Sorry, I just had to do this one... ^_^
******
"Melodrama, tragedy, melodrama, sitcom...*SITCOM*?!?!?"
Nabiki did not meet Ranma's shocked gaze. "Yeah, I couldn't believe it
myself when I saw it." She cracked her knuckles. "Finding the cast for
*this* one's going to be a challenge."
"Yeah, I guess. Ain't there one that WE can do?"
"Try these." Kasumi handed Ranma two paperclip-bound stacks of paper.
"You may get a break from your 'vacation' after all."
"Two. Just *two*, out of how many scripts?"
Akane scowled at him. "Remember, this was your idea."
"I know, I know. And it does let us be fair. But still..." He
gestured through the window, where 'Ranma' was sparring with 'Ryoga' in
a scene from some work whose name he had already forgotten. "I'd like
to play myself every once in a while, you know."
"Ranma..." Kasumi sighed. "That's not us. That's various authors'
interpretations of us, but it's not us. Let them play the roles they
were made for; they don't seem to mind the name change, so long as they
get any roles."
In a studio nearby, Ryu Hoshi finished a series of martial arts katas
that Happosai would never have dreamed possible, then adjusted 'his'
Chinese shirt.
Next door, Ryoko wore an unfaked grin as she drove towards the climax of
her sex scene, thanking the kamis that appearances had mattered so
little to the author of the moment that she only needed hair dye, and
Tenchi was close enough to Kuno to pass that author's muster.
Across the way, Asuka smashed stage prop after stage prop as she
assaulted the 'lair' of the one who kidnapped 'Akane' in a blind rage.
Back in the studio headquarters, Nabiki glanced, briefly, at the list of
'employees'. A thousand Ranmas from a thousand storylines, yet none of
them could be confused with the Ranma she knew. And the money she got
for coordinating all of them... "Yeah, Ranma. No story lives forever.
Let's enjoy this paradise while it lasts, huh?"
Meanwhile, half a world away in an existence where distances beyond
line of sight all tended to be the same, a grand table of muses - mostly
figures like Prometheus and Monkey Khan and Coyote, but also including
chronologically younger faces like Sherlock Holmes - debated whether to
add another setting to their gathering.