I’m going on vacation this next week, and since I have at least sixteen hours in the car ahead of me I decided that my time would be well spent in finishing Angles. Chapter 16, the ending, is already written and just needs some minor revision, so chapter 15, the battle with Shishio, is the last one I need to complete for the story to be done. It will be nice to have the whole thing finished after so long, though I’m fairly sure I am the only one that will care XD

The reason I abandoned Angles for a while was because it seemed unbearably tedious to write out events of the Kyoto arc in detail when I’d already done so in Warriors Blue and plan on doing it again in Aku Soku Zan(za). I picked it up again because the Saitou/Kenshin/Sano threesome is irresistible (although most of the really irresistible scenes appear in the hypothetical sequel), because it had gone so far that it seemed a shame not to finish it (and appease my completion fetish), and because some of it is so excessively good (the Saitou vs. Kenshin scene in particular) that I couldn’t bear not to have that up and about — and when I have something up and about, it needs to be finished.

So I determined to skip shamelessly any details I didn’t feel like writing. Of course some of the details I didn’t feel like writing could have played into the threesome drama, but I am lazy. So pretty well any battle not between members of my triangle gets neglected, as we saw in the latest chapter in my glossing-over of Anji vs. Sano, bare mention of Usui vs. Saitou and Aoshi vs. Kenshin II, and wholesale skipping of Soujirou vs. Kenshin.

So now we get to Shishio vs. Everyone, and I’m sitting here trying to decide what details of that lengthy scene to describe. (At the moment I am leaning toward “almost none.”) In rereading the manga chapters in question, though, I’m so distracted by the same thing that gets me every time that I can barely form a thought as to the disposition of the chapter. Because, though Sano is shocked and horrified when Kenshin falls, apparently dead, it’s only when Shishio takes Saitou out that he really loses it and attacks without thinking. For Kenshin he stares, wide-eyed, but for Saitou he jumps, headlong and profane, into the battle. It almost justifies Saitou’s OOC slip and the horrid sight of him getting pwned by Shishio.

Anyway, I’m almost certain this chapter will be a set of thoughts occurring in bullet-time about how much they all love each other and are inspired to fight for each others’ sakes. Which sounds like about the greatest thing ever to me, but may not entirely please… heh, whom am I kidding? Nobody’s going to read this chapter or the next one, so it’s not like I have to worry about pleasing an audience anymore. So onward to bullet-time romance!