[MISSION] Of Ballet Slippers, Orchestras and Hideously Long Paragraphs

Kaguya and Momoka have been stuck in RC 🤘 for days, and thus ensues a highly unusual mission. Much unprecedented joy awaits the Four Demonly Kings.

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The fic cited in this story, titled "The Nutcracker: The Return Of The Mouse King", belongs to Stephanie Nova Rose Allen and they're allowed to keep or do whatever they want with it. The Nutcracker was the creation of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, based on a book by E. T. A. Hoffman. The site recolor.me, which authorizes off-site hosting of creations using their content, was used to create illustrations.

The following text is a work of parody/satire that contains literary analysis.

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Akagashi Inasuke was seriously into pretty and/or cute Western media, that was as obvious as the sun's rising in the east.

For this reason, it was only natural that for a painfully brief stint, he developed a hardcore interest in ballet. It was almost impressive how he had the energy to finish watching Giselle, Gayane and Swan Lake in one sitting, while Urato's brain felt like turning to mush three notes into Giselle's overture. As a measure of killing time before Kaguya and Momoka could get back to their RC, he roped the two of them into binges of different ballets or different productions of the same ballets. Oh, to be surrounded by those operating on a different frequency: those lively discussions those three had about whether the Mariinsky or the Royal Ballet production was better was getting on Urato's nerves. Though he wouldn't deny, he found Gary Avis and Claudio Cocino rather fetching…

And then one day, Inasuke decided to be more annoying than he already was. For that entire day, he decided to binge-watch various productions of only one ballet – his favourite, The Nutcracker. Alas, how he and his mini Booky held their breaths at the battle against the mouse king! How their faces lit up every time Act 2 started and the kingdom of sweets appeared in all its glory before their eyes! How ultimately unaware they were that the ballet was an allegorical tale of sexual awakening and eroticism! It was amazing how fast Urato grew from ambivalent towards to totally loathing a piece of music; if he heard that annoying celesta melody to Sugar Plum Fairy just one more time, there was a high chance something would end up horribly broken.

But of course, before he could actually do so, a perfectly timed [BEEEEEEP] stopped him in his track.

"You have got to be kidding me," Inasuke whined at the intel report. "Must every single of my fandoms be defiled? Even Nutcracker? Can't I watch something nice and cute without seeing it defiled seconds later? I just can't believe this!"

"Well, ya signed up fer dis," Urato quipped, picking his nose. "Dontcha wanna defend fiction from evil? There ya go, ya get to defend fiction from evil. What more d'ya want?"

"Then defend my favourite ballet from evil I shall," Inasuke answered, then forcefully pulled the Bag of Holding from under a pile of magazines. "Come on, Ura-chan, let's go. The faster we deal with this badfic, the better."

"Oi, oi, oi. Ya tellin' me it'll just be da two of us on dis mission?"

Inasuke halted. It took some glancing between Urato and the agents of RC 381 for him to get what his partner meant.

"Missioning with Hazama-sempai? No way!" Inasuke protested, not noticing Momoka's burning stare on him. "I'd rather be eaten by a lion than stuck in a badfic with that botchan scum!"

"Well, I guess ya don't want 'em back in their RC then. Y'see, we all ended up in da wrong RCs after comin' back from missions; bringin' 'em along is da only way tah maybe get 'em dropped off in theirs. It's either missionin' with him fer a while or get stuck with him in here forever. Choose one, man."

Inasuke stared at Urato, then glanced back at Kaguya and Momoka again, and sighed.

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The Strange Gift

Behind the portal was a dimension of utter darkness. Not grey, not beige, not even purple; endless and impenetrable black.

Inasuke had the CAD, but he couldn't see any of his companions nor even his feet. He called out the other agents' names, but no sound came out his mouth. He could feel his teddy bear costume still in place on his body, and that meant he was certainly in the fic. He just couldn't fathom the alien environment he found himself in.

He was already panicking when he was thrown for another loop: the pitch black darkness was suddenly no more, and he was doused in light so bright he had to cover his eyes. When he uncovered them seconds later, he discovered a shocking surrounding: he was on a stage, albeit built from Generic Surfaces and Generic Curtains. Props depicting a bedroom were strewn about, appearing to be cardboard cutouts hastily coloured with crayons. In front of the stage was a pit, filled by an orchestra of Generic Faceless Musicians.

Then Inasuke noticed something off about himself, his own disguise. He didn't remember inputting ballet slippers when he selected this costume.

The horrors weren't over just yet. As soon as the fic started, his body began to move on its own. Against his will, he stood upright on perfect pointe, despite having not a single day of ballet experience under his belt.

Stephanie slowly opened her steel blue eyes from her slumber. How long has she been asleep? She groaned slightly and stretched out slightly, before sitting up on the bed and also noticed that she is in a different bed, then the bedstead she was in back at home. She looked at her surroundings and noticed that her room was also different. Her room was neat and tidy with her cleaning habits, but this room she is mysteriously inside was different. The room she inside has a mirror in front of the bed and a table by a closed window. The bed she was in looked like it was from the 18th century and the whole room smelled musty. She heard a creak and glanced at the door and the door that is strangely and mysteriously creaked open by nothing behind it. She was quiet for a moment, thinking who opened the door and felt suspicious about what have unlocked the door, until she just shrugged at her thoughts and pulled the blankets off her body, revealing her long, silver, skinny, metal legs, covered by her snowy and decorated pants with pink butterflies, except her feet that are covered with black with white spots, fuzzy socks, and a pink nightshirt with kitten decorations decorated all over it, that reaches down to her waist, making it looks like a mini skirt, and her long hazelnut brown hair, with varieties of unique colored wires on the left side of her head, up in a low braid, with a rainbow rubber band at the end to keep the binding from undoing. Around her neck was a grey chain necklace with a gold heart-shaped pendant and clipped to the sides of her ears were silver ear cuffs in a shape of a Celtic knot.

[Stephanie Nova Rose Allen. Non-canon, female human? Non-human? Toy? Cyborg? MARY SUE ALERT WTF IS THAT OUTFIT COMBINATION, THANK HEAVENS I DON'T HAVE EYES.]

Argh, what on earth is this menace? Inasuke thought, switching off the overheating CAD and hoped it wouldn't turn itself back on again. Before him, the metal-legged Sue with a horrifying fashion sense moved with all the grace and poise of a bear trying to be a duck. Inasuke's eyes weren't the only thing the sheer length of the paragraph was paining; the lack of paragraph breaks also manifested as a force that made him stay en pointe without pause for a hideously long while.

Just to cap it off, he still couldn't get a single sound to come out of his throat to cry about the pain.

Ugh, charge for humongous paragraphs! he thought, minutely shifting to ease the pain in his toes. The orchestra began playing a rendition of Danse macabre by Camille Saint-Saëns that sounded like the musicians were on the verge of falling asleep. Besides, metal legs? Wires growing out of her head? I have so many questions! The fic's just begun and it's already racked up huge charges!

He quickly realized he didn't have his notebook with him. He figured one of his partners had it, which lead him to remember something of greater importance: none of his partners were anywhere within sight.

However, before he could start panicking, his notebook and pencil were shoved at him by someone's hand. He looked up to see who it was, and couldn't believe his eyes.

It was Urato, disguised in a red toy soldier costume.

Inasuke was at once relieved and annoyed. He wanted to yell at his partner where the hell were you, I was dead worried about you, but as it was, he could only grab Urato's clothes and try to shake the buff 188 cm man back and forth to no avail, shouting complete silence.

Urato shoved Inasuke off. Rather than saying anything, he pointed at his feet, which was also forced by the narrative into tip-toeing, then pointed at his mouth and shook his head.

Inasuke understood what he meant, but knew no way to answer beyond looking away dejectedly (I don't know how this happened).

Stephanie felt suspicious about the strange unopened box, so she gently took the card from the box and opened the card. Inside was ancient cursive handwriting and the writing said, "Please, take care of this wonderful nutcracker. And hurry, we need-" the message was cut off and Stephanie felt confused. "Need" what? So, she was going to reach underneath the tree and take the box from underneath, when there were loud grinding noises that echoed through the rooms, and making Stephanie grit her teeth and wince in pain, squeezing her eyes shut, imagining her long clawed silver metallic fingernails on her right hand, scratching over a chalkboard back at her old school in the old-fashioned schools that she visited. Stephanie popped open her eyes and frantically looked at her surroundings, in wonder of what was that noise, and thinking it was a hook from the Hook Man from the previous adventure that he went with, until she heard louder grinding noises from a different room, so she decided to figure out what was that noise and leave the present there for later. So, she placed the present back down on the ground and got up from the ground and picked up her jar and she walked down the living room, to search for the strange annoying grinding noises. She turned around the corner to another room and wandered through the room and entered the second room, where there is a medium length counter in the middle that is honey that is covered with a red fabric table cover, with gold trimmings and it smelled musty from left over for many, many years.

Urato looked completely dumbfounded, and not only at the sight of a table made from honey, dripping thick amber liquid on the stage floor.

Inasuke pointed at one of his hands, then down at his legs (how many more strange body parts does this chick have?). He then made a few vague waving motions in the air (Besides, what's even going on here? Shouldn't the nutcracker be given as a gift to Clara, and shouldn't he no longer be a nutcracker by the end of the story? How is any of this related to Nutcracker, even? Who is this girl, where did she come from, why is she here, why is she half-human, half-metal? I need a lot of explanations!).

Urato looked even more dumbfounded.

Inasuke only grew more infuriated when the Sue turned out to have metal eyes that were capable of digital scanning, a metal finger capable of transforming into a key to unlock a door, and Devil Fruit powers, the narrator kids you not, that turned her hand into oil. This and the constant pointe proved more than enough for Inasuke; he was about to grand jeté forward and knock the Sue to the stage floor… until he recalled something of great urgency.

Kaguya and Momoka.

He held up two fingers and almost clawed at his face (oh great, now where the hell are our sempai? We can't finish the mission before finding them!).

Urato tilted his head (what?).

He moved his hands about his head as though trying to fluff up his hair (Shigisawa-sempai) then puckered his lips into the most exaggerated duck lips known to man while waving a fist in front of his mouth as if slathering invisible lipstick on the lower half of his face (and Hazama-sempai!). He then placed his hand above his eyes and looked left and right as if searching for something (we must find them!).

Urato pointed at his mouth, then rubbed his stomach (are ya hungry or sumthin'?).

Inasuke gave up.

The scene changed into a room lined with old dull blue wallpaper that is rotten from all of the years that have passed from the missing family. This sudden shift caused Inasuke and Urato to end up on opposite sides of the stage. Disoriented, Inasuke stumbled un-balletically for a moment and found himself bumped into.

Whatever he bumped into was decidedly not a prop. It was another ballet dancer, a young woman wearing a large pink bow in her fluffy white hair, dressed in a pink dress with a frill-trimmed cream apron. She was as pretty as she could be, but her face betrayed agony, and not merely because she was not only en pointe but also in attitude derrière for what was presumably quite a while.

Inasuke waved a hand in front of her face (Shigisawa-sempai! Are you alright?), but she showed no signs of coming back to her senses (Kaguya-sama Kaguya-sama Kaguya-sama).

Right then Urato surprisingly gracefully saut de chat'ed across the stage to join them while the Sue was busy reading the original Nutcracker book and thus not looking (hey! What's goin' on?).

Inasuke frustratedly paced around, but was forced by the fic into delicately shifting around one spot (Shigisawa-sempai is unconscious, Hazama-sempai is nowhere to be seen, we still don't have the Bag, my feet hurt, and we're stuck in a fic that makes no sense, watching this ridiculous Sue ruin a perfectly good ballet longer than necessary. What am I gonna do?). Just to rub salt in the wound, the Sue displayed one more burst of speshul power by teleporting the book she was reading away, and Inasuke was short of tearing out his own hair.

The Sue disappeared from the stage following her decision to investigate an unknown ripping noise, and the orchestra started playing eerie notes, with the occasional blood-curdling screech from a string instrument. Urato and Inasuke winced at the horrific music, which continued well after the Sue was gone.

Then Momoka moved from her position at last, and Inasuke started looking extremely horrified (Ura-chan! Behind you!).

Naturally, Urato didn't understand what in gobswatting hell Inasuke was pointing at, until he turned around to see it. Stiffly walking towards the three came a man carrying the Bag of Holding, a pretty man with long dark hair and Chinese-style dress in a blue-on-white "blue flower" porcelain pattern, but moving like the stiffest robot known to man and cloaked in an aura of pure rage. His eyes, his expression, his entire being emanated a horrifying energy, and the makeup far too badly applied and badly coordinated for his liking was not helping the case.

Urato just stared at the creature (ey Guyatchi, ya 'kay there?).

Even without speech, one gaze from the creature's eyes sent a bloodthirsty, eldritch growl echoing through Urato's bones (/T/o/! /M/i/! /Y/a/! /M/a/! /Y/o/u/ /a/r/e/ /n/o/t/ /g/e/t/t/i/n/g/ /a/w/a/y/ /w/i/t/h/ /t/h/i/s/!).

The orchestra thus launched into a squirm-inducing off-key and off-beat rendition of Lezginka from Gayane as the agents started chasing each other in a high-pace pas de quatre. Kaguya tried to catch Urato, but could only rigidly march forward and incompetently flail his arms with the stiff battements and upper body movements he was only capable of, while Urato was allowed cabrioles after jetés, sprinting and leaping around in strides out of Kaguya's grasp, at one point busting out a few emboité steps just to spite him. Neither Momoka nor Inasuke could stand and watch, and so they joined in on the chase, desperately trying to stop their respective partners. It wasn't long before the four collided and collapsed to the stage floor into an undignified mess of stacked agents, closing the chapter on a sour note.

The curtains closed, the lights dimmed, the orchestra paused playing. On a stage now quiet and lowly lit, the agents rolled off of each other and sat up – and found that control over their bodies had returned. "Hey, I can talk now!" Inasuke exclaimed, undoubtedly relieved at his vocal cords' ability to function again, despite the pain now settling in his body.

But the joy didn't last long. Kaguya still fully intended to brawl with Urato, and would have done so if Momoka hadn't tied his wrists with the bow she wore in her hair. Now Inasuke started becoming bewildered; he had no idea why Kaguya was nothing like the collected self he displayed, nor could he make out one word of the noise he was barking. "Er, what's going on? And what's he saying?" Inasuke asked.

"Dunno. He was like dat too last time I missioned with 'im," Urato said, not at all bothered by Kaguya's still screaming incomprehensible bloody murder at him. Luckily, Momoka had a more useful answer to offer.

"Kaguya-sama says this is all Urato-kun's fault," she said, still keeping a watchful eye on her angry master. "He says it's Urato-kun's idea that all four of us break our toes together in this awful fic. Besides, he's disguised in the wrong eyeshadow colour."

"Shigisawa-sempai, you understand him?" Inasuke asked, but his question went unanswered. There was a more pressing matter at hand, as Urato got irritated.

"C'mon, how is it my fault? 'S not me who wanted tah go on dis damn mission in da first place! Blame da one insistin' he wanna protect his fuckin' favourite ballet!" Urato said, gesturing at his partner.

Inasuke got annoyed too. "Then what was I supposed to do, ignore orders and get in trouble with the higher-ups? Besides, it was your idea that they come along! I didn't think it'd turn out like this; who would've thought that a ballet mission would be staged like a ballet?"

The argument would've gone on some more if Momoka hadn't cut in. "At this rate, we're going nowhere. Shouldn't we work together to finish the mission quickly so we can leave? Say, there's a device that helps you escape odd formats, isn't there? Can we escape ballet format too?"

"But the fic itself isn't oddly formatted, that's the problem. It's the Word World's decision to stage the fic environment in any way it pleases," Inasuke said. "Besides, how do we escape ballet format anyway? Where do we warp to if we leave the stage?"

"Er, ain't there audience seats or sumthin'?" Urato asked.

"Hey, I got an idea," Inasuke said. He took the Bag from Kaguya, and once the RA was in his hand, portalled all four into the next chapter.

---

The Nutcracker

As the fic entered its second chapter (read: act), the Four Demonly Kings were ready to take the cringy show head-on again, but not on stage. They were now members of the pit orchestra, dressed in black and sitting among Generic Faceless Musicians with instruments they couldn't play. Their speech was taken away again, but they no longer needed to put their bodies through pain, and that was the best they could hope for.

Inasuke, sitting at the far back of the first violin section, was about to throw the CAD at horn-toting Urato in the brass section to stop him from ogling Kaguya fake-playing the clarinet when he saw a red blur dashing across the stage and the Sue musing on who it could be. Who on earth is Heatwave, and how can anyone have that name in Nutcracker? he angrily scribbled on the sheet music in front of him.

Momoka, sitting among the cellos, eyed the wind sections warily. "Angry moding" Kaguya in such close proximity to Urato was a disaster threatening to happen.

Within a few run-on sentences, the Sue heard scraping noises, which she discovered to be from the canonical nutcracker's trying to climb up a door but kept slipping and making small splinters of wood fall on the ground. Momoka stared at the display on the stage, puzzled (erm, if I remember correctly, the nutcracker doll is really a cursed human, right? If he gets bits of his body shaved off like that…).

Guro implications in a Nutcracker fic. Disgusting, Inasuke jotted down. The nutcracker, after being caught from falling by the Sue, introduced himself as Drosselmeyer Hans, which added to Inasuke's sheet music the charge of that's not how Western names work, at all.

Then it was Urato's turn to be puzzled (why're they talkin' while we can't? Fuckin' unfair, man).

As the agents continued to pretend to play music, the narrative dragged on in more boring block paragraphs. Hans recalled blacking out during his wedding with Clara and finding himself in her abandoned house afterwards, then an entirely pointless bit about the Sue's glowing jar ensued. The Sue and the nutcracker then had another exchange.

"Hans, beside Clara, who else lived here?" she asked. Hans thought for a moment, before replying, "Clara's parents lived here along with her until they disappeared along with Clara." She sighed for a moment before noticing a mouse hole and she got curious. "Hans, another question; have you fought mice before?" she asked. He glanced up at Stephanie in confusion and noticed where she is looking at and felt confused. "I had before, but why you ask?" he questioned. "What if the mice came here before and used magic on them to shrink them to their size and kidnapped them?" she asked. Hans gasped in shock. "Then, the Mouse King might be alive still…" he replied.

Then how on earth could the nutcracker turn back into a human? Killing the Mouse King broke the curse; the entire freaking second half of the ballet would've never happened if the Mouse King is still alive! having snapped the neck of his violin in anger, Inasuke drove the tip of his pencil through the sheet music writing down his thoughts. Then another snap was heard; Kaguya broke his clarinet in two after Drosselmeier the Mouse of Misspelling landed on his face.

The agents' instruments wouldn't be the only things that broke if the convolutedness continued. Is The Nutcracker at once a fictional story and a real event in this fic? Inasuke punctured yet another page. How many more special powers is this girl going to have? he added upon seeing the Sue gently whispered "Ila." and instantly healing a cracked doll. Not wishing to sacrifice his sanity, he produced the RA and portalled himself and his fellow agents out of the chapter.

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Attack Of The Mice

After another break, it came time to finally target the Sue. However, as the chapter title suggested, it would not be easy. Right away, the agents, once again in their first disguises, were thrown into the thick of a brawl between mice and toys. The orchestra was now playing a cacophonic interpretation of Ride of the Valkyries; the stage was so crowded it was hard to get anywhere. Pain once again took hold of the agents' bodies, made worse by the faster pace of the dance.

None of it was as bad as the fact the Sue remained human-sized, which when compared to the agents playing toy roles, made her an utter giant.

(Damn it! She's going to crush us!) Inasuke just managed to avoid being stomped by the Sue's metal foot, but the CAD tumbled out of the Bag and was now fine bits of metal and plastic. The other agents didn't have it any easier, as they didn't have much room to move yet under threat of a Sue feet's falling on their heads; Momoka had to pick up and carry her master, whose limited moves didn't let him run very fast. It was hopeless…

She was backing up against a table and didn't notice that a hooded mouse was behind her, cackling softly to herself or himself. "Meddling human towering tall, let my magic shrink you small." the mouse whispered to herself.

Thanks, whoever you are, Inasuke thought. After getting bitten by a mouse and bleeding black blood – causing Inasuke, Momoka and Kaguya to feel bile in their throats in perfect sync – the Sue was brought down to everyone else's size. Inasuke was still contemplating how to get closer to her when he had a better idea.

Just like in the canonical ballet, he took off one of his slippers, and after much careful aiming, threw it right at the Sue's head. The Sue collapsed to the stage floor, and the music as well as dancing halted on the spot.

"Fuck, dis fucker stepped on my toes… ey wait," Urato cried, then realized something was off. No doubt, he as well as the other agents once again could speak; Inasuke's thrown shoe had interrupted the performance, thus nullifying the Word World's balletification.

"Show's over. Stephanie the Mary Sue, the Protectors of the Plot Continuum convict you of crimes against fanfiction and the work of Tchaikovsky," Inasuke said, approaching the Sue amidst a staring crowd of generics. He placed a foot on top of the Sue's back to prevent her from standing up. "You are charged with creating a badfic in a ballet continuum, forcing agents to hurt themselves doing ballet on top of suffering through the fic; overly long paragraphs and sentences; having way too many implausible body parts, items and abilities, one of which is ripped out of One Piece; having… ugh… black blood; having The Nutcracker be a fictional story and a real thing that happens at the same time; messing up the original story by making the Mouse King still be alive; taking away all the beauty and magic from Nutcracker canon; being too grotesque to belong in a beautiful children's ballet; never explaining anything: who you are, why you're here, why you have all that stuff; and, in short, just making no sense whatsoever. For this, we sentence you to the same fate as the Mouse King in canon: death."

No more needed to be said; the Sue was swiftly portalled into a volcano somewhere unknown to have her flesh burn and metal melt. The formless narrator would love to say the mission was over and the agents returned to HQ, but right then something happened, and the agents were in for quite a pleasant surprise.

As canon reasserted itself, the stage was transformed into a beautiful Land of Sweets set and the dancers' outfits, including the agents', into angelic white costumes. At long last, there was actual Tchaikovsky music; the orchestra commenced a decently performed Waltz of the Flowers. Amidst columns of sugar and banners of marzipan, doused in the rainbowy twinkles from a rock candy chandelier and the colourful shine from fruit drop sconces, the performance continued; the background dancers and the agents broke out in a celebratory dance surrounded by beauty and magic, just the way it was supposed to be.

Within a delight lay another delight. Before long, Momoka found herself dancing too close to Kaguya even though it was a crowd dance. Soon they were holding hands and their bodies almost touched; it was not a pas de deux, but it could well be. It seemed everything faded around them: Urato and Inasuke, the backup dancers, the orchestra. Their eyes locked and Momoka's heart skipped a beat; they were perhaps getting a tad too close for comfort, right before he lifted her and she arched backwards in a graceful cambré derrière.

After a physically painful mission in an unfamiliar continuum, it was a much welcome treat.

Of course, all celebrations had to come to an end. As the music reached its last bars, Inasuke neuralyzed the nutcracker prince, then still in waltz rhythm, all four danced through the newly created portal out of the fic.

---

"Ballet is horrifying! And yet I actually had chūnibyō fantasies about being a pro ballet dancer one day!" Inasuke whined as the pain and strain pulsed through his flesh and stung his joints. It felt as though every of his muscle fibers was being torn apart and his limbs were about to fall off like withered branches off a tree, and he could barely even sit up. "I'm never watching a ballet ever again!"

"Wimp," Urato quipped. In stark contrary to his partner, he looked as though he'd never been through the mission, already lounging about and opening another bottle of fizzy tonic drink as if his body had never undertaken a physically taxing, injury-prone dance form. "C'mon, this is fuckin' nothin'. Looks like ya gotta exercise a lil' more."

Inasuke wanted to protest, but was too exhausted to. He lay limp for another moment before recalling something, and he asked, "Hey, where are the sempai?"

"Welp, looks like they're back in their home at last. See, toldja this'll work."

Inasuke sighed. "Well, as long as that botchan is out of my RC, I'll take anything I can get."

---

Minis:

• Drosselmeier (adopted by Linstar)