"Oh. Oh yeah. Yeah, ummmmmmm. Ah! Ohhhhhh."

Madoka often found herself wondering why, exactly, she stayed friends with Misa. She supposed that was normal for any friendship where two people got on each others' nerves as often they did. And that it was equally normal for her to be unable to explain to herself why she stayed friends if they did so. Well, she suspected that it might be because, if she didn't, she wouldn't be able to stay friends with Sakurako, who had ... some of the same frustrating qualities as Misa but was overall more of a source of happiness. Even so, Madoka knew that she would probably return and return to the question of whether this friendship was worth it.

"Mmmmm, Kakizakiiiii!"

Particularly if she ever again found herself listening to Misa fingerfucking Fuka while the self-proclaimed older twin noshed on her fellow cheerleader's boobs, in between bouts of tongue kissing, while she herself was trying to sleep.

Honestly, if she'd been able to watch Misa getting familiar with their fellow collective member - she should really ask Negi-kun if there was a simpler term than that - she might not have been so bothered. She could not deny that Misa, despite having a soul of blackest pitch, was pretty damn hot, and watching her couple with Negi, Makie, and Yuna the previous night had been very entertaining. But the futon in which she and the elder Narutaki were presently entwined was out of Madoka's line of sight.

Looking to the left, she could see Sakurako sleeping like an angel. (Lucky wench.) Just past her, Madoka could make out the top of Misa's futon, raised up because two girls were using it, even if one was somewhat petite. That was pretty much all that she could see of those two. The soundtrack was coming through very clearly, though.

"Oh, fuck! Where did you learn some of these mooooves, nnnn?"

"Ninja must be masters of sex, too. Ahh, no, not back there, no one has ever -"

"Oh come on," Madoka softly groaned as she rolled over onto her right, hoping that looking away and maybe covering her ears might help her to ignore matters. It didn't. On the other hand, misery loved company, and Fumika, lying on her right and gazing in the direction that the noises were coming from, looked every bit as miserable as Madoka herself surely did.

After a few moments of eyelock, Madoka lifted her futon's cover and silently raised an eyebrow.

A few moments later, more noise was being made.

Mahou Sensei Negima Alter:
Anything That Burns

Inspired by OverMaster's Anything That Moves

Chapter Fifteen: Setsuna

In Group 2's room, nearly everyone was peacefully asleep. Misora was, she thought, the only exception. She'd been expecting Kaede or Fei ... well, no, probably not Fei ... to wait until Satsuki and Hakase were sound alseep and then make a move on her. That they hadn't was faintly bewildering. The young acolyte, who was completely and utterly straight except when matters were forced upon her, hadn't been looking forward to it or anything, but ahhhhhh my internal monologue is that of a tsundere, she abruptly groaned.

Unrecognized by Misora, Hakase Satomi was actually still awake. She often suffered from mild insomnia when in environs other than her lab, the only place she ever truly felt comfortable enough to sleep. This particular episode of sleeplessness was a bit more frustrating than the usual in the way that she wasn't coming up with any novel ideas for research topics, as the loose hours of the night sometimes granted her. They would have been a welcome distraction from the unfamiliar way that she was feeling.

Why had the sight of that one Chinese girl employed by the inn as a maid, hair done up like the so-called 'strongest woman in the world', face set in a permanent blush, affected her so?

Iincho snored. Who knew? Well, it seemed likely that it was only something that occurred when the blonde was massively drunk, and since Asakura was trying to help her beloved teacher cover that episode up, she wasn't about to publicize the fact. Finding it annoying, since between it and the glow from Hasegawa's computer screen, she had the hunch that she wasn't going to get any sleep tonight. Which would have been fun if she was with people she could fool around with, but here she was in the non-sex group.

Thinking about it like that made her consider some things of interest. From what Negi and the others had told her, he had actually gotten surprisingly close to Hasegawa without banging the cosplay girl. He'd also gone to Iincho's private manor and chosen not to give the thirsty wench what she so desperately wanted. And despite the fact that she was in on the secret, he'd apparently never fucked Naba either. Asakura glanced at the big girl who'd been cuddled up beside Ayaka ever since they'd arrived in the room. She had a hunch why that might be, but the other two were almost inexplicable.

Of course, there was also Murakami, trailing along after Naba like goldfish shit and going completely blotto after one sip of alcohol-infused water, so maybe there was no real pattern here after all.

Ako has a boyfriend, Yuna thought as she lay on the floor, gazing at her third-best friend who was sleeping the sleep of the seriously drunk beside Makie, equally inebriated. Ako has a boyfriend. It was the sort of thing that an elementary schooler might chant in celebratory harrassment, if that made any sense. It probably didn't, but since it was just in Yuna's mind, she was the only one who had to care whether it made sense. And she didn't.

Ako has a boyfriend, Yuna thought some more. That's what she told Madoka and them. But ... and maybe I'm overthinking this, which is weird, because I usually don't think very much at all ... but ... if Ako has a boyfriend, why did she drink from the love stream at the falls? And she did. She clearly did.

Then again, so did I. (Just a sip, though - that had been all that she'd need to recognize the taste so similar to the beer she'd taken out of her father's fridge that one time, and spit it out so that she kept her senses - mostly - to help Negi.) But she was eager, just like Makie. Makie, who will probably be trying jinxes to make sure Negi loves her after she's given him three kids or more. It could be that Ako's not certain about the relationship, but if that's the case, then why hasn't she talked to any of us about it?

... wait. Really, I only know that she hasn't talked to me or Makie about it. Has she talked to Akira, and Akira just kept it secret like all her other secrets? Ahhhhh, Madoka, why did you tell me about Ako after I was done talking to Akira? Oh, and now I'm replaying old conversations in my head, trying to fix them up. Nothing good ever comes of that. I've got to get off this topic. How do I do that?

Oh. Duh. "Hey, Tatsumiya," she asked softly. "You awake?"

"Yes," replied the quiet voice of the fourth member of their group.

"Figures. You don't sleep, you wait, right?"

"... no, and that's a really dumb thing to say, Akashi. All creatures more complicated than some of the insects need some form of sleep. Failing to get it when you need it impairs one's performance. Someone who did what you suggest wouldn't be tough, they'd be very fragile."

"Oh."

"Was that all? Please tell me that's all."

"Um ..." Well, as long as I'm tempting fate anyway - "... do you have a boyfriend?"

"No," the answer came back promptly.

"Right, of course not. No room for love on the battlefield."

A profound sigh. "... that's another really dumb thing to say, Akashi." (Yuna felt a vague stab of annoyance at this particular observation.) "No creature who lives, and knows desire, can truly claim to avoid it, and it will come when it comes regardless of whether you are at war or at peace. What there isn't room for is immaturity, on anyone's part."

"So ... you've had boyfriends."

"What a fascinating takeaway you have. Yes. I had a boyfriend once. He died."

"Oh," said Yuna, feeling like a complete heel.

"Are we done this time?"

"Y-yeah, yeah. Thanks for talking with me. I think it's the longest conversation we've ever had."

"You're welcome. Now go the fuck to sleep," Mana said in gentle, motherly tones.

Yuna closed her eyes and made a genuinely heroic effort to do that for a while, before Negi threw the door open and started shouting something about kidnapping.

"So you're a lesbian, huh?" Haruna abruptly asked.

Konoka stared at the pages of the magazine on fortune telling techniques she was reading without taking anything in for a moment or so, before she closed the magazine and reached up with her hand to take from her mouth the small flashlight she was using to illuminate the pages. She directed the flashlight's beam across the room to where Haruna was sitting, petting Nodoka's head as their fellow librarian giggled in the depths of an alcohol-induced hallucination.

"Yes," Konoka said after a moment. "Yes I am."

Haruna shook her head. "I never would've guessed," she said. "I can't believe that it's never come up before now."

"Paru, it's not like we sat around and talked about our deepest sexual fantasies," Konoka reminded her.

"What are you talking about?" Haruna asked with a frown. "We did just that."

"No, no, we - all right, you talked about your sexual fantasies and the rest of us just sat there and tried not to die of embarrassment," Konoka conceded. "Even if I'd wanted to, I don't really think I could have gotten a word in edgewise, and I didn't want to. And even then - all your sexual fantasies, all the ones that you told us about back then, had to do with various boys you wanted to see making out with each other, and I don't think I could have guessed where your journey was going to lead from that."

"Eh, yeah, I see where you're coming from," Haruna said, nodding for a moment ... then breaking off to look at her. "What do you mean, you didn't want to?"

"For heaven's sake, Haruna, I didn't want the entire school to know, and they would have if I'd told you anything!"

"Harsh, but true," said Yue from where she was curled up on the other side of Haruna from Nodoka.

"More true than harsh, if we're being really honest, and why not?" Haruna admitted. "So what about Negi?" she asked, just as abruptly as the first question of this period of interrogation had been asked.

Konoka, with the sinking certainty that she wasn't going to get back to her magazine tonight, set it down on the floor beside her futon. "What about Negi-kun?" she asked. As delaying tactics went, she could have picked a better one, but it was also fairly straightforward.

Which was no help in dealing with someone as un-straightforward as Haruna. "You kissed him," she said. Nodoka made a small, unhappy noise in her sleep, but resumed her gentle sounds as Haruna resumed petting her head.

"I know I kissed him, Paru. I was there, believe it or not," Konoka replied.

"Ha. Ha ha ha," Haruna replied in an appropriate manner to that attempt at humor. "Ha. I meant, do you want to have sex with him?"

Konoka opened her mouth to make a very loud reply. When nothing emerged after a brief interval, she closed it again, then looked off to the side, where Asuna should be sleeping. "I don't know," she said at last.

"Because of the lesbian bit or because of the -" Haruna nodded towards the same futon that was the subject of Konoka's uncomfortable regard.

"Why aren't you saying Asuna's name?" asked Yue, still resting supine.

"Out of concern for the possibility that she'll be summoned by it, thanks, Yue," Haruna replied with a glare that was only two-thirds mock angry.

"... I'd really like to be able to dismiss that as superstition," Yue admitted, sounding rather morose. "We're so fucked up."

For a brief silent moment, Konoka and Haruna stared at Yue.

"Oh, don't look at me like that," said Yue, without looking up herself and thus theoretically being unable to see how she was being regarded. "I've had sex a ridiculously large number of times with a ridiculously large number of people. I think I deserve to be able to speak a bit less formally, under the circumstances."

"Well, anyway, both of those are part of it," Konoka admitted to Haruna, once she had recovered from the shock she'd just endured and it had also become clear that Asuna was not about to burst through the door at an extremely inopportune moment. "There's also the part of it where I don't really want Negi-kun to suffer a death by a certain individual's blade, and ... this is the biggest part ... the part where I want to confess my feelings to a certain individual."

Haruna's glasses gleamed in the flashlight's beam. "Are those two certain individuals the same -"

"No," interrupted Konoka. "Very. Much. No."

"What is up with the two of you, anyway?" asked Yue, actually getting up to look with bleary eyes in Konoka's direction.

"We were friends," Konoka admitted with a sigh. "Then, various things happened, and Setsuna decided that she only cared about getting stronger instead of being friends with me, and then we weren't friends anymore. So I'm stuck with a bodyguard, probably until I do something that convinces her that I'm strong enough not to need a bodyguard. And I don't know what that would be."

"Are you familiar with the trope of the Bodyguard Crush?" asked Haruna after a moment.

"For pity's sake, Paru," said Konoka, disgustedly.

"I'm serious. I have been looking at the way that she looks at you when you're looking at someone else who's not looking at you and she thinks no one is looking at her."

"You need to stop making such complicated compound sentences," Konoka replied, starting to get to her feet. "However she looks when she's, when nobody's - you see? You see why sentences like that should be banned?" Before Haruna could rebut that argument, Konoka walked over to the room's door and slid it open, revealing that Setsuna was sitting before the door with her blade unsheathed and in her lap.

"And it doesn't matter, and I'll show you why," Konoka directed at Haruna, before turning to look at Setsuna. "Hey, Setsuna, would you like to have sex with me?" And then, after a moment, she looked back at Haruna. "You see what I mean?"

"She actually turned to stone," Haruna said wonderingly.

"Well, no, it's really just a fairly thin layer of salt that she'll break out of fairly shortly," Konoka corrected, staring at the seemingly petrified swordsgirl with obvious annoyance. "Even if something were likely to happen between us, she'd probably sabotage it. Well, fie upon that. Fie fie fie. I gotta hit the head," she concluded, her native accent emerging a bit.

"I'll come with," said Yue.

"I don't really need any company, Yue-han," Konoka started to say.

"No, but I need to go too."

"Oh. Okay, then," Konoka said, and beckoned for Yue to come take her hand. The two of them headed out into the hallway past Setsuna's salty form, closing the door behind them. Haruna waited a moment, and then, after making sure that Nodoka was further into sleep than she had been earlier, got up to go the door herself.

"You saw nothing," said Setsuna, as red as she'd been white earlier.

"Whatever could you mean?" Haruna asked mildly.

"... indeed."

"I think I might be, too," Yue said abruptly as she and Konoka walked through the hallway together.

Now, someone might have expected Konoka to respond to this with a murmured interjection, the better to encourage Yue to elaborate on that somewhat vague remark. But Konoka was just that little bit more clever than that, and realized what part of an earlier conversation Yue was continuing. Of course, knowing the background (and not feeling any particular need to remind a hypothetical observer of the background) helped quite a bit. "That's okay," she assured.

"I don't know if it is or not," Yue replied in her usual monotone.

That made Konoka want to reply with a confused interjection, but she elected to remain verbal instead. "Why wouldn't it be?" she asked, frowning.

Yue came to a stop in the middle of the hallway. "I love her," she said. "I ... after my grandfather died, I gave up on ever caring about anyone. And then I met the three of you, and she saved me from that." Yue's voice didn't change at all as she spoke these words, but her eyes spoke volumes. "And then he came along, and everything changed."

"Ah," said Konoka, finally reduced to interjections as she whipped her head around to make sure that no one else was in hearing range as Yue bared her soul like this.

"She still thinks I had sex with him before we both did," Yue continued. "I can't ... I don't know how to convince her otherwise. And even though we both know that he's going to be with so many other women, she still thinks that the three of us have some sort of special connection that will somehow triumph over everything else, and -"

"Yue!" Konoka interrupted a little desperately. "Should you really be talking about this in public? Or semi-public? Or whatever you'd call this?"

Yue stared at her. "What's so strange about talking about a play that we're rehearsing in public?" she asked. Then winked.

Konoka gaped for a moment or so. "Right," she said. "Right." She restrained herself from giving off a rather Haruna-esque giggle, certain it was the beginning of hysteria. "So then ... youuuu don't think that can happen, that special connection thing?"

"I ..." Yue trailed off. "Whenever I thought about it," she eventually resumed, "even though I didn't think about it very often, when I thought about it, I thought that I'd have the same sort of relationship that grandfather said he'd had with my grandmother, or that my parents had. Just ... one person who made my life complete. Can that really happen with more than one person?"

"... I guess it depends on who's asking," Konoka answered, thinking about Kaguya, and Negi, and - well, if she was giving herself this sort of license, why not go completely crazy? - and Asuna, and ... she reminded herself that she probably should accept some limitations.

"Well, obviously, it's me who's asking," Yue replied, sounding just a bit irritated.

"Yes, but I'm not sure I really get the role that you're playing," Konoka piously replied. "The person who wrote this play doesn't seem very talented."

Yue stared in sullen silence for a moment. "Right," she said at last. "Bathroom," she added, then turned to start marching down the hall, going around the corner and stopping dead in her tracks. "What in the world?"

Konoka saw it a moment after Yue did, coming up on her heels. Standing outside the bathroom door was a woman wearing glasses and an apron over a shirt and miniskirt - well, something that looked like a miniskirt, though it was hard to see with the way that the woman was up to her hips in what looked like a gigantic monkey mascot costume, struggling to get those hips through the thing's mouth. She'd paused in her efforts when she realized that she was being watched, and was presently staring at Konoka and Yue while they stared right back.

She broke the silence. "Don't suppose all y'all would mind forgetting about this, then turning around, going for a little walk but coming on back here in just a few?" the lady asked in a decidedly Kansai-ben accent.

"Ah," replied Yue.

"Sure!" Konoka said with what she hoped would sound like enthusiasm rather than panic. She began pulling Yue back from the corner, intending to go find Negi, Asuna, even Setsuna at this point.

"Oh, never mind, it was a dumb idea anyway," the lady said disgustedly, clearly not fooled. She yanked something out of her hip pocket and threw it like a fastball in Yue's direction. Konoka let out a yelp as she heard the something smack into Yue's head, with Yue promptly dropping to the floor, then blinked as the something revealed itself as a long strip of paper with the words 'Go To Sleep' written on it in very fancy calligraphy.

"I was saving that for real trouble, so I'm a tad bit miffed right now, so please let's just go quietly, ojosama," said the lady, letting the mascot costume drop and stepping out of it, walking towards Konoka with a determined look on her face.

"Stop right there!" came a voice from behind her.

The lady's face curled up in annoyance. "Oh joy, here comes the colonizer," she muttered.

"Negi-kun!" Konoka cried. "Help!"

It was indeed her teacher, his wooden staff held defensively as he glared in what he hoped was an intimidating manner. (Konoka gave it maybe a three for an intimidation, but a respectable seven for hunky manliness.) "You're the one who's been behind all of this, aren't you?"

The lady hissed in annoyance. "Well spotted. Look, little boy, you're intruding on a story that doesn't involve you, so just -"

"I am getting really tired of being told that!" Negi shouted. "Undecim spirites aeriales, vinculum facti inimicum captent -"

"Oh, hell no!" gulped the lady, and dashed down the corridor.

"- sagitta magica, aer capturae!" the mage concluded, with the eleven aerial sprits lancing out from all around him, just as their target ducked behind Konoka's paralyzed form.

"Gack! Diverge!" Negi added, causing the arrows of binding to shoot harmlessly into the walls or ceilling. "Get away from her, right now!" he demanded. "I won't stand for you putting her in danger!"

"Says the guy who fires off artillery spells in a closed space!" the lady snapped.

"That's different!"

Whether it was different or not, and it seems likely that there might be a variety of opinions on the subject, it seemed likely that the lady - whom we should probably start calling Chigusa, as she has been introduced, even if not yet to Negi and the others - had only said that to create a momentary distraction in which she could seize Konoka and then dash off with her under one arm.

"Stop!" Negi cried out - then paused momentarily to silently curse his own naivete. Obviously, the opposition was not going to just stop doing their dirty deeds because someone told them to do so. Likewise, it seemed very unlikely that this individual was working alone, if she was an agent of the Kansai Magic Association. Rather than pursuing her alone, then, he should bring his own backup along with him.

First, though, he ran up to where Yue was lying on the floor, and pulled the talisman off of her head.

Yue's eyes promptly uncrossed and gazed out at the world through a faint haze. "Sensei?" she half-yawned, half-groaned. "Someone ... someone is trying to -"

"I know, Yue, I know," he reassured her as much as he was able. "You're going to be a while recovering from the effects of this spell, so I can't ask you to come with me."

"I can -" the small girl started to protest, pushing her body up from the floor. When after a moment or so she realized that her efforts availed her not, she stopped pushing. "No, I can't," she said, miserably.

"It's okay," Negi told her. "When you do recover, I need you to help Haruna start organizing a secondary response, Yue. Wake up everyone who's wakeable, and then wait for contact."

"Hurry up and wait?" she asked, no less gloomily.

"That's what it's going to take," Negi admitted.

"Yuna!" Negi shouted as he threw open the door to Group 2's room. "Konoka-san has been kidnapped! We need to go rescue her!"

"Of course we do," Yuna groaned wearily, throwing back the futon's cover and standing up, stretching a bit as she did so.

"Put a robe on and -" Negi started to say, reaching for one of the outer garments.

"Fuck the robe, let's just go," said the pyjama-clad girl. Before Negi could reprimand her for language, she glanced at one of the other futons. "Hey, Tatsumiya, would you like to -"

"Zzzzzzzz," issued from said futon.

"... okay, I'm just gonna pretend that wasn't really conveniently timed," Yuna said, then turned back to Negi. "Let's go, I said!"

"It's important that you understand that I don't want to hurt you," Chigusa explained as she ran towards the train station.

"Mmmm," Konoka replied, her mouth covered with an adhesive that turned the doubtless very cutting remark she'd just made into a meaningless noise, just as her forearms and knees were also taped together.

"I don't!" Chigusa said sharply. "All this is to make it so that you can't do things that will make it necessary for me to hurt you, like fighting back or incanting a spell. I know that this isn't what you want to be doing."

"Mmmm mm mm mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm."

Chigusa ignored that as she reached the doors of the station. "But when you get to be my age - if you get to be my age - you'll hopefully learn that sometimes there are no good options when you've got to do something really important."

Konoka mumbled something rather lengthy in response, and Chigusa paused just inside the doors to glare down at her captive. "For the record, I'm still under thirty, and I do in fact have a boyfriend!" she growled.

"Hold it right there!"

"Aw, bugger," Chigusa cursed, glancing back to see that the accursed westerner was chasing after her again, now accompanied by a trio of girls, two of whom had swords in hand. One of them was the Shinmeiryuu swordswoman she'd been told about, the other being the much more frightening individual she'd really hoped wouldn't get involved in all this. There was nothing for it but to keep running, and hope that the talisman she reflexively slapped on the doors would slow them down a little.

By the time she got to the train idling in the station, it was fairly clear that the talisman hadn't. The girl that she didn't recognize must be the mage's partner, then, for no ordinary person could have passed through the ward. Chigusa let out a hiss, deeply regretting that she hadn't been able to afford the materials for a talisman that would stop even extraordinary individuals, or one that could bring her allies to her.

Well, then, she thought, pulling out the talisman that she had been able to afford. She hesitated before casting it towards them. Colonizers or no, they were just children. No good options, she reminded herself, then threw the talisman towards them as soon as they were in the train car behind her and the door had slid shut behind them. Almost as soon as it left her hand, the paper talisman exploded into a gout of water, filling the train car as Chigusa slammed the door shut to seal it.

"Mmmm!" mumble-shouted Konoka.

"I'm not the one who brought things to this pass, okay?" Chigusa snapped defensively as she ran down the next car. "If you want to blame someone, blame -"

Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping!

"Hah?" Chigusa yelped, looking behind her to see the door fly off its hinges, four holes neatly drilled through each of its corners, and a flow of water coming through the now vacant doorway. It didn't quite reach her feet, but the shock kept her from running.

"Pistolero!" shouted the girl she didn't recognize, holding a gun in each hand.

"What kind of maniac gives guns to kids?!" Chigusa shouted, and started running again.

NAH-nah, nah-nah-nah-NAH-nah, nah-nah-NAH-NAH, nah-nah-nah-nahhhhh, sang Yuna in her head as she chased along with Negi and his other two comely comrades after the lady who'd kidnapped Konoka. Nearly drowning had been rather scary, but with the resilence of a basketball, she'd bounced back almost as soon as she'd shot her way out of the situation. Maybe when this was all over she'd freak out about how close she'd just come to dying.

Eh, no, probably not, she admitted to herself.

They finally caught up to Chigusa when she was halfway up a long set of stairs. "Okay," the long-haired rather hot lady said as she glared down at them, breathing a bit heavily from the exertion of carrying Konoka all this way. "Okay. Seriously, what is wrong with you people?" she demanded.

"You kidnapped my best friend, Setsuna-san's charge and Negi's student. Of course the three of us are gonnna chase you," Asuna retorted. "And Yuna, well, she's sort of nuts."

Yuna tilted her head to one side and decided that was fair.

"Give. Ojosama. Back." Setsuna ground out, glaring up at the kidnapper.

"Look, there are things going on here that you little children are not prepared to understand. Walk away, and nobody has to get hurt," Chigusa said. "Keep going as you have been - oh, hell with it, talisman-san, facilitate my -"

There was a sudden cracking noise, and the piece of paper Chigusa had abruptly produced was suddenly on fire and not in the helpful way she'd intended. She let out a squawk and dropped it. Her eyes focused on Yuna, who was still targeting her with one of her guns. "You shot my talisman," said Chigusa, in the manner of one who suspected that the person she was addressing was unaware of this fact.

"I can shoot other stuff, too," Yuna said helpfully, then added, "Pistolero!"

"What does that even mean?" Chigusa half-wailed.

"Give. Ojosama. Back!" Setsuna repeated, then began running up the stairs, her blade held high. Asuna was hot on her heels. In the moment before either of them could close the last few feet to Chigusa, however, another human form exploded forth from a concealed position at the top of the staircase, flying downward towards Setsuna, who barely managed to block the figure's attack, leaving her held in check by ... a petite blonde girl in a dress and hat, wearing a pair of glasses.

"Oh, no," Negi and Yuna chorused. "Not her."

"Hah?" said Asuna as she stared at the sudden arrival.

The girl whose twin swords were presently locked with Setsuna's single long blade blinked in confusion as she glanced down at Negi and Yuna. "I'm sorry," she said in a mildly accented voice. "Have we met?"

"Who are you?" Setsuna demanded. That stance is Shinmeiryuu, but she's - what in the world is she wearing?

"This is really a real honor," the girl said, smiling across the blades. "All my instructors told me so many stories about you and - oh, right, right, you asked me for my name, sorry, sorry. Ahem. Iwai Tsukuyomi, Shinmeiryuu sword school. I am so stoked right now!" she gushed after that brief moment of solemnity.

"Yomi-han," Chigusa hissed as she began backing away towards the station exit, holding Konoka's body in front of her as a human shield. "Focus, please!"

"I am focused!" the young girl protested. "You can be excited and still focused, right, senpai?" she asked Setsuna.

"You're what the school is producing these days?" Setsuna asked, mildly bewildered.

Tsukuyomi's smile faltered. "Rude much?" she asked.

"Okay, while you two are doing this, whatever you're doing, I'll just go deal with your boss or whatever," declared Asuna as she ran up past where the two girls were facing off.

"One more step and I swear I'll kill her!" Chigusa shrieked as Asuna came within striking range.

The threat stopped Asuna in her tracks.

It also got Tsukuyomi to whip her head around. "Wait, what?" the young girl demanded, looking shocked. "Chigusa-han, that's not part of the -"

Before anything else was said, the flat of Setsuna's blade slammed into Tsukuyomi's face, knocking her to the side and the glasses off her face, before Setsuna, eyes narrowed to tiny slits, crossed the remaining distance between her and Chigusa is the blink of an eye. Chigusa, seeing blue murder in those eyes, shrieked and let go of Konoka so that she could bring up yet another talisman into the path of Setsuna's descending blade, blocking it as though she had a sword of her own.

"Flans Exarmatio!" sounded a cry from further back.

"Shit!" snipped Chigusa as she was disarmed of her talisman, denuded of her clothes, and knocked back through the doorway in the space of a moment.

"Konoka!" Asuna cried out, racing to her friend's side as Konoka attempted to stay upright despite still being bound at the knees.

For her part, Setsuna didn't spare Konoka a single glance, preparing to strike the now-naked Chigusa ... who hissed in fury, then produced one last magical tool in the form of a balloon that took her up into the air and out of Setsuna's reach. "You are all going to regret this!" she yelled down as she floated out of sight.

"Um, hey, Chigusa-han," said Tsukuyomi, having found her glasses quickly. "Are you just leaving me to the -"

"C-click!" said Yuna as she pointed one of her pistols at Tsukuyomi's head, at point blank range.

"Did you just make the sound of a revolver being cocked when you're holding a pistol?" Tsukuyomi asked after a moment. "A magical pistol, no less?"

"Maybe!" Yuna replied.

The smaller girl shook her head and held up her hands. "I surrender," she said wearily.

"You surr-" Setsuna started to snap, glaring at her now that Chigusa was out of view.

She was cut off by Konoka's mild exclamation of pain once Asuna got her gag off. "Okay," Konoka added once she could speak again. "The whole 'I don't need protection' thing? I'm rethinking that."

"I suppose some explanations are probably in order," said the tall gentleman with long brown hair streaked with grey, wearing glasses and a suit that matched his hair.

"Yes, yes they are," agreed Akane as she sat on the couch of the hotel's lounge beside Sayuri and Yuka, glaring up at this interloper on her class trip, and at the strange blonde girl who was standing beside him. She didn't look in Ranma's direction as he sat on the couch's arm cushion. She was not done working through the inexplicable anger she'd felt when she saw him - well, her, then - coming back into the hotel with the blonde in tow. (Akane didn't even consider glancing at those two losers Ranma hung around with, who were respectively seated in one of the lounge chairs and leaning over the top of that chair.) "Let's start with, who are you, and who the hell is she?"

"I assure you that I was coming to that," the man assured. "My name is Ikutsuki Shuji, and I'm an employee of the Kirijo Conglomerate, who own and operate the facility on this island where Aigis, here, was ... um ... based," he ultimately said deliberately. "And this, of course, is Aigis. She is, as you can see, a mechanical maiden."

The blonde bowed her head, but said nothing. Looking at her a bit more closely, especially now that the sundress that she had been wearing was gone, Akane could see that the girl's arms were attached to her shoulders with what looked like very large screws, in the same way that her legs were attached to her hips. Akane supposed that it was just barely possible that the young woman could have been a quadruple amputee who'd had very odd replacement limbs installed, but there were a few other little hints that that wasn't what she was looking at.

"You're a robot?" said one of the losers - was his name Daisuke?

"That is a reasonably accurate term for what I am," replied Aigis with a nod in the loser's direction.

"Wow!" said the other loser, not quite leering. "Someone actually built a robot. That's so awesome!"

"Awesome," Aigis repeated, almost as though she were tasting the word. "I believe that to be a compliment. Therefore, thank you."

"But, I mean, did this just happen recently?" asked Sayuri. "I mean, I'm not much of a gearhead, but I think that kind of thing would be on every TV station if it happened."

Aigis opened her mouth to reply, but Ikutsuki cut her off. "That's actually a very interesting story, much of which, I'm afraid, you're not really cleared to be told." He glanced at Aigis, coughed slightly, then continued. "However, the parts that you can be told are as follows. Aigis is the last surviving example of a group of mobile weapons who were created in the immediate aftermath of Second Impact to fight a ... secret war, I suppose it could be called, against certain creatures who threatened to complete humanity's near-extinction."

"I ... don't think I ever heard about that, either," said Sayuri, now looking even more boggled.

"You are welcome," replied Aigis.

"Oooookay, then," Sayuri said after a moment.

"The full details of that conflict are, as I said, still classified," Ikutsuki continued to infodump. "But ten years ago, it came to an end, and Aigis went into a standby mode from which she just awoke today for ... reasons as yet unclear," he concluded. "And here she is. I hope you will all be very kind to her as she becomes a student at your school."

"Wait, what?" chorused Hiroshi, Daisuke, Saiyuri and Yuka.

"Because she's fixated on Ranma, right?" Akane said through clenched teeth.

"Yes," said Aigis, this time cutting off Ikutsuki's attempt to reply. "It is very important for me to be with her."

"Uh-huh, sure it is," said Akane. "Why?"

Aigis hesitated a moment, then replied, "Because she is awesome."

"Well, can't really argue with that," said Ranma, glad to finally get a word in edgewise.

"Oh can't I?" Akane said without a glance in his direction.

"It is somewhat strange," Ikutsuki admitted with a nod of his head. "Perhaps she's not fully conscious yet, or her identification software is malfunctioning."

"Well, it'd kind of have to be, wouldn't it?" said Yuka. "I mean, she keeps calling Ranma 'her' and 'she', and Ranma is -"

SPLASH! Akane noisily set down the now-empty bucket at her feet while her classmates stared at the petite redhead who had just appeared as though from nowhere.

"Two questions, in no particular order," Ranma-chan said quietly. "Where did you get that? And why?"

"How long did you seriously think you could keep this thing of yours a secret, anyway?" Akane answered one of those questions, this time glancing in Ranma's direction.

"Fascinating!" said Ikutsuki, glasses faintly gleaming as he stared at Ranma. "It's as though you're a rebis, a reconciliation of matter and spirit, a divine hermaphrodite!"

"Ah!" said Ranma, backing away. "Look, buddy, I understood maybe one word in all that, but that one word is one thing that I sure as hell ain't, so just check your fetishes at the door, a'right? Sometimes I'm a girl, and sometimes I'm a guy, but I'm always one or the other, not both, got it? It's crazy, but I'm a normal person just like anybody else."

"Oh, my apologies," the old man said, looking somewhat contrite. "I did not mean to offend. Although I do suspect that Aigis would offer a ... robottal ... to your statement."

"That was a terrible pun," Aigis informed him a moment later, when it became apparent that everyone else in the room was too horrified to do so.

"Ahem."

"So, um," said Hiroshi, once he'd recovered enough from the pair of shocks he'd just received. "About how Aigis is going to school with us ... how's that go, again?"

"Well, it seems the best way to deal with her need to be with Saotome-san. And, as it happens, your school's principal is an old friend of mine, from when we were both in the same club at college," Ikutsuki admitted. "So the paperwork will be no problem."

"Well, I guess that's okay, then," said Saiyuri. "Um ... but I do have one question. Um. The fact that Aigis, here, has woken up, that doesn't mean that the war she was fighting is going to start up again, does it?"

"Oh no!" Ikutsuki said quickly. "Certainly not! Why, the beings she was fighting have even established a treaty with the Japanese government. Everything is peaceful, now. Isn't peace wonderful?" he asked, smiling in what he probably meant to be a reassuring manner. (It wasn't.)

"You were fighting the liminals?" Hiroshi asked Aigis.

"We called them Shadows, then," she answered.

It was at that moment that Kuno Tatewaki strode into the lounge, declaiming as he did so, "Ikutsuki-san, the principal bade me come to invite you to with him converse and AAAAAAAH the pig-tailed girl! You have followed me even unto this island paradise, and I see that you sit with Tendo Akane! Could it be that you have decided to join with her and offer unto me your GGGGGGGGHHHH," he concluded, as he found it somewhat difficult to continue orating, or maintain consciousness, with a metal fist slammed into his stomach.

"This individual was a threat, correct?" Aigis asked as she considered Kuno's slumped form.

"Eh, yeah, pretty much," Akane and Ranma chorused, then exchanged a strange look as they realized what they'd just done.

It took a moment for Midori to realize that she was hearing two different thumping noises, even though the one coming from the door of her room didn't really synch up with the one in her head. Groaning, she got out of her futon and pulled on a robe, not bothering to belt it before stumbling over to the door and sliding it open. "Yes?" she said blearily to the air in front of her face.

"Ah," said a voice from somewhat further down.

"Oh, joy," Midori sighed, then looked down at Negi. "I knew this was coming, but I really sort of hoped you'd wait until morning."

"Honestly, I would have preferred that as well, but circumstances ..." He paused, and sniffed the air. "Wait, you didn't drink any of the waters at the fountain. So why -"

"Because I drank quite a few of the waters available through room service," she informed him.

The boy teacher frowned. "That's not something that someone who's just seventeen years old should be doing."

Midori nodded solemnly. "You are absolutely right, I am sooooo ashamed of myself, far too ashamed to continue this conversation, good night," she said, and started to slide the door shut.

"Wait!" Negi cried out just before it closed all the way.

She waited a moment, then slid it open again. "Yyyyyes?" she asked, smiling sweetly.

"I apologize," he said, bowing a bit. "I need your help, and we need to have that conversation. If you'd really rather wait until later to have it, that's fine, but I do need your help right now."

Midori frowned. "Help with what?" she asked suspiciously.

"Hello," said the cute blonde girl who leaned into sight with her hands taped together.

"I need someone responsible to take charge of this ... person until I can turn her over to the local authorities," Negi said, pushing the girl back out of sight. "Ideally someone who wouldn't be threatened by her."

"Uh-huh," Midori said, eyes now fully opened. "I think maybe you should come in so that we can have this conversation in somewhat greater privacy."

"She tried to kidnap somebody," Midori said dubiously, looking down at the girl who was now kneeling patiently, her back against one of the walls.

"She was more of an accessory after the fact than an active participant in the kidnapping itself, but yes," Negi confirmed. "Please do not be fooled by her appearance, this is a very, very dangerous young woman."

"I really had no idea that my reputation had spread all the way to Brittania," Tsukuyomi marveled.

"I'm not from Brittania," he told her, irritated that he still had to clarify this.

"Oh, sorry, sorry, my mistake," she replied. "I had no idea that my reputation had spread all the way to wherever it is that you happen to be from. Be that as it may, I am still a bit confused about what it is that you think I'm going to do."

Negi stared at her. "I think you're going to kill someone," he said at last.

She stared right back. "Excuse me?" she said - very quietly - at last.

Negi had already turned to look at Midori. "We've taken away her weapons, so she should be less dangerous. If you feel genuinely threatened, take off her glasses, she's blind without them."

"Noted," said Midori, nodding in somewhat stupefied fascination.

"Excuse me?" Tsukuyomi repeated, a bit more loudly.

He turned back to regard her in silence.

She opened her mouth to say something, closed it again, then spoke in a much more calm tone of voice than she'd been about to employ. "Look, I don't know what sort of rumors you've heard about me, but I'm a bodyguard. I guard someone's body. I protect life; I do not end it - not unless someone else forces the issue, and I'm grateful that it has never come to that."

"Your employer threatened Konoka-san's life," he reminded her.

"That was not part of any plan she'd confided in me!" Tsukuyomi continued to protest. "All she told me was that we were going to extract the girl, take her to a secured location and then release her once the larger operation was over. Didn't you see how that threat threw me off balance? I'm not a killer, and I don't willingly work with people who are! How could anyone want to kill people after Second Impact?"

Negi slowly shook his head. "You'd say anything to get me to trust you, and I'm not going to fall for it."

"What in the world did you hear about me?" she half-whined.

"A very different account of the sort of person you end up becoming, from the lips of an alternate universe counterpart of yourself," he told her.

"... okay, okay, fine, fine, if you don't want to tell me, don't tell me, but don't make up ridiculous stories," Tsukuyomi said with a huff.

"Yeah," interjected Midori. "Who would ever believe a story about someone traveling from another universe?" She was glaring rather angrily at Negi.

"I didn't disbelieve her, I just -" Negi started to reply, then shook his head again. "I think maybe we should have that conversation where someone can't hear us."

"So after all that stuff about wanting someone to guard me, you're basically just shoving me in a closet?" asked Tsukuyomi, now even more irritated.

"This is hardly a closet," he answered, somewhat annoyed himself.

"Well, compared to some closets I've seen, actually -" Midori started to say.

"Please join me in the hallway," Negi interrupted, then headed for the doorway. After a glance in Tsukuyomi's direction, Midori followed him.

Tsukuyomi let out another huff of annoyance once the door slid shut, and the two of them started speaking in low tones that she couldn't make out. She briefly considered extracting one of the several small blades she kept hidden in her dress, with the intention of holding it in her teeth and cutting her hands free. It took her only a moment to dismiss the notion. Right now, they thought her a murderer who was safely imprisoned. If she attempted escape, they'd think her a murderer on the loose, and possibly be moved to take lethal means to deal with the threat that, ironically, existed nowhere except in their imagination.

Alternate universe counterpart? she thought. Surely he could have thought of a more plausible story than that!

So why didn't he?

The sad thing about having divine fortitude was that the prospect of a few hours to rest and recuperate wasn't nearly as much of a relief as it should be. So even though it had been a fairly long day, Rei didn't find herself sufficiently comforted as she slid open the doors to the shrine's household and stepped into its foyer. Maybe if it had actually been the shrine where she'd grown up ... but that was lost, as was so much else. Nevertheless, she announced, "I'm home."

"Welcome home," came the familiar voice from further in.

She slipped off her shoes and walked to the living room, where she found him lounging in front of the TV and eating potato chips. Her grandfather pulled his attention away from the comedians long enough to look towards her as she sat down at the table. "So how was your day off?" he asked.

"Eventful," Rei replied in a way that didn't invite further inquiry.

"I bet," he said with a chuckle. "You should've gone with the rest of your class, you know. You might've had fun."

"I had more than enough fun on school trips when I was an actual student, instead of just maintaining a cover as one." She looked back to where the bedrooms of the home were situated. "So where's the snakegirl?"

"Lamia," her grandfather corrected patiently. "And she's back in her room, pouting." Off her inquisitive glance, he continued. "That Kuro fellow called to let us both know that he'd found Miia a host family, at last, and would be coming by to take her there tomorrow. She's not as happy about it as she might be."

"Doubtless because of your irresistable masculine allure," she said, deadpan.

The old man let out a full belly laugh. "Time was, you'd have been right," he said when he was done. "But no, I think she's just gotten used to this place, and the thought of being uprooted to live a more worldly existence scares the poor girl a bit. I've told her that she can come back and visit, and that I'll be happy to have her working here as an actual lucky snake, but I don't think it's getting through her nervousness."

"Ah," Rei said, nodding. "And there's probably the other thing, too."

He blinked. "Other thing?"

"From what Ami told me about lamias, the ones who were sent out for this exchange pact were also meant to find husbands for their nation. So that's probably adding to her anxiety. What sort of man am I going to meet, will we get on, will he be handsome, will he think I'm pretty, all that romantic worry that all adolescents go through, no matter what their species might be." She shook her head.

"You used to have a fair amount of that romantic worry yourself, as I recall," he reminded her.

"I used to have a lot of things that I don't have much time for anymore," she reminded him right back, shaking her head.

They sat a while in companionable silence, watching comedians and, if they were being honest, attempted comedians do their thing on the television.

"Isn't it about time for me to give you your treatment for this month?" Rei asked.

The old man made a face. "I could cheerfully wait a while to have our usual argument about whether or not you should give me that treatment," he answered.

"Great idea!" she said with false cheerfulness, clapping her hands together. "Let's have that argument on weeks when I don't give you the treatment. It'll let us both focus our energies on that, instead of the other thing."

"I'm being serious, Rei-chan," he said, turning away from the TV to face her with a solemn expression on her face. "Hasn't this gone on long enough?"

"No, I don't think it has."

He let out a long sigh. "Whatever is empowering you, I'm sure that it wasn't meant to be used in this fashion, child. You need to let me go eventually."

"And eventually I will," she said, meeting his gaze evenly. "But 'eventually' is not 'right now'. You still have a role to play in all this."

"Really?" he asked, very dubiously.

"Yes," Rei said, very firmly. "Someone has to look after this shrine. Someone has to maintain this haven - not just for me, but for people like the lamia, and others. And if extending someone's life is so wrong, then why is it okay for the god of war to extend my life like they have?"

"You can't interrogate the gods like that, Rei-chan," he told her. "They do not have to justify themselves to us."

"I'm not asking them for that," she protested. "But if they don't approve of me giving my grandfather a few more years of life, they can send me a sign against it. And they haven't."

He shook his head. "The argument always ends up going the same way," he said at last. "I don't know why I bother, really."

Taking that for the agreement that it was, Rei got up and came over to where he was sitting, then crouched down before him, her forehead touching his and her hands on his leathery cheeks. She breathed in and out for a moment, then exhaled a fiery mist that spread across his form and into his mouth and nose, burning away the signs of another month's aging, both on the surface of his body and within him as well.

"A few more years," he said, voice no longer quite so wheezy when he spoke again. "You know it's been a lot more than 'a few'."

"I know that I've lost my father, my mother and the brother or sister she died birthing, who never had a chance to know how beautiful the world can be," the Guardian of Battle replied. "I know that I've lost more than that. I'm not going to lose you too. Not yet."

He sighed at this sophistry, at her using old sorrow to justify new selfishness, but didn't say anything more against it. Not yet.

"You're not listening," Negi said again. Even though the conversation between Midori and himself, to probably lend the exchange more dignity than it possessed, had only been going on for a few minutes, it felt as though it had lasted much longer. "It was never a question of whether I believed Tokiha-san or not. I even offered to introduce her to those travelers, but she refused the offer, just like she refused every other offer of assistance I made her. And then -"

"Dragging someone in to a confrontation with the authorities seems like a pretty lousy offer of assistance to me," Midori interrupted.

Once upon a time, Negi had been assured that Japanese people were incredibly polite. Oh for the halcyon days of his innocence. "That's a very unusual attitude for someone who is supposed to be one of the authorities," he replied, still trying to hold on to his temper.

"Call it Zen," Midori said with a thin smile. "Not so Zen is the way that you didn't even try to track Mai down, in all those weeks between your little chat and when you're telling me that these people went back to their world or wherever."

"All right, you clearly were listening," he allowed. "The way that 'chat', as you put it, ended made it fairly clear that any further conversation would involve violence, and I was trying to avoid that."

For all that he'd been carefully taught, by experts in the field, how to lie when necessary, he'd never quite succeeded in silencing the little voice in his head that kept telling him everyone could see through what he was saying. Right at that particular moment, Negi felt sure that Midori was well aware that he didn't full believe his own words. Had he really exhausted all efforts to contact Mai and reassure her of his peaceful intentions? Especially after Tiberius' other allies had arrived, and one of them proved to be a young woman somehow merged with the Babylonian goddess Ishtar, in a situation not unlike Mai's, he could have, should have inquired whether they were familiar with ways to end such spiritual fusions. When would such an opportunity come again?

Instead, he'd stood back and let the second set of travelers talk the first into immediately ending their interlude on this planet. The truth was that he'd welcomed their departure, and for purely selfish reasons. Even if they hadn't known how to help separate the otherworldly Mai from this world's Mai, they might have been able to send the fusion of the pair back to the former's original world, which would have been a solution, if not necessarily the ideal one.

"And besides that, I did actually have a few other things going on in that time," Negi added, setting those ruminations aside for the moment. "Classes, training, preparing for this very trip -"

"- messing around with the girls in your class," Midori interjected blandly.

He broke off and stared at her, open-mouthed. She met his gaze steadily.

After a moment, Negi closed his mouth again. "Under the circumstances - where I am asking for your help - I will not insult you by trying to lie about that," he said after a moment.

Midori had not been taught to lie by experts in the field. What ability she had in the area was purely a natural talent. She did, however, not have a little voice in her head that insisted that everyone could tell when she was lying. She did have a keen sense of irony, and was experiencing it as something she'd been sure had to be made up came true.

When Mai had confided in her that Second Impact had been part of a fictional story on her own world, and that a number of the people she'd heard about, read about, or even met since her arrival had also been fictional characters there, Midori had been intrigued. Apparently, in the immediate wake of Mai's arrival, she'd been too bewildered to remember that Negi Springfield was the name of the protagonist of one manga that her artistic younger brother had particularly enjoyed, and not made the connection between that character and the child teacher she'd met until much later.

Midori had carefully memorized what Mai had told her about the fictional Negi - and now had confirmation, from the boy's own mouth, that the real one, in front of her, was also making magical alliances with members of his class by kissing them! At least she could take comfort in the fact that the boy's manga had apparently gone no further than that.

"I appreciate that bit of respect, Negi-kun," she said in response, emphasizing the honorific just a bit. "I'd be more appreciative if you stopped doing it, though."

He regarded her a bit skeptically, his expression clearly communicating the message 'So now you're an authority'? But what he said aloud was, "I actually considered doing that a while ago, but matters have since persuaded me that I can't turn away from the course that I chose at the start of all this." He paused, seemed to reflect, then admitted, "So in a way I'm not that much different from Tokiha-san."

"Well, I'm sure she'll be glad to hear that -" Midori started to say.

"But on the other hand, I've never murdered anyone," he quickly interrupted, and if there was even a hint that he was taking any pleasure in turning the tables on her, it wasn't to be found in his voice or face.

"... say again, sorry?"

"She killed a man," Negi repeated. "Not one of your invisible monsters. Not a particularly good man, but it's not my place to judge him, anymore than it was hers to execute him. And yes, I have witnesses that can confirm this. Yuuki Nao and, in particular, Minagi Mikoto should both be known to you." He regarded her in a troublingly unchildlike way. "I take it she hasn't told you about this."

"I - I haven't seen her since -" Midori began, then cut herself off. "I think I should hear their account before I say anything else," she concluded, with great delicacy.

"All right, I can arrange that," Negi agreed. "Both of them are staying at other hotels in the area, and I'll have Natsuki and Shizuru pick them up and bring them here tom- later today," he corrected himself, making a face.

"Oh, will you now?" she asked, noting the familiarity. "Um ... by any chance, are those two -"

"Yes, they are part of my collective," Negi confirmed. "It's spread further than my class."

"I see," said Midori, surprised at how easily she could speak considering how dry her mouth had suddenly become. He's kissing high school students, too?

"Not yet, but you may," the boy replied. "Well, if you'll excuse me, it's been a rather long day, and I should probably get some rest. I appreciate you watching over Tsukuyomi-san, and I'll see to arranging that meeting. Good evening, Midori-sensei." And with that, he bowed, and walked away.

Midori stared at him for a long while after he wasn't there anymore, then shook her head and slid open the door to her room, finding that the blonde girl in the frilly outfit was still there, still bound, and still awake.

"Good talk?" Tsukuyomi asked, to make conversation.

"... have you kissed that kid?" Midori found herself asking.

"Ew!" the girl replied, her nose wrinkling cutely.

Natsuki hadn't had a peaceful night's sleep in what felt like ages. Quite apart from the dreams she had of the night all sense left her life, there were the ones which recalled the flickering moments of awareness she'd had in the months afterwards, where she'd fought to keep herself from tumbling back into the abyss of unconsciousness ... and sometimes fought the urge to wake up and return to the agony of reality.

But now, here she was, awaking from perhaps the finest rest she'd ever known. Part of it, she suspected, with her cynicism in full force, was the thread count of the sheets, probably higher than any she'd ever slept on before this. But part of it, she knew, with the tiny flicker of romance that was slowly building into a flame, was the fact that she was not alone between those sheets. She could not evaluate which was the greater part; it would take the wisdom of a keener mind than her own to do so.

The two of them had arrived at the Fujino family home fairly late the previous night, been greeted by the staff - something that Natsuki had thought happened only in manga and anime - and then escorted to Shizuru's bedroom. At that point Shizuru had politely dismissed the maid who offered to guide Natsuki to a guest room, and closed the door behind the two of them while Natsuki gazed at the room. It was much more finely furnished than Shizuru's room at the school was, making Natsuki feel a bit shabby, inadequate and - thanks to the presence of a large painting of a younger Shizuru seated with two older people who were presumably her mother and father - judged.

Natsuki had not had very long to consider all that, though, for, soon after the door was firmly closed and, from the sound of it, locked, Shizuru had firmly grasped her by the shoulders and turned her about so that she could press their lips together in a deep kiss. Natsuki had gone weak in the knees as her tongue was drawn into Shizuru's mouth, making it easy for the other girl to maneuver them both over to, and then onto, the bed. There had then followed a brief frenzy of clothes being removed or, more accurately, pulled aside.

For a long while, Natsuki had laid on the bed, almost senseless with the pleasure that Shizuru's fingers had inflicted on her as they'd worked on and in her lower regions, sometimes trying to lift her neck so that she could reach up to Shizuru's almost-leering face, to again kiss the mouth that had hovered teasingly out of reach. After the dozenth or so orgasm, she'd finally somehow found the strength to reverse their positions so that she'd been able to kiss downwards onto Shizuru's face, and had then kissed her way down her lover's neck, pausing briefly to offer tribute to Shizuru's breasts and stomach, before reaching her destination between Shizuru's legs.

In truth, even that had only been a temporary stop, though a quite lengthy and rather pleasant one, for she'd only eaten Shizuru out for a while before Natsuki had forced herself to stop, pull back and then throw herself onto the other girl, face to face, breast to breast, and vulva to vulva. She'd grinded onto her, knowing that she could have probably got more pleasure if they scissored against each other, but unwilling to give up the pleasure of kissing Shizuru as they fucked.

"I think maybe I like kissing you too much for my own good," Natsuki mused aloud, softly, so as not to disturb Shizuru, who still lay asleep before her. She resisted the temptation to kiss her right then, too, instead indulging in reaching out to run her fingers through a lock of Shizuru's brown hair - something that the other girl had sheepishly confessed to doing to her, while she slept, on more than one occasion. Natsuki had found that strange at the time, but at the moment, it seemed completely understandable. Shaking her head a bit at her own giddiness, she decided to turn over to glance at the clock on the far wall, to see how early it was.

"Good morning," said the tall blonde woman, hair in twin drills, resplendent in a maid's uniform, who was standing at the bed side.

"Gnnnaahhhhhh," replied Natsuki, eyes reduced to black circles around empty space.

"Regretfully, I do not speak that dialect, and am unable to answer what is no doubt a very polite greeting," the maid continued. She followed up that obvious lie with a polite cough, then continued. "Under ordinary circumstances, I would be attempting to rouse the young mistress and inform her that breakfast will be ready when she is. Under these somewhat extraordinary circumstances, however, I will imform you of that, and then withdraw, so that you can rouse the young mistress in whatever way you see fit. Once again, good morning," she concluded, and began to back away.

It was sort of amazing, Natsuki thought through her panic, the way that this woman, seemingly not that much older than Shizuru or herself, could manage to surround an incredibly impolite way of saying 'you' with some of the most eloquent language that Natsuki had ever heard, and the way that she could say 'good morning' and make it sound like 'hurry up and die'. She struggled to find words to answer her, and had not succeeded by the time that the maid reached the door, opened it, stepped through, and then closed it once again.

Shaking her head, Natsuki turned back to look at Shizuru's sleeping form, and caught the sight of the other girl smiling just before her face returned to a blank expression. "... you were awake for that, weren't you?" she asked after a moment.

"Part of it," Shizuru softly admitted without opening her eyes. Then they did open, looking up at Natsuki. "Don't take anything she says too personally. I'm fairly sure that Otowa would hate anyone I brought home."

"Oh," Natsuki said flatly. "It's like that."

Shizuru shrugged as she sat up. "Somewhere between that, and the fact that she's been more of a mother to me than my actual mother. She used to work for some cousins of ours in Mahoroba, and then they all died after Second Impact. I don't think she's ever really recovered."

As Natsuki privately revised her estimation of the maid's age upward by quite a bit, Shizuru reached over the side of the bed to pull up the skirt she'd tossed there the previous night, pulling her phone out of its pocket. "Ohh, I hope this wasn't urgent," she murmured, glancing at the screen. "Message from Negi-kun," she added, by way of explanation to Natsuki.

"Well, I guess you should answer it," Natsuki replied, then cursed herself for how poisonous the words sounded even to her own ears.

"In a bit," Shizuru said, closing the phone's cover, then looked levelly at Natsuki. "You don't like him, do you?"

"I ..." Natsuki started to say, then trailed off, and looked away from that firm gaze. "I don't love him. I don't think I ever will. And I know that you do."

"No," Shizuru said softly. "I love you, Natsuki."

Natsuki still didn't look back. "But," she replied.

"Yes. But," Shizuru repeated with a nod. "But I do ... need him. And he is a part of both of our lives now." One hand rested on her own stomach, the other reached out and pressed against the side of Natsuki's.

"Yes," Natsuki agreed. "And ... I am grateful that he got you to stop worshiping me from a distance. But. I won't say I don't wish things were different."

"Don't we all," Shizuru said, smiling sadly. "Don't we all."

"You know, considering the red sky, and the way that most flowing water is the same color, it's easy to forget that Japan is nevertheless still a land of great natural beauty," said Maya as she sat in the car's back seat and gazed at the forested hills they were presently winding their way through. "I'm really grateful for this opportunity to reflect on that. Aren't you?"

Anthy didn't say anything. Neither did Juri. And of course, neither of them took their eyes off of the road.

Nothing new there. Neither of them had said anything since that little burst of not-exactly-scintillating conversation that they'd shared just outside the Academy's gates. Well, no, that wasn't strictly true. After they'd stopped at a love hotel to get some sleep, a little while ago, and Anthy had silently handed Juri the keycard for a double room while she herself took a single, there had been some words spoken. Just as her senpai had opened the door, she'd turned to look back at Maya with a look of profound regret that didn't belong on that face, and simply said, "I'm sorry."

Just that. Nothing more. And they'd lain down together without even holding each other's hands, much less availing themselves of any of the room's appurtenances, and slept a while.

Maya found herself truly wishing that her senpai hadn't said that. This, this whatever-it-was - she supposed that the term 'quest' was not too dramatic, even if the imagined word filled her head with fanfares of tinny electronic music - was clearly more dangerous than they were saying. (Of course, given that no one was actually saying anything, it would be difficult for it to be less dangerous than they were saying.) And that made no sense. They were scholars, academics, and not the adventuresome kind that filled the pages of pulp fiction. Their lives should not be dangerous.

She tilted her head back, looked up at the angry red sky, and shook her head in amazement at how utterly foolish that line of thought was. It had been a good distraction, though, from the frustation and anger that she didn't really want to feel right at the moment. Ten long years she and Juri had been together, in one way or another, and now secrets were coming between them. Even if her senpai had said something about not knowing anything about the person that Anthy was trying to find, Maya was sure that Juri had to know more about this situation than she was saying.

It would be difficult to know less.

And then a wonder transpired, for Anthy spoke! "We're here," she said, as the car began to slow down.

"Where's here?" Juri asked, a moment before they pulled up in front of a fairly large house that seemed to almost rear up out of the forest, with a fence-enclosed track set on the grounds before it. The car came to a stop, and Anthy turned off its engine.

"I," the dark woman said calmly, eyes locked on the house's front door, "am going to talk to the person who lives here. If, by chance, she wants to ask you anything, answer honestly and briefly. Do not ask questions in return." A brief pause, and then, Anthy unbent enough to turn and look in Maya's direction. "I am of course addressing only the person who was invited on this pilgrimage to the past. Those who were not invited should not say anything."

"So I shouldn't say anything, then?" Maya asked, to clarify the somewhat confusing instructions she'd just received.

Anthy did not answer, not even nonverbally. She opened her door as Juri opened her own, with senpai pulling the seat forward so that Maya could step out of the car as well. They followed along in Anthy's wake as the woman in the long coat walked up the stairs to the front door, and reached out with one gloved finger to press the doorbell.

Immediately, several dogs could be heard barking in the distance. Less immediately, the door opened and a rather petite woman, red of hair and red of eye, red of blouse and black of pants, age ... difficult to assess ... poked her head out. "Oh," she said. "Hello, Anthy."

"I offer greetings and respect to thee, Knight of Rayearth, Princess of the Flame, Last Pillar of Cefiro Which Was," Anthy said, in phrasing much more formal and vastly more polite than she'd used in Maya's hearing to this point.

The woman gazed at Anthy for a moment, smiling warmly if maybe a little fixedly. "It's going to be that kind of a conversation, then," she said. Having done so, she seemed to notice the presence of other persons on the doorstep, and turned that smile on them. "Good morning," she added.

Juri was on the verge of returning that greeting, but found herself interrupted.

"I seek a boon, and am prepared to offer in exchange -" The interruption which Anthy had begun was then itself interrupted.

"Anthy, I'm going to just break in here," said the red-haired woman. "Just to save some time. I don't know where Utena is. If I did, I'd tell you for nothing." A beat. "Probably." She returned her attention to Juri and Maya. "I'm Shido Hikaru. And you?"

The way that Anthy had just been shut down, perhaps oddly, lent a bit of elan to Juri as she answered. "I'm Professor Arisugawa Juri of Otori Academy University, and this is my associate Ibuki Maya." She considered adding some information about being present under duress, but mindfully chose to heed Anthy's request to be brief. For her part, Maya offered a polite wave, not that Juri noticed. Her attention was more focused on the way that Shido's eyes had widened slightly when she started speaking, and the slight nod that she'd given midway through the introduction. What to make of that was presently beyond her, but perhaps that would change.

"Very well, then, in that case, I would appreciate an introduction to your sister," Anthy continued, much less formally.

"... I don't have any sisters, Anthy," Shido said, and that smile was definitely fixed at the moment. "I have three brothers, had a mother and father who loved me. I had two other mothers who also really loved me, I'm told, but they died a very long time ago." She spoke over Anthy's attempt to interrupt. "I also knew a very nice lady who was quite sweet to me, and I cried buckets when I found out she'd died after I came back a while ago, but she was not in any way my mother, and her daughter is not my sister. And even if she was, which she's not, I don't know where she is either." The smile dropped completely. "How did you even know I was here?"

"I'm a witch," Anthy replied tersely. "How do you think I knew?"

And Shido nodded in acceptance of that reply.

"Ooookay, I was told not to say anything, but we've reached the point where I need more of an explanation than the complete non-explanation I've gotten to this point," Maya announced.

Juri just sighed.

"I know exactly where you're coming from," said Shido, smiling quite brightly this time. "Please, come in, all of you. I might not be able to help, but I'm not about to send guests away without even a meal, I'm not too confident in my cooking, but still, come in, come in -"

It was somewhat surprising that a traditional inn like this had a fairly modern-looking conference room, Midori decided, but given the convenience that it afforded, she wasn't about to wish that they all had to squeeze into one of the regular rooms for this meeting. There were quite a few of people present, mostly seated around the room's table, with a few choosing to stand.

For the most part, her attention was on Nao, who was providing most of the testimony. For once, the henna-haired girl wasn't engaged in the snark that had been her trademark every time that Midori had met her before this. Midori doubted that Nao had really straightened up, but she was clearly making an effort to describe what she'd seen a few days ago so that there couldn't be any misunderstandings. Mikoto, seated beside Nao, was just staring down at the floor, but the haunted, almost morose expression on the young girl's face as Nao talked about what they'd witnessed was vocal confirmation of it.

Out of the corner of her eye, Midori was also watching Konoka having a quietly voiced conversation with Shizuru, their accents becoming quite strong in each other's presence. They seemed to be getting along rather well, or so it seemed, and were basically ignoring the presence of Asuna and Setsuna as Konoka's bodyguards, and Natsuki as that of Shizuru. Meanwhile, Yuna was holding up one of the conference room's walls with her back as she gazed steadily in Natsuki's direction. Midori wasn't sure what that was about, though she had her suspicions, but now was probably not the best time to dwell on them.

Natsuki herself seemed oblivious to Yuna's regard, even as she chimed in to back up what Nao said about Mai's actions after Negi had confronted her, and brought the account to a close.

"We don't know who those people she was fighting with were," Negi said, in the manner of one beginning some final remarks.

"Well, then here's where I make my contribution to the morning's agenda," Midori cut in.

Negi blinked. "You're familiar with these people?"

She nodded. "Well, by reputation, anyway. Guy goes by the name Roman Torchwick - he's a gangster active in the slums around Mahora, supposedly has a fairly big piece of the refrain trade, a chunk of the porn business, and runs some protection scams. The girl who didn't talk is his bodyguard, and uses the alias Neo Politan."

That got Yuna to stop staring at Natsuki and start staring at Midori. "What, like the ice cream?" she asked, sounding horrified. "What kind of sick person tries to make ice cream evil?"

Midori replied with a shrug, then added, "It's no weirder than one of the most wanted criminals on Earth, pre-Second Impact, being a mad golfer. Anyway, the woman who wanted to swallow Mai's soul operates under the alias Cinder Falls, and she's some seriously bad news. She came out of nowhere last year to murder one of Europe's four wizards - and yes, Negi, I'm using the term correctly."

"I wasn't going to say anything," Negi replied quietly.

"Well, good. Anyway, there are, or were, these four wizards in Europe who embodied the four seasons, until Cinder murdered the one who embodied autumn, and stole her power. She dropped out of sight until just a little while ago, which is understandable when you consider that the other three were out for her blood, and especially when you consider who one of them is." Midori shook her head.

"And ... who would that be?" Shizuru asked, quietly.

"Kulenkov," said Midori.

"... oh, feathers," Negi said after a moment.

"Well, damn," murmured Natsuki.

"Woman's clearly got stones," Asuna observed, nodding.

Setsuna silently shook her head in the manner of one soberly lamenting the folly of man.

"We're talking about the Kulenkov?" Shizuru asked, perhaps even more quietly.

Yuna glanced in the direction of Nao, who answered her look with a shrug, and then Mikoto, who showed no sign of awareness that there was actually a conversation going on. "Okay, let's pretend that some of us haven't been immersed in magical gossip for our entire lives, and maybe explain who the hell Kulenkov is and why she's so scary?" she asked.

"I haven't -" Shizuru started to say.

Negi coughed, and the vice president fell silent. "We're talking about Lara Vassilevna Kulenkov, Yuna," he said. "She's somewhat better known by her nickname of Esdeath."

Midori found it vaguely amusing to watch Yuna lose her footing, slide halfway down the wall she was leaning against, then recover and, with effort, push herself back up again, all the while losing all color in her facial features. "The Generalissimo of Russia ... is a frigging magical girl?" she asked, voice gone hoarse.

"Pretty scary one, too," Asuna answered, nodding.

"You've, you've met this person?" Yuna asked, staring with wide, blank eyes at her classmate.

"No, but Karin has, and I'm passing on her opinion," the bell-haired girl elaborated.

"... who's Karin?" asked Nao.

"That clearly adds a bit of urgency to the situation," Negi said in a particularly grim tone. "Not only has Tokiha-san engaged in activities that are beyond the pale, she's made enemies that are extraordinarily dangerous in the process. For her own sake, as well as that of anyone else she might encounter, I need to take her prisoner, and I can't do this alone. Will you and the other hime help me to do this, Midori-sensei?" he asked.

"HiME," Midori corrected. As Negi let out a sigh, she continued. "And yes. I don't like any of this, and I've only known Mai as a friend and ally ... but if this is what's going on, then yes, I'm willing to help you to stop her before she hurts herself. And I'll get Akane-chan and Kikukawa to help, too."

Shizuru's jaw dropped. "Kikukawa?" she asked, rising to her knees. "She actually is a HiME?"

"Why is it that when I say it, it sounds exactly like when they say it, but everyone acts like I said something completely different?" Negi soundly wondered aloud.

"Why is it that when someone else asks for clarification, they get it, but I'm completely ignored?" Nao softly wondered aloud. Actually, there was no softly about it.

Somewhere, and Akane wasn't really sure where, she'd heard about some group of soldiers, or something like that, who had a motto that was currently really resonating with her. "The only easy day was yesterday." Surely such wisdom could only have come from the gods. Or God. Or whatever.

Yesterday had been good. She'd been able to spend time with Yuka and Sayuri and just be a simple, ordinary high school student on a simple, ordinary school trip to a simple, ordinary island that her school's principal apparently owned. Okay, so that last part could not in any way be considered simple or ordinary, but she hadn't had it shoved in her face, so she could ignore it. Nor had she had to think about what she'd learned about her mother, her relationships with a ten year old magician, or any of her half-sisters. And definitely not her half-sister-slash-half-brother, who'd stayed well out of her way.

That had been the best part. No Ranma. He'd been somewhere else, and she could just forget about him. Off he'd gone with Hiroshi and Daisuke, and if, as she thought was fairly likely, he was going to end up turning into a girl and end up in a threesome with those two idiots, then Ranma-chan could go whore herself to whoever she liked. Given that they shared a father and not a mother, it was sort of hilarious that Ranma-chan was so much like Akane's mother. On the other hand, she didn't know what Ranma or Haruna's mother was like, but given how Haruna acted -

No, no, no! Don't think about any of that! Akane reminded herself, clenching a fist as she sat on the beach chair beneath the shade of an umbrella, and watched Ranma, Hiroshi, Daisuke, Yuka, Sayuri, and the robot having fun a little ways down the beach. Well, she doubted that the robot was having fun, as such. Probably not programmed for that sort of thing. But dear, sweet Yuka and Sayuri had decided that it was their civic duty to help Aigis try and fit in, and so they'd left Akane alone after she'd told them that she hadn't slept well last night and was too pooped to go and play like that.

Why the hell had they believed such an obvious lie? Akane let out a deep sigh ...

... then blinked as she realized that she'd just sighed in synchrony with someone else. She turned to her left and saw, maybe a meter or two away, seated on a beach chair beneath the shade of an umbrella, another young woman around her age turning to her own right to look in surprise at Akane.

Fortunately for her already battered mental balance, they didn't look very much like one another, beyond the vague similarity of blue-black hair color, which in the other girl's case was worn longer than Akane had ever let hers grow, complete with a headband to keep it out of her eyes. She was also slightly taller, and almost as busty as Ranma-chan, as revealed by the rather daring black bikini she wore, in contrast to Akane's green one-piece. Further contrast was the way that her face seemed set in a permanent pout which was utterly different from Akane's habitual frown.

They stared at each other.

"Furinkan, right?" the girl asked.

Akane nodded. "And you're from -"

"Shichiyo," she answered reflexively, then shook her head. "Well, Hakudo, now."

Right, the all-boy's school that had merged with an all-girl's school, not too far from Furinkan. Both schools were much more prestigious than her own, not that Akane had ever cared about that sort of thing. Well, she should at least show that she had enough civility to offer her own name before asking for someone elses's, and so opened her mouth to do just that.

"Hey, Natsuki!" came a cry from one of the girls further down the beach. "C'mon, join in the fun!"

"I'm fine like this, thanks," said the girl, clearly Natsuki. And indeed, this was soon confirmed. "Souma Natsuki," she introduced herself. "And you?"

"Tendo Akane."

Natsuki's eyes widened. "The one who fights every boy in Furinkan every morning?"

"My reputation precedes me, clearly," Akane remarked through clenched teeth. Saying it wasn't every boy, or that they'd stopped attacking her lately, would probably not help matters.

"Hah," Natsuki said, nodding.

Before she could say anything else that would further foul Akane's mood, a younger woman in an even more daring bikini, dark-skinned but with a certain resemblance to Natsuki, jogged up beside the other girl. "You've got such great friends," she declared, voice slightly accented in a way that Akane didn't recognize. "So lucky, Natsuki-chan. But I bet you wish Mitsuki-chan had come with you, don't you?"

The pout on Natsuki's face turned into a frown almost as intense as Akane's usual look. "No, I do not," she enunciated. "This is the first time I've been able to get away from that bitch in years, and you think I'd want her to come here? Are you out of your mind, Maho?"

"But you were sighing just now -"

"That was a sigh of relief!"

Now, Akane was well aware that she wasn't very honest with herself. But she was honest enough to admit that her own sigh, the one that had echoed that which Natsuki had let out, had not been a sigh of relief, but of regret. So it seemed likely to her, that whoever this Mitsuki person was, she was someone that Natsuki did in fact want to be present. For whatever reason.

Any comment she might have made, though, went suppressed when a middle-aged gentleman, moustached, very tanned, walked up to where they were gathered. "I guess your relationship with Mitsuki is still as bad as it was when the two of you were just little children," he said, somehow managing to sound both smarmy and boisterous.

"Hello, uncle," Natsuki greeted him with obvious reluctance.

"Papa!" said Maho, further clarifying the relationships here.

"It's sad, really, when you consider how you've grown up in so many other ways," the uncle said, grinning.

"Did you -" Natsuki started to ask. "Did you just - what is wrong with you, making those sorts of comments about your own niece?!"

"I have no idea what you mean by 'those sorts of comments', Natsuki-chan," the man continued to smarm and boister. "Anyway, I was hoping that I could invite you and your friends to the festival we'll be having tonight. Maho's the only young lady who lives here, and I expect that the young men would appreciate your presence." He seemed to notice Akane, then. "Oh, you're one of Kuno's girls, aren't you?"

"That's ... not how I'd put it," Akane said, with patience that no one who knew her would have expected.

"Well, please let your friends know that they're welcome to join the celebration, too!" he said. "Will you be there, Natsuki?"

"No," Natsuki replied, then added, very reluctantly, "Thank you. But no. The rest of them will be happy to show up, though."

"Well, plenty of time to change your mind!" her uncle said with clear respect for Natsuki's agency. He wandered off in the general direction of the girls splashing around, most probably Natsuki's classmates, Maho trailing along behind him as he did.

"My family, ladies and gentlemen," Natsuki grumbled, more to herself than anything else.

"And Mitsuki is -" Akane asked.

"The other daughter of my father," the girl admitted, then made a face. "Oh, why did I say that?" she groaned to herself. "I can't believe that -" She broke off, turning to regard Akane in confusion.

Akane, who was laughing, hand over her eyes.

"What? What the hell's so funny?" Natsuki almost demanded.

"We have soooo much in common," Akane said, letting the hand drop and offering a surprisingly cute smile in Natsuki's direction.

She blinked. "Really?"

Akane nodded. "Yeah. Let's talk about just about anything else."

Within a few moments, they were chattering away about absolutely nothing of any importance.

Yukihiro Ayaka was not having a good day.

For starters, her head still hurt. She was bewildered as to why anyone would drink from a fountain that caused such odd if not unpleasant sensations immediately but then inflicted such agonies later, even if it was supposed to bring good fortune in romance. Asakura-san had offered her some wild tale about the waters being adulterated with alcohol, but surely no one could possibly be so vile as to interfere with a maiden's pursuit of love. (Fortunately, she did not voice that objection and suffer the burning tongue she'd endured the last time she claimed 'maiden' status.)

Be that as it may, Ayaka found herself forced to endure a ridiculous reaction to the brightly shining sun, and to the appallingly loud noises produced by everything around her. She supposed that she could have worn sunglasses and perhaps a pair of noise muffling headphones, but the mental picture of herself with such paraphernalia was not consistent with her self-image. Besides, it would probably lead to her writing poetry, smoking, and - worst of all - drinking coffee.

Such mere physical discomforts faded into irrelevance, in contrast to the emotional devastation she'd suffered that morning. Through the haze of her confused state, she'd nonetheless had a very firm goal in mind. She was going to invite Negi-sensei to accompany her and the rest of her group on their free time expedition that day, then gradually and subtly encourage the rest of the group to find other activities of interest, and then, when at last she and her unfathomably cute teacher were alone, she would confess her feelings and delicately educate him in the loving of a woman.

But what had transpired instead? Afflicted by her headache, she'd only been able to get out the words, "Good morning, Negi-sensei," when they'd met, and then, at the worst possible moment, suffered a touch of nausea.

"Good morning, Iincho," Negi-sensei had said, utterly oblivious to her struggle to keep her breakfast where it belonged.

"Mmmmm!" she'd said in lieu of 'come with me my love to the sea the sea of love,' or something like that.

His genial expression had grown concerned. "Are you all right?"

Setting aside the fact that his obvious worry about her meant that she would be able to count her life well-lived if she died that very moment, Ayaka had actually felt herself starting to recover. Still not enough to trust her voice, though, and so she'd just nodded.

"Oh, good, good. Iincho ... no, Ayaka-san, I should probably use your given name if I'm going to do this. Ayaka-san, I would like to ask you to do me a favor."

... to think she'd thought her life could ever have been well-lived before this moment. "Of course, Negi-sensei!" she'd half-wheezed. "Anything for you!"

"Thank you!" he'd said. "I was hoping that you could try to help Chisame-san have some fun today. I think she's really not enjoying herself on this trip. It's true that she usually seems fairly unhappy at the best of times, but she's seemed even worse since we boarded the train yesterday. So if you could take it on yourself to help your classmate, it would be a really big help." And he'd smiled at her.

The world ... at times ... was a dark and lonely place.

All this passed quickly through Ayaka's mind as she stared at herself in the mirror. "I look hideous," she declared in tones which did not speak of a desire for contradiction.

"Well," said Chizuru, redolent in an outfit which looked like it should come from the wardrobe of one M. Poppins, complete with a rather fetching top hat, "I'll admit that the wig doesn't really flatter you very much - honestly, I can't think of anyone born this century whom it would - but I think you're being much too hard on yourself, Ayaka."

"Well, I feel hideous, and I've no doubt that I will look hideous if I put on the face paint that goes with the blasted wig," Ayaka declared. "Why did I let you talk me into this, again?" There was more than a hint of confusion in her tone.

"Because Natsumi has always wanted to visit Cinema Town, and, being the wonderful, huge-hearted class representative we know and love, you agreed to let her pick the destination for our outing today," Chizuru replied.

"Yes, that does sound like the sort of absurd flattery that would work well on me, particularly in a moment of extreme emotional trauma," Ayaka mused. Ignoring Chizuru's coughing fit, the heir of Yukihiro turned away from the mirror to look at the curtained-off areas of the changing room. "Chisame-san, you've surely had enough time to get changed into your costume. Come out and let us have a look."

For a moment or so, there was no response. Then, somewhat quietly, "Couldn't you just forget that I was here?"

"Unfortunately, no, I'm not at all inclined to be so daffy," Ayaka replied, just a bit crossly. "It's bad enough that Zazie-san managed to drop out of sight on the way here, I will not stand for other members actually assigned to our group trying to fade into the woodwork."

A huge sigh ensued, and the curtain drew back to allow Chisame, wearing a pink kimono and dark red hakama over a pair of leather boots, to slouch irritably into view, face in her usual glower.

"Interesting choices," Chizuru said, trying to be nice.

"It's based on that recently discovered photograph of Okita Souji, correct?" Ayaka said, examining the outfit skeptically.

She noted that Chisame's eyes widened in response to that observation, though the girl looked away quickly. "Maybe," she said, in a rather harsh tone. "I just took what they gave me, that's all."

Now, that she knew to be untrue. Despite having had her heart crushed yet again, Ayaka hadn't been so absorbed in her own difficulties as to miss the way that the clubless girl had been quietly talking with the costumer who gave them their outfits, in a way as to suggest that she'd been asking for this in particular. Why she'd wanted this, why she was going to such lengths to hide what she wanted, none of these made any sense to Ayaka.

She supposed that they didn't have to make sense. Negi-sensei had asked her to see that Chisame had fun, and it seemed that Chisame was actually starting to have fun. So be it then.

Ayaka plucked the glasses from Chisame's face, then ignored the squawking noises of disapproval that her classmate said to silently evaluate the other girl's appearance. "You're quite lovely," she said.

"I'm fricking blind is what I am!" Chisame squawked disapprovingly, and, since this one was in response to what Ayaka had said, it was harder to ignore.

"Balloon juice," Ayaka replied dismissively.

"Ball-" Chisame started to repeat.

"If you're actually helpless without your glasses, you won't be able to follow me to get them back," the class representative in geisha garb replied, turning to walk briskly towards the exit.

Chisame did in fact start towards the doorway, suggesting that her eyesight was, in fact better than she'd indicated. She stopped in place as she realized that suggestion, paused a moment, then ground her teeth before starting for the door again. She halted for a second time as she realized that Chizuru hadn't moved from where she was standing and, in fact, staring. "What're you looking at?" she growled at Chizuru.

"An additional complication," Chizuru replied, very quietly.

"What?"

"Never mind, let's be on our way."

"No, seriously, what?"

"Isn't it kind of weird, though?" Yuna asked as she stood before the large torii gate, beyond which she could see dozens of other gates, slightly smaller but more or less identical for all that, stretching away along the path leading up the hill and through the bamboo forest upon it.

"Weird in what way?" Negi asked, sounding a bit distracted as he looked from side to side, instead of up the pathway.

"Well, just like you said on the train, this is just like that Fushimi-Inari shrine they've got here in Kyoto," she said, glancing at him.

"Mm-hm," he replied in a way that was probably meant to be encouraging.

"... so how come nobody in Kyoto has noticed they've got two Fushimi-Inari shrines?"T

Now Negi looked at her, a gentle if maybe just a bit patronizing smile on his face. "Magic," he answered.

Yuna took a moment to consider that response, then nodded in the manner of one acknowledging a point.

"The effect probably takes advantage of the way that torii are meant to signal a separation of the worldly and the divine," the boy continued. Having done so, he paused to blink a bit. "I wonder if something similar is in play at the church back at Mahora. Hm. Well, no matter, we should get going." This he said while taking one more look up and down the street outside the gate.

"What are you looking for?" Yuna asked, having finally run out of patience. She found herself considering that Negi was probably a good influence on her - she'd never had this much patience before meeting him.

"I think someone followed us," Negi told her, softly.

Yuna took a moment to consider that response. "I seeeeee," she finally said. "So ... basically what you're saying is that the opposition is doing something to oppose us. What a surprising development."

"I'm not sure that it's - ah, sarcasm," he said.

"Uh-huh," she agreed, then held up her hands. "Adeat!" she declaimed, and her pistols took form in her hands as she started to hum in tune with the baseline of one of Juno Reactor's greatest hits.

"Okay, Yuna?" Negi interrupted. "We're trying to be a bit covert here, so, you know, singing might not the best thing we could do under the circumstances."

The humming stopped. "Fiiine," Yuna grumbled. Her thoughts, which remained her own, were nonetheless filled with the music as she and Negi ran forward through the first gate.

"Well, so much for them, then," the boy said as he sat and looked down into the trap.

"Is it, though," Chigusa said in response as she stood near him, resting her hand on the carapace of her spider-goki. Her face gave no particular indication that she regarded the capture of the opposition leader as a triumph.

Well, since he wasn't inclined to view this sneaky crap as being all that glorious, he wasn't inclined to disagree with the point. Nonetheless, he was a bit confused by his client's lack of enthusiasm, since, from what he'd seen of her up until now, she lived for this sort of thing. "So what's the matter, then? We're winning."

"Are we though," she said, without glancing at him. "Something isn't right here. That little bastard has many more resources and allies than just that gunslinger girl. Why didn't he bring more of them with him?"

Oh, buh-rother, he thought. This was clearly what came of having so many brains that they started to leak out of your head every time you opened your mouth. "Guarding the princess, maybe?" he offered up instead. "Since she's the vulnerable type, an' all?"

For a moment, he thought Chigusa might actually listen to him for once. She promptly ruined that. "No," she said, shaking her head. "They couldn't do that without letting her know what's going on here, and they won't do that. There's something else here, something that we're miss - wait, what are they doing?"

"Chamo-kun," said Negi as he sat by on the comfortable bench outside the rest stop while Yuna was inside, taking care of business. "What sort of people put a rest stop inside a space warp trap?"

"Eh, I guess that it was just here on the inside of the space that they warped," his familiar answered with a motion that was probably supposed to be a shrug of his invisible shoulders.

"Well, yes, but they could have chosen to warp a smaller section of space that didn't include it. They're providing food, water and sanitary services to the people they're entrapping. Why do that?"

Chamo glanced at the vending machines. "Considering the price tags on those guys? I'm guessing there's a certain amount of sheer damn greed involved."

Negi might have argued the point further, but then Yuna came out of the washroom with a look of mixed relief and aggravation on her face. "So," she said after slamming her butt down on the seat beside him, grabbing one of the water bottles he'd bought, and chugging its contents. "How are we getting out of this one, oh hero?"

"It is a very troubling situation," Negi said solemnly, leaning against her. "I'm sort of scared, really."

Yuna frowned. That was uncharacteristic ... and then she realized that it was supposed to be. She wrapped one of her arms around his shoulders and pulled him close, in the manner of someone comforting a small child. "So?" she said when his mouth was near her ear.

"My uncle told me about this sort of thing years ago," he whispered. "The spell will be focused on one of the gates. It's a simple matter to just start blasting them until we find the right one. We can get out of here any time that we like."

Yuna felt a surge of relief ... mixed with other emotions brought on by the scent of him. "Right," she said, eyes darting in Chamo's direction. "Hey, ermine. Go water the flowers."

"Eh?" Chamo said, eyebrows high. "I don't really need to - ohhhhhhh," he concluded, then bobbed his head twice before darting off.

"Why did yugh," Negi started to ask, interrupted by Yuna kissing him rather forcefully.

"It's. Been. Days," she said once her osculation offensive reached a ceasefire and she pulled back to stare hungrily down at him. "No private nookie time in way too long. So if we're alone now -" She broke off and began to undo his belt buckle.

"I don't think we are, really, we're probably being watched," Negi reminded her.

"Let 'em watch, then," said Yuna as she pulled his dick out and bent down to suck it into her mouth.

"Oh," said Chigusa, face ashen. "Oh, oh, oh. What are they doing?!" she asked.

"Uh, boss, you might not wanna ask questions like that if you want people to buy into the notion that you got a boyfriend and all," the boy told her.

"That's not what I meant!" she nearly shrieked. "Ahhh, they're starting to - oh, what kind of sick place did they send the princess!" She turned away from the sight of Yuna mounting Negi and riding him in a very experienced style. "I've changed my mind, we've got to get Yomi out of whatever pit of perversion they've stuck her in!"

"She's kind of a pervert her own self, y'know," he said. "Just sayin'. Look, what am I supposed to do while you're off rescuing her?" he asked her angry glare.

"Don't do anything!" Chigusa snapped, and then darted away.

"Oh what the heck," Inugami Kotaro groaned. "I'm getting paid to do nothing!"

"Ahhh, yes! Fuck me, fuck me doggy style!"

"... even better, I'm getting paid to watch kiddy porn that fricking pisses me off!"

The only weakness that Iwai Tsukuyomi would admit to having - or at least, the only weakness which she viewed as a weakness, rather than something her mentors called a weakness but which she knew was a quality that would eventually lead to her being recognized as the badass of all badasses - was a profound fondness for pulp fiction. In pulp fiction, it was sometimes the case that the protagonist would end up imprisoned, like Tsukuyomi was right now. There was never any illusion that such situations would be permanent, and they really existed, as did much else, either to allow the protagonist to demonstrate their badass qualities in escaping, or to allow supporting cast members to demonstrate their usefulness in rescuing the protagonist.

One way that the protagonists informed the reader of this fact was to muse that they had been in much worse situations than the present, and gotten out just fine. In the future - if there was a future - and Tsukuyomi found herself musing that she'd been in worse situations, she was very sure that her current situation was not one she'd be thinking about, because it was hard to imagine an easier situation than this.

She was fairly sure that her keeper - Midori-han, she called her in the privacy of her thoughts, because there was no way that she was going to call someone who claimed to be seventeen years old 'sensei' - had stayed awake after she herself had fallen asleep. And that Midori-han had been awake before she herself awoke, because she'd been woken up by the so-called teacher having a conversation with some other, more realistic-sounding teacher at the doorway, begging illness as an excuse for not acting as a minder for one of the student groups going out and about. That was sort of contemptible, and yet also a respectable way to keep Tsukuyomi under guard.

They'd had a breakfast, without much conversation beyond her request to be set free to engage in sword form practice, which Midori-han had treated as the ridiculous joke that it was. But then, any shred of respect she might have built up had vanished in an eyeblink, as the older woman had returned to her bed and gone back to sleep, leaving Tsukuyomi to her own devices! In her dress filled with blades! And the door to the room locked on the inside!

What sort of warden was this? It was disgusting! Only her profound curiosity about what sort of incompetents were hanging around with her senpai kept her from making an escape then and there. Well, she eventually admitted to herself that another factor was that she had no idea where she'd go if she did escape, since her only allies in the area had abandoned her and -

"Sssst! Sssssssst!" came a noise from the window. It was followed by a slightly more intelligible but still faint, "Tsukuyomi!"

Or, perhaps not, she thought. "Well, goodness gracious me, could that possibly be my client, Chigusa-han, outside the window of my dank and dismal cell?" she asked, voice dripping a bit of venom.

"Quiet, dammit!" Chigusa's voice hissed some more. "You gon' wake up that damn Westernized tramp in there with you, and then the whole thing gon' go south so fast, it'll make your head spin. I'm here to rescue you!"

"How spiffy!" she enthused without much enthusiasm. "What's the plan, my rescuer?"

"Get yourself free and get out of the building, and then we'll work out the next step between us," Chigusa ordered.

Tsukuyomi nodded slowly, considering the words which had just been spoken unto her. "You know," she said, "this plan ... well, well, I hope you'll take this as constructive criticism, Chigusa-han, but that first step really sounds more like you telling me to escape rather than rescuing me, as such. And, and, if that was what you wanted, wouldn't it have been a lot easier on you to take me with you when you made your clever escape last night?"

"Oh, come on! You can't be so upset about that you're not going to cooperate in your own damn rescue?"

"Can't I though?" she wondered aloud. "But even if I couldn't be, that gets back to the way that what you want isn't my cooperation, but my blind obedience. And since these people were nice enough to give me back my glasses, I'm not -"

"Do you have any idea what these people are actually like?!" Chigusa asked, her voice almost reaching normal volume levels.

Tsukuyomi sighed and shook her head. "Chigusa-han, I thought I made it clear that while I respect your goals, I don't share your biases. I haven't seen any way that these people are all that worse than -"

"I saw that brat fucking!"

She paused, blinked, wondered if Chigusa might be so upset as to mix up word order. "Say again, sorry?"

"The brat! The Springfield brat! He was fucking one of his students! Isn't that disgusting?!" she demanded.

"Hmmm," Tsukuyomi replied, realizing as she did that such a non-comittal response would probably further outrage Chigusa, but unable to take the response back once she'd given it.

"Why aren't you horrified?!"

She coughed. "Um, Chigusa-han? Would you like to know the circumstances under which I lost my virginity?"

"What? What? What does that have to do with -" The voice through the window broke off. "Ughhhh," issued from there a moment later.

"It takes a lot to really horrify me," Tsukuyomi replied agreeably. "So what you're saying is interesting, but not really -"

"Fine!" Chigusa interrupted, her head finally rising above the window sill so that she could glare at Tsukuyomi. "Fine! I don't need you! I don't need anyone! I'll do it alone, and I'll take credit for it alone! You just stay here, and, and - do whatever! You're fired! And I'm going to give your service a bad review!" And with that last dire threat, she vanished.

"... so this is what it's like to be unemployed," Tsukuyomi mused sadly.

"So what were they?" asked a voice from the futon.

She started. She didn't like starting. The badass of all badasses was never startled. "How much of that were you awake for?"

Midori rolled over so that she was facing Tsukuyomi, an incredibly disturbed look on her face. "Quite a bit," she said. "So, anyway -"

"Well, I was in grade school, and -" she started to explain.

"No, never mind that, I -" Midori broke off, and let out a sound midway between a sigh and a snort. "Oh, man, what've I gotten myself into? I thought that being in a battle royale organized for the amusement of a vaguely Lovecraftian entity was the worst thing that was ever going to happen to me."

"... you lead an interesting life," Tsukuyomi said approvingly.

Midori sat up. "Okay, never mind any of that. Just what exactly is that woman up to?"

She frowned unhappily. "I'm not sure about the ethics of discussing a former client's private information with -"

"I'll arrange for you to fight that Setsuna girl," Midori interrupted.

"Basically, this is the situation," Tsukuyomi started to explain.

Natsumi blinked.

She'd heard it said, somewhere, that you could go halfway across the world and end up running into someone from your hometown. Well, Kyoto wasn't halfway across the world from Mahora. And it wasn't halfway across the world from Natsumi's actual hometown of Tomakomai, either, though that was a longer trip. And since she already knew that there were lots of students from Mahora here in Kyoto, she supposed that it wasn't really a surprise for her group to run into another group here at Cinema Town. The surprise, then, had to be what they were doing.

They - specifically Yue and Haruna - were peering out from behind a wall at another pair of young ladies, whom Natsumi needed a moment to recognize as Setsuna and Konoka, walking casually together down one the lane. Well, Konoka seemed casual, Setsuna looked a bit like she expected to be struck down by a bolt of lightning from the rather clear sky, but Natsumi thought that might be one of the girl's two main expressions, the other being stoic disinterest in everything around her.

What was going on, here? Why were those two spying on those other two? Well, she wasn't going to get anywhere just wondering about it, and so she opened her mouth to ask the spies what they were doing.

"Whatcha doin'?" Asakura asked as she faintly leered in Haruna's direction.

Natsumi closed her mouth, swallowing a sigh in the process. Sometimes, she wondered why she bothered to try.

Haruna whirled around, clutching one of her sketchpads to her chest. "Waah! Asakura? What are you doing here?! And -" The artist paused, blinked, removed her glasses to wipe them and then replaced them on her face. "- what are you wearing?" she asked in a tone slightly less excited and yet no less bewildered.

"Costumes," said Iincho, very calmly. "When one comes to Cinema Town, you have to wear a costume. Everyone knows that," she added, then slowly turned her white painted face to glare in Chizuru's general direction. Chizuru returned the glare with a saint-like smile.

"So, again, what's with the secret agent routine?" Asakura asked, one arm coming up from her kimono's neck to rest against her chin as she gazed at them speculatively.

"Ah, well, you see -" Haruna started to ask.

"We're spying on Konoka and Setsuna-san while they are on a date," Yue declared in her usual monotone.

"Yeah, sure, that won't cause any problems later," Haruna whimpered while covering half of her face with the hand that wasn't tightly holding both sketchbook and pen.

"A date?" Iincho asked, blinking.

"Ah, yes, if you'll give me a moment, Ayaka, I'll explain what she meant -" Chizuru started to say.

"What's to explain?" asked Ayaka, blinking some more. "I am only surprised that there wasn't ever a hint of romance between those two before this, but that's hardly any of my business."

In her two years spent in the company of Naba Chizuru, Natsumi had witnessed her being enthusiastic, being a bit melancholy, being genially daffy, and, on one occasion which Natsumi had sought never to repeat, being possessed of a fury which could probably cow a demon king. Never, until this very moment, had she seen Chizuru disconcerted. "Eh, uh, er, what?" said her older sister figure who was two months younger.

"I am also somewhat surprised that you would think I'd need an explanation for lesbianism, Chizuru-san," Ayaka added. "It is the twenty-first century, you know."

"Yes, that is the general understanding," Chizuru said faintly, staring at nothing in particular.

Ayaka shook her head. "Chisame-san, please do not take advantage of this situation to attempt to sneak off," she said without looking in Chisame's direction. "Now, Haruna-san, quite apart from wondering what would motivate your decision to spy on a classmate who wished to enjoy privacy -"

"Oh, come on, that's got to be easily understood," Haruna interjected.

As was generally the case, Ayaka ignored Haruna. "- I would also like to inquire where the remaining member of your group has gone. Where's Nodoka-san?"

"A good and interesting question," said Yue, nodding soberly.

At the moment, Nodoka was standing outside a certain set of torii gates, questioning some of her recent life choices. Not the biggest ones, she felt neither regret nor apprehension about any of that, but the ones that had led her to this precise location.

Initially, she'd been fine with the way that things were going. She'd certainly hoped for the chance to spend some private time with her husband, as she thought of Negi-sensei, but that could come later, after the completion of the serious and critical mission he'd explained to her and the rest of her group. Perhaps tomorrow, when they visited the deer enclosure, they could walk together, apart from all the other girls, and find a nice quiet, secluded place, and, as the beauty of nature paralleled the beauty of their mutual love, they could draw each other close and then do it like they did it on the Discovery Channel.

Nodoka realized that she'd been thinking about exactly how that would work for a while now, and she wasn't sure how long a while was. She shook her head to clear it.

But then, as she was following along behind Yue-chan, and Haruna, and Setsuna, and other people, in order of familiarity, she had found that she was walking beside Zazie, with whom she had even less familiarity that she did with Setsuna, and who was in a completely different group. Before she could ask the obvious question, the other girl had spoken her first words to her.

And so here she was, for Zazie had told her that she should follow Negi and Yuna. And even though she'd thought it rather strange even at the time that no one else had seemed to hear Zazie talking to her - Yue had been within reach of Nodoka's arms if she'd been minded to reach out and hug her best sexfriend, and so probably should have been aware that someone was talking to her - she'd felt so moved by what she'd been told that she'd done just that.

And now she was here and not sure why she was here.

The smart thing, and Nodoka flattered herself that she was a little bit smart, if not all that remarkable in a class with Hakase and Iincho, would be to turn around and head back to the lodge, and wait to see the outcome of all this. But Nodoka was aware that the smart thing was also not having a child at her age, whose father was even younger. Then, once certain things had been explained to her, the heart - and, being honest, the vulva - had wanted what it wanted. And now ...

She took a deep breath. Now was not really any different than then.

Letting all the uncertainties dissolve in the one thing she knew above all others to be true - that she loved Negi Springfield - she walked through the gate, the Diarium Ejus held tightly against her breasts.

"Oh, come on," Kotaro groaned. The two sex freaks had, after finishing what they were doing and then taking a brief rest while they murmured together, started up again. Why the hell weren't they at least trying to figure out a way to break out of the trapped field, so that he'd have an excuse to go beat them up before they could do that? The kid was supposed to be the son of some hotshot fighter from back in the day, and Kotaro had been understandably a bit curious to see whether the son had picked up anything from the father.

By this point, though, he'd reached the conclusion that the only thing this Springfield jerk had ever picked up was chicks. Wearily certain that he wasn't going to get a good scrap going today, Kotaro was just waiting for Chigusa to send him the news that she'd gotten Tsukuyomi and the princess, so that he should head for their rendezvous point. Hopefully, they'd be pursued and he'd get to fight off the pursuers. The world couldn't possibly hate him bad enough to deny him -

Urah? he thought, as he noticed some motion further down the pathway from the service area. The lookout point that Chigusa had selected for him had the benefit of a fairly wide view of the trapped field. Happy to look away from the coupling couple, he soon spotted a girl who was slowly walking in that general direction.

"Ooookay, yeah, I don't think so," Kotaro muttered to himself. Chigusa might have told him not to do anything, but he'd never had any intention of heeding those instructions if there was a fight in the offing. But even though there was no fight, he wasn't about to let some poor, innocent girl go wandering into the middle of ... that. "Stay," he told the big crab shikigami, and it obediently stayed right where it was as he headed down to intercept the girl.

She let out a gasp as he ran up out of the bamboo forest beside the pathway, jumping the fence without breaking stride. "Hi there!" Kotaro said, striving to sound cheerful but not particularly friendly. "Excuse me, neechan, but didja maybe not see the 'no entry' sign back there?"

"Ahhhh," she replied. "N-no, no, I can't say that I did."

"Ah, well, this whole area's closed down for the day," he told her. "You should probably come back later to ... do whatever it is you were planning to do," he concluded, since he had no idea what this girl's purpose might be. She wasn't a local, he could tell that much from her accent, but people from all over the place visited the Association. (This was part of the problem, in Chigusa's view, not that Kotaro really gave a hoot.)

"Oh," she said, sounding and looking very disappointed. "Well, then, I guess I'll do that. Um. I'm Miyazaki Nodoka, by the way. Who might you be?"

Well, if she was volunteering her name, he might as well give her his back. "Kotaro, Inugami Kotaro. Nice to meet you, neechan. Now, you just hurry along back to the gate." Once she was on her way he'd go and shut down the spell for long enough that she could get out. The two who were busily boinking each other would never even notice.

"Kotaro-kun," the girl said, nodding. "I see. Hm. Are you working as a, a janitor, here?" Nodding ... aaaand not walking away.

"I guess you could call me a sweeper, yeah," Kotaro said, resigning himself to conversation. Hopefully, the joke would go right over this chick's head.

"But you're so young!" she said, stepping towards him. "That must be so difficult, looking after this big place all by yourself."

Normally, Kotaro would probably have stepped back to keep the distance between them at the same, safe amount. But his well-developed sense of hostile intent wasn't giving him any signals, and it was a girl, after all! "Well, it's not so tough. I mean, the bad guys know me and they leave me alone. It's not like it was in the old days."

"So brave!" Nodoka enthused, coming even closer. "I think ... yes, I think you deserve a special reward for being so nice and so very, very brave." And before he had even the slightest notion of what she was doing, she'd bent down to press her lips to his own.

URRRRRRRAHHHHHH? he thought as he received a very deep first kiss. Maybe, if he hadn't spent a while watching people engaged in violent sexual congress, he would have been a bit more resistant to this. But right then, as someone pressed up against him for the first time without the other person being engaged in an attempt to hurt him, Kotaro found himself surrendering to the incredibly unfamiliar sensations he was feeling.

Right up until he felt the incredibly unfamiliar sensation of shoving their hand down his pants. "Gak!" he said, pulling back from the kiss. "Ne-neechan, what're you doin'?!"

"Ssssh, it's all right, it's all right," she said, smiling gently. "Doesn't it feel good? It feels good, so it must be good, that just makes sense, doesn't it, Kotaro-kun?"

As Kotaro's sole definition for 'makes sense' was 'allows me to brawl', he wasn't exactly equipped to give an affirmation to that, but it seemed a rather compelling argument for some reason. So he made vaguely squawking noises as Nodoka's other hand pulled his pants down while the hand that was stroking his, well, thing continued to do so. He was a bit startled to realize that their motions thus far had pushed him back so that he was resting against the fence lining the path, and that he was now pushed back into it.

"Such a nice thing," she said, kissing him once more, before she abruptly dropped down to take it in her mouth.

"Hnnn!" Kotaro said, and "Herrggh!" This, this was just what that chick with the Springfield jerk had done, but now it was happening to him! Nothing in his short life had prepared him for any of this.

"Are you a virgin, Kotaro-kun?" Nodoka asked, pausing in her actions of bobbing her head back and forth and licking him like he was some sort of lolipop, looking up at him curiously.

"Hominahominahominahomina," he answered cleverly.

"I thought so," she said with a nod and a gentle smile. "I'm glad, Kotaro-kun. I'm glad that no one has ever hurt you like that, and that you can give me a very nice gift. Lie down, please."

"Uh uh uh uh uh," he mused as he found himself dropping into a seated position, barely even noticing the sensation of the pavement against his ass.

"Good boy," Nodoka complimented him as she stood up from her crouch, reached under her short skirt, and slid the pink panties she was wearing down and off her legs.

"Wait, is this -" Kotaro said in a moment of clarity.

"Shush, now," she replied as, without further ado, she sat down on his waist and he experienced the feeling of sliding up into a warm, wet place. "Congratulations on losing your virginity, Kotaro-kun!"

"Ahhhh!" he gasped, and -

"... well, that was surprisingly quick," he heard Nodoka saying.

"Um, um, did I, did I just -" he asked, staring up at her neck, about the level of his eyes.

"Yep."

"... ah ... can we keep going?" he asked, hopefully.

"I'm afraid not, Kotaro-kun," she replied.

"Wh-"

"C-click," said another voice nearby.

"... aw, mannnnn," Kotaro groaned, closing his eyes. When he opened them, he could see Springfield and his tramp looking down at him, with the girl pointing a gun at his head. Nodoka had gotten up, and was standing beside yet another, rather tall girl who was regarding him through eyes mostly closed. Beside her was a red-haired girl with bells in her hair who looked utterly mortified, and -

"What the hell?" he gasped.

"I know that it's a good and interesting question, Yue-san," Ayaka said, starting to sound just a tad bit irritated. "That's why I asked it. Why are you avoiding answering it?"

Yue continued to nod. "Also a -"

"Oh, god, here we go," declared Haruna, who was keeping her eyes on the situation before her rather than the developing confrontation to the rear.

Her declaration drew the attention of Natsumi, who also watched as the large, enclosed coach clattered down the street and rolled to a halt not far from where Konoka and Setsuna were walking. "Well, that's not very period," she muttered, more or less to herself. "They were using open coaches in the - the -" She broke off as the coach door opened - and a huge figure with bright red skin, horns sprouting from its head,and wings from its shoulderblades, stepped out, followed by an annoyed looking woman in a long black dress and glasses.

"Wow, what awesome makeup work!" enthused a passerby.

"Your civilization is sick!" Chigusa (for it was she) snapped without looking in the passerby's direction. Instead, she watched approvingly as the red-skinned demonic figure pulled a bow and arrow out of ... somewhere ... and aimed the latter in the direction of Setsuna, who'd stepped up to stand protectively in front of Konoka. "If either of them moves, let fly," she said, to the creature's nod.

That done, she turned to glare at the two. "All right, no more games," Chigusa snapped. "I've had just about all I can stand from you people, so I'm gonna make this real nice and simple. Give me the girl, or die, and watch me take her all the same."

"That assumes that you can kill me, and you haven't had much success with that so far," Setsuna replied.

"I hain't been tryin' all that hard, sweet cheeks!"

"'Sweet cheeks?'" asked another person who'd stopped to watch the exciting scene playing out. "Isn't that kind of modern slang for a period drama scene?"

"Oh for the lovva -" Chigusa started to snap.

But as she wound herself up, Konoka silently rested a hand on Setsuna's shoulder. The blademistress glanced back at her, then drew in a deep breath. "How do I know that I'm not sending her to her death if I give her to you? You threatened that before," Setsuna reminded the older woman.

"Yes, I did, and I really do think that is much better than any of the alternatives," Chigusa agreed, apparently recovering a bit from her descent into fury. "But I swear on the soul of Kyoto that I will not do her any harm if you hand her over to me."

The words hung in the air for a moment.

"Very well, then," said Setsuna, and lowered her sword. Konoka stepped from behind Setsuna, to start walking over to where Chigusa stood.

And Rubicante, the demon, who was not terribly troubled by the burdens of intellect, interpreted that as 'if either of them move', and released the arrow it was holding in Konoka's direction.

Chigusa was starting to shriek in horror as, from one of the sidestreets, a woman with gray-brown hair darted out and cut the arrow out of the air with a single slice of the naginata she was holding. Any relief that Chigusa might have felt at this narrow escape turned to ashes in her mouth as the woman turned hellish red eyes in her direction.

"You," Fujino Shizuru seethed, as something that slumbered lightly at the best of times came fully awake.

"Shizuru, no!" Konoka cried out - in a voice completely unlike that of Konoe Konoka.

"Wha-" Chigusa said, and that was all she had time for as the naginata-wielding maniac before her launched forward to slice through Rubicante before the demon could even hope to draw another arrow. It vanished in a puff of sulfurous smoke, ignored by Shizuru, who was promptly swinging the weapon's blade at Chigusa's neck.

It stopped just as it touched her.

"You tried to kill my Natsuki," Shizuru bit out.

"The hell is Natsuki?" Chigusa shrieked.

"I'm all right, Shizuru!" 'Konoka' said, an illusory disguise from Haruna's pen coming apart to reveal Natsuki beneath it. She and Setsuna ran forward to join Shizuru, with Natsuk grabbing hold of her partner's arm. "I'm all right, see, everything is just fine, and we need her alive! Alive, Shizuru!"

"I believe the term is 'the jig is up'," Setsuna said with a rather cruel smile on her face as she looked into Chigusa's stunned face.

"That's - that's actually -" Chigusa stammered, then shook her head as Shizuru, very reluctantly, drew back her naginata. "What is this? Where is the real Konoka-sama?"

"By now?" Setsuna replied, still smiling. "Almost certainly safely within the walls of the Kansai Magic Association, where you and yours won't be able to do anything to her!"

Chigusa stared. "Oh god, what have you idiots done?" she asked. "You've - you've - you've handed her off to the very people I was trying to save her from!"

"Asuna, you're not mad that my house is so big, are you?" Konoka asked with great trepidation as they were escorted in to the main hall.

"Konoka, Negi's family lives in an actual castle," Asuna told her roommate. "I'm totally cool with all of this." Admittedly, her journeys to that place had never involved this sort of rigamarole. The two of them had been carried inside Kaede's cloak - which had a very nice house inside of it, so it wasn't uncomfortable, really, just way out of the ordinary - and Kaede had made herself invisible as she went into the pathway with Negi and Yuna, waiting to act as a card up the sleeve in case anything had happened.

Things had, in fact, happened, but now they were in the Association Headquartrs, and surrounded by smiling young ladies in miko outfits who were taking them into a huge hall (and taking that Kotaro kid off somewhere else) where they were asked to sit down and wait a few moments for the Elder to arrive. So, naturally, that's just what they did.

They hadn't been waiting very long when an incredibly good looking gentleman came down the stairs, wearing a priestly raiment, a pair of glasses and a gentle smile. "My apologies for the wait," he intoned.

That was all he got out before Konoka faintly bounced up from her kneeling position to grab him around the chest with a cheerful cry of "Daaaaadddddyyyyy!"

Ah well, thought Asuna, bidding a fond adieu to any thoughts of fooling around with this incredibly good looking gentleman Konoka's father who was all right she guessed, since that would make her relationship with Konoka really weird, especially if she ended up marrying him. Oooh, yum yum thought, but no, that could never be.

"I offer respectful greetings to the Elder of the West," Negi started to say.

"And I accept them, but there is no need for such formalities," Konoka's father assured him. "After all, you are Negi and Asuna Springfield, children of some of my oldest and dearest friends. And with you are Nagase Kaede, a chunin of the Koga ninja who has already achieved some distinction, and Miyazaki Nodoka, whom I know from Konoka's letters to be one of her dearest friends. All of you are people who would always be welcome in my home."

And then he sighed. "Which is why it is so unfortunate that you are now our prisoners."

"Eh?" Negi and Asuna chorused.

All around them, the cheerful smiling mikos had stopped smiling and being cheerful, and weapons of various types had come out and were being held in ready positions. Kaede rose up part way, then froze as she surveyed the scene. What she thought of their circumstances didn't show on her face, but she slowly returned to her seiza position, an action which clearly indicated that a fight was not now a good idea. For her part, Nodoka looked like she was about to faint.

"Daddy?" Konoka said, staring up at her father. "What's going on here?"

"I'm afraid that there are some things we've been hiding from you, dear," he told her while keeping his eyes firmly locked on Negi and Asuna.

"Mm-hm, yes, I thought I knew most of that already," Konoka said, starting to try to pull away - emphasis on try, for her father was holding her tightly at his side.

"Of course you do," the Elder said flatly, looking at Negi. "Just like your father ... rules are for other people. Granted, it was a politely voiced suggestion rather than a rule, but nonetheless -"

"There is no time for this, Eishun-san," said a voice from further up the stairs that the Elder had just descended. "If our goal is to be achieved, we need to get moving." The source of the voice drew closer as the words were spoken, finally appearing when they concluded - a young man about Kaede's height, with white hair and a distinctive pallor, wearing a grey suit.

"You?!" Asuna gasped.

"Hello, Asuna. I wish our meeting was under better circumstances," the young man replied.

"Well, that was never gonna happen," she said, a bit dazedly.

He ignored this. "And this is your brother. It's a pleasure to finally meet you, Negi Springfield. Please allow me to introduce myself: my name is Fate Fidius Averruncus ... and I am Asuna's fiance."

Next: Kaguya