The Reunion

Word Count: 1,933

Written: 7/31/12

Notes: Hello, Coriana here. Thank you for reading the bonus chapter for the story 'Who's in Character Anyway?' I had a lot of debate whether to post it since I had said that the story had ended. But once I had it written all out, it was too perfect not to post. I hope you all enjoy it. :-D

Plus, I had to bring to notice the awesomely awesome book cover RaisedOnRadio made for this story (you can check out her Deviant Art profile (caressofsteel) for a full-sized version). Thank you for making it! (Although I was the one that found the picture of Naru). ;-)

Four years had passed since the ending of the Ghost Hunt series. So it was only high time for all the old co-stars to meet in a reunion party, and to discuss their current lives and job situations…

…

Mai, Naru, Yasu, Mr. Monk, Normal Ayako, Masako and Lin were gathered at the original SPR building. Since it was still empty, they had decided it would be okay to use it as a reunion spot. John had not yet arrived. And Gene was busy, as he normally was these days.

Except the office wasn't how they remembered it, since there was no furniture, electricity, gas, or water being brought into the building. It has been closed for four years. What had they been expecting?

"It's so nice to see everyone," Mai said, clapping her hands together and smiling broadly. It had been a good thing that they had decided to meet earlier in the day, because there was sunlight streaming through the windows. Otherwise, they probably wouldn't be able to see each other since there was no electricity. Everyone was sitting on the floor except for Masako, who was sitting on a cardboard box that she had found in the corner.

"Ah, yes, it's good to be back. This is where I made my debut, you know?" Yasu said, who was sitting next to Mai. Who was sitting extremely close to Mai. She would scoot away from him a bit only to have him scoot after her.

"Now I have the reign of my own world. As the king, so to speak," he continued. "Would you call me the king, Agent?"

Mr. Monk had turned all his cell phones off for this seemingly special occasion. Mai didn't remember when Mr. Monk had become Yasu's agent.

Mr. Monk nodded. "He's the god of advertisements. Everyone that has featured him in their advertisements, their sales go up ten-fold. Yasu is a… very convincing salesman."

"Convincing," Naru scoffed, who was standing by the windows. Mai was pretty sure he was still holding a grudge from when the producers had auctioned off all his antique lamps to pay off their bills. "You're using some type of mind control – that's the only answer."

"What have you been doing these last few years, Naru?" Mai said. She didn't want it to seem as if she was asking him the question as soon as she could, but she couldn't hold it in anymore.

Yasu leaned closer to her. "Apart from his acting career - he's become a model as a hobby."

Mai's eye's got so wide, that they almost tumbled out of her skull. "What? For which magazine? I haven't seen him!"

"That's terrible Mai. So that probably means that you've been missing out of his underwear photo shoots," Yasu said, shaking his head.

"You're an underwear model?" The idea struck Mai as terribly funny.

"It was only for a little while," Naru mumbled.

"At least it wasn't woman's underwear," Yasu said, and Mai almost choked on the tea she was drinking.

"What about you, Masako?" Mai said, trying to turn the conversation to something else. Except she knew that she would be thinking about Naru as a model for the rest of the evening…

Masako, whose wardrobe malfunction had finally been fixed, was wearing a kimono. She put the sleeve to her mouth and shifted on her cardboard box. "It's quite awful, really. The Ghost Hunt series has completely ruined my image. I always try to leave it out of my résumé, but it's no use – I've been forever marked as the bad-good girl that's such a minor character that people forget about her. The only time that they remember the character is to be reminded that they hate her." Masako covered her face.

Normal Ayako patted the girl's shoulder.

"What about you?" Mai asked Normal Ayako, once again to turn the conversation.

Normal Ayako was the beginning of all the exaggerated versions of herself from the Ghost Hunt series. She was a little bit of all of them. "Why, I've just been a devoted housewife. We've had more children, too."

"Oh, that's lovely. How many?"

"Five."

"Oh, how – Wait. You had five more children. Didn't you already have three? You have eight children?"

"Oh, yes. I had two sets of twins and a single."

"Yech," Mai said, pretty sure that she wouldn't be able to have more than two. If only a certain underwear model would marry her.

Lin was sitting by the wall with his legs folded (remember, there's no furniture). And he was working on a…computer.

"Lin's become a computer technician," Yasu said.

Everyone was too horrified by watching him type and stare at the computer screen so intently. It seemed very... wrong.

"Hey, Lin," Mai said, raising her hand to get his attention. "Remember when you didn't like computers?"

"Me? Not like computers? What are you talking about?" Lin looked at Mai from over the computer screen. "I adore computers. They're the loveliest invention in the world. I love computers. I married my computer."

Mai was too shocked by the last sentence to say anything.

"Well, that's creepy," Yasu said.

"It's not creepy," Lin said, his eyes shining with unshed tears.

"All right," Mai said, trying yet again to change the turn of conversation, "has anyone heard from John? He should have been here by now."

And thus on cue, there was a knock on the door.

Mai jumped up and ran excitedly to the door, opening it up to find… some person she didn't know.

"Oh, can I help you?"

"Well, no," he said, "You see, I've come to bring dire news. Father John Brown has passed on."

Mai covered her mouth. There was a collection of gasps behind her.

"John Brown had never fully recovered from the Cardboard Disease. He had just entered one of his bouts, and, well, someone left him outside in the rain, and he…melted."

Mai continued to just stare with a gaping mouth at the uncomfortable messenger.

"Also," the man said, "John had said that he never wanted to go to waste, even after his death, so we had him recycled."

"Recycled," Mai whispered to the man.

"Recycled," he calmly repeated.

Mai shut the door after the messenger had departed. "Recycled," she said again.

"Wow," Naru said. "That was unexpected."

She resumed her place on the floor.

"This is awful," she said, "That means that John can be in any cardboard-substance right now…"

Everyone's eyes narrowed in on the box that Masako was sitting on, and she hastily stood up and scooted the box back into the corner. Just in case.

There was another knock on the door, so Mai rolled her eyes and got back up. She had to wonder though, that maybe it would be John telling her it had all been in jest. Not that John had ever been one to joke. It had never been written into his character.

Mai opened the door, feeling the sense of déjà vu, because she had already just opened the door, and then saw Madoka standing in the doorway. There was no sense of déjà vu there, since she had never even seen Madoka on this set.

"Hello, everyone! Sorry that I'm late. You see, my train broke down so I've been stranded in a town four hours from here for the last few years. And whenever I tried to email Lin to come and pick me up, he would never answer for some reason. I was so disheartened." She stepped into the office, only stopping to pat Mai on the head. "Ah, this place looks perfect. The producers really know what they're doing, right? So," she turned to look at everyone sitting on the floor, "when does the production start?"

Yasu looked at her for a minute, and then said, "The production ended four years ago. They eventually had to just make your stunt-double take over your whole role since you never arrived."

Silence prevailed throughout the office.

"You mean, it's over?" she asked.

"Yes, I do believe so," Yasu said.

"No one bothered to ever call me?"

"The Other Madoka might have had something to do with that. Most people don't even know that there was an Original Madoka," Yasu said, "but don't worry; you'll always be the Real Madoka to us."

Madoka made a scoffing noise. "Who is she? I'll kill her for taking the role that I worked so hard to acquire."

"She's off to some other place in the world living the high-life, since she got more money than she would have if she was just a stunt-double."

Mai patted Madoka's shoulder. "It's okay. We still love you from your toes to your magenta colored-hair –"

"Excuse me? Magenta? My hair is a dark strawberry-blonde. Got it? Magenta is the color of the female dog from 'Blue's Clues'. That's the color magenta. Do not forget it."

"Yes, ma'am," Mai said.

The real truth was, which no one dared to say, was that they all liked the Other Madoka better. And that was why no one bothered to pick her up at a town only four hours away.

And then Gene walked through the still-opened front door, dramatically. Because he liked doing that. "Idiot scientist," he said before anyone else could speak.

"What?" Mai asked.

"Nothing, I just like saying it."

"What are you doing here?" Naru said, folding his arms. "Don't you have, like, three other movies that you should be at? You're disgracing the whole family when you take off like that."

"I'm going to go back. But first, I had come to see if Mai would be my Love Interest in my new movie. Duh." Gene took hold of her hand and kissed it. "He's just an idiot scientist."

"What! That's not acceptable! I've been trying to get her into the same movie as I for four years! I am against this. Somebody call my agent!" Yasu declared, standing up for dramatic emphasis.

Mr. Monk raised his hand, "You called?"

"Oh, I forgot…"

"But we were always supposed to be together," Gene said, "That's how the author intended it."

"I don't believe so," Naru said.

"And why not, Mr. Idiot Scientist?"

"Because you were dead."

"Oh, yeah…"

Mai was still too dazzled to react to anything, because in her fantasies, she believed that they were fighting over her. When in reality, Naru had just wanted to remind Gene that he had been dead throughout the whole production.

"This has been an interesting reunion," Masako said, writing out her next résumé.

"What? What? It's the reunion?" Madoka said. "I missed everything else and I crashed the reunion?"

"Yes, you did," Yasu said.

"Where's John?" she demanded.

"That's an interesting question…"

"Don't worry – he's not gone forever," Naru said.

Mai looked over at him, a question mark all but appearing over her head. "He's not?"

"Of course not. They have a direct copy of him, just in a smaller, more manageable form. Just in case something like this ever happened, they could just make another one."

Mai couldn't help thinking that one of the producers had a paper doll version of John somewhere in their folder of character bios. It made her shudder to think of such a notion.

She had to wonder if they had one of her, too.

Madoka looked quizzical, but she also decided it was sometimes better not to press certain things.

"So," Mai said, "I guess we'll see each other again when they make a second season?"

They all shared in a hearty laugh – excluding Naru – because they all knew that would never happen.