[Lazy Shonen Parody] Lancer's Tale

[Arakawa]

I had a weird dream last night, and then I had the idea to turn it into an anime. Unfortunately, since I don't have an army of underpaid animators with nothing better to do, I'm contenting myself with turning it into a text story with minimal techniques. It's unlikely to be good -- this is just an attempt to loosen up writer's block and experiment with how lazily I can tell a story and still have some fun doing so. Don't read too much into it. Just needing to vent some steam here.

The Rules:

• This works like a cliched shonen anime, until it doesn't.
• Each episode is less than 1,000-2,000 words of story material. If it were animated, the rest would be filled with mindless action and excessively drawn-out shonen standoffs. If the story becomes interesting, episodes might get longer.
• When in doubt, use tropes.
• When in trope, look for a way to subvert it.
• I only have a vague idea of where any of this is going, and it's going to show.
• Edit: things that usually take a lot of time but are dispensed with for this exercise -- solid prose style, and good places to put cliffhangers.

The Setting: post-apocalyptic interplanetary cyberpunk dystopia. Obviously.

Five Man Band of Freedom Fighters:

• JIN - The Leader
• ED - The Lancer/The Protagonist. Initially dull as cardboard, as befits a shonen protagonist.
• RAMSAY - The Smart Guy
• BUGS - The Bug/Big Guy (I had an inspired typo)
• SACHIKO - The Heart/The Hacker/The Love Interest

Antagonists:

• Assorted Mooks
• Evil Governments and Corporations

[Arakawa]

Episode 1

Ever since he was little, Ed wanted to be a Freedom Fighter, and a hero. Unfortunately, there was no application form for being either of these things. The Citizens Board on the planetoid of Giga Tokyo allowed high school students to apply for university, or for trades school, or to join the Army, which was on the side of the Governments and as freedom-less and unheroic as you would expect. Ed was aware that the Governments were totally in the hands of EvilCorp. No one was quite sure why EvilCorp was named that way, since they only ever did non-Evil things like making cell phones, terraforming alien planets, building housing and roads, and providing Internet services. Ed was absolutely convinced they were Evil, though. It was kind of clever of the villains, admittedly, to be hiding in plain sight like that.

The application forms also had a drop-down list of approved extra-curricular activities. 'Freedom Fighter' wasn't on the list. Having a normal childhood with friends was also out of the question. All of his classmates' interests revolved around having EvilPhones that probably spied on them, and accounts on EvilBook where they would record their deepest, innermost feelings in an ostensibly private setting, and then receive coincidentally relevant advertisements.

Ed had considered self-training, but he could never figure out where to start. And he probably wouldn't have time anyways, given the crippling workload a Giga Tokyo high school student was burdened with. He knew vaguely that Giga Tokyo had a dark, seedy underbelly where the high school students didn't do their homework and didn't succeed in Society. There, people went on Welfare and got Oppressed and the Adventures happened. But he was scared to go there and seek out a teacher. The clean, straightlaced suburb he'd grown up in was all he'd ever known. Naively, he expected the Adventure to come to him there.

One day, it did.

Ed was walking home from school one day when the nondescript building he was walking past exploded. He froze in place, watching rubble arc through the air with fascination. So this was what an explosion looked like!

Then he heard an awful, death-rattle cough. Ed looked on in mute horror as the man, wearing the charred remains of a labcoat, crawled up to him out of the wreckage and thrust into his hands a nondescript plastic bottle, full of a viscous, steel-gray liquid.

"Don't... let them find it..." the man croaked, "Infinite potential... don't let... EvilCorp... get their hands on this!"

Then he collapsed on the ground.

"But... I'm just a kid!" Ed argued, holding the bottle. He then realized the folly of arguing with a man who was unconscious. Then he realized that they were currently in full view of an EvilCorp Street Policing Security Camera.

"Holy crap!" exclaimed a bystander. "Someone call 911!"

"Crap crap crap crap!" Ed yelled, running through a dark alleyway to get away from the scene. He looked around for a suitable hiding spot. Any moment now, EvilCorp was probably going to send some mooks to chase after him.

Spotting an open manhole, he descended into it. Perhaps the sewers would aid in his escape.

* * *

"Mr. Mooks, sir!" barked a large, bulky mook. "Squad Sixteen reporting in!"

From the screen of the laptop, an elegant mustachioed man nodded curtly and steepled his fingers. Gerald Mooks, the current President of the Mooks Corporation, presided over as motley a collection of mercenaries as you could ever imagine. He was an excellent tactician in his own way, but he did not actually enjoy talking to the mooks, and was always fantasizing about a change of career. In a bored voice, Gerald Mooks lectured his mooks about their latest mission, and added as an afterthought:

"And always remember the iron ideal set by our illustrious founder, Abraham Mooks Senior...."

"The ideal of having absolutely no ideals of our own!" roared the members of Squad Sixteen.

"And always doing the bidding of whoever has the money," Mr. Mooks finished acidly. "Excellent. You may proceed with the mission."

"Squad Sixteen, out!"

Disconnecting the video call, Mr. Mooks sighed and leaned backwards in his chair. His computer beeped, indicating another video call.

"Mr. Ford," Mr. Mooks began. "I've dispatched the mooks according to the mission parameters you specified...."

"Excellent!" the man on the phone was wide and had a wide, lugubrious voice. "Keep in mind that yours are not the only men assigned to this job. Only the group that brings us the Protean Water will see any of the reward."

"I know," Mr. Mooks sighed. "Your typical EvilCorp middle manager always does this to us mooks. I'm going to go back to coordinating the mission now, if you don't mind."

"Excellent! Proceed as planned!"

Disconnecting the video call, Mr. Ford sighed contentedly and leaned backwards in his chair. His computer beeped, indicating another video call.

"I still have reservations about your plan," the man on the phone began testily. "Won't having multiple sets of mooks competing to catch the same targets be incredibly counterproductive?"

"Don't be such a stick in the mud, Gaddis. After all, isn't introducing competition among one's own subordinates a time-tested management principle?"

"I'm fairly certain that principle only works when your subordinates compete on creating useful accomplishments, not on shooting each other with guns."

"No, I'm sure competition is the proper way to manage a capitalist economy."

"I'm... I'm not even going to bother explaining how clueless you are being right now."

Disconnecting the video call, Dr. Gaddis sighed and leaned backwards in his chair. His computer beeped, indicating a call from the CEO. This was not a video call -- the screen displayed only a generic outline of a human being, and the words "[VOICE ONLY]".

"How goes it?" the CEO inquired in a menacing, digitally distorted voice.

"All arrangements have been made to recapture the Protean Water and bring it to our lab for analysis. My only fear is that coordinating this operation through such a complex chain of command is going to bite us in the ass. The time delay alone for relaying orders up and down the hierarchy is quite significant."

"It is not your place to question my management methods," the CEO admonished, and disconnected the call.

[Arakawa]

Episode 2

After trudging through the sewers for what felt like several miles, Ed admitted that he was stuck and that the whole situation smelled.

Then he heard heavy, booted footsteps in a parallel tunnel and someone barking "search the area!"

'I've got to be ready and alert!' he psyched himself up, creeping down a side-tunnel that led away from the ruckus. 'Ready for the mooks... ready for absolutely anything!'

Ed was in for a shock when the bottle was snatched out of his hand by a man wearing a knitted hat and a leather vest, who'd come seemingly out of nowhere.

"Ahh man, lookit this alien bluman water, man?" the man exclaimed in a stoned-sounding voice, holding the bottle up and looking at the contents.

He had a long, scraggly gray beard like a ghetto Santa Claus, and when he smiled his face resembled most of all the skulls that biker gangs like to decorate themselves with. He was probably in his mid thirties, but looked far more awful and wrinkled due to what could only be assumed was hard-hitting living on the streets.

"Hey! Give that back!"

"What? Ok!" the man shrugged and tossed the bottle back. "Have some chill kid, I was just lookin'. I got my own booze."

To prove his point, the man swigged from a metal canister which was quickly replaced into an inner pocket of his vest.

"So where you off to?" he asked, wiping his mouth.

"I don't think that's any of your business."

"Sheesh. Just asking. What's a man gotta do around these parts if he can't ask? Those guys chasing you, by chance?"

He nodded towards the side tunnel Ed had just emerged from, where the sound of footsteps was getting closer.

"Yeaap, sounds like a ruckus," the man commented. "Name's Ramsay. Know my way 'round these tunnels. If you wanna get help, might not hurt to ask for it."

"Sure. What have I got to lose, at this point?" Ed admitted. "Lead the way."

"Great, that's tha attitude! Follow me!"

After crawling through a series of narrow pipes, stepping quietly through a dark basement corridor, and climbing up a ladder, they emerged into a landscape of ruined buildings and cracked asphalt. There was dust everywhere, and gray, thorny weeds poked up in places out of the pavement. Ed briefly spotted a haggard face observing him from a gaping window. The face quickly withdrew as Ed looked back at it.

He realized that they weren't just in the Underbelly of Giga Tokyo, they were in the Underbelly of the Underbelly.

"Ahh, this is really the place for a Freedom Fighter to go," Ramsay said nostalgically. "Though it's been gentrified lately. See, there's a condominium going up."

"You're a Freedom Fighter?" Ed asked suspiciously.

"Of sorts. Hey, let's go hide in there. They'll never look for us at a construction site."

They trudged up to the sixth floor, while Ramsay ranted disjointly about idiots buying condominiums and selling them to other, bigger idiots. Then Ramsay turned around and pulled a gun out of his vest.

"Now gimme back the bottle."

"What?!"

"Don't get me wrong, man, I really am a Freedom Fighter. The Freedom I fight for is my own, and it is accomplished by having lots of money. Money that I will receive when I hand that bottle of yours over to EvilCorp and the Governments. Now, howzabout you give me the bottle and then I don't shoot you in the face?"

"Stop right there!" two separate groups of voices managed to shout simultaneously, from opposite ends of the floor.

"We are the Freedom Fighters!"

"We are the Mooks... uh... Squad Sixteen! Mooks Corporation!"

"Well, screw," said Ramsay, putting the gun back into his vest.

There were only two Freedom Fighters and quite a number of mooks.

The Freedom Fighters were the more professionally dressed of the two groups. They wore overalls that had pockets in every possible place, and dangerous-looking weaponry in every possible pocket. One was tall, thin, dressed in purple overalls, and had an earnest face that made you unsure whether he was about to cut you open, or just share a really good joke. The other was shorter, heavyset, and wore green overalls together with somewhat more crash padding than the average football player.

On the other end of the room, the Mooks numbered about a dozen, but appeared to be armed with the contents of a joke shop. Their leader had many, many fidget spinners.

"These fidget spinners have razor-sharp edges and can be thrown like boomerangs!" postured the lead mook. "You cannot withstand such advanced weaponry!"

"We happen to have tranquilizer darts," the tall and thin Freedom Fighter remarked with amusement.

"The bottle you're carrying is required for Good purposes!" the heavier of the two Freedom Fighters shouted at Ed. "Toss it to us!"

Ed made to throw the bottle, and then stopped.

"Wait," he said carefully. "How do I actually know you're the Freedom Fighters?

"Um... seriously good point. Whatever, Just trust us with your heart!"

"I was already betrayed by one trustworthy-looking homeless person today!"

"Who, that guy?" the heavy Fighter pointed to Ramsay, who was still grinning at everyone like a skull on nitrous. "Trustworthy-looking? Are you seriously an idiot?"

Ed just uncapped the bottle and balanced it on the palm of his outstretched hand.

"Look, if we can't agree with who gets the liquid," he found himself saying suddenly, "I'm going to spill it. That way, we can be sure that EvilCorp will never have it."

The Freedom Fighters looked horrified, the Mooks looked merely sour (since this was merely Yet Another Mission for them), but it was Ramsay who displayed the most agitation:

"Whoa whoa whoa, look kid, ya gotta get some chill! Just gimme the bottle. Who cares if the Governments get their hands on that stuff, they're just gonna do stupid experiments on it to accelerate global warming or something, amirite guys?"

"I'm spilling it," Ed said, and tilted the bottle a fraction. A small splash of steely liquid landed on the concrete and began to evaporate.

"No no no no!" Ramsay shouted, pulling out his gun and shooting spastically at Ed's hand. "I don't care, I just wanna get paid!"

As Ed reeled from the shock, the bottle spun through the air, spewing a spray of liquid. Ramsay executed a mad dash to catch it, then ran straight past Ed and towards the precipice. Capping the bottle with one hand, he gave a brief glance at the contents, saw with relief that it was still three-quarters full, and then jumped off the edge of the building and directly onto the roof of a passing train.

The Freedom Fighters and the Mooks were left staring each other down, while Ed sat on the floor in the middle, his hand bleeding. The heavier of the two Freedom Fighters briefly made to chase after Ramsay, then threw up his hands in defeat as he'd just seen Ramsay holding on with one hand to the pantograph of a train moving at 175km/h and zooming away into the distance, shouting "sayonara, ya lumpenproles!"

"Dammit Jin, I'm not going after that guy."

"Noted," said the taller Fighter and then resumed staring down the Mooks. "Well, if Bugs can't do this, neither can I. Gentlemen, it seems that there's nothing of value left for you here."

"You're of value," the guy with the fidget spinners argued. "Jin Menro and Bugs Takeda, right? There's a biiig bounty on your heads."

Ed could hardly process this with his already-dazed mind. *The* Jin Menro? The most infamous teenage Freedom Fighter who was in all the papers?

Needless to say, there was a very long and flashy battle that ensued. It would not be worth reporting a play-by-play because, predictably, it ended with the Freedom Fighters driving the Mooks off. Thoughout it, Ed remained parked in one place on the floor, and there was only one real thought in his head anyways:

'Look at those epic moves! It really *is* Jin Menro. Now, how do I get him to train me? Think think think think think!'

He didn't manage to get much further than that.

"Well, that was pretty hardcore behavior for a high school student," Jin addressed him suddenly. "Threatening to spill Protean Water."

"Huh! Oh... uh..." Ed stammered. "I... just did what came natural?"

"You want to get some medical attention for that hand?" Jin asked more kindly.

"Uh...."

"Forget talking to him!" Bugs advised Jin, "he's probably in shock. Let's just drag him out of here and have Sachiko treat his hand."

"Agreed," Jin said, "here, you're coming with us. I'm not letting you talk to anyone about what happened here until we've set a few things straight."

Unbeknownst to them, a camera-drone was hovering across the street and monitoring the entire exchange. Emblazoned on its side were the words "RESEARCH FACILITY ALPHA".

[Jason_Miao]

"I only have a vague idea of where any of this is going, and it's going to show."
...
Setting: "post-apocalyptic interplanetary"


An idle thought here - if you were to later try to take this seriously, determining how that's possible, then shaping your plot to subtly reveal that to the reader is a possible approach.

Of course, that is the opposite of your disclaimer, so I doubt you'll actually do that. But if you ever decide to take a serious stab at it...