue's favorite cushion-stuffed chair which is still redolent with the warm vanilla aroma of Sues everywhere. He then spends a way too long amount of time about taking a rose-scented, girly bubble bath and changing his smeggy pants, turning down the Maia Collection '98 because the Suethor doesn't think he'd look sexy enough like that and... that is it. What a very vital scene that was.
Next up, Omi finally reappears from whatever plot hole he fell down so that he can marvel over Keiko's shiny purple Sue powers and reassure her that she doesn't need to understand them, just use them. Oh, and he's so fascinated by Keiko and her whiny, co-dependent love for Aya that when she claims she isn't actually completely hamstrung by how much she loves him and tries to leave the room, Omi pushes her back into her chair and refuses to let her leave until she confesses that - shock of all shocks - she wubs Aya twuly. This is, of course, Keiko's cue to dissolve into a useless flub of emo again because having to (wo)man up and actually admit that she's interested in the guy she's been mooning over for the last 13,000 words is just so emotionally draining you guys!
Oh, and Omi can now turn into a fucking dove. Because STUPID FANTASYVERSE of course he can SHUT UP.
Omi leaves, Youji gets briefly namedropped (he totally still exists guys!) and then we're back to the main event i.e.: Keiko moons over Aya some more. Anyway, she goes to find him and is shocked to learn he's dragged his whiny ass out of bed and - courtesy of picking up Aya's magic ruby katana - is now in the garden (but first she's going to blush like a schoolgirl over the thought of Aya taking a bath because she's so adorably virginal and coy). So she goes into the garden and marvels over his angst-ridden hot for a while and gthen has a fit of the vapors because Aya's holding a flower and MAYBE HE'S THINKING OF SOME OTHER GIRL OHNOES blah blah fucking blah get on with it you pair of unutterably tedious and snoreworthy specimens.
Can you guess what Aya is wangsting about this time?
Yuuup. Not that the ficcer can just come out and say that, no, first we have to have yet another scene in which a pair of grown adults behave like stammering adolescents in the grip of their first crush, complete with lengthy silences, furious blushing and complete lack of eye contact. Yes, yes, we get it, Keiko is a blushing virgin and so is Aya for some godforsaken reason, can we move on now, plea--oh, wait, that means a ringside seat for the lame fantasyverse IMAX Motionmaster Cinema presentation of AYA'S GODDAMN PROBLEMS (Cert PG-13), I take it back!
"My family…" He broke himself of, trying to find a better way of starting his story. "My sister and I…" He paused again. "Give me your hand." Startled, Keiko extended her hand and Aya enclosed it protectively in his own big hand. Her hand was petite and warm and the touch of it was comforting. With his other hand, he gripped his katana, lifting it, with the hilt upwards. The ruby began to glow and the surroundings changed.
"It was summer when it all happened," Aya said softly. "It was the day before my sister's birthday. She would turn sixteen." The face of his sister appeared in front of them, like he had remembered it. "I admit I loved, and still love, my younger sister. She always managed to cheer me up." Aya closed his eyes, while before them, the story continued.
BY THE POWER OF GRAYSKULL, AYA HAS THE POWER!
Please also note that Aya is apologizing to the Sue for daring to find another woman at all significant.
Right, so Aya woos Keiko by taking her to a 3-D movie version of his own tragic past, blah blah tedious blah we've all seen the show thank you skimming forward until something new happens. Being a whiny angst-whore herself, Keiko of course eats this up and asks for dessert but oh noes she is adorably chilly, Aya, quick, tell her it's time to go inside because she's such a co-dependent idiot she won't do anything unless someone with a penis tells her it's okay! Then Omi shows up and cheerfully announces that they have a mission because yeah, everything's coming up Dungeons and Dragons but Kritiker are still totally a thing here. WORST FANTASYVERSE EVER. End of chapter.
Okay, so in this fanfic Aya has sat around and stared at a Sue, then was randomly zapped into a fantasyverse where he sat around and stared at the Sue some more. Since Chapter Three supposedly brings this tedious nonsense-pile to a close, that means something has to happen this time that isn't just staring at the Sue some more, right? I mean, right?
Skimming the disclaimer, the author's notes - no, fangirl, things are not going fast and could in fact not be moving more glacially slowly if you tied the fic to the back of a fuckin' glacier - and the thing about floral language, and yet more Clannad lyrics, we commence Chapter Three. Or, as the author knows it, Chapter Three. And, in a massive and shocking break with tradition, we... no, wait, we're just going to be opening on Aya throwing himself a one-man first-person pity party again, aren't we.
Thought so. There's nothing interesting to be said about this one either. Aya still has ridiculous self-pity problem and the cure for this is obviously going to be finding Twu Wub with the Mary Sue because applying a Sue to the affected parts three times a day makes everything better, and to prove it here's Keiko's beauteous voice of beauty quoting, yup, Clannad lyrics at him. Onward.
So Youji's still AWOL and the fangirl takes this opportunity to bash him a bit for it. I guess it slipped your notice while you were staring at Aya's hot, fangirl, but Youji is not actually stupid and does not make a habit of doing stupid things, also Ken and Omi actually like him so quit using them to editorialize. Ken is apparently attempting to find Youji with his brain and giving himself a headache in the process... but the presence or absence of Youji is, of course, of minor importance next to Keiko's soggy socks which she hasn't changed, seemingly simply so Aya can fret about it. Then she does change them. And then everyone wonders how in the Hell they could have a mission in a lame fantasyverse and... well, and then this happens, and it's stupid:
"In here." Omi opened a heavy door and they all walked quietly into the room. "You'd better take a seat," the boy suggested. "It might be quite a shock for you."
Right, so they go in and DUN DUN THEATRICAL BULLSHIT DRAMA BUTTON DAAAAH--
From a shadowy corner, a woman stepped further into the room. She had stunningly bright red hair, much like Aya's hair, and piercing green eyes. Her crimson hair fell down in large, elaborate curls. She wore a red silken robe and she carried an ornated crafted staff. But she was still the same Manx they knew from the other dimension.
"Manx!" Ken exclaimed with a startled gasp. "What are you doing here?!"
Yeeeeeah totally unsurprisingly it's Manx. This is, like, the precise opposite of shocking, story. Weiss find themselves in an alternate universe and are mysteriously assigned a mission BY THE SAME PERSON WHO ALWAYS ASSIGNS THEM MISSIONS. Shocking would be, I don't know, a giant marmot in a blue fez, maybe, but not the one person they could reasonably have expected to be involved in assigning them a freaking mission! Geez!
Right, so Manx shows up and inexplicably knows fucking everything about Weiss and their mission and also about the fact she totally has an identical twin sister in the non-lame-fantasyverse canon setting. All this comes out in a lengthy and nonsensical infodump, which is quickly followed by their actual mission. So, 16,632 words in, with a mere 6,512 words to go, an actual plot shows up. And it's rubbish. Basically there are some baddies - here called 'Shadow Wizards' - who want to cause worldwide chaos because I 'unno, and Weiss have to stop them with their snowflake powers. Omi has a sobbing meltdown because Lame Fantasyverse Persia was delivering this briefing courtesy of, uh, wobbly... column thing. Everyone else stays behind to comfort him while Manx rounds off the infodump for Aya and Aya alone regardless of how many 'mild glares' he shoots her for, uh, considering him worthy of actually getting shit explained to him. Aya Is Weiss's Daddy, Fuck Their Actual Leader.
What this basically means is that Manx leads Aya into a corridor and delivers another string of lengthy infodumps about how all of Weiss's Lame Fantasyverse Counterparts are dead, dead, dead. Because, you know, three trained killers who've all been repeatedly placed in harm's way would be completely incapable of contemplating their own mortality because they all have really big eyes. This. Is. Stupid.
No less stupid are the actual backstories. They've been excerpted here. Read on for the Cliffs Notes versions.
(But first we've got to sit through a dull, tedious scene between Omi, Ken and Keiko that serves to do absolutely nothing but waste time, go nowhere and establish once again that Aya is the most important thing ever and the Sue, as his handmaid, is second only to him. Even when they're safely by themselves Omi and Ken have nothing on their minds but propping up Keiko's ego by giving her endless buttpats and going on about her unending, tedious relationship angst that SIMPLY WOULD NOT BE AN ISSUE IF EITHER SHE OR AYA COULD ACT LIKE GROWN-UPS FOR FIVE MINUTES ARGH. The idea that either of these characters might have anything going on in their lives that did not immediately involve Aya or the Sue is, apparently, too radical to contemplate.)
Right, lame fantasyverse backstories. These are basically identical to Weiss's canon backstories, they just all tragically die during the event that canonically precipitated them onto the team... except when you're looking at Ken. See, instead of giving lame fantasyverse Ken a past that sounds even remotely like what happened to him in the series, the ficcer instead decides she's going to go with this ridiculous heap of totally irrelevant twaddle:
Ken was a knight of the king, son of a noble family and a promising swordsman. In fact, his life had been quite pleasant, with all the courts and training. His death, it seemed, was only an accident. When he was with a friend, a group of knights, young men as well, had challenged Ken for a duel. Ken couldn't refuse that, and although he had drank a bit too much and was quite unsteady on his legs, he had accepted the challenge. It proved to be fatal when a sword slit through his armour and through his heart.
See? SEE? What the flaming fuck was that? I don't care how hammered he was, ARMOR DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!
Right, so we breeze past Aya, Youji, Omi and (apparently) Ken's backstories and onto Keiko's. Which, because the ficcer doesn't want to leave anything to chance, we are immediately informed is the angstiest and most tragic of the lot! You vill pity this character mach schnell, schweinhund!
Yeah, this is kind of a tall order because not only is Keiko an annoying Sue her backstory is also by far the stupidest and is far too busy being wangst-filled and tragic to remember to make sense. Long story short daddy got a Sue instead of a son, so, uh... he decided to keep her alive for eleven years so he could use her as a stress doll then off her, instead of offing her immediately and saving a lot of time and money. But it served to make Aya predictably enraged and that's all these emotastic Sue backstories are ever really aiming for so, uh, mission accomplished, I guess?
Then Aya goes to put on his asskicking gear and discovers Keiko left him a significant flower. Aww, how puke-tastically adorable of her.
Next up, Weiss are looking for Youji and Ken has given up on using lame magic to try and find him because he's getting a headache but doesn't want to admit it, which is funny because I seem to remember him actually saying 'this lame power is giving me a headache' - or words to that effect, anyway - at the beginning of the freaking chapter. Of course, the Sue's gone one better and is using a map to create a flashing 'THIS WAY TO THE OTHER GUY' marker. Except that's not working either because Snowflake Powers. Aya orders them all to get ready for the mission and says he'll look for Youji himself, but not before he asks Keiko to label 'all the taverns' on her Map of Speshul then thanks her for the flower and makes her blush like a ten-year-old and tremble. Once again, this character is supposed to be an adult.
Moving on, and... oh, it's this bit. Damn this is gonna hurt. Here goes.
So Aya - who not only has a horse but can ride it too, because being bamfed into a lame fantasyverse means you get the trade skills to match, apparently - goes on a whistle-stop tour of all the drinking holes in the town and of course finds Youji propping up the bar at the shittiest of the shittiest, because... uh, because Youji, I guess. Aya rocks up and asks Youji where he is so Youji tells him to leave him alone (this all happens magically, for the usual why-the-fuck-not reason). Aya, soul of tact and delicacy that he is, storms over, berates Youji for 'sinking so low' and 'abandoning his friends' because feeling low and going out for a drink is forbidden now, of course, and...
Well. And this happens.
The enraged Fire Mage grabbed the Water Mage at his shirt and lifted him up from his place. "You traitor."
That was enough to pull back Yohji from the drunken state he had been in. His fierce, green eyes flashed with anger and he pushed Aya away from him. "What did you call me?" His voice had dropped to a low, threatening tone.
"Traitor," Aya's deep voice repeated slowly. There was a silent contest between the redhead and the drunken blond man. Yohji finally raised his fist to smash it in Aya's face, but drunk as he was, he staggered backwards and he had would've fallen over the chair if Aya hadn't grabbed his wrist.
"Yohji, I know the story. It's sad, but this isn't the time for mourning over such things. There's a mission and if we succeed that, we can go back home."
Yohji blinked, then his expression grew one of deep guilt and sadness. "She died again, Aya. You don't know it. You don't understand it. She died. I'm responsible for her death… again."
Aya's bare hand slapped Yohji in his face and two amethyst eyes glared angrily at him. "Stop drowning in this self-pity!" He panted slightly of this outburst and regained his self-control. "We don't belong in this dimension," he continued in his normal, emotionless tone. "What happened here isn't your fault. We're only here to solve a problem."
You'll have to excuse me a minute, but WHAT THE FLYING FUCK?!
So, story, lemme see if I've got this straight. Aya spends the entire fic from start to... well, pretty much where we are now - that's a sizable chunk of the 18,549 words that have comprised the fic so far - whinging on and on and bloody on about how his life is a dark and tragic pit of tragic darkness because his sister is a coma and his hope is shattered and he doesn't know if he will ever be able to love again and blah blah blah blah freaking blah. He even gets first-person segments at the beginning of every single chapter just so he can whine about his fucking problems some more. This is not only perfectly okay, it's completely understandable. His past is a never-ending cavalcade of angst, pain and tragedy and should be treated with respect.
Youji vanishes into a plot hole toward the end of Chapter Two to do what I know not because the fic never goes into it. During this time he finds out that the woman he loved is dead in both his reality and the lame fantasyverse he's stuck in. He goes to get miserably drunk then spends 32 words explaining why he's drowning his sorrows, and for his pains he gets branded a 'traitor', slapped in the face and told to get over it. By Aya. Who's spent most of the rest of the fic... yeah, see above.
Right.
Okay.
This isn't annoying or hypocritical of characters or author at all.
Oh, and while he was drinking Youji's horse was made into glue. What is this, Let's All Shit On Youji: The Musical? This is the most obnoxious thing I've read since... well, probably since the last fic I read where Youji got gratuitously shat on while the ficcer sung Aya's praises and heaven knows I'm not exactly short on those. Let's move on.
Youji gets cleaned up and Ken gives him a magic drunkenness cure that just leaves him with a massive hangover because sure, that's exactly what you need when you're going off to fight 'shadow wizards', whatever they are. Aya is apparently acting friendly to him (that's why he slapped him in the face!), and everyone goes and grabs more horses and rides off into the pale midnight moonlight to the dramatic climax, while Keiko angsts about Aya knowing it was her who left Aya a flower (um, did she really believe he'd assume, say, Ken did it? Think, girl!) and otherwise babbles on and on about Aya Aya Aya Aya Aya. Then she nearly gets thrown by her horse which magically brakes because... uh, Aya told it to or something? Anyway, everyone has to dismount and walk because Aya says so and he's a totally caring horsie-dad now as well and--
--yeah, you know I think I've just realized what's been bugging me about this. This scene is a really perfect example of the ficcer's failure to show rather than tell. We know Aya is supposed to be treating Youji like a friend and he totally loves and cares for his horsie because Keiko has decreed it is so, not because we've actually seen any evidence that Aya's doing anything of the sort. We're just supposed to take the Sue's word for it. Because it's not like she's sickeningly infatuated with him and could possibly be at all bias-- oh wait.
ANYWAY. Shadow Wizards. Beware, Weiss! For Keiko's snowflake powers have revealed that they are... really kinda fuckin' generic.
Glimpses of amorphous, spectral creatures dwelling in murky places flashed through her mind. They had no faces, no limbs, nothing that could identify them as human beings. She glanced at Omi, who still walked further with no trace of anxiety on his face. The others also appeared unconcerned, which meant only she had seen it. She bit her lip and hobbled a bit faster, until she walked next to Aya.
"Aya-kun?"
"Hm?"
"The creatures we're going to fight aren't human," she blurted out before she lost all her courage she had just scraped together.
KEIKO'S INABILITY TO STAND UP FOR HERSELF OR EVEN HOLD A FRICKIN' CONVERSATION WITHOUT TURNING INTO A FRIGHTENED LITTLE BUNNY IS. NOT. CUTE wait, what was I actually talking about here? Oh yeah, boring generic monsters! Oh, and once again we see a fanfic version of Weiss doing precisely no groundwork at all before running after the Badnasty of the Day. Great. You go, guys, that won't backfire on you at all.
Aya decides he can't be bothered to listen to that, which throws Keiko back into a self-pitying flub. Omi comforts her and they all go to rock up at the - okay, we're at the villains' evil castle of evil and not only are Weiss going to just walk in and attack them with no problems at all, the world-fuckingly evil bad guys are apparently all hanging out in one room. And they're just shadows. And they're weak against sunlight. And they're ten times stronger at night but no we're gonna just roll in and attack them at fucking midnight anyway because Aya says so and everyone has to do what he says or else. Oh, and apparently there are only five of them.
Getting the impression that these villains 1) suck, 2) were winged in at the last moment when the ficcer realized that something ought to actually be freakin' happening in this stupid damn fanfic and 3) suck? Go with it. We've struggled through 21,204 words of fuck-all happening at painful length oh and also some baddies are doing bad things, stop them, and now we've finally reached the pasted-on final showdown between good and evil, well...
Okay, you ready for this? Because this, in its entirety, is the final showdown.
They were sinister, dark, and horrible. There were five of them, scattered through the room, mixing with the current shadows or glibbering over the walls and ceiling to dark places. There was hardly any light, but they made enough slithering noise to locate them.
The five assassins of Weiß stood transfixed to the ground. It was as if a spell had been cast upon them, that let fear creep into their hearts. But Aya shook it away and barked, "Keiko! Create light!" The Fire Mage lifted a hand and a flaring colomn of fire shot through the gloomy room.
Aya's voice brought her back to reality and she flushed slightly for not thinking of it herself. As she had explained not that long ago, the shadows couldn't stand light. And light was, after all, her element.
The Light Mage rose her hand as well, and a radiating glow surrounded her, intensifying with the second. The rest broke free from their spell as well, grabbing for their weapons or using their magic. Keiko let the bright light fill the room. She couldn't use it for offensive meanings, but she could make it impossible for the Shadow Wizards to find a shadowy place to hide.
The Shadow Wizards shrieked with pain, as light threatening to evaporate them. Aya continued casting beams of fire to the creatures, and the other three had started to use their powers as well. Trees, plants and forest animals appeared out of nowhere, the Air Mage tried to blow up walls and the Water Mage created huge streams to wash away the Shadow Wizards of the room. Keiko had nearly covered the whole room with her purple light and their opponents started to panic.
POOF! One by one, the dark Wizards exploded into nothingness. When the last one disappeared, a tear formed itself in the middle of the room. It was the portal they needed to go back to their own dimension.
Right. So, in this dramatic finale:
- When Weiss show up, the evil villains are gibbering and flailing aimlessly around a single room like demented moths;
- Their sinister world-fucking plans can be foiled by someone showing up and turning the bleedin' lights on;
- Keiko needs to be reminded that she has magical powers of light by a man because she's a complete incompetent;
- The rest of Weiss are completely irrelevant to this process but they do magic at stuff anyway to try and hide it;
- No, seriously, Ken, are you just summoning your magical forest friends because it feels good to be a gangsta?
- The shadow wizards don't actually bother fighting back, they just keep flailing around until the Sue explodes them;
- And defeating the baddies magically allows Weiss to return home even though this was never mentioned before.
Okay, so everyone jumps through the Magic Time Tunnel and Aya wakes up back in his own bed where Ken casually reveals that he's been comatose for days and nobody thought to take him to a hospital because... uh, no idea. Maybe it was a special coma. Ken then says he needs to stay in bed for two weeks because he has a concussion, but this must be a special concussion too because Aya doesn't seem to realize he has it. Ficcer? I have been concussed twice. Trust me, you want to stay in bed. Aya asks for water, Ken leaves, calls Aya his best friend then and takes his OOC with him, and Aya... yeah, so the others show up to talk to him but they don't count because Not The Sue, where is the speshul Sue?!
Sadly, she takes this as her cue to arrive and being instrumental in saving the world with precisely no effort at all hasn't led her to grow a spine: she's still blushing and stammering and acting like normal social interactions are totally beyond her. Again, NOT CUTE. Anyway Keiko asks Aya what happened when he dived into the Time Tunnel and oh look it's some late-arriving wangst and speshul. Just what Aya needed.
The creature laughed. "You fool. You think you can eliminate us. But as long as there is light, there are shadows. You provided a perfect hiding place for us, friend." More and more slithering and hissing sounds emerged from my own shadow.
I took a few steps back, drawing nearer towards the closing portal. It was futile, the Shadow Wizards simply moved along with me. I cast a glance over my shoulder. It wasn't completely futile. Yet. If I only could use my power to hold the portal open…
"Welcome to our group… Fire Mage!"
A Shadow Wizard leaped forward, but I quickly raised a shield of fire. Dimmed cries of agony and choking sounds reached my ears, but I ignored them. The portal was almost gone now. In a desperate attempt, I hurled all the power I possessed towards it, then pushed myself through it, with only one thought flashing through my mind.
Keiko…
... which is all very ooky and creepy and all, but there's one problem: we already know Aya is home safe. This? It's an entirely gratuitous drama bomb that adds nothing, goes nowhere, and has absolutely no relevance to anything at all - because Aya decides that he can't possibly tell Keiko any of it and then tells her he wants to sleep and she goes away all angsty and emo because ohnoes he's rejecting me - but wait, Aya's left a bunch of deeply fucking significant flowers in her room (their meanings, respectively, are I love you, first love, your presence soothes me, I can't live without you, I'll always be true, thank you for understanding, take care of yourself for me and everlasting love because we haven't over-egged this pudding significantly enough yet) and he tags along after her because as an assassin Keiko has no peripheral vision and is entirely incapable of hearing that she's being followed.
And that, apart from the inevitable confession of love and the equally inevitable kiss scene is - finally, mercifully - THE END.