Choice

In general, I consider Mai-Otome the anime to be inferior to Mai-HiME the anime. The amount of easily forgiven characters and general plot wankery is rather jarring, as opposed to the original which managed to keep things together more or less until the final episode. (Well, there was the incident with psycho lesbian Shizuru, but nobody likes to talk about that, do they.)

In that regard, I consider Mai-Otome Zwei to be even worse, largely because… look, it's utterly nonsensical, and largely ignores the plot in favour of fanservice. And not in the Mai-Otome manga nonsensical, where all the nonsense is played so endearingly straight that it warps right back around to awesome.

Aaaanyway, fans of the series might note that a certain pair of characters from Mai-HiME never actually showed up. Yeah, I don't like that.

So! The storyline will start of after the Mai-Otome anime proper ends, and while it will indeed take some elements from Mai-Otome Zwei (well, mainly just the one element of Mai running a noodle stand), I consider the events of that four-episode OVA to have never. Happened. In fact, I'm going to be frank here and say that there's relatively little Otome-ish stuff going on here.

Yeesh, four paragraphs and I've haven't even gotten to the basic plot of the story. Okay, folks. You know Otome lose their powers once they have sex, or basically let semen prostrate specific antigen touch them and screw over their nanomachines. Owing to the nature of Otomes as living WMDs and servants of the various ruling powers, this is problematic. One particular Otome, however, is largely free of this issue, the person she is currently bound to not really giving much of a damn whether she actually has superpowers or not.

I think you can figure out where it goes from there.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Prologue: Encounter

It had started out as an ordinary day.

Waking up early to tend to the noodle shop, she'd proceeded with the usual routine of gathering the necessary materials, getting them up, waiting for the daily shipment of stuff that couldn't be preserved…

It wasn't half bad a way of earning money, and as long as she ensured that Mikoto remained well fed too, there was no complaints from anyone involved. And hey, it provided her with something to do.

It then continued on as an ordinary day.

She wasn't a genius at cooking, no matter what Mikoto said, she'd simply had a lot of practice at doing that. More, after the past few years, really.

The lunchtime crowds were beginning to grow, the queues were getting longer, and not for the first time Mai considered Materializing her Robe in order to facilitate faster cooking. As always, she ultimately decided against, reasoning firstly that it would attract attention she didn't really want or need, and secondly, said attention would involve a certain moniker that she utterly, utterly detested.

Oh, well.

"Two bowls of ramen, please, extra chilli sauce for both of them. And two cans of orange soda, as well."

She glanced up at her latest customer. Short, messy, dirty blonde hair is the first thing she noted notice. She quickly noted his face – it's something one picked up on the job quickly, because if someone came up complaining about something it behoved the store seller to remember if she had ever seen the person before and what, if anything, they had ordered.

He struck her as a little plain, at least until she reached over to pluck the money from his hands – there was a scar running up the back of his palm, into his shirtsleeves. She couldn't help the slight widening of her eyes, but she quickly covered it over with a nod.

"Sure, coming right up. Hang on a moment…"

After she'd finished with the preparations for the food, she grabbed a couple of the cans from the freezer – odd, she'd have remembered leaving the door open, wouldn't she? – and passed it along to him.

"Anything else."

"Nope. Thanks." With a nod of thanks, he left to rejoin his friend, who was sitting on a nearby bench.

And so it was that Mai, preoccupied with her next customer, failed to notice anything was odd until the soda from the can exploded in his face with the force one would hold comparable to an average jet.

In retrospect, she really should have been more careful about letting Mikoto poke around the place. She could just imagine the Cat Goddess taking the cans and trying to see what shaking one of them really hard would do…

As she offered a towel to the man and sheepishly offered him a refund (for the drinks anyway. Business was business, after all), he, to his credit, managed a smile and a 'don't worry about it".

Shortly after, he'd finished his meal, and left along with his friend, and Mai had thought no more about the matter. Aside from the one hiccup, it was just one of literally hundreds of such encounters, and nothing about it seemed particularly special.

Or, well, so it seemed at the time, anyway.

Prologue End

I admit that my memory of Mai-Otome canon isn't the best, and so I might fudge up some of the stuff. If that happens, well, you can let it slide or you can correct me. Your choice!

Well, this is going to be a multichapter fic, as you should be able to tell, so here's to hoping I get the next update out soon.

Thanks for reading.