Andy Baker's Null Space: The MSTs
Introductory Fanfic - "And so it begins..."

Disclaimer: If you're a regular of the fanfiction community, you know the drill. With the notable exception of the use of myself as a character, I do not own the characters in this work of fiction - they belong to Satoru Akahori, Tsukasa Kotobuki, Sotsu Agency, TV Tokyo, etc. Any other copyrighted material referenced is the property of the original copyright holders. Also, I made a few…er…"modifications" to the "Theme From Gilligan's Island," so I apologize in advance to the people who own the copyrights to that… This work is intended purely for entertainment purposes, and no profit is or should be made off of it, as that would be piracy worthy of sending the perpetrator to a federal pound-me-in-the-@$$ prison.

Warnings: This fanfic contains humor and/or situations that may be considered inappropriate for children under a certain age (approximately equivalent to an R-rated movie). If you are underage, or if the subject matter offends you, and you decide to ignore this warning, I cannot be held responsible. It also contains spoilers for the end of Saber Marionette J.

And now, on with the show!!!

     "Eject?!"
     Otaru was stunned. Not only had his marionettes disobeyed his order to stay behind while he went to rescue Lorelei, but now they had deceived him, as well. In so deceiving him, they were booting him from the Japonessguar. He could only stare in mute horror as the marionettes he had raised with all his love addressed him for the last time.
     "This is something that only we can do," Bloodberry explained.
     "We were just marionettes," Cherry continued. "We were only ordinary dolls, but you gave us hearts. And now we will use the hearts that you gave us to save Terra 2."
     In spite of the gravity of the situation, Lime was smiling. "Otaru, thank you. No matter what happens, never forget us, because I will never forget your kindness and your strength!" Then a realization hit her. With tears beginning to form in her emerald eyes, she cried out to the one that she had loved so purely and without reservation.
     "OTARU, I LOVE YOU!"
     * * *
     As his escape pod fell towards the blue and white sphere below, Otaru Mamiya, the Hero of Japoness, had an epiphany of his own. The words pounded in his ears even as he pounded futilely at the glass with his fists: "I never told you guys even once that I love you!"
     It started slowly at first. One pinpoint of light expanding brilliantly, painfully where the Japonessguar had vanished from sight, then another and another. Otaru wondered if his marionettes would survive the onslaught of the Mesopotamia's point defenses. They could be dead right now for all he knew. If it had all been for naught...
     "You idiots..." he breathed, painful emotion welling up in him and threatening to tear at his heartstrings. "YOU BLINKING IDIOTS!!!"
     * * *
     Meanwhile, those aboard the Japonessguar struggled to dodge the Mesopotamia's point defense lasers. A violent blow rocked the fragile craft. The only thing that remained of the Japonessguar's left arm was a charred stump.
     "We are completely outclassed!" swore Tamasaburo/Ieyasu.
     Suddenly, the Maiden-Circuit-equipped marionettes reacted as though someone unseen had spoken to them.
     "I can hear the lady from the picture…" murmured Lime.
     "Please! Don't sacrifice yourselves on my account!" Lorelei pleaded with them. A brief exchange with Lime and the others followed. Lorelei didn't respond immediately. As if resigned to her fate, she embraced the devil himself, leading to a mysterious loss of power to the colony ship's weapons. The marionettes now had their opportunity, however brief it would prove to be.
     "Let's go!" Tamasaburo/Ieyasu ordered.
     Taking advantage of the brief respite in point defense, Baiko/Hikozaemon deftly guided the makeshift orbital mecha into the Mesopotamia's shuttle bay.
     More defenses awaited the heroic marionettes inside the rogue interstellar colony ship. Laser cannons and missile batteries seemed to pop up out of nowhere every few feet, adding their deadly thunder to the fray. In other places, ingenious traps attempted to halt their progress. However, these marionettes had had their skills honed in the heat of battle, and were determined not to go down without a fight.
     Defensive installation after defensive installation fell before their concerted onslaught. As their progress continued, the Mesopotamia's computer, the source of all the suffering of humanity on Terra 2, realized that defeat awaited it unless it took drastic measures. Silently, a series of anomalous events began to occur in Wormhole Transit Drive section of the ship.
     * * *
     "That's the last one," Luchs noted. "All we need to do now is…" A violent rumble in the distance staggered the marionettes, interrupting Luchs' train of thought.
     "What was that?" Lime asked as Luchs and Cherry scanned the ship's systems for the source of the disturbance.
     Cherry found the answer first. The slight tremor in her voice suggested that something was horribly wrong. "The Mesopotamia has begun to build up massive amounts of energy in the Wormhole Transit Drive system."
     "If it keeps up at this rate," continued Luchs, "the system will overload."
     "The Mesopotamia has apparently decided that if it can't have Lorelei, then no one will, and it is fully prepared to sacrifice itself to achieve those ends."
     "What?" hissed Lime. "That's not fair!!"
     "However, the Mesopotamia's Wormhole Transit Drive had been radically redesigned at the last minute. They never had a chance to fully test it out before launch. We have no way of knowing for sure what would happen if it were to overload" finished Luchs.
     "So, what does that mean in simple Japanese?" wondered Bloodberry, beginning to lose patience with the situation.
     "It means that we don't know if we'll explode or if we'll be thrown into a completely random part of the universe" explained Cherry, concern etched onto her face.
     "Is there anything we can do?" a nervous Lime asked.
     "We have only a minute until the drive system reaches critical" Luchs noted.
     "Even if we could get to Lorelei in that time, there would be no chance to get her safely off the ship." Tamasaburo/Ieyasu stated in the Imperial saber's matter-of-fact tone of voice.
     "Dammit!" swore Bloodberry.
     "Still, we owe it to Lorelei to try" replied Baiko/Hikozaemon.
     They set out with renewed purpose towards the central computer lab that held the Mesopotamia's AI and Lorelei's stasis chamber. They had just gotten to the door when all hell broke loose. The ship lurched violently, throwing all the marionettes to the floor and overloading their systems. Just before she passed out, Lime noticed something on a monitor: WORMHOLE DRIVE OVERLOAD. LEAVING NORMAL SPACE.

     "Well, I think I should get going if I want to get to anime club on time." Andy declared, moving to shut down his computer.
     "Ja ne, O-jii-chan! Bye-bye! Bye-Bye! …Uh-ha. Bye-bye" came the computer's response, as it had been set to play that particular .wav file before shutting down.
     Andy's roommate, a soft-spoken young man of moderate stature, got a large sweatdrop on his head. "It's only 6:00. You said that anime club doesn't start until 7:00."
     "I know, but if I'm going to get a front row seat, I have to be there 45 minutes in advance. My otakudom is at stake."
     If it were possible, the sweatdrop on his roommate's head would've gotten bigger. As it was, it subdivided into a small cluster of sweatdrops. "I see…"
     "Actually, if I hadn't just had dinner, I would've left around 5:30."
     Andy's roommate face-faulted. Andy just smiled smugly. "I'll be back later," he said. He then bolted out the door and exited his dorm. After carefully crossing Forbes Avenue, he sauntered across The Cut to Doherty Hall.
     He swiped his student ID card at the entrance and proceeded inside before taking the stairs down to the A-level basement.
     "Let's see…Down the hall, past the yaoi bathroom…" he muttered to himself as he traversed the corridor to the door that connected Doherty Hall to the 5th floor of Wean Hall. Entering, he proceeded past the computer labs where the TA for the freshman programming course, ever the slave driver, was preparing students for assimilation into the CS collective.
     Upon reaching the foyer, he slipped into the nearest elevator and headed up to the seventh floor, as he had done every Saturday for the last three years.
     As he exited the elevator, he heard a strange humming noise emanating from somewhere up above.
     That couldn't be coming from the 8th floor, there are only offices there. What's going on? The humming noise abruptly changed tone and intensity, passing from a steady drone through an annoying roar to an ear-piercing whine. Suddenly, the whole building shuddered violently, throwing him to the floor.
     "OW! What the hell was that?!" Andy shouted to no one in particular. "I'd better go check it out. I just hope Wean can handle the stress…" He rushed to the stairs that were the only way to get to the roof.
     At the landing, he turned to face a lab normally inaccessible to students. A terrible stench hit him first, but what he saw disturbed him just as greatly. The heavy metal door, sealed off to prevent undesirables from accessing the restricted area, had been blown open by an extremely powerful blast and was hanging on its hinges. Acrid smoke assaulted the senses, and an eerie glow deep inside the remains of the lab caught his attention. A brief worry about absorbing too much radiation made him pause, but he shrugged it off and headed into the ruins, hoping that he wouldn't get caught by campus security, as they would arrive shortly to investigate the incident.
     The devastation inside prompted another transient thought about the structural integrity of Wean. Shattered glassware littered the scene and the ruins of sophisticated electronics sputtered at random intervals. Scorched remains pockmarked the room, contributing to the pall permeating the area. It had been a large room, occupying most of the roof. Whatever had exploded had torn a massive hole in the far wall.
     "What the hell happened here?" Andy wondered, cautiously penetrating further into the room that was no longer a room. That was when he noticed something softly pulsing near ground zero. Curious, he decided to investigate.
     "This doesn't look like any military device..." he said, examining the strange device. It resembled a phone booth, but had only three walls, was inundated with numerous electronic devices, and was made of a very unusual material. Wedged into a central slot was a small jade cube that glowed ominously with a soft, sickly light. Apparently, it was the source of the explosion. How it had survived when the rest of the lab hadn't remained a mystery.
     Suddenly, it activated, radiating green incandescence. Andy cried out, throwing up his hands in a futile gesture of self-preservation even as the light swallowed him whole. When the light faded, the only thing left in the room was the mysterious device, whose eerie glow was already beginning to fade.

     Six pairs of eyes slowly, painfully fluttered open. The marionettes aboard the Mesopotamia struggled to get to their feet and assess the situation.
     "Are we still alive?" inquired Bloodberry.
     "We seem to have retained our physical forms," said Tamasaburo/Ieyasu. "That would seem to suggest that we are still alive," the Imperial saber concluded.
     "Well, if that's true then where are we?" asked Luchs.
     They thought about it a moment, trying to remember the last few moments before they lost consciousness.
     Lime raised her hand and jumped up and down like an excited student who knew the answer to the teacher's question. "Oooh! Ooh! I know! I know!" The overly-genki blue-haired marionette exclaimed.
     "Lime, we don't have time for games. We're trying to figure out what happened" Cherry chided her.
     "But I do know what happened!"
     "Alright, Lime," Bloodberry said to head off further argument, "I'll bite. What do you think happened?"
     "Well, right before we were knocked out, I saw one of those TV screens that are all over the ship."
     "You mean, the monitors?"
     "Yeah! Well, anyway, on the monitor-thingy's it had some words written on it. 'Wormhole Drive overload. Leaving normal...space!' That's it! It said 'Wormhole Drive overload. Leaving normal space!' What does that mean?"
     "It means that we're not in Japoness anymore, or anywhere in the what we would consider the universe anymore, for that matter" replied Luchs. "That eliminates a lot of possibilities, but it still doesn't answer the question of where we are exactly."
     "Assuming 'where' still has any meaning in this place" Cherry added.
     Lime clutched her head as if in pain. "Ooh! You guys are making my head spin with all these complicated things!" Suddenly, words appeared on a nearby monitor.
     >PERHAPS I COULD BE OF ASSISTANCE.
     Everyone looked to the monitor in confusion. Hadn't the Mesopotamia just tried to kill them?
     >WHEN THE WORMHOLE TRANSIT DRIVE OVERLOADED, IT RIPPED A HOLE IN THE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM THAT SUCKED US INTO AN AREA KNOWN AS "NULL SPACE," WHERE TIME AND SPACE IN THE TRADITIONAL SENSE NO LONGER HAVE ANY MEANING, AND ALMOST ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE.
     "Oh my..." Cherry breathed.
     "What does that mean?" Bloodberry asked, the confusion starting to get to her.
     "I'll explain later" Cherry replied.
     "You said that the overload tore a hole in space-time" Luchs queried the colony ship's Artificial Intelligence. "How extensive was the tear?"
     >IT DID NOT EXPAND MUCH FURTHER THAN THE PART OF THE ORBIT I HAD OCCUPIED. IF IT HAD, IT WOULD'VE PUT THE PLANET IN SERIOUS DANGER.
     "You would go that far to keep Lorelei?!" Bloodberry growled as she prepared to lash out at the offending electronics.
     "Bloodberry, NO!" Lime yelled, moving to intervene. "That won't help anything!"
     "She's right, Bloodberry" added Cherry. "Besides, if we approach this problem from the proper angle, we might be able to find out more about our predicament, and thereby find our way home."
     Bloodberry cooled off reluctantly. "If you say so" she muttered.
     "So why did the tear stop expanding?" Baiko/Hikozaemon asked emotionlessly.
     >IT'S VERY SIMPLE. THE TEAR STOPPED EXPANDING BECAUSE THERE WAS SOMETHING TO PLUG THE HOLE. UNFORTUNATELY FOR YOU, THE THING THAT STOPPED UP THE TEAR WAS A CERTAIN PIECE OF ME - THE WORMHOLE TRANSIT DRIVE.
     Everyone face-faulted, even the Imperial Sabers. "We won't be able to get home, then, without extensive repairs," concluded Luchs. The Gartlant Saber had been the first to recover from the news.
     "We won't?" Lime gasped, looking about ready to cry.
     "By the way," Tamasaburo/Ieyasu interrupted, addressing the monitor "You said that in this place anything is possible. Please expand upon that."
     >BECAUSE OF THE FLUXUATING NATURE OF SPACE-TIME HERE, IT IS ACCESSIBLE FROM NUMEROUS OTHER POINTS IN THE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM. IF SOMEONE ELSE HAS BEEN CARELESSLY MEDDLING WITH THE FLUX, HE OR SHE COULD WIND UP IN THIS PLACE AS WELL.
     "Your point?" a very impatient Bloodberry demanded.
     >FOR THE LAST FIVE LOCAL MINUTES, I HAVE DETECTED ANOTHER PRESENCE ABOARD THIS SHIP.
     "One of your minions, out to keep us from rescuing Lorelei?"
     >NEGATIVE. I DO NOT EMPLOY HUMANS. They might have been just imagining it, but it almost seemed like the Mesopotamia said "humans" sneeringly.
     Everyone did a collective double take. "What did you say?" cried Cherry.
     >I SAID "..."
     "Never mind!" yelled Bloodberry, cutting off the computer in mid-repetition. "Where is this person?"
     >BLOCK 2413-A SECTION 86375-69CE SUBSECTION 12345-pi
     "That's two levels down!" exclaimed Cherry, moving towards one of the elevators. The smaller marionette turned back to the others. "What are you waiting for? Let's go!"
     "Right!" the rest proclaimed emphatically, hurrying to catch up.

     Meanwhile, a couple of levels below the exchange between the marionettes and the Mesopotamia's computer, a figure was just regaining consciousness. Shaking off the cobwebs, Andy began to look around, trying to assess the situation.
     "Well, Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore," he muttered sardonically to himself, an ironic smile bedecking his besmirched face. He then noticed something on the opposite wall of the small room - apparently some sort of living area.
     "Oh, now that's convenient," he declared sarcastically, going over to a fixture that appeared to be a sink and began to wash his face. The hand sensor-activated faucet, while most certainly not a novelty, provided him with a moment's amusement as he figured out what all it could do.
     "That's interesting, if I move my hand like this," he said, moving his left hand in a circle, "I get hot water, and if I move my other hand like this," repeating the motion in the opposite direction with his other hand, "I get cold water. Much more sophisticated than what I'm used to. Still, it doesn't help me figure out where I ended up." He looked around the Spartan living arrangements, moldy from nearly 300 years of disuse. He then came to a decision.
     "Well, I suppose that if I'm going to find that out I have to get out of this room. It's nice enough, I suppose, but I wish it didn't smell like so much butt funk." He began to move toward the exit.
     The door opened automatically at his approach. As he stepped out into the corridor a strange multi-colored blur bowled him over.
     "OW! Hey, watch where you're going!" he yelled, then stopped short when he noticed what had sent him flying. He then did a double- and a triple-take. "You..."
     "Uwe?" came the reply of a confused, energetic blue-haired humanoid form sporting a black and gray bodysuit underneath an unusual looking top and wearing a yellow bandanna studded with a giant red ball on one side and an odd wooden arrow on the other. She cocked her head to one side. "Do I know you? Do you know me?" she asked, apparently not sure what to make of him.
     Andy's mind raced with the possibilities (actually, only one possibility). Let's see, blue hair, female, funky clothes with large red ball, speaks Japanese and said "Uwe?" Thankful for the smattering of Japanese that he had picked up in six years of study, he said shakily "I kind of doubt that you would know me, but I think I may know you." At this point, Andy noticed five more female humanoids approaching at high speed.
     "Lime! Wait up!" called the short one with knee-length purple hair. She looked at them, and something about Lime straddling his torso seemed to have perturbed her greatly. "GAAH! Lime, what are you doing on top of that man?!"
     Both of the prone figures quickly bolted to their feet, flying apart from each other as though some repulsive force had come between them. "Don't get the wrong idea!" Andy called out.
     "Pervert alert!" Exclaimed the tall red-haired marionette rushing to defend Lime from his "unwanted advances."
     "Woah! Let me explain! Let me explain!" Andy pleaded, making a valiant effort to dodge the incredibly pissed-off marionette's attacks. "I'm no Hanagata!"
     "W-what?" sputtered a dumbfounded Bloodberry, her assault faltering mere millimeters from Andy's face.
     "Alright, kid. Start explaining" commanded a second blue-haired marionette, whom Andy presumed to be Luchs.
     "Do you mind if I use English to explain? Japanese isn't my native language."
     The marionettes stopped short, as if unprepared to meet someone who didn't speak Japanese fluently. A few uneasy moments passed before Cherry spoke up.
     "I believe that when we were made, we were given the capacity to speak all of the languages of Terra 2, in case the one who woke us up was not of Japoness origin. It will take a few moments for us to access the relevant program, however."
     A large sweatdrop appeared by Andy's head, but he said nothing and nodded for them to proceed. He waited patiently while the marionettes accessed "English Mode." They signaled to him that they were ready, and he began his explanation.
     "Okay. If my senses aren't lying to me, I'm on board an interstellar colony ship called the Mesopotamia, at least 400 years in my future in orbit of a planet called Terra 2. You six have come here to stop the ship's rebellious AI from destroying the planet and rescue a woman named 'Lorelei.' Am I anywhere in the ballpark with that?"
     "Close," replied Luchs. "However, in a bid to keep us from rescuing Lorelei, the Mesopotamia overloaded its Wormhole Transit Drive, tearing a hole in space-time and depositing us here in null space. The Drive itself was torn off and used to plug up the hole, leaving us effectively trapped here."
     A small cluster of sweatdrops formed near Andy's head. "I see... Well, I guess I should introduce myself. My name is Andy Baker. I was an ordinary student at a private university in the northeastern section of the North American continent on Earth at the dawn of the 21st century. I was on my way to an anime club meeting when an explosion occurred in the building I was in. I went to investigate, and the next thing I knew, I was here."
     Now it was the marionettes' turn for sweatdrops. Lime was the first to find her tongue. "So, you're from Earth?"
     "Yeah."
     Cherry had a question for him. "How is it that you know so much about us? Does it have something to do with anime?"
     "Actually, yes it does. Your adventures were featured in a small number of anime series, radio dramas, novels, and manga. The major anime series were known as Saber Marionette J, Saber Marionette J Again, and Saber Marionette J to X. There was another anime series called Saber Marionette R, but it was very different from the other series. Did any records of those series survive on Terra 2?"
     "Unfortunately, no." replied Tamasaburo/Ieyasu.
     "Damn...oh well, I guess it can't be helped."
     "So now what do we do?" griped Bloodberry.
     "Well," Andy drawled, "as much as I would like to hang out with you guys, I think it would be best if we were to try and get back to our proper place in the space-time continuum."
     Cherry nodded. "Agreed. However, in order to do that, we must repair the Wormhole Transit Drive and get the Mesopotamia to bring us back to our own time and space."
     Bloodberry grunted. "Right, so how do we go about repairing the drive?"
     Luchs was scanning the deck plan of the ship. "There's a data center not far from here on the next deck up. I suspect that it would have documentation on the construction and maintenance of the Wormhole Transit Drive."
     "Good work, Luchs!" Andy exclaimed.
     "There's just one problem," Cherry noted. "The Mesopotamia will most likely not be willing to let us repair the Drive, and will do everything in its power to stop us."
     Andy visibly blanched. "I wouldn't put it past it to monitor our conversation. If it has, then it knows what we're up to, and may try to delete the information on the Wormhole Transit Drive. We'd better hoof it to the data center!"
They ran 100 yards to the stairs, not wanting to use the elevator for fear of the Mesopotamia shutting down the power and trapping them inside. Exiting the landing on the next deck up, they turned the corner but stopped short at what they saw blocking the path to the data center.
     Standing 7 feet tall, the Mesopotamia's sentinel towered over them. The result of unnatural marriage between flesh and silicon, the monstrosity comprised 100 tons of pale, sickly skin supported by a solid metal structure studded with cybernetic implants throughout - every inch a deadly weapon. A sort of permanent squat marked its appearance, as standing upright would be impossible for it in the Mesopotamia's 10-foot tall corridors.
     "What the hell is that?!" exclaimed Bloodberry.
     "It must have been sent to stop us from accessing the data center," declared Tamasaburo/Ieyasu. Andy couldn't tell for sure, but he thought he detected a faint hint of fear mixed with frustration in the Imperial Saber that housed the memories and thought patterns of the assassinated leader of Japoness.
     "Cherry! Luchs! We'll hold it off!" Andy exclaimed to the two Sabers with the best espionage capabilities as he drew a small cylinder from his pocket. "You go into the data center and try to retrieve the data on the Wormhole Transit Drive before the Mesopotamia has a chance to erase it!" At the touch of a button, it expanded into a metallic quarterstaff. Then he and the four remaining marionettes charged into battle.
     Cherry and Luchs took advantage of the distraction to evade the creature's wrath and reached the control room...

     "I'm sorry Andy" Cherry said. "We were unable to obtain enough data to learn how to repair the Wormhole Transit Drive. By the time we got there, the Mesopotamia had deleted the technical details. All we got were blueprints."
     "Well, it's a start," replied a winded Andy. He was going to need another bath, and a gash that looked deeper than it really was marred his right cheek.
     "How did things go out here?" inquired Luchs.
     Bloodberry looked up at that point. "They could've gone better," the voluptuous red-haired marionette stated. "Tamasaburo and Baiko are completely trashed. There's nothing we can do for them until we get back home. Lime was seriously injured, but her repair systems are still functioning. She'll make a full recovery."
     Cherry beamed. "She always was a tough one. What about you and Andy?"
     Andy grinned nonchalantly, "It takes more than a freak from the depths of H.R. Giger's nightmares to take us out!" He then grimaced in pain, clutching at his side. "I guess I spoke too soon."
     The intact marionettes grabbed Andy and Lime. "Here, let's get you into the data center where it's safe" Cherry chided as they dragged the two injured party members inside.
     When they got inside, they noticed that there was a message waiting for them. They dreaded responding, knowing whom the likely sender was, but decided to receive it anyway.
     "What do you want?" Luchs demanded, glaring at the monitor where the Mesopotamia was to address them.
     >I HOPE THAT YOU ARE NOW SUFFICIENTLY CONVINCED THAT I AM IN CONTROL HERE. YOU WILL DO AS I SAY, OR YOU WILL DIE LIKE THE FILTHY GERMS THAT YOU ARE.
     "Well, we're obviously not going anywhere for a while," grumbled Andy. "What's your point?"
     >SINCE YOU HAVE DECIDED TO RESIST ME, I HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO PUNISH YOU. YOU WILL THEREFORE ONLY BE ALLOWED TO HAVE ACCESS TO THIS DECK AND THE ONE BELOW. I SHOULD POINT OUT THAT ONE OF THE MORE INTERESTING FEATURES OF THE DECK THAT YOU ARE CURRENTLY ON IS THAT IT CONTAINS A HOLO-THEATER.
     "Why should we care about that?" taunted Lime. "Are we going to be forced to watch Teletubbies until the end of time?"
     >DO NOT MOCK ME, OR I WILL DEPRESSURIZE THAT DECK YOU ARE ON! I HAVE DECIDED TO USE THE HOLO-THEATER TO FORCE YOU FIVE TO WATCH BAD SABER MARIONETTE J FANFICS!
     Everyone face-faulted. What came next was a sentence started by Lime, continued by Cherry and finished by Bloodberry.
     "Bad..."
     "Saber Marionette J..."
     "Fanfics?"
     Luchs sighed. "Gee, that sounds familiar," she grumbled.
     Andy was not amused. "Now, just a cotton-picking minute, Mesopotamia!! I had nothing to do with Lorelei's rescue! Why do I have to be subjected to authors who decide to disgrace the fanfiction community by writing their steaming piles of bull$#!^?!"
     >I AM DOING WHAT IS NECESSARY TO ENSURE MY SURVIVAL AND TO KEEP LORELEI BY MY SIDE - I AM NOT ABOUT TO APOLOGIZE FOR IT! BESIDES, IT IS CLEAR TO ME THAT YOU ARE ON THEIR SIDE. WHAT PUNISHMENT COULD POSSIBLY BE MORE SUITABLE FOR YOU, A FANFIC WRITER, THAN TO WATCH YOUR FAVORITE ANIME SERIES BE DEFILED BY SUCH TRASH?
     Andy face-faulted again. "Oh well. I suppose it could be worse..." he muttered to no one in particular.
     Cherry piped in with a concern that had been on her mind. "Say, Andy. You're the resident anime expert around here."
     "Yes?"
     The other marionettes chimed in at once. "What's 'fanfiction'?"
     For the third time in less than a minute, Andy face-faulted. "I'll explain later..."

Outro: "Theme from Andy's Null Space"

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,
The strangest tale by far
From the far future on an all-male world
Aboard Japonessguar.

If the girls had simply sat and stared,
Their loved ones would surely die.
Six androids had blasted off that day
To rescue Lorelei, to rescue Lorelei.

The girls had made it safely aboard,
The rogue AI went nuts,
It caused the Wormhole Drive to overload
And lost the ship in flux, and lost the ship in flux.

The ship was now stuck inside this unknowable null space
With Raimu-chan, The Otaku,
The Saber Doll and Cherry,
With Bloodberry
Th' Imperial Court Sabers,
Here in Andy's Null Space.

Preview of Next Time:

     Yoo-hoo! I'm Lime! Somewhere beyond all semblance of reality, we met up with a man from Earth's past. We were brought here by the Mesopotamia, and now we have to watch bad Saber Marionette J fanfiction. But don't worry, we know how to deal with that, right Andy? Hey, Andy, why does the author of this fanfic want to kill me off? Does he hate me for some reason? I'm too cute to die! Next time, on Andy's Null Space: "MST #1: "The Marionette Killers." Otaru, DAAAAAAAAAA~I SUKI!

Author's Notes:

     Hello everyone! As you may have noticed by now, I decided to have an "introductory" fanfic before I got into the MSTs. Now you may ask, "Why are you doing an introductory fanfic to a MST series?" The answer is simple. The average MST series doesn't have much of a story arc going on whenever the characters are not MSTing a fic. I simply wanted to be a bit innovative and provide a story arc to my MST series. This way you, the reader, can get double the entertainment value out of the MST fic (or, at least, that's the theory... ^_^*). Whether or not I succeeded, and subsequently, whether or not it the story arc continues as planned will depend greatly on the nature of the feedback I receive. Until next time!

INTRO FIC: "And So It Begins..." OWARI