Writing Challenge #3!

[Arakawa]

It is somewhat debatable whether the following qualifies as an action scene, since it consists of someone buying a DVD in an anime store. I argue that Anime Tencho is capable of turning any scene into an action scene simply by existing in it:

Spoiler: ShowHide

There was another slight problem: due simply to the item's rarity, it was by several orders of magnitude the most expensive thing to be had in the entire Bin of Shame...

"That will be 1,785 yen," Tencho announced, having scanned the thing, opened the case, and added the Preferred Ultimate Fanfiction that had been his real reason to sell something to Konata in the first place.

Konata emptied all the bills from her wallet, and began wordlessly to dig in the corners for loose change.

... as it turned out, Konata hadn't come prepared that day. All that advanced train journey scheduling, and yet she hadn't bothered to bring a fresh wad of bills? Well, Konata was just that kind of person sometimes.

She started to put her loose change into the tray, one coin at a time.

The tension in the air could be cut with a knife.

Down to one-yen coins now, clinking down into the change tray. Almost there, Legendary Girl A! Don't let us down now!

The other employees forgot to put up even the slightest pretence of a cover. Noses very nearly pressed up against the change tray, they crowded Konata from all sides. Tencho would have made a mental note to sternly admonish them later, had he not also been preoccupied with the scene before him.

Konata rummaged in the corners of her wallet one last time and came up with nothing.

"Oh, I'm sorry. Three yen short," she noted in an indifferent tone that (though she did not know it) was pure torture to the clerks hanging on to her every word.

Tencho could see it. In another nanosecond she would grab the money back and leave. All that advanced preparation... gone... for absolutely nothing!

Could he ever look his subordinates in the eye again?

He began to sweat profusely, like a triathlete about to collapse of exhaustion with the finish line already in sight. This was going to require some of the quickest thinking he had ever done in his entire life!!

"Animate Salesmanship -- Founding School Forbidden Manoeuvre: super advanced context sensitive discount!!! TAKE A PENNY..."

He telegraphed the motion from a mile away, startling the girl and thereby buying himself another half a nanosecond during which time his hand dipped into the open cash register, too fast for the naked eye to observe...

"... LEAVE ..."

Konata could only counter this sudden assault by sweatdropping, which was a truly foolish and ineffective tactic against the unstoppable Tencho!

It had been the closest he had ever come to absolute defeat, today out of all the days of his miserable life, but no matter, with this ultra advanced technique he would be able to recover. The sale would return to territory he would be intimately familiar with, where none had ever stood against him and left the field with their wallet intact. Nor would the Legendary Girl standing before him be any different -- the DVD, and the all-important memetic payload it carried, would make its way to her anime collection as surely as the sun was going to rise tomorrow. He would survive! He would overcome!

"... A PENNY!!!!"

He would at last be free of his burden!

He had also just shouted a bunch of Engrish at a small girl at the top of his voice, knocked her hand out of the way with a karate shop (incidentally defeating the hygienic purpose of having a change tray), and generally acted in an intimidating fashion towards his customer.

On any other day, this would be an unacceptable breach of the essential traditions of anime retail. However, some days one had to make sacrifices and deviate from the common forms, to achieve victory at all costs. The basic purpose of the technique had been achieved: three one-yen coins had miraculously appeared in the tray where none could be found before.

Tencho would see what she could ever say to that!

"Waugh!" Konata took a step back. "Hey, you scared me! What is this 'take-a-penny leave-a-penny' thing?"

"It's, uh, huhh, just what we do here!" Tencho offered lamely. "Since you're such a valued customer we can surely discount three yen on this here purchase.."

EDIT: I would welcome any and all suggestions as to how to make this scene even more over the top than it already is while still being readable. For instance,

Spoiler: ShowHide

before Tencho announces his technique his hands might blur together in a series of forbidden seals, forming a complex dance he had learned from instructions sealed away thousands of years ago in a haunted volcano at the North Pole by a clan of evil ninjas and unearthed by the board of directors of Animate to use in their secret employee motivational training. This would pile a Naruto reference on top of the Ranma reference.

Or maybe that would just be too silly. I don't know.

[Jason_Miao]

Oro: I can't find anything to criticize.

Ara: I think it qualifies as action, since you were mostly concentrating on what people were doing.  My thought as I was reading it: penny, in Japan?  But thinking it through, I'm not sure if the take-a-penny-leave-a-penny practice even exists in Japan, so writing it out that way is probably better.

I wouldn't try to add a reference that way, since mixing it like that would just cause confusion as to the first source (Ranma).  I've never seen Tencho; is the clerk the only anime-reference character?  If not, you could have someone else (perhaps a passing clerk from a rival store) use a Naruto-like technique to try and disrupt the sale.  And perhaps the clerk has a flashback to where he's being instructed by the store owners who are all large pillars with the words [Sound Only] as to what to do in such situations, so he uses another Ranma technique to close the sale.  When he looks smug as his customer walks away, girlfriend might shout "Darling you idiot" and zap him with a taser.

I'm not saying write it just like that.  I've never seen the series, so I doubt I've characterized anyone properly.  But by splitting your references between characters, you have clear divisions between references so you don't get anyone who is confused, thinking "I thought that was a Ranma reference, but Ranma doesn't use handsigns.  I don't get it."

Graph: Heh.  Didn't see it coming.

[Arakawa]

Huh. When writing the scene I was in fact keeping in mind that Konata would not know what 'take-a-penny-leave-a-penny' was. Didn't do a good job lampshading this, though.

I should probably point out that Tencho is reaching into the North American repertoire of retail techniques (a good reason why the technique would be 'forbidden' in an anime store). As for Konata's confused reaction, I'm not sure at the moment how to play that up without significantly lengthening the scene.

Thanks for pointing that out, in any case - it just happens to be something I had in mind (among other things), but was failing to get across.

As for the handseals, that really is a bit over the top. It's not worth bending the scene out of shape for it, especially since (in the context of a larger fic) there's always opportunity to revisit it later.

[Brian]

Sorry for the delay; distractions.  Graph, Oroboro, your entries were both great, though in different ways.  Thanks for participating in this challenge, I'll try and have another up sooner than later. ;)