History’s Strongest Disciple Kenichi, AKA Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple, and all related characters belong to Syun Matsuena and Funimation. Battle Rules, the fanfic being sporked, belongs to PaperFox19, who is welcome to it. Tekkaman Blade II belongs to Tatsunoko Pro, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic belongs to Lauren Faust and Hasbro, and the Protectors of the Plot Continuum belong to Jay and Acacia.
Mission One
Strange Acquaintances
Okay, Johnny thought. I’m not in my world anymore. That much is obvious. Some things are weird, some things are going to be weirder. I can accept that. But this...
“Hey, are you alright? You’ve been staring at me for a full minute now,” said the strange creature in front of him, somewhat similar in appearance to a pony laden with saddlebag almost as big as itself.
“You’re a talking horse,” Johnny pointed out, as if that explained everything.
“I’m a pony. There’s a difference,” Burning Heart corrected him, then gestured toward the door next to them, one of several in the long, otherwise featureless gray corridor. On it was a piece of notebook paper with the number 1002 written sloppily in pen. “I’m also an agent, and this is my Response Center. If you don’t have some kind of business here, I’d like to ask that you stop gawking and move along.”
For several moments, Johnny said nothing. His mouth moved, but no words came out. Yes, he’d dealt with talking Flowers already, and that was certainly bizarre, but he thought that would be the end of it as far as talking things that shouldn’t be talking was concerned.
“Oh, did you say your name was Burning Heart?” Johnny finally asked the pony, fishing in his pockets for a slip of paper. When he was assigned his partner earlier, he’d written the name down. They, that is, the Flowers, also told him he would meet his partner at Response Center 1002, and here he is...
“Yeah. Why does it matter?” Burning Heart responded with a look of mild puzzlement, but soon it dawned on him. “Wait, wait. Let me guess, you’re Johnny?”
Johnny stopped his search for the paper, his suspicion confirmed. With a nod, he tentatively held out a hand.
“Yep, that’s me. I think we’re partners.” he said with an awkward smile, wondering if ponies knew how to handshake, seeing as they didn’t have hands. This, too, was confirmed when said pony clasped his hand between his forehooves and shook it vigorously.
“Alright, great! I had a tough time getting here. Took me almost three whole hours, so I thought for sure my partner would have trouble too,” Burning Heart said, his face breaking into a grin. “But we made it here at the same time! Must be fate, or something.”
Johnny pulled his hand back, letting the pony drop back onto its hooves, and rubbed the back of his neck, a little embarrassed. “Yeah, that’s pretty...coincidental. So, uh, where do you come from? Some alien planet or something?”
“Equestria. Magical land of ponies and all that,” Burning Heart waved a hoof, brushing the question off. Turning to the door, he twisted the knob and pushed it open, then looked over his shoulder at Johnny. “Come on, let’s check it out. Oh, and you can call me BH for short.”
Johnny blinked, then blinked again. Such a casual dismissal. Sure, it might be obvious to the one who’s from that magical land of ponies, but he was hoping for something a little more detailed. Shaking his head, he followed his partner through the door into the Response Center, wondering what might lie beyond.
It was pretty bland, really. Just a generic gray room, like the generic gray hallways in the rest of the building, if it even was a building. There was a faded blue couch against the wall to the right of the door, with an equally faded green rug in front of it and what Johnny guessed was the console on the wall across from it. To the left, on the wall perpendicular to the entrance, were two doors, one of which was slightly ajar and showed a glimpse of porcelain.
“Looks pretty bare. It’s too bad I don’t have anything to add to it.” Johnny said, lamenting his lack of things to make the place look less, well, generic. Really, even just a picture on the wall would have done wonders.
Burning Heart, trotting over to the rug and shrugging off his bags with a heavy-sounding ‘fwump’, nodded in agreement. “Yeah, there isn’t really much. I don’t think it’s even been used in a while. Unfortunately, all I have in my bags is camping equipment.”
Meanwhile, Johnny was inspecting the two side rooms, the one furthest from the door that was slightly open turning out to be a bathroom with a basic, but functional, setup. The other door led to a decently sized closet, with several shelves on one side. Arranged on them were two sets of standard agent gear, including neuralyzers and Character Analysis Devices, among other things.
Grabbing a belt lined with pouches, he strapped it around his waist, finding it a little larger than necessary. Despite his best efforts to keep it somewhat balanced, when he placed a few pieces of equipment in the pouches, it sagged noticeably to one side or the other.
Finally giving up, he turned around to see his partner hopping up onto the couch, folding his legs up underneath him. Heading over, he sat down on the other end, leaning back a bit. “So, when do you think we’ll get our first mission-”
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!
Jumping at the sudden noise, Burning Heart scrambled to get up and run to the console, but tripped over his bags and went tumbling into the wall next to it with a painful crash, ending up upside down against it. Johnny ran over to help, but with a groan, the young pony waved him away and heaved, soon getting back onto his hooves. At the very least, it only took a couple of steps from there to get to the front of the console.
“Oh, hey, what do you know? It’s our first mission!” He was practically bouncing on his hooves in his excitement. A moment later, he was examining the buttons underneath the screen. “Alright, so how do we accept? This beeping is kind of a buzzkill, and I wanna see what we’re going after for our first mission.”
It only took a moment for Johnny to spot it. “It’s the big red button. Did you pay attention at all during training?”
The pony looked at the indicated button, which even had the word “ACCEPT” written helpfully across it. “Oh, huh. Actually, I kind of dozed off a few times.”
“Then move aside and let me at it. You don’t even have fingers.”
After pressing the button, the two of them read the mission briefing together.
“Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple? I’ve never even heard of that one,” Johnny said, racking his brain for any trace of knowledge of the ‘verse. Nope, definitely nothing he was familiar with. Giving up, he turned to his partner. “How about you?”
Except Burning Heart was no longer next to him. After hearing the name of the continuum they’d be going to, he had gone back to his bags, and now had several books piled up next to them. Looking up to see Johnny’s questioning look, he shrugged.
“Okay, so I looked at the library’s catalog and picked out a couple things that looked cool. I like to read,” he admitted, then dumped out the rest of the bags’ contents, loaded the books back in, and picked them up in his teeth to sling them over his back. “That’s the actual reason it took me so long to get here. I know they said that a distraction helps you get where you’re going in HQ, but I got so wrapped up in reading, I think I walked past the door a dozen times. They probably figure I’m familiar enough with the canon by now.”
A few moments of silence passed before Johnny shrugged and turned back to the monitor. Talking pony reading manga, why not?
“Well, it looks like this one is short, anyway. Only eight hundred words, and there aren’t many characters with speaking parts.” he said, then set to work opening a portal. As the shimmering blue oval manifested next to the console, Burning Heart was the first to reach it.
“Ooh, I’m feeling all tingly with excitement. Finally, I get to do something really heroic!” the young pony said, and then jumped into the portal without a second thought. When he landed in a white void, he noticed something odd. Well, apart from the white void.
Hands. He had hands. And not only that, but his tail was gone, and he was quite a bit larger, and all sorts of other little details. In fact, if he had to guess, he would say he’d just become-
“Human,” Johnny hissed into the disguised pony’s ear as he, too, came through the portal, the blue hole closing up behind him. “You need a human disguise. None of the characters in this fic are talking ponies, so I think they would notice if one suddenly appeared. And if they notice, the Sue notices. Not only would we miss out on charges, but there would probably be a good chance of death. This is why you needed to pay attention during training. Count yourself lucky I set the Disguise Generator just before you jumped through.”
“Oh, uh, right. Sorry.” Burning Heart apologized with a sheepish grin. Before he could say anything else, words materialized before the two agents, hanging in the empty white void like a message from some mysterious deity.
I own no animes or cartoons and make no profit from my fics
Warning: Yaoi
Do Not Read If You Do NOT Like Yaoi
If you do like yaoi please read and review
Reviews help inspire new fics and gives me the drive to work on others
Warning:Yaoi Group D/s M/s
Pairing:Kenichi/Tsuji
Apart of my anti uke project , harem project, rare pairing or lonely boys club project
Do not read if you do not like
Or a badfic author. Close enough.
“What do you make of this?” Johnny asked his partner, reaching out to touch one of the words, his scientific curiosity piqued. Sadly, his hand just went right through the floating text, like some sort of hologram. Disappointing.
Burning Heart shrugged. “Author’s notes, I guess. But I thought they said it would be like a voice echoing in your head-”
(AN: So those who do not know, know I have over 40 series I do fics for with at least 20 ideas in each one Naruto Bleach One Piece have the highest at over 100 different ideas, for every one shot i do i have a sequel prepared but that doesn't mean the one shots will get a sequel done. I also do not drop fics I have every single story fic planned through the basics only thing is the little details that will get messed with like who will be in the harem and how that addition will change some things, so if you have questions ask if its not super spoilers i will answer it )
“-pretty much like that,” the pony-turned-human groaned, covering his ears to try to block the deep, booming noise accompanying the author’s note. It was like some kind of horn, or something. “Sweet Celestia, what is that?”
Johnny, in the meantime, was shoving ear plugs into his ears. “I don’t know, but I’m going to charge for it,” Grabbing a notebook and pen, he started writing. “Having an author’s note within an author’s note...”
Just then, another few lines of text appeared in the air, shunting the previous block aside.
Battle Rules
Tsuji challenges Kenichi to a fight and the loser becomes the winners slave/subordinate. Tsuji loses cause he thinks he's found a fighting style that can beat Kenichi boy was he wrong.
“...within an author’s note,” Johnny quickly amended, then tapped his chin a few times before jotting something else down. “And for spoiling the fic ahead, as well as lying. I skimmed the Words, and it doesn’t even get to the slash before it just abruptly ends. ‘I don’t drop fics’ my foot.”
“Can you really charge for those last two?” Burning Heart asked, wiggling a finger in his ear in a vain attempt to get the ringing out.
“I dunno, but it looks good.” Johnny shrugged, and then grabbed his partner’s arm to drag him out of the way of a giant text plow pulled by the chapter title, which swept the rest of the floating text away.
—/
Chap 1 Tsuji's Challenge
Johnny watched the jumble of words disappear into the white, featureless horizon, and then Ryozanpaku began materializing around them.
Surrounded by a high stone wall with a slanted top, the front of which was a pair of massive wooden double doors, the complex was actually rather simple. Three buildings, two in traditional Japanese style and one more modern, made up Ryozanpaku proper. The yard between and around these buildings was well-worn by many years of martial arts masters honing their crafts, mostly consisting of a thin layer of grass with several noticeable patches of bare dirt and a few trees dotting the area.
Still with a firm grip on Burning Heart’s arm, Johnny pulled him into the dojo to hide from the canon residents, who were appearing one by one. A somewhat scrawny teenage boy wearing a martial arts gi stood in the middle of the yard in front of the building, identified by BH as Kenichi Shirahama, with a much older and much larger man wearing a leather jacket and reeking of alcohol standing dazedly next to him, somehow managing to give off a threatening air even in that state. He, BH told Johnny, was Sakaki Shio.
Several yards away, all standing in a neat row, were three other older men. One was a small, balding Chinese man, the next was of Japanese descent, above average height, and possessing strangely colorless eyes, and the last was a hulking, gray-haired Thai whose slack-jawed expression not only looked somehow natural, but even obliviously cheerful. Ma Kensei, Koetsuji Akisame, and Apachai Hopachai.
“But why do they look so...blank?” Burning Heart whispered, peeking around the edge of one of the doors. “I mean, that’s normal for Apachai sometimes, but it’s like they’re hypnotized or something. For that matter, some of them are missing.”
Johnny shushed him, and then the fic proper began.
Tsuji has been training to beat Kenichi, thinking he's mastered the best fighting style he returns to face Kenichi, after his last loss he decided to place a little wager on this fight. He showed up at Ryozanpaku with a challenge, and if the wager was made in front of his masters Kenichi would have to obey the results no matter what, Tsuji thought it was brilliant.
“Poor grasp of English grammar...” Johnny muttered as he wrote another charge in the notebook.
Just then, the main gate opened, apparently on its own. Another teenaged boy, this one larger and noticeably more muscular than Kenichi with a head of wild, shaggy hair, called out to the other boy, who was suddenly punching a wooden post jutting out of the ground alongside Sakaki.
"Kenichi Shirahama I want a special kind of fight a battle of manhood, we each fight using our fighting styles and the loser has to become the slave of the winner, he has to do whatever the winner says forever." Tsuji says arms crossed with a grin on his handsome features.
Something in the world shifted, causing the agents to momentarily lose their balance. Thankfully, they both managed to find a grip on the doorframe, so they don’t go into an out-and-out tumble, but it’s still unsettling enough that Burning Heart has to stop himself from throwing up that morning’s breakfast.
Johnny, after reorienting himself, adds yet another charge. “Sudden tense shift in the middle of the fic...”
But Burning Heart is more concerned with other things. “Wait a minute, if this is their rematch after the Ragnarok arc, which I’m assuming it is because that’s the only time Tsuji came to Ryozanpaku to challenge Kenichi in canon, then Tsuji should’ve gotten over making Kenichi his subordinate eons ago. Besides that, I don’t remember him ever being called or portrayed as ‘handsome’. Where’s that Character Analysis Device?”
Johnny digs through his pouches for a few moments until he manages to find the requested device. A quick scan of Tsuji produces the expected results.
[Tsuji Shinnosuke. Human male. Canon. Out of character 54.49%.]
“I knew it!” Burning Heart exclaims, his outburst causing the characters on the other side of the dojo’s doors to look about in confusion for the source of the noise. After several seconds, they all shrug in unison and return to their business as if nothing happened.
"Tsuji did you hit your head while you were gone, you must think I'm crazy to agree to such a challenge." Kenichi said and Tsuji gasped in shock. "Wha?!"
This time, the agent duo are unable to grab onto anything fast enough, and the shifting tense sent them both for a tumble across the dojo to collide with the opposite wall. Outside, the canon characters once again tried to locate the source of the noise, Tsuji eyeing the dojo with suspicion. When nothing further happened, though, they continued like before.
Burning Heart, in the meantime, was already quietly making his way back to the front door of the dojo. “Okay, that was a pretty reasonable response from Kenichi. Other than the weird punctuation, that does sound like something he might say. That was weird, though, both of them saying that last part together like that,” he whispered back to Johnny, who was following close behind. Then his voice began taking on an angry edge. “When I get my hooves on that darn Sue, I’m gonna give them a beating like they’ve never dreamed of!”
When they were once again (somewhat) comfortably situated behind the doors of the dojo, they caught another bizarre piece of the conversation outside.
"Oh go on Kenichi take his bet, if he's a man he'll take on this challenge, and should he
lose he will honor the bet." Sakaki said with a knowing smirk. He had seen Tsuji before and yes he was improved by Kenichi was far more advanced not that he would tell Kenichi that to his face. "Go on Kenichi show him what you got Apapapapapapa!"
Burning Heart did a doubletake, unable to believe what he just saw and heard. “That can’t be right. Did Apachai’s voice just come out of Sakaki?”
Johnny’s expression turned to one of worry as he peered across the yard at Apachai. Sure enough, he looked as if he had recently had a lobotomy. Sitting down with his back against the wall, he wrote down another charge and sighed. “This is getting to be too much. They said it would be weird, brain-breaking even, but I never thought...”
“Hey, they’re starting the fight!” Burning Heart interrupted his partner, poking his head out from behind the edge of the door to watch.
Outside, Tsuji attacked rushing forward. He worked on his speed and his defense he rushed at Kenichi and Kenichi moved to punch and his movements seemed so slow to Tsuji. He saw the punch get thrown and he thought he dodged it and he thought he could hit Kenichi hard in the gut knocking the wind out of him, but it was him getting thrown back.
Johnny, who by now had also decided to watch the fight in progress, started to look confused right around the part where Tsuji sudden began dragging tires tied to his waist by a rope and fending off flying wooden swords mid-charge. “What in the...oh, he worked on his speed and defense. I see...I think. But how did he get hit if he dodged-”
“Check out the Words.” Burning Heart interrupted him again, seemingly staring off into space with his eyes out of focus.
Johnny did so as well, and discovered that Kenichi hadn't thrown one punch he had thrown twenty but he moved so fast all the punches looked like one punch. “Oh, I guess that makes sense. It sounds a little extreme, though.”
Burning Heart nodded. “Yeah, I don’t think he’s that fast, especially if this is the point in the timeline I think it is.”
Johnny wobbled a hand. “Eh, there’s not enough evidence to support that, though. If it’s even remotely possible, I’m just going to give it the benefit of the doubt,” he said, then a thought occurred to him. He pulled out the CAD again and scanned the other characters, turning up high percentages but nothing at replacement level. “For that matter, there don’t actually seem to be any character replacements, just possessions.”
The pony-turned-human frowned, then went back to watching the fight, grumbling under his breath. The rest of it was pretty uneventful, apart from the narration forgetting about Apachai, which Johnny added as a sub-charge. At last, Kenichi knocked Tsuji unconscious with an undefined quick movement, which thankfully came out as just a regular punch to the head.
Tsuji had lost and by his bet he would be Kenichi's slave, his masters would see too that. Tsuji had better enjoy his little nap he's not gonna like it when he wakes up.
“I already don’t like it,” Johnny muttered, closing the notebook and standing up. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Alright, seeing as the author was kind enough to knock him out for us, let’s go ahead and exorcise- BH?”
When he opened his eyes again, Johnny noticed that his partner was no longer with him. He had, in fact, charged outside and decided it was a good idea to put Kenichi in a chokehold while the boy was still dazed from the fic’s ending, seeming to forget the three martial arts masters nearby who may not be too happy about him assaulting their disciple. The Primary Body slapped a hand to his forehead, letting out an exasperated sigh.
Outside, Ryozanpaku’s masters were starting to move toward Burning Heart, and the Equestrian agent backed away, his arm still firmly locked around Kenichi’s neck. Even though they were shambling like they weren’t in full control of their bodies, he knew full well how dangerous they could be, especially if they couldn’t control themselves. Under normal circumstances, there would be a slim chance of survival, but now there was no way of telling.
Unfortunately, his foot found a rock, and he lost his balance for a split second. That turned out to be all the boy in his grip needed, as Burning Heart suddenly found himself being lifted off of his feet, flipped over, and slammed into the ground. The impact knocked the wind out of him, and he was left simultaneously gasping for breath and trying to remember where everything was in relation to himself.
As he lifted his head off the ground, trying to make the spinning sensation stop, he realized that the masters were standing directly over him, staring down at him with that creepy gaze they would sometimes get. It was as if their eyes had ceased to be such and been replaced with ghostly lanterns that would lead him to the afterlife.
Wow, what a time to get poetic. Burning Heart thought, then quickly rolled aside as Ma Kensei smashed his palm into the ground where the agent had been laying just a moment before, causing the earth to erupt in a small geyser of dirt and rock. Scrambling to get back up to his feet, he adopted a rough karate stance and shuffled backwards until the backs of his legs met one of the bushes in front of the dojo.
“Okay, not the brightest thing I’ve ever done,” he noted, running his options through his head as the possessed canons resumed their approach, even the shortest of them seeming to tower over him. He could try a frontal attack and die, or maybe try a feint and die, or... darn it, everything ended in death! But just as he was about to give up and charge again anyway, the sound of a loudly ringing bell and a man shouting directed everyone’s attention to the wooden walkway in front of the dojo.
“Avaunt, ye spirits of bad slash! Avaunt, and away with thee!” Johnny shouted as loud as he could, clanging a standard issue PPC bell in one hand while the other held one of Burning Heart’s borrowed copies of the Kenichi graphic novels. As he stepped onto the stone path leading into the yard, still yelling at the top of his lungs, he consulted the cover of the book for the appropriate name to invoke. “The power of, uh... Syun Matsuena compels you!”
Burning Heart gave his partner a blank look, but after a few moments it finally came to him. “Oh! I get it! This is a slashfic, no one’s out of character enough to be a replacement, and there are no uncanonical characters, so that means...”
The canons all stopped moving, their bodies shuddering violently at the sound of the bell and the commands in the name of their creator. Wisps of some misty substance began trickling out of their mouths, continually growing until it was like a series of fountains, all spewing that strange miasma. It began to coalesce into a wraith in the vague shape of the author, which immediately set into whining as Kenichi and his masters all collapsed to the ground.
I told you Do Not Read If You Do Not Like Yaoi. Why can’t you understand that?
“There’s no yaoi. The fic hasn’t even gotten past the first chapter since it was published last August.” Johnny pointed out, then blinked in surprise at his own response. Was he really having a conversation with this thing? He shouldn’t have acclimated to the strangeness that quickly.
Well I have over 40 series I write fics for and more than 20 ideas for all of them. I’m going to finish this one later, I promise!
Johnny shuddered at the thought of what future chapters might bring. “Please don’t.” Then, before the wraith could respond, he put the bell back into one of the pouches and brought out the notebook again. “Alright, down to business. You are charged with the following: Having an author's note within an author's note within an author's note, spoiling the fic in the in-fic description, not finishing the fic despite saying you don't drop fics, poor grasp of general English grammar, suddenly and without warning shifting between past and present tense, causing a canon character's personality to backslide and exaggerate, transplanting Apachai Hopachai's personality into Sakaki Shio, making Shinnosuke Tsuji spontaneously start training in the middle of a fight, making a canon character enslave another canon character for the purposes of uncanonical slash, and... well, I think that's about it."
At that point, Burning Heart finally got sick of waiting and ran over to his partner to snatch the graphic novel from his hand. Turning around to face the new target of his wrath, he tilted his head to one side, then the other, each motion producing an audible popping sound from his neck.
“Didn’t you hear him? He said, ‘avaunt’!” the wannabe hero said, then charged at the wraith. Leaping as high as he could, he raised the book over his head and brought it down on the apparition, splitting the misty substance of its body in two. “The power of SYUN MATSUENA compels you!”
The wraith dissipated without any more protest than a whimper, the only thing it had strength left for. With that done, Burning Heart began checking the canons for any signs of injury. He didn’t get far, though, before they all started coming around.
“Ahem. Excuse me, gentlemen, but if you would all look this way?” Johnny said before any of them could start asking questions, sunglasses already on. When Burning Heart didn’t get the idea, he sighed. “Except for you, BH. Glasses, now.”
It finally dawned on the Equestrian, and he began rummaging around in his pants pockets. “Uh...I don’t have any.”
Johnny, who had gotten out his neuralyzer and flicked it to the appropriate settings, sighed and once again placed the palm of his free hand firmly against his face. “Okay, just shut your eyes really, really tight, then.”
“Hey, what are you doing here, and why was that guy choking my disciple? Are you trying to challenge our dojo?” Sakaki said, stepping forward with a scowl on his face. He was even more intimidating now than he was under the fic author’s influence, and his threatening gaze caused Johnny to flinch. “We charge a fee for that, you know. So are you gonna pay, or what?”
Apachai, who by now had drooled a rather sizeable puddle onto the ground in front of him, finally seemed to snap out of his stupor. He excitedly raised a hand. “Apachai wants to fight the challengers! Please let Apachai fight, apa!”
The other canons started chiming in with their own opinions on the situation, but were soon interrupted by the red flash of light from the neuralyzer, leaving them standing around in a daze again.
Burning Heart opened his eyes, then quickly headed over to just in front of Johnny and turned to address all of the canons present. “Everything you just saw and experienced never happened. Shinnosuke Tsuji, you never made a bet with Kenichi to be your slave, and in fact, you should probably be training in the mountains. The rest of you can carry on with your day as normal.”
Johnny nodded in approval as he pocketed the neuralyzer for the Remote Activator. “Sounds good to me. So, we should send Mister Tsuji to the mountains, huh?”
“Come on, Tsuji. Let’s get you where you should be.” Burning Heart said to the groggy young man as he helped him up, guiding him through the shimmering blue portal. After it closed, he dusted off his hands, staring at them for a second or two before shaking his head and turning to his partner. “Alright, take us home.”
Another few moments later, and the duo emerged in their Response Center, Burning Heart having regained his natural form. Holding a hoof up in front of him to check for extra appendages just in case, he sighed in relief. “Phew, it feels good to be back in my normal shape. Fingers are nice, but they just feel weird. No offense.”
“None taken,” Johnny said, walking toward the closet. As he did so, he reflected on everything he’d been told compared to what they’d just been through. “You know, that was actually pretty easy, all things considered. Think they went light on us for our first mission?”
Burning Heart tapped a chin, thinking it over. “Huh, yeah, that wasn’t actually all that bad. I thought we’d be taking on monstrosities like those Legendary Badfics or something, but that was a piece of cake.”
BEEEEEEEEEEEP!
Johnny winced at the sudden noise from the console. “It can’t be. We just finished a mission; they can’t just have another one ready for us,” he said, but when he went to check, sure enough, there was another mission ready for them. “You gotta be kidding me.”
Burning Heart, strapping on his own pouch-covered belt and loading equipment into the pouches, simply grinned. “Hey, we’re doing good. If it’s anything like the last one, we’ll have it knocked out in no time,” he said over his shoulder, cramming one last unidentifiable doohickey into an already overstuffed pouch before trotting over to the console to join his partner. “Well, I’m ready. What about you?”
Johnny stayed silent for a while, mentally going over everything he’d already gone through. Meeting a talking pony, entering a fictional universe, seeing someone get their personality shoved into someone else. But, well, it wasn’t so bad in the end, was it?
“Yeah, I’m ready. Let’s see what we’ve got this time.” he said, and then pressed the ACCEPT button.