5 - Toko Fukawa - Versus a Cartoon Menace

With graduation drawing close, Toko Fukawa, the Ultimate Writer, was in the library studying diligently, to the apparent exclusion of all else. Eating... bathing... even writing and indulging in fantasies, to some extent, were banished from her mind as she kept her nose in the books.

Needless to say, with an occupant as inviting as Toko, the library was mostly empty, allowing her to focus... Except that one person had shown up to join her. The table was a strange scene: Toko's side was piled high with all kinds of business technical literature she'd never ordinarily read, while the other side was relatively empty except for rudimentary end exam material from another school entirely.

As Toko tried to wrap herself around a complicated supply chain concept for operating businesses, she heard raucous laughter coming from the woman across from her. She slammed her hands on the table in front of her and shouted her frustration. "Komaru, th-that's it! Your library pass is hereby revoked! I'm t-trying to study here! And also... you're not even studying, you blockhead!!"

Her unlikely friend peered around the comic she was reading, raising an eyebrow. "Huh? You can't actually kick me out, right? This isn't your library!"

"W-well it sure isn't YOUR library! You're not even a s-student here!" Toko reminded her.

"Oh, quit it. I know how lonely you get without a study buddy, Toko. If I'm gonna have to hit the books, might as well be here. But why are YOU studying? Studying that, I mean. I kinda assumed that graduating from Hope's Peak meant you get to go wherever you want. Why are you trying to get into a business school?"

Instead of answering, Toko simply looked gloomy, beginning to chew at one of her nails. When she saw Komaru was waiting for her, she clicked her teeth and glanced at a point on some far-off wall. "Master Byakuya... It hit me suddenly, just last night. W-when Master Byakuya graduates... how am I going to see him again?! The easiest way is if I'm qualified to transfer into any business program he enters or work at his company!!"

"Is that really the easiest way?! Are companies really gonna hire you considering your... uh... work history? Feels like you're more of a 'freelance novelist' type."

"It's the only way! And studying is the only way to take my mind off the fact that... I wasted so much time here, not b-basking in his presence... like studying, here with you! Ugh... I c-can't believe I'm gonna have to subsist off fantasies from here on out... Well, unless I can properly prepare. So shut it! What are you even giggling about, anyway?! Isn't that a manga? Don't you know comedic manga is the l-lowest form of entertainment, lower than fanfiction?!"

"Well, I know that's your opinion of it," Komaru replied, still looking puzzled. "But c'mon, this is a classic! Rude Ruffian is a household name, although I guess he's more popular from anime. The wily dog that outsmarts all kinds of grouchy adults, know-it-alls, and villains! And also... I'm not laughing! Yeah, Rude Ruffian is funny, but this is actually a volume I already read."

"So you're not just reading manga to bother me and keep from studying, you're reading OLD manga that isn't even funny? Are you g-gonna be okay? Actually... why are you lying about laughing? It's just us t-two here, and I know I heard someone laugh."

As if on cue, a sound like an obnoxious, whooping laugh came from a table at the back of the library. Somebody was sitting there... No, not someone. Some thing, and it was something both of them recognized. After all, they'd just been looking at him just a moment ago.

Straight from the covers of an old comic, it was a black-and-white dog... or some kind of dog. He wasn't any readily identifiable breed, but his body was long, and he had human-like hands and legs, as well as a tie and a fedora. His lack of details and beady, button-like eyes marked him as something that didn't belong in the world of humans, even before Toko saw the strange way he flowed between still images like a hand-drawn animation.

Komaru let out a shout. "Oh my God!! It's Rude Ruffian!! The cartoon character!! T-Toko, how are you not freaking out right now?!"

Toko turned back to Komaru with a pitying smile. "Right, you're not from around this school... We have a stuffed bear as a headmaster... This thing is obviously the same p-principle."

"Rude Ruffian is your principal?!"

"Not that kind of principle!" Toko groaned. "Anyway, I'm saying he's not a living, breathing cartoon character, he's a r-robot. Probably something one of those egghead programmers cooked up or something. The bigger question is... w-why's he in the library bothering me?! I'm gonna go over and find his off switch-"

"Oh no!" Komaru shouted, grabbing Toko's arm when she rose. "No no, you definitely can't do that."

"W-Why not? Don't tell me you're p-picking him over your friend! So I mean less to you than the d-dumbest most obnoxious cartoon dog?! I get how it is-"

"No, Toko," Komaru interrupted her, rolling her eyes. "I'm saying you can't do it because Rude Ruffian will win."

"Win...? I'm n-not gonna challenge him to an arm-wrestling contest or something. I'm gonna turn him off."

"No! Look, Toko, I've read a whole bunch of Rude Ruffian comics. There's even a specific one where a mean old librarian tries to make him be quiet, and she ends up totally humiliated! That's gonna be you if you try to mess with him."

"M-mess with him?! I'm trying to make him be quiet in the library! Is that a crime?!"

"It's not about what I think, it's about the spirit of the comic. Also, this looks like the old version of Rude Ruffian before they started targeting him towards kids, when he was still targeted to older men, so what I'm trying to say is-"

Toko shook her hand free and began marching away. "I don't need his whole w-wiki history to deal with him! I'm not gonna waste another p-precious second of my time on this."

The strange "robot" didn't react in any way when Toko approached him, continuing to read the book in front of him and laugh away. The braying laugh seemed calibrated to **** someone to either ask him to shut up or what he was laughing about.

The student didn't intend to engage with him at all, but once she drew closer and saw what he was reading, she began to stomp even more furiously. "Hey. H-hey! What do you think you're doing, y-you two-bit Tom? What the heck is it you think you're laughing at?!"

The cartoon character looked up to her with an expression of mock surprise, as though it hadn't heard her coming. Silently, it looked between her and the book, then pointed to the title.

"Yes, I can see that! So Lingers the Ocean. I recognize it because it's mine! It's a true-to-life dramatic dark romance, a tearjerker designed to move hearts. I'm asking what you think is so funny about it. There shouldn't be so much as a dry chuckle in that work!"

The cartoon, smiling smugly, simply pointed to a page in the middle of the book, then turned it around for her, open.

Meanwhile, Komaru, who'd been watching at a safe distance, winced and shouted out to her friend. "Oh no, Toko! Don't do it, seriously!"

Ignoring her friend, the writer leaned forward to see which passage of her smash-hit novel had inspired such ridicule-

Only for Rude Ruffian to suddenly shut the book on her face, encompassing her whole head between the pages with a loud sound more like a gunshot than a meeting of pages. For a moment, Toko's arms waved in surprise as her dark pigtails twitched from the pages.

As the cartoon slowly opened the book, the young woman felt at her head, certain that she was going to be feeling a bloody mess or the mangled frames of her glasses. Instead, the whole thing felt... indescribably weird, without any texture of any kind. Toko couldn't see it, but her head had been flattened into a two-dimensional sheet with caricatured features of her face on it, the grumpy scowl of her teeth taking up half the sheet and her cracked glasses obscuring her eyes.

Before she could come to terms with that, and before her friend could do anything to help, the animal opened the book once more. As Toko yelped in terror, the book seemed to grow before her eyes in a smear-frame transition between opened and closed- this time, he shut it on Toko's entire body, leaving only her feet and fingers wiggling from the closed pages as he guffawed at her expenses.

Komaru remembered getting a chuckle watching something like this happen in a cartoon in the past, but it turned out it was a totally different feeling seeing it happen to someone you knew and liked. "Toko!! Let her go, Rude Ruffian!"

The character looked her way, smiled, and shrugged. Licking one finger, it grabbed Toko's feet and pulled her out. The young woman was both the size and thickness of a sheet of paper, excluding the out-of-place fingers, shoes, and pigtails. Her spinning eyes behind her broken glasses indicated she wasn't injured, just greatly disoriented. He held her up, inspecting her this way and that, before frowning and shaking his head. Suddenly, a light-bulb appeared over him with an audible "ding."

Komaru watched, stunned, unwilling to get close and start subjecting herself to what was happening. She buckled in for a strange few minutes.

Rude Ruffian had approached a shelf on the wall and pulled a conspicuously cartoony red book, causing the whole shelf to rotate out from the wall. Once it was flipped, a rack of what were clearly cartoon versions of dirty magazines was revealed. Taking a moment to look over them carefully, the dog broke into a grin when he saw one he liked. He pulled it off the shelf, flipped through it quickly, and selected a page. Then, he took the paper-formed Toko and slammed her between the open pages of the magazine.

Finally, he waved the magazine in the air, shaking it up until a huge centerfold pinup unfolded from its pages. It was the size of a human, and as it got all the way out, it was clear that it depicted Toko in an uncharacteristically sultry pose, looking down on a view of her reclining on a bedspread with a finger in her teeth, dressed in bold red lingerie that didn't suit her at all. Notably, she was also wearing fully intact glasses, and her holsters could be seen on her legs, one bearing her other half's Genoscissors and the other her stungun. Rude Ruffian showed it to Komaru proudly, then gave it a big wave, as if spreading a sheet. Suddenly, a three-dimensional Toko in the outfit from the magazine popped into the air, still biting her finger but otherwise looking totally bewildered. In fact, she was even more three-dimensional than she had been before: she'd definitely been rail thin before Ruffian had gotten to her, and she now had proportions to make her look at home with the women in that magazine, only with her same ill-fitting head on the shoulders. She floated in the air for just a moment before crashing to the floor gracelessly.

The author rose to her feet, humiliated and furious. She barely had a thought for the outfit she'd been **** into: instead, she was seeing red, determined to tear the animal that had done this to her limb from stretchy limb.

The cartoon character saw her fuming and starting towards him. Rude Ruffian exclaimed with the sound of a horn, then quickly turned on his heels, heading towards what, by all appearances, seemed to be an empty wall with no passage. Except, there was one: improbably, the wall had what was called a "mousehole" at floor level. He hooked his fingers into it, pulled it up to an appropriate size for him to pass through, then disappeared inside.

Toko was befuddled. She tried pulling up on it the same way he just had, finding she couldn't replicate his trick. So, she fell to her knees and reached her hand into the mousehole, squinting as she felt around inside. Somehow, she seemed confident in this course of action.

Komaru was speechless, but she tried to find the words. "Toko, uh... why don't you just take your arm out of the wall... we'll find you some clothes... a-and we'll go try to study somewhere else?"

Instead of seeing reason, Toko only barked an order at her in response, furiously. "Komaru, I've g-got him trapped! You get the hole on the otherside of the library, and we'll strangle him together."

"Are you kidding? How the heck would that work?!"

"J-Just do it! Unless you're taking his side-"

"Oh, brother!"

"You're talking about your brother at a time like this?!"

"I'm not!! Ugh, fine," Komaru whined, knowing full well that this had no chance of working from either knowledge of tropes or knowledge of how a library wall works. Still, she had to help her friend... She copied Toko's position on the opposite end of the library without enthusiasm, blushing as she realized that taking this position on the floor meant anyone behind her would be able to look right up her skirt at her butt. "Sorry I didn't come dressed for crawling..." She sighed and stuck her arm into the hole, surprised at how far she was able to get it in. It went in all the way up to the shoulder... Actually, wasn't that crazy? There shouldn't even be that much straight, empty space inside a wall like this... Somehow, the thought emboldened her, and she thought she really might be able to catch the evasive Ruffian... if she just stuck both arms in. To the certain surprise of anyone watching, she managed to fit both of her arms deep into a mousehole, her tongue working on her lips as she became determined to make this work.

Meanwhile, Toko felt something brushing against her hand and tried to pull her arm out with a nervous yelp. She managed to do so, but was startled to find another pair of hands grabbing at her from out of the hole. Improbably, they managed to snag her two pigtails.

"Got him!" Komaru declared. "Toko, I actually got him! I'm gonna be the first human being to ever catch Rude Ruffian!!"

"N-n-no, hold on-"Toko began, before she was suddenly roughly pulled to the floor by her pigtails. As stars circled her head, her friend's improbable hands began to drag her head-first into the hole, which began to make a squeaky creak as her shoulders beat against it.

Komaru, meanwhile, was tugging as hard as she could on what she apparently thought of as a part of Rude Ruffian she was holding. "Guess I'm... not so... plain and ordinary after all, huh? I gotcha noooooow!" she declared with a grunt of exertion, finally managing to pull her prey out from the wall-

Defying all logic except that of cartoon animation, Toko's entire body followed her pigtails through Komaru's mousehole. For just a moment, she was shaped somewhat like a long, extended cylinder aside from the hair Komaru was grabbing. Then, as Komaru fell on her back, Toko suddenly plumped out to human shape in the air again, falling on top of her friend.

With a wet, exaggerated noise, the two locked lips in a noisy kiss, staring in shock into eachother's eyes. As they remained that way for a good, noisy twenty seconds, Toko's glasses fell and somehow flipped midair to land on her friend's nose instead.

With a gasp, Komaru finally pushed her friend off, blushing and panting as they both lay on the floor. "T-Toko... we've gotta get outta here while we can. Rude Ruffian... can keep this up all day. He's got a bottomless bag of tricks!"

Toko let out a big, frustrated groan as she wiped her lips clean of her friend's saliva. "You're right! I'm done playing with this guy." Before her friend could get hopeful, Toko reached for her hip, pulled out the stungun.

"No, Toko! That isn't gonna work!"

Ignoring Komaru's protests, Toko fired it. She wasn't aiming at the cartoon dog that had reappeared in the center of the room, leaning against a table and checking his nails without concern. Instead, she was shocking herself. As the electricity briefly ran through her, her eyes grew wide and red. Her hair stood on end, and her tongue shot out of her mouth, giving her the look of a cartoon character, herself... Until the tongue remained out, dangling horrifyingly as she fixed her wild eyes on her hated enemy. "Ta-daaaaa! Sorry to keep you waiting, fans around the world! It's the only character more popular than Mickey, Donald, and Goofy put together: the Ultimate Murderous Fiend, Genocide Jack is here! Sorry, Scooby Doo, but Toko's asked me to put an end to your little Guest Feature Mysteries." The red-faced serial killer drew two pairs of thigh scissors from her thigh holster and brandished them theatrically. "You're about to become cut content, Ruffy! I've got a whole no-kill shtick going on right now, but cartoon **** is A-OK! I'm gonna dice you up and get a temporary tattoo of mark 38. Then, I'm gonna hope this chick who never bathes remembers to wash that crap off! Kyeeehahahaha!!"

Rude Ruffian's eyes grew wide. He gulped loudly, then turned to run-

A step too late. Genocide Jack cleared three tables in no time flat, flying through the air towards her prey with her scissors raised and open. She pounced on him, intending to dice him into pieces. Of course, he was a gag manga character, and they tended to have certain rules against taking fatal hits. The result was a flurry of slashes that transcended genres, an epic battle for the ages...

Or so it must have felt on the inside. From the outside, it looked like a cloud of smoke with all kinds of cartoonish bash and bonk noises, occasionally revealing a limb of one or the other as they duked it out.

Finally, the dust settled. The two were standing still, facing each other: Rude Ruffian with his hands wiggling at his hips like a gunslinger, Genocide Jack panting and looking spent from the battle. It was anyone's guess as to what would happen next...

... After a tense few minutes, Ruffian laughed and wiped sweat from his forehead. Whistling, his top half then turned and walked away, severed neatly in a paper cut from his lower half. Then, both halves drifted to the floor as if he'd never been anything but an ordinary drawing.

"Kyeehahaha!! Y'see, Komaru?! Sometimes, battle anime comes out on top, after all! It all comes down to shear skill. Get it?! I've got jokes too, dog boy, and unlike you, I'll be here all week! Damn, I'm good. Probably the first horrible villain to fight Rude Ruffian and come out unscathed, huh?!"

Komaru blushed. She was happy her friend was all right and this nightmare was over, but... "I think you'd better look behind you."

Raising an eyebrow, Jack frowned and attempted to look over her shoulder, turning in place to do so. She couldn't see what Komaru was talking about, of course: across the seat of her red panties, the cuts from her own scissors had split her seat open. The serrations formed block letters that also happened to reveal pale skin and her buttcrack, but didn't seem to have so much as nicked her. Of course, the letters spelled:

THE END