Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/5440364.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      F/F, F/M
  Fandom:
      Mahou_Sensei_Negima!, Mai-HiME
  Additional Tags:
      Not_Canon_Compliant, Parent/Child_Incest
  Series:
      Part 2 of The_Darkenned_World
  Stats:
      Published: 2015-12-24 Chapters: 24/24 Words: 25311
****** A Decadent Habits Christmas ******
by Darkenning
Summary
     Twenty-four stories about the girls of 3A, their teacher and others,
     all set on December 24, a few months after the events of "Decadent
     Habits".
Notes
     Standard issue disclaimer: Akamatsu Ken created and owns Negima. I am
     not him. This is a parody, protected speech. Thanks to my cowriters
     and the reviewers.
***** Kitty *****
It was cold when Negi woke up, though he only felt it on his cheeks. The rest
of his body was firmly enmeshed in warm blankets, not to mention the arms of an
equally warm, soft female form pressed up against his back. He let out a mildly
irritated sigh at the realization that she'd done it again. The worst part of
it, of course, was that he certainly couldn't criticize her for doing this sort
of thing.
Was this what being a parent was like? Well, then, maybe it was good that he
was getting in some practice at that by acting in loco parentis for Mas—
For Kitty.
He was still getting used to that, and to much else, as well.
With that thought, he set himself to the task of disentangling the rest of the
way from her arms, hopefully without waking her. Unfortunately, that proved to
be beyond him, and her green eyes flickered open as he was doing so. Her first
conscious sound of the day was a grunt, as those eyes swiveled over to regard
the window. She considered the view for a moment before returning her gaze to
him. "The sun," she said at last, "is nae risen."
"No, it isn't," Negi agreed as he completed his self-extraction, then unwrapped
himself from the blankets. "You should probably try to go back to sleep."
Kitty ignored the suggestion. "Wherefore must ye be out and about, on such a
winter's morn as this?"
He sighed as he got free and started to crawl over to the bunkbed's ladder.
"You know why. I have to keep up my training."
"Wherefore?" she repeated insistently.
"Because," he answered. Then, to forestall the inevitable comeback, he
continued. "If I skip a day, I set myself a bad precedent that will be all too
easy to follow. Eventually, I'll find myself looking for reasons to avoid
training, even on days that aren't cold and unpleasant. And as a result, I
won't be in the best shape possible when a real battle comes. And that would be
very bad."
She stared at him as he started climbing down the ladder. Just as he started to
entertain thoughts that he might have persuaded her to his views, she spoke up
again. "I dinnae like to think of ye in battle."
That was unexpected. Always before, her periodic complaints about his early
morning departures had focused on how she didn't like being alone, or even that
it was colder in the room without his presence. This was the first time she'd
expressed an anxiety on behalf of someone else. He thought that it was probably
a good idea to encourage that sort of thing.
"I don't like fighting either," Negi said. And cursed himself for a liar,
because there was a part of him, not too well-buried, that exulted in it. "But
sometimes, there is no other choice. You either fight or see someone else
fighting on your behalf. And for me, at least, the latter is worse. Maybe it's
the same with you. Maybe you should join me in training."
Now her stare turned clearly aghast. "Are ye daft? I am a delicate blossom!"
And with that, she rolled up in blanket and turned away from him in what he
could clearly recognize as a pout.
"Right," he said, and descended to the floor.
The suite of rooms in which he and Kitty now resided had, up until a few months
ago, been Takamichi's residence. By the time they moved in, a week or so after
everything, there had been nothing left behind to mark it as his. Negi still
felt a bit guilty over his friend's dismissal, though he had enough guilt over
his other actions and inactions that he didn't feel much need to dwell on his
relatively minor role in Takamichi's disgrace. Besides, he suspected that he'd
come perilously close to losing his own job in all of that.
The problem being, he thought gloomily as he dressed, that I almost wish I had.
If it had just been him ... but, of course, it wasn't. He had responsibilities.
His students — his crazy, wonderful students — would have followed him if he'd
left, and he cared too much for their welfare to let that happen.
A quick glance outside confirmed that, though the sky was overcast, there was
no snow in the air. He nonethless bundled up tightly, complete with the scarf
Haruna had given him for his birthday with the words, "Wit beyond measure is
life's greatest treasure."
"All right, I'm off, " he announced. "I'll be back later this afternoon. I'd
appreciate it if you studied the Japanese lesson we went over last night. And
you could use a bath."
"Dinnae like baths, " came a sour-sounding reply.
Negi sighed, not appreciating the irony at all. "In any event, if there's any
trouble, please call me on my cell. Or call Chachamaru-san if you can't —"
She cut him off with a disgusted grunt.
"I know you're not comfortable with her, " he continued wearily.
"She's strange!" Kitty protested from the bed where she still lay curled up.
"All of these heathen folk are strange, but she's surely strangest of all!"
"She's a good and kind person —" Negi started to say, biting out the words,
then reigned in his temper, reminding himself, again, that it wasn't Kitty's
fault that she didn't know or understand why Chachamaru would walk through fire
for her. "— and very reliable, " he concluded instead.
To this, she made no reply.
"Ittekimasu, " he said.
"Ganbattay koodasigh, " she said back.
He decided to count that as another point of progress, as he went out the door
and locked it up behind him.
===============================================================================
He was mad at me, Kitty thought.
She didn't want that. The world was filled with things she didn't want, but
least of all did she want to drive away the only person who made her feel safe
in it. But everything that came naturally to her seemed to do it.
Daft world, she thought wearily, and closed her eyes to try and find a sleep
that wouldn't bring her dreams of the castle, and the scent of the lilacs in
its garden. All just dreams, she'd been told again and again. And yet, oh, how
the scent of them lingered ...
***** Mana *****
In the handful of times when he'd been able to have a sit-down talk with a
fellow battle-mage, he'd usually sounded out their thoughts on facing opponents
armed with guns. Their opinions had universally been that the only threat such
weapons posed to them would be from sniper fire. Any closer than that, and
there were an embarassment of ways to prevent the gun from firing, or the
bullet from striking.
Negi was not quite so sanguine. Of course, he suspected that his perspective
was different because very few, if any, of his colleagues in the field counted
any true masters of the gun among their close allies, as he did. For the most
part, Mana agreed with their verdict. Her preferred method of dealing with an
enemy mage was the sniper shot from a concealed position — with a magically
incapacitating round if possible, but if not ... then not.
But she also had no illusions that she would always be able to have her choice
of circumstances in every engagement. Relying too much on long-ranged attacks
would be a weakness, and she abhorred weakness in herself. So Mana had set out
to develop a set of tactics for close- to medium-range combat that allowed her
to bring her strengths to bear, and Negi was happy to help her practice them.
He was her teacher, after all, and it was only right to help his students to
develop their skills.
Of course, the sessions involved some heavy handicapping on Negi's side. Not
using Erebus, a power that practically no other caster had ever or would ever
wield, was just the beginning of it. Mana didn't want him to reduce himself to
the level of a 'normal' mage, whatever that was, since she would certainly
never be facing one. But on the other hand, no matter how lethal the shooter,
bullets couldn't be made to move faster than their propellants would permit.
And those velocities were nowhere nearly as fast as he could go in lightning
mode.
So, holding back from his full power, how did things go?
"I think you killed me twice over," Negi declared wearily, looking at the dye
splatters on his coveralls as he lay on the forest floor.
"No," Mana reflected as she leaned back against one of the trees. "That one on
your side, it's bad, but probably fixable if you have a healer nearby, and you
probably would in a real fight. And I had to pull back after I pulled it off,
so I wouldn't be able to follow through or cap the healer. Now, the one to your
center of mass, that's a kill shot. Barring immediate, artifact-level healing,
it'd have you bleeding out pretty quickly."
"So you win, then," he confirmed.
"Only if I survive the rest of the encounter, which is by no means certain,"
she replied with a shrug.
Negi nodded ruefully, imagining the fury that wouold be unleashed on someone
who succeeded in killing him. It would have been much more flattering to his
ego if he didn't find the thought of his friends on a grief-filled roaring
rampage of revenge to be horrifically disturbing. The thought of his own death
didn't bother him nearly as much. Or at least, it wouldn't have, up until
recently.
"Well, up and at 'em, private," the mercenary said as she came over to offer
him a hand up.
He winced at the nickname, bestowed on him after calling her 'Commander' once
too many times. The embarrassment distracted him from realizing her intent
until she'd pulled him up into a tight embrace, with her chin resting against
the top of his head and his face against her left breast.
"It wasn't your fault, you know," Mana told him after a moment of silence.
"I never thought it was," he replied, not lifting his face to meet her gaze.
She let out a short laugh devoid of mirth. "You are a terrible liar. It's an
endearing quality, really, but heaven help us all if you ever have to rely on
verbal deception, querido ... ah, no, no flinching when I murmur sweet
nothings, you'll give this poor girl a complex."
"Wouldn't want that," Negi muttered.
"I'll take snark if I have to, but I'd rather have that foolishly honest face
of yours facing mine."
Obedient as ever, he lifted his head to look up at her.
"It wasn't your fault," Mana repeated.
"I know that."
"But you feel guilty, nonetheless. It's a lot easier than blaming me, isn't
it?"
"Eh?" he asked, startled by the way that the conversation had suddenly turned.
"Why would I blame you?"
"I had a warning, remember? Your mother dropped that bombshell on us right
before she left. So I had plenty of time to change my ways. And I didn't. And
so ... and so I had a miscarriage, and our daughter died without being born.
And if it was anyone's fault, it was mine. Certainly not yours."
"But I could have done something," Negi protested.
"Like what? Force me to spend the next nine months in confinement?" she asked.
Seeing a speculative look on Negi's face, she continued with considerably
greater asperity. "I'd like to see you try it!"
"I suppose that would be a bit much to ask," he muttered.
"Damn straight," she said, as she shifted the embrace so that he was at her
side. Together, they started to walk towards the path out of the forest,
towards the shrine where Negi would change out of the coveralls and into his
suit.
"Do you think about her a lot?" Negi asked softly, breaking the silence.
"I try not to," Mana answered, eventually. "Dwelling on might-have-beens is a
good way to get yourself killed."
There were all too many of those, he mused, but chose to address another part
of her statement. "You try?"
"I ... try."
***** Chachamaru *****
Until she'd moved into Chisame's room, she hadn't had a bed. It was, to an
extent, superfluous. Unlike her biological associates, her tactile senses shut
off during her periods of dormancy. She couldn't experience the comforting
sensations of a soft mattress or a warm blanket except by remaining conscious,
which would defeat the point of the exercise.
And yet, after only four months, Chachamaru couldn't envision going back to the
way that things had been. The joy of moving out of standby mode and
experiencing the sensation of Chisame's arms around her was too wonderful to
ever give up.
It wasn't just the sex, for they did not make love every night; had not done
so, in fact, last night. Actually, they didn't do it anywhere nearly as often
as she had when she lived with the person she didn't live with anymore. But the
other side, the emotional intimacy that she'd craved without ever realizing
that she wasn't getting it, was finally within her grasp.
Evangeline had never wanted Chachamaru to sleep beside her.
But thinking about that produced ... not pain, exactly, but unpleasant
confusion. And she didn't need that confusion while she was making Chisame's
lunch. That was what had sparked this entire thought process, actually. She'd
never made lunches while she lived with her late master, either. She had made
tea, and Chisame had started to prefer Chachamaru's iced tea to the colas she'd
formerly drank.
So some things had changed, and that was good.
But some things had not changed, and that was good.
Did it follow, then, that both change and the absence of change were both good?
Now, that was confusing for someone with a very binary view of existence.
Fortunately, she'd finished packing the sliced hamburger into the box, and the
lunch was made. "Chisame," she announced, directing her words to the curtained
off area of the dorm room where her roommate did her 'work'. "I've finished
your lunch."
A grunt that Chachamaru chose to interpret as appreciative came from behind the
curtain. Again, some things did not change. Evangeline had often made such
noises when she was engrossed with her video games.
"And now I'm going to head over to sensei's room to deliver your invitation to
spend New Years with you and Sora-sama, and also make sure his lunch is
nutricious," she continued, taking off her apron. "I don't think he's been
eating right lat—"
"He'll be training, you know," Chisame interrupted. "He probably won't even be
there."
"He may have come back from his exercises before heading to the school
building," Chachamaru said evenly.
"... why are you trying to kid me? You aren't going to kid me. I'm the queen of
ulterior motives, you know that, right?"
"I don't believe that I have any ulterior motives," the gynoid asserted as she
pulled on her coat. It was hardly necessary, except for her half-hearted
attempts to preserve the illusion of her humanity. Still, that counted for
something these days. "I will probably not be back in time to walk with you to
school," she added.
"Uh-huh. Well, when it doesn't work like you want it to, then —" Sigh. "— then
go ahead and come crying to me. You will anyway, right?" There was a faintly
defeated note in her voice.
The question seemed rhetorical, so Chachamaru didn't answer it.
Some things changed, and some didn't seem to change at all. Or perhaps the
change was so slow that it could only be perceived in hindsight, which
Chachamaru was given to understand was a more accurate mode of perception for
humans. She followed this thought process for quite some time as she walked to
the teachers' residence.
Arriving at Negi's door, she knocked. No response. Logically, there was no need
to become concerned. Given that the building was not a flaming ruin, the
probability that Negi had come under attack was vanishingly small. It was much
more likely that Chisame's earlier supposition about Negi's whereabouts was
correct.
But the triumph of her operating system was its ability to go beyond logic. And
she had been entrusted with a spare key. So it would be wrong, in a sense, not
to use that key to gain access to the room. So she did.
The tiny person whose body had once housed her late master's mind and soul was
seated at the room's kotatsu, eating cereal and watching videotaped Sesame
Street. She turned to look at the door with a bored expression. "Ah," she said.
"'Tis ye."
Well, Chachamaru mused, she is not screaming, so this is going better than
average. "Good morning, Miss McDowell," she said aloud. "Is Mr. Springfield not
here at the moment?"
"Were he, would he nae ha' come to yon door when did ye knock on it?" the
little girl replied in an irritable, 'why-am-I-set-upon-by-fools' tone, so
reminiscent of Evangeline that Chachamaru's coprocessor skipped several cycles.
"I suppose that is so," the gynoid allowed when she could function again.
"Well, then. If he comes back, would you please tell him that Miss Hasegawa has
extended him an invitation to visit with her over the holiday season." She
paused, feigning a breath, and then added, "And I am sure that she and her
mother would be pleased to have you join them as a guest as well."
"Will ye be there?" the girl asked, turning her attention back to
Kukkimonsuta's antics.
"That is the plan."
"Then I think not."
"If my presence is an obstacle, then I will absent myself."
Kitty whipped her head back around, clearly startled. Chachamaru took a moment
to commit the image to permanent memory. "Why would ye do such a thing?"
"Because I am so constituted as to derive most of my own happiness from the
happiness of others," Chachamaru said, knowing full well that this would go
well over the little girl's head.
Sure enough, all that Kitty did was gape.
"Well, then. If you'll excuse me, I must hurry to attend class."
"But I dinnae even like ye," the girl protested quietly, just as Chachamaru
started to close the door.
"No," she agreed. "But I love you."
She left her with that contradiction.
***** Konoka and Setsuna *****
As far as everyone else was concerned, Setsuna had moved into the top bunk that
a certain person had vacated. No one who was at all familiar with the two of
them was likely to believe that. Nor should they, for the top bunk went unused
most of the time. "Most of the time", of course, specifically excluded the
times when they did it there for the sake of variety.
There was an awful lot of variety in their relationship.
Konoka had done some research on the topic. (What, you thought that library
exploration was only about nifty keen adventures? No, it involves a hefty dose
of research, too.) In her research, she had encountered discussion of a
phenomenon known as 'lesbian bed death'. It apparently involved two women in a
relationship who stopped engaging in the physical side of that relationship.
Konoka had trouble wrapping her head around the idea. Why would anyone ever,
for any reason, give up that side of a relationship? Particularly when there
were so many different ways to do it, so many things do try while doing it, so
many places to be doing it ... it was just baffling!
And so Setsuna stoically bore the burden of being in a relationship with a
recovering nymphomaniac who had discovered the joys of monogamy. (Or rather, to
be perfectly honest, she bore it with a pose of stoicism that fooled nobody,
just like nobody believed the whole 'separate bunks' story.)
But it shouldn't be thought that their relationship was all sexual hijinx. (It
was only largely that.) There were also many quiet moments of peaceful
intimacy, which they both cherished a great deal. Moments like this one, where
Setsuna stood behind her beloved ojousama (as she still called her in the
privacy of her heart) and gave her lustrous black hair one hundred strokes with
the brush.
Of course, even that was not without a certain sensual component. Only hours
before, she had received one hundred strokes with that very same brush to a
different part of her anatomy. (She was still sorting out how she felt about
that sort of thing.)
"You're so good at this, darling," Konoka said with a dreamy smile. 'Darling'
had become her name of choice for Setsuna, with 'Setchan' now off-limits by her
own choice.
"If the bodyguard thing doesn't work out, perhaps I can find work as a
stylist," Setsuna replied, making an attempt at humor.
As a reward, Konoka laughed, then replied, "Well, you're already better at it
than —" And then her face froze, and her voice stopped.
After a moment, Setsuna sighed, then crouched down so that she could look right
into the mirror at the reflection of her girlfriend's face. "You can talk about
her, if you want to talk about her, you know. I won't get angry."
"Really?" Konoka asked warily.
"Really," Setsuna confirmed as she stood up again. "It's been five months,
after all. I don't hold grudges that long."
"You blamed yourself for me almost drowning for eight years."
"That was a different thing!" Setsuna protested, blushing and wondering as she
did when that phrase had entered her idiom. "Anyway, while Ì'm still not too
happy about the way that she left us without saying goodbye, it doesn't upset
me anymore. So, if you want to talk about her, go ahead. I'll even start it
myself." A deep breath. "A. A-a-a-asss, aaasssu ... aaasssssuuu ..."
"Asuna," Konoka supplied at last.
"See, I'm not mad!" Setsuna proclaimed, grinning a bit too widely for comfort.
"You said her name, and I did not get angry. You can even talk about all your
happy memories with her, so many more than I got to make, and —" It then became
apparent even to Setsuna that her tone was starting to become fairly angry, so
she choked back her words and resumed brushing in silence.
That silence reigned for a few moments.
"Setsuna," the healer mage said at last. "There's something I have to tell
you."
It's sad when one's personal name becomes nothing more than a signal of doom,
Setsuna mused. "What?" she asked warily.
"It was my fault."
She paused mid-stroke. "What in the world are you talking about?"
"The reason that you're so mad at Asuna. It's my fault."
"... she left because of you?" Setsuna asked, now utterly bewildered. After she
had found out, she'd spoken with Negi, and what he'd told her did not square at
all with what Konoka was saying.
"No," the other girl whined. "That's not it, and don't play dumb. You're not
mad that she left, you're mad that she left without saying goodbye."
Well, that was true, but —
"Only she did," Konoka continued. "She said goodbye to me, Setsuna. And I put
up such a fuss, begging and pleading with her not to go, and, and, well, and we
did it, and ... and then when she finally did leave, she said, 'I can't take
another goodbye like this.' So it was my fault that she didn't say goodbye to
you. I'm sorry."
All that the Shinmei swordswoman could do was embrace her from behind, and
whisper right into her ear. "Ojousama no baka," she said, gently and fondly.
"You're not mad?" Konoka asked.
"Not at you," she answered. "I'm not exactly happy about you keeping this from
me, because I thought we'd both learned our lessons about doing that. But I'm
only mad at her for putting that on you."
Konoka decided not to argue the point. "Our class has been through a lot this
year, hasn't it?"
Setsuna nodded. "A lot of people that I thought would always be there are gone,
now. Chao, Evangeline, Satomi, Ayaka, Chizuru ... Asuna ... but I suppose that
partings are inevitable on the road of life," she added stoically.
"But reunions can happen, too," Konoka reminded, reaching up to take her
lover's hand in her own.
Then the phone rang. Since it was closest to Konoka, she picked it up and
answered. "Hello? Oh! What a coincidence. Setsuna and I were just talking about
you!"
Setsuna's eyes widened.
***** Makie *****
Life was wonderful.
It wasn't perfect, to be sure. If it was perfect, she'd be dating Negi! And her
friends wouldn't be in the weird love polygon that they were in, and they'd
spend a lot more time with her. But not in the sexy way that they spent time
with each other, of course.
Well, maybe that way too.
But now was not the time to be thinking of such things! It was the last day of
school before winter break, and today was going to be Makie's day! Before
everyone went away for two weeks, she was going to kiss Negi!
Okay, so if you wanted to get all technical about it, she'd actually already
done that. But this time was not going to be part of some magical ritual which
she hadn't really understood at the time and probably still didn't but which
wasn't really all that important to her immediate concerns. No indeedy! This
was going to be kissing for the sake of kissing. Which might — who knows? —
lead to other stuff for the sake of other stuff.
And the best part of it was that Negi himself had set the whole thing up in the
first place. He was practically asking for it. A week or so ago, when everyone
had been getting excited about the upcoming winter break, their homeroom
teacher had brought in a sprig of mistletoe and pinned it to the top of the
doorway. Even Makie knew what that meant!
Of course, Negi had used the mistletoe as a way of getting the girls interested
in a lesson about Christmas traditions in the United Kingdom, which included
reading to them from something called 'A Child's Christmas in Wales'. For her
part, Makie was more than willing to pay attention. Since the trip to the
Magical World, she'd discovered a genuine fascination for learning about
different countries that was pulling her social studies grades way up.
But she'd also been paying attention to the rest of the class. She knew
perfectly well that some of the wicked, awful girls in the class — all of whom
were really nice people that she liked a lot — weren't even paying attention to
the lesson. Instead their eyes were darting back and forth between Negi and the
sprig of mistletoe.
Fortunately, the one who would have been the worst offender wasn't there
anymore. Unfortunately, that meant that Misa was expanding to fill the void
that the class representative had left behind. Makie was actually a bit
surprised at how much she missed her fiercest rival. If nothing else, Ayaka
could always be counted on to fight within certain limits of propriety. Misa,
on the other hand, knew no limits. She was an enemy to be feared, not
respected.
Makie paused, reflected on her thoughts, and then shook her head. Why did
shounen battle tropes keep intruding themselves into her narrative? This wasn't
that kind of story!
Anyway, despite everyone's scheming, Negi had managed to avoid getting kissed
for the whole week since then. In fact, Makie thought he seemed a little bit
relieved about that. Maybe even a little bit smug. Either way, it was a
refreshing change from his usual obliviousness. (Was that a word?) But today,
that was all going to change. Today, Makie was on the case.
She finished primping herself in the mirror, making one last check of her
boobs. Yes, there were definite signs of growth! Could it be that those rumors
were true, and that the best way to make them grow was to have them massaged?
And that the tickle fests she got into with the slime-tans counted for those
purposes? It could be so! How lucky she was to have them in her life, even if
it wasn't so.
Speaking of which, Makie decided that now was as good a time as any to let them
in on her plans. "Ameko! Suramui! Purin!" she called out as she pulled on her
coat.
The three slime girls promptly materialized before her, like the cloud ninjas
they aspired to be.
Well, sort of. "Yes, Makie-sama?" asked Ameko, who was holding a brush and
dustpan. Makie was pretty sure that ninjas didn't clean houses.
"Yo, wassup?" inquired Suramui as she floated three feet over the ground with
an open bag of potato chips in her hand. Makie was pretty sure that ninjas
didn't eat potato chips.
For her part, Purin said nothing, but simply smiled. Not exactly warmly, but
with a certain charm. Makie was pretty sure that Purin could be a ninja if she
really wanted to be. She worked hard at being cool.
"Okay!" she said. "As you all aware, winter break is upon us, and I'll be
heading to my parents' house for New Years."
"We'll miss you," said Ameko, while the other two nodded.
Now Makie beamed. "You won't have to miss me! I've gotten the headmaster's
permission to take the three of you off-campus and introduce you to my mom and
dad!"
"Eh?" the slime girls chorused, eyes suddenly wider than their heads.
"But your dad is ghrn hn hmrmhn mhn," commmented Suramui, with the second part
of the sentence muffled by the other two covering her mouth with their hands.
"What was that?" Makie asked, blinking.
"Suramui was just saying that we thought your esteemed parents were wholly
unaware of the existence of magic," Ameko lied sincerely. Purin nodded for
emphasis.
"Oh," Makie said, wondering why they'd need to stop her from saying that. Well,
it probably wasn't important. "Anyway, yes, they are. So you're going to have
to pretend to be human while you're there."
Suramui and Purin exchanged dubious looks. "Oh my," said Ameko uneasily. "I am,
well, not so sure that this is such a very good plan, Makie-sama. Surely, your
esteemed parents will be clever enough to notice our peculiarities, as it
were?"
"Ah! That's the best part! I've thought up a surefire way of explaining those
so that they won't ask too many questions." Makie was smiling broadly now.
"And that would be?"
"We're going to tell them that you're French!"
As she strolled out humming, leaving the slime-tans in stunned awe of her
genius, Makie decided that she'd been right earlier.
Life was wonderful.
***** Haruna *****
There were parts of the job that Negi enjoyed, and there were parts that he
didn't. This meeting, right before homeroom, was definitely one of the latter.
"Is it really okay for us to be talking openly like this?" Haruna asked,
peering around at the other teachers in the staff room while she stood beside
Negi's desk.
"Yes, I cast a conversational disguise spell. People nearby will hear us
talking about some safe topic," Negi answered absently, examining the form
Haruna had handed to him. He looked up after a moment. "Are you sure that this
is what you want to do?"
Haruna just nodded in response.
"I know that things have been a little uncomfortable for you since the end of
summer break, but —"
"Uncomfortable," Haruna interjected, nodding. "That is a good word for it, all
right. Learning that your peripubescent teacher is engaging in incestuous sex
and has also knocked up three of your classmates ... yeah, that's very
uncomfortable, learning that."
Negi blushed. "Haruna-san!"
"And he blushes, too," she muttered. "Goes through all that, and is still able
to blush when someone talks a little dirty around him. Boy, am I ever making
the right call here."
He struggled to bring the blush under control, because, dammit, he wasn't
embarassed or ashamed of what he did, merely conscious that it wasn't the done
thing. And perhaps a little uncomfortable with how much it happened, too.
"Ahem," he said at last. "It is Mahora's policy to allow students to transfer
between home rooms if they feel that a change in educational culture would
serve their needs, but surely your friends in the class will miss you."
"Probably," Haruna agreed, silently marveling at how adept Negi had become at
the traditional Japanese art of emotional blackmail. In under a year, too! "But
even though things have been better between us than they were a few months ago,
we're not, not close anymore. Yue and Nodoka have each other, and so do Konoka
and Setsuna. There's no place for me in any of this. I'm the fifth wheel, and
who needs —"
"Forgive me, Haruna-san," Negi interrupted, very delicately. "But isn't this
the sort of behavior that annoyed and upset you when it was Yue-san expressing
it, a while ago?"
Haruna blinked. Then laughed long and loud, startling the other teachers. (The
sprite handling the phoney conversation quickly improvised a discussion of a
funny variety show over her next words.) "Yeah, I guess it is at that. A+ on
reading my motivation, sensei. You're really good at this. You might want to
ditch the whole magical swordsman gig and become a teacher full-time."
"So then —" Negi started hopefully.
"No, I still want out," Haruna said, shaking her head and smiling broadly. (It
was irritatingly reminiscent of Chao.) "But I'm doing it for entirely selfish
reasons, and I'm not going to try and kid myself about them. I need to find a
new path."
"What do you mean?" he asked, frowning.
"It's something I've been thinking about for a while now. Really, ever since
those girls from another dimension showed up here back in August. You remember
that, right?"
"Of course I do," Negi replied. "That's not the sort of thing someone's likely
to forget." Though admittedly, he hadn't really been too closely involved in
that situation. Which had been a pleasant change, but —
Haruna was still talking. "One of those girls was me. Well, not me, but the
version of me from their world. And you know, despite all our differences,
despite being from different families and histories and everything else, she
was just like me, really. Just like the person that I used to be, back at the
start of it all." She let out a sad laugh. "In fact, they got into that whole
mess by her making the exact same sort of mistake that I made when I was her."
Her eyes went distant. "The first really big mistake I ever made. My 'first'.
You wanna hear that story, sensei?"
"Not particularly."
"Tough, I want to vent. Looking back on it, that was when my life really
started to go off the rails. And it wasn't even your fault, sensei, because it
happened before I ever met you.
"It was one of my brother's friends. Well, his friends. It's complicated, but
most things about my brother are. Anyway, this guy had been having some
problems with his wife, and so naturally he tried to deal with his frustrations
by beating up my brother. That worked out pretty much like you'd expect, and he
ended up recuperating at our house.
"I'd known this guy all my life, you know, and I didn't like seeing him all
depressed like that. So I decided to try and cheer him up by teasing him a
little bit. Basically I did the whole 'you didn't come here to hunt' routine,
and we ended up wrestling a bit on the floor, and then, well, then we weren't
wrestling.
"I mean, on some level, I knew that this was a bad, bad idea. He's twenty years
older than I am! He's married! He's not even interested in me! He's probably
closeted gay for my brother! But I didn't know the expression 'hate sex' yet,
and none of these ideas really registered with me." Her eyes already distant,
went miles away. "It really felt kind of good. And then the door to the room
where we were doing slid open."
"And your parents walked in on you?" Negi guessed.
"Close. It was actually his wife. She was pretty cool about it, once she calmed
down and stopped threatening to feed us both to her pigs. Anyway, the point of
this whole story is that I wasn't in control of the situation, even if I
thought I was, and I grew up too fast. Not as fast as you did, maybe, but too
fast all the same.
"When I met that girl, and found out that she was repeating the same mistakes I
made, I found myself trying to steer her right. But that was silly and stupid,
because I still don't have my own shit together, so how can I steer anyone
else? I need to make a clean break with my past. And so here we are."
"I don't think that you can make that kind of break, Haruna-san. Everyone
carries their past with them, no matter how much they might try to run from
it."
"Very deep. I still want out."
"All right," Negi said at length. "I'll sign this form and turn it in. You'll
be in a new homeroom after the break ends."
"Thank you, sensei," Haruna said. And drew in a deep breath. "And the other
thing?"
"After classes."
***** Chisame *****
And so began the last homeroom before the winter break. Satsuki, who'd received
the post of class representative by unanimous acclamation, read off the
announcements. She also took the time to gently remind those of her classmates
who were on clean-up duty that they shouldn't rush the job just because it was
the start of a vacation.
Negi, who wouldn't have thought of that, nodded approvingly before moving on to
asking about the girls' plans for the break. The majority of them were planning
on traveling to spend time with their families. From the looks on Fuuka and
Fumika's faces, they weren't looking forward to that at all. But they weren't
alone in this, as several of the others were also clearly anxious about the
notion. Not seeing people for nearly a year and then being thrust into close
contact with them couldn't be easy.
Some had other plans, of course. Kaede was heading off into the mountains for
some extended practice in the art of strolling. (Negi wasn't sure why she
bothered with the pretense, but didn't interrupt.) And Mana would be working
hard at the shrine in preparations for its New Years ceremonies, unless some
urgent business called her away. (Again, Negi didn't know who she was trying to
fool.)
When Chisame mentioned that she'd be spending the break with her mother and her
new baby brother, who'd moved to Mahora after Sora-san had gotten a job with
one of the academy's vocational colleges, he forced himself not to react. He'd
gotten very good at that. He'd had to do so. Otherwise, the idea would make him
want to faint dead away, as he had when she'd first told him the news.
"Well, I hope you all have a good time, regardless of your plans," he concluded
at last. "As for me, I'll be stuck here working on lesson plans." And training
and training and training."If any of you need help, you know how to reach me —
ah, there's the bell."
Satsuki bade everyone stand and then bow to their teacher, and he made his
escape. He wouldn't see any of them again until they had English class, later
that afternoon.
So what should he do with himself until then? Officially, he supposed, he
should go back to the staff room and gets some paperwork done, before his next
class started. But he just wasn't in the mood.
Eventually, he found himself standing in the stairwell, looking out the window
at the winer scene before him. It occurred to him that his pose in doing so was
more than a little reminiscent of Takahata's, when he'd seen him on the day
that Negi had arrived here at Mahora. Add a cigarette to his mouth, and he
could be a dead ringer.
Perhaps he should start smoking.
No, no, no, that was a disgusting habit, and he had enough bad habits already.
To say nothing of the difficulty of obtaining cigarettes at his age. Well, he
supposed that he could get around that with age-up pills, but —
His train of thought was interrupted by a cough from behind him. Negi turned to
see Chisame standing on the stairs looking down at him.
She drew in a breath, and began speaking in English. "Sonnet 43, by Elizabeth
Barrett Browning," she said.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach,when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
As she recited, she slowly walked down the stairs, one step per verse. Her
accent wasn't perfect, and she slurred the "l" in "soul". But Negi was only
dimly aware of these facts as she slowly made her way down towards him.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
Her eyes never left his, not even for a moment.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints.
And now they were on the same level, and she was slowly walking in his
direction.
I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
Silence fell in the stairwell.
"I think poetry recital is more on the level of high school English, not middle
school," Negi said at last.
Chisame just nodded.
"And that's really more of a Valentine's Day poem than a Christmas one."
"I didn't think 'Good King Wenceslas' was appropriate, somehow," she said,
eyebrow twitching slightly.
"But A+, nonetheless," he concluded.
"Thank you. Are you coming over for New Years?"
He looked away. "I think I need to be with Kitty —"
"She can come too."
"— and I don't want to risk exposing her to —"
"We can control ourselves," Chisame ground out from between clenched teeth.
"Can we?" Negi asked wearily. "It's taking a lot for me not to hug you right
now."
"Good," she said mercilessly. I want you to want me like I want you. "Please
come over. I think he wants to see you."
"I'll try," he said.
"Okay."
***** Nodoka *****
"Ah! Sensei, better hurry!" Makie called out from where she stood just outside
the classroom's door, watching him approach. "It wouldn't do for sensei to be
late to class!"
Negi obliged her by picking up the pace, arriving at the doorway just as the
bell —
"Sensei," Makie said sweetly. "We're under the mistletoe."
He wasn't sure what possessed him to look up, since he was the one who'd hung
the silly thing. But sure enough, there it was. Ignoring the collective gasp
from the rest of the class (and the murmured "Cunning wench!" in a voice that
sounded like Misa's) he lowered his face and said, "Yes, we are."
As Makie leaned forward, eyes half-closed and lips puckered, he quickly pressed
a kiss on her cheek, as one would to one's maiden aunt. (Which, of course, she
was.) He quickly headed for the lectern while she was still shocked and unable
to detain him further, affecting not to hear the faint moan of frustration that
came from her direction a moment later.
So passed his last class with 3-A before the break, not without incident but
without difficulty. Overall, he thought that the class was doing very well,
despite losing most of its best and brightest, since events had driven some of
his formerly less-inspired students to improve themselves.
The bell rang. The students once again stood and bowed to him as he made his
exit. So far, so good. He'd made it through the whole week without any
increase, at least, in the number of people who were romantically involved with
him, despite the challenge he'd made to the class with the mistletoe. That
wasn't as good as a reduction of the number would have been, of course, but it
was good.
Negi went to the staff meeting, then, and endured the discussion of various
mundane issues with good grace, giving his opinion when solicited but never
volunteering. It took more time than he thought it should, but less time than
it had before he'd learned to avoid volunteering.
With that out of the way, there were really only two tasks remaining to him. So
he headed to the classs to take down the mistletoe before his planned
rendezvous with Haruna. He slid open the door, expecting to see that the
students on the clean-up duty had already finished and departed
He was almost right.
"Sensei," said Nodoka, standing with her back to the windows that displayed the
darkening afternoon sky. "We need to talk."
He swallowed, came the rest of the way into the room, and closed the door
behind him. With a flash of tactical brilliance, he cast a quick sound-proofing
spell on it as he did. "Yes, Nodoka-san?" he asked. "What —"
"I know about you and Chisame," she said.
All right, he thought calmly. Mother warned me that she had ideas in this
direction, so there's no reason to panic. I just have to honestly reassure her
that —
"I know that her little brother is your son with her," Nodoka continued,
starting to inch towards him.
... Mother never warned me there'd be days like this.
"I don't really know how you did that," she added, shaking her head. "Really, I
don't, I don't care. But I want that sort of relationship with you, Negi-
sensei. I'd like to be the only one. But it d-doesn't seem very likely,
especially considering that. Well, then, I at least want to be one of the
ones."
She'd crossed the floor to where he was standing, stock still, and now she was
standing in front of him, smiling sweetly but with a look in her eyes that he'd
never seen there before.
"Nodoka-san," he said, trying to hold onto some shred of control over the
situation. "This is a bad idea."
She nodded. "I'll regret it, later, probably. But some regrets are more bitter
than others. You taught me that. And here we are, under the mistletoe." And she
leaned down to kiss him, soundly, wrapping her arms around him in an embrace
that he couldn't break without breaking her. And he could never do that.
So he really had no choice but to let her gently push him up against the
blackboard, kissing him far more deeply than she ever had in the past, and as
she did so her hands ran down his back from his shoulders to his behind, then
his hips and in front. The sound of his zipper being opened filled the air, and
he felt the cold air of the classroom on his privates.
"It's very pretty, Sensei," Nodoka said, sounding very quiet despite how close
she was to him.
"Nodo-" he said, but before he could finish, she was pulling back and dropping
down before him, and then he felt her mouth on him, tentative caresses of her
tongue quickly turning into forceful, purposeful ones. He let out a gasp as his
hands ran through her beautiful violet hair.
And then he was out of her mouth, again, and another gasp escaped him as the
cold bit at his genitals for a moment too long before she was rising up to kiss
him again, one leg lifted up so that her knee pressed against his hip. He felt
his thing brush up against fabric, and entertained the hope that she'd be
satisfied with frottage for a moment, before he heard the faint rustle of it
being pulled to one side.
"In me, Sensei."
And then he was in her.
"I'm sorry, Sensei," she murmured as she held him there. "You deserve a virgin,
but I'm not. I'm so -"
"Don't, don't apologize, Nodoka-sa- Nodoka. You are, you are beautiful, and
sweet, and -"
"So, so, so happy," she said, and began to rock back and forth.
He didn't do any of the work, just standing there and letting her rut against
him, until it became clear that he was about to achieve climax. "Nodoka, I-I'm
going to -"
"It's okay, it's okay, I want this, it's a safe day."
He wanted to scream that safe days were a myth, but it was too late. He always
thought of his mother at moments like these, when, she would say, his cock
spewed its load of cum into a willing cunt. So indelicate.
His legs went weak right afterwards, and he collapsed to the floor, his head
against her still-clothed stomach. He felt her reach down, feel around in her
genitals. And then she started running the panties down her legs. "Too messy to
put these back on," he heard her say. "You keep them, Sensei. They're my other
gift."
He couldn't even look at her as they dropped down onto his softening hard-on.
All that he could do was think of the ways that he was going to have to doctor
the surveillance footage in his classroom to cover this up ...
===============================================================================
Nodoka slid the classroom door closed behind her, and walked down the hallway.
The unfamiliar feeling of her skirt brushing up against the usually clothed but
presently denuded parts of her body beneath it was strangely pleasant as she
made her way to the washroom.
Yue was waiting there for her, as they'd planned, standing by the sinks. She
took one look at Nodoka and swallowed audibly. "Did you — you did, didn't you?
W-what, what was it —"
Nodoka, fully aware that Yue could easily go on like this for hours, simply
said, "It was like this." And closed the distance between them.
***** Yue *****
Yue sometimes wondered when she'd started to lose control.
When her sometimes confusing relationship with Nodoka had turned physical for
the first time, she'd been in control. She had come to her to say goodbye and
make one last sweet memory with her. And though she'd been surprised by how
much passion Nodoka had shown, Yue had been in control. She'd walked away when
it was over.
In her relationships at Ariadne, she'd still been in control. She'd been aware
that various people were interested in her, that way, and since she hadn't
wanted to start something so soon after ending something that had barely begun,
she hadn't pursued any of that.
And then Nodoka came back into her life, and somewhere along the line, she'd
started to lose control. It wasn't just that Nodoka wanted physical intimacy a
lot more often than Yue did, and had an imaginative side when it came to
lovemaking that she really hadn't expected. But the loss of control didn't just
apply to her interactions with Nodoka. That had been brought home to her when
Collette, right before the girls from Ariadne had gone home, had waited until
they were alone and then promptly jumped her bones.
She supposed that she could have made the beast-girl stop, but she just
couldn't say no to her obvious need.
And now, again, as Nodoka kissed her fiercely, with the scent of Negi-sensei
all over her, she couldn't bring herself to say no, even though parts of this
made her very, very uncomforable, and -
"Lick me," Nodoka said, leaning back against one of the sinks and lifting her
skirt to reveal the mess below.
Yue's jaw dropped. "You, you let him, he -"
"Lick me."
Yue felt herself drop to her knees and pressed her lips and tongue to that
mess, conscious of the fact that she was tasting a boy's stuff for the first
time, under circumstances completely different from any that she'd ever
envisioned. It was completely different from the flavors she'd sampled from
girls before this. And the fact that it was the remnant of her other great
crush wasn't something that she could easily ignore. But she focused on doing
what would please the lover who was with her right then, and Nodoka, already on
the edge, quickly came to orgasm.
"Your turn now," she said breathily as she slumped down to start undressing
Yue.
"Oh, come on!" A familiar voice abruptly called out from one of the bathroom
stalls. Just as abruptly, a pair of slippered feet dropped down into sight
through the aperture at the bottom of the stall door, and then the door swung
open.
"How long d'you two expect me to keep my balance on that thing, anyway?" Haruna
demanded angrily, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the stall's toilet.
Yue yelped as she started to pull her clothes back into place. "What, hey, no,
how long have you been in there?" she stammered out
Haruna suppressed, with difficulty, the urge to steal a certain annoying
person's usual response to that sort of question. "Since before you showed up
and started hanging around," she said instead.
"Did you enjoy listening in our conversation?" Nodoka asked, frowning heavily.
Haruna couldn't help but notice that, unlike Yue, Nodoka hadn't made any real
attempt to cover herself up when she'd realized that someone else was present.
Her shy little friend wasn't so shy anymore. And from the sound of her voice,
she suspectted that 'friend' might not be the right word either.
"No," she answered, rather than dwell on any of that. "It turns out that
voyeurism isn't really one of my kinks, either. I'm sure you're shocked. Now,
if you'll excuse me —"
"Would you rather join in than watch?" Nodoka interjected.
"Eh?" Yue gasped, turning her head rapidly between the two of them, eyes wide
with panic.
Haruna stared at Nodoka's calm face for a long moment, before she sighed and
lifted a hand to rub the bridge of her nose. "If I really thought you were
serious, and not just trying to freak me out or upset me or maybe just show me
who's boss, if I could bring myself to believe that you actually wanted me ...
but the point is, I don't believe that. Any of that. So. Thanks, but no thanks,
and nice job making what I am going to do now just a little bit easier."
And with that, Haruna turned and walked right out the washroom door into the
hallway. Nodoka promptly started pulling her clothes back on and, dragging the
still-not-quite-recovered Yue along with her, took off in pursuit.
It was immediately apparent where Haruna was going, and Yue felt her jaw drop
again when she saw her crazy — well, crazier — friend stepping into their
classroom, where just a little while before — "No," she gasped, as her mouth
once again ran at the same pace as her thoughts. "She wouldn't."
"Of course she would," Nodoka nearly snarled as she ran down the hallway.
"Are you really sure about this, Haruna-san?" they could hear Negi asking.
"Yes, Negi-kun," Haruna's voice replied. "Do it now, please."
Nodoka flung open the door, crying out, "You utter self-serving hypocrite,
Haruna, how dare you try to —" seduce my Negi-sensei, she was about to say,
though she probably would have stumbled on the 'my'. However, the rest of the
sentence was obviated when the fact that neither Haruna nor Negi was in any
state of undress registered on her eyes. Nor did they present the appearance of
those preparing for that sort of thing, aside from Haruna being slightly
crouched down so that Negi could reach up towards her lips with his hand.
A moment of silence ensued.
"You see, Haruna-san?" Negi said earnestly. "Your friends are worried about
you, even if they don't know what's going on, and they've come to try and talk
you out of this —"
"Wow, you're misreading this situation almost completely!" Haruna interrupted.
"Just do it, okay?"
With an expression of deep regret, Negi touched his finger to Haruna's lips,
and then drew it along their length, as though erasing something. A card-shaped
light appeared in front of Haruna's head as he did so.
"Pactio release," Negi said, loudly. The card proceeded to disintegrate into
much tinier squares of light that faded out of sight quickly.
"You and I are no longer partners, Haruna-san," he added.
"Yeah, " she replied, looking down at her hands. After a moment, she spoke up
again. "Well. See you around, sensei." She looked at Yue and Nodoka. "That goes
for you, too." And with that farewell, she left the room before their shocked
eyes.
"What just happened?" Yue heard herself asking. It seemed like she had even
less control than she realized ...
***** Misora and Cocone *****
"No, said Sister Shakti, firmly and decisively.
"Please?" Misora asked, eyes shining.
"No."
"Do it for the kids."
"No."
"Do it for their parents."
"No."
"Do it for me?"
"Definitely no."
"Do it for the Christmas Spirit?"
Sigh. "We do not believe in anthropomorphized personifications of holidays,
Misora."
"Sister Sourire would do it."
Now Shakti's eyebrow was twitching dangerously. "Sister Sourire abandoned her
vows to live openly as a lesbian. While I am utterly unsurprised that you would
regard her as a role model, rest assured that I for one do not."
"Yeah, that's so much worse than breaking them every chance you get," Misora
muttered.
"What was that?" Shakti asked sharply.
"Nothing!" Misora answered angelically, knowing that Shakti probably knew what
she'd said. "Please?"
"You already said please. Misora, when I say no, I do not mean 'maybe', or
'I'll consider it', or 'I need to be persuaded'. I mean 'no'. I mean that I
will not—"
And then Shakti felt a slight tug on her habit's right sleeve. Frowning, she
looked down at her side. Cocone was standing there, looking up with her usually
impassive face somehow expressing immeasurable sorrow and regret, eyes giving
the impression of being right on the edge of dissolving into tears. Her tiny
lips moved just enough to softly say, "Please?"
Shakti let out a sound somewhere between a snarl and a groan. "Fine," she said
at last. "I'll do it. Once." She turned and stomped off towards the stairs
leading up to the church proper.
"Wow!" said Misora, eyes squared. "How did you manage to —"
"Sincerity, " Cocone answered, stone-faced once more. "I really do want to see
it."
"Yeah, that'd do it. Well, let's hurry up before she goes and starts without
us."
They quickly headed upstairs, narrowly avoiding being drawn into greeting
duties at the church's front door with Sister Caren and that quote-unquote
friend of hers who'd shown up to help during the holidays. Misora frowned
slightly as she tried to remember the blue-haired woman's name. Sky or
something, maybe. Ah well, it wasn't important.
Seeing her standing there with Caren, though, reminded her again how much had
changed in the last little while. This time last year, it had been Sister Yui
there; now she was gone, having left when Father Gendou did. Honestly, Misora
didn't miss either of them, or Father Kirei. Father Joseph, who'd been quickly
transferred in to take over the two excommunicates jobs, was a lot nicer than
either of those guys had been.
At least, Misora thought so. Cocone disagreed, claiming he was creepy. But that
was probably just down to how much time he spent obsessing over the girls'
choir. Well, better that than the boys' choir, right? And not even Cocone had
anything bad to say about the recently arrived Sister Yukariko, who worked most
closely with Father Joseph, even now briefing the choir with him.
The two young acolytes arrived in the pews just in time to see Shakti
approaching the elderly American cleric and speaking quietly with him. He
seemed surprised, but nodded acquiesence promptly. (Misora expected that his
thought process probably went something like, 'What, she wants to give me even
more time to fuss over the choir? God bless us every one!'')
Assured now that there would be no last minute backing out, Misora and Cocone
slid into one of the pews beside Sister Misato and her students, Hayakawa Naomi
and Komatsuzuki Rie. They were lucky to find those seats, actually, since the
church was starting to get a little packed, with students and teachers from the
Catholic-run schools showing up for this Christmas Eve service.
Misora could see lots of familiar faces in the crowd, like that Eiko girl from
the dodgeball game all those months ago, and some of her teammates. And the
famous Kitajima Sara was here with her cousin, Kaede, as was grade school
celebutante Houraisen Runa, with her guardian and teacher Suminoe Takako. And
on Takako-sensei's other side, there was a woman in her twenties who looked
like an older version of Runa-san. Could that be ... well! It was certainly a
night for reunions, wasn't it?
Most of these people, Misora knew, were no more Catholic than she was. Some of
them probably considered themselves CTG — Catholic Til Graduation, Misora
thought wryly. But not too wryly, because until lately, she'd have thought of
herself as being the same way, just paying lip service to the faith as part of
her training.
Lately, though —
She was distracted when Shakti finally went up to the mike, said a warm good
evening to everyone, and explained that by popular request (HAH!) she was going
to start the evening off with a bit of light music. With that, she reached
behind her back, pulled a guitar out of thin air and slung it across her
shoulder. One quick tune-up later, she announced, "Feel free to sing along, and
if you don't know the words, just follow along with the tune."
And then, just like on another Christmas Eve, in 1818, Stille Nacht began to
play.
Misora did, in fact, know the words. But all she did was hum along in tune with
Cocone, since she had other things on her mind.
Lately, though, she'd been thinking a lot about the notion of faith in a higher
power. It had been a really dangerous year. She'd come far too close to dying,
too many times, to not appreciate it. But time and time again, she'd gotten out
of those fixes, rarely if ever by her own abilities. She wouldn't say that her
survival was miraculous, exactly, but she did find herself wondering whether
someone was watching out for her.
Well, if so ... then for that, for the warmth of the love I share with Cocone,
for my friendships, for the music, and for Jesus Christ Our Lord ... Father in
Heaven, I thank thee.
And then Shakti finished the last verse, and promptly forgot she'd said she was
only going to do one song as she segued into another one.
Feliz navidad
Feliz navidad
Feliz navidad
Prospero año y felicidad
Such a show-off, that one.
***** Fei *****
It was, she had decided, a terrible thing to peak this early in one's life.
There was a time, and the time was not long ago, when Fei had to really work in
order to defeat the groups of less gifted martial artists who would
occasionally challenge her. Oh, she made it look effortless. She never let even
a trace of apprehension show on her face when they had at her.
But it was simply a fraud. Only in stories does a fighter face many opponents
without concern for her welfare. If nothing else, the distraction that they all
pose can prove fatal so easily. And so the sham confidence served its purpose,
for those who were taken in by this posture were less likely to attack in the
first place, and so not become that possibly deadly distraction.
Not so long ago, these had been her concerns.
Now, though? In battle now, her thoughts moved more swiftly than light itself.
The moment in which a distraction might be truly deadly was no moment at all,
no more than a fraction of a second so small as to be all but invisible to
anyone else. The sham confidence was genuine, now. The uncertainty was gone.
And with it had gone all challenge. What joy could there be in an assured
victory?
Well, she supposed that there was the joy of the artistic elegance to her
movements that still remained, but that was for the observer, really. And it
was problematic to cultivate. She would have to set up cameras to capture
herself fighting, and watch the films to see how to make improvements, until
the beauty of her technique was also perfected ... but no, that way lay madness
and vanity.
She must simply face the facts. She had achieved the summit of her powers, and
now she must live with the consequences of doing so — a life bereft of
challenge.
"Good evening, Ku-roshi," said a voice from behind her as she sat by the frozen
river thinking all of this.
Well, perhaps not wholely bereft, she reminded herself as she turned to smile
at her teacher who was also her student. "Hello, Negi-bouzu," she said. "Would
you join me as I sit and I muse?"
He nodded and sat down beside her. For a moment, they were united in silence,
their breaths making clouds in the cold evening air.
"Why so sad, Negi?"
He blinked, looked as though he were about to deny it, then laughed a bit. "If
it's so obvious, I must really have problems," he allowed. "Well, basically,
Haruna-san has decided that she doesn't want to be one of my partners any more
—"
"Eh? Crazy girl!"
"— and some other things have happened, and, well, it's all making me look back
on all the people who should be here now, but aren't."
"Like Baka Red," Fei guessed.
"Yes," Negi replied, eyes closed. "Very much so." His eyes opened. "I hope I'm
not hurting you by —"
She shook her head, rested a hand on his knee. "Strong people need and deserve
strong people to love," she said. "Negi and Asuna are both very strong." She
lifted it up and shook her first two fingers. "But! You are still not so strong
as to not need a lesson from your roshi-aru! I think of her, too, and I think
of Chao, and I am saddened they are not here. But this is an illusion. For they
are here," she said, touching her left breast. "And they are here." She held up
a clenched fist. "While I live, while I fight, those I love and fought are with
me always, aru yo."
Negi looked thunderstruck. "That's, that's almost poetic, Ku-roshi."
"Eh, I have my moments," she said, rubbing the back of her head, before she
stood up and assumed a stance. "And now we spar. Too long since we last spar,
Negi-bouzu."
"Yes, I suppose it has been," he agreed, standing and assuming one of his own.
"Let us dance, then."
And they did.
For all of three seconds.
Ku Fei found herself wondering whether any bystanders had been kind enough to
get the license plate number of the low-flying jet plane that must have just
hit her. Not too much, though, because she was finding the frozen grass to be
utterly, utterly fascinating!
"Ack," she heard Negi say, sounding anxious. "I'm sorry, Ku-roshi, I should've
maybe built up to that."
"No, no, this is good," she said, still examining the ground. "A very good
thing, aru yo!"
"Eh?"
"You see, Negi, I have been worrying that I have peaked, and peaked too early.
But now, as I fight you, I see that it is not so. I have climbed to a certain
height, and I have done well to do so. But now the sun dispels the clouds
around the summit I have attained, and I see that what I thought was a mountain
was veritably but the merest foothills of the true mountains, which I can see
clearly now the rain is gone. I have not yet begun to scale those mountains,
and yet I can do so. Nay, I must and shall do so. And so I am profoundly
grateful to you, my student, my teacher, and my love."
Unfortunately, she said all that in Mandarin. Well, perhaps, she realized as
she gave it a bit of thought, it was not all that unfortunate.
"Eh?" repeated Negi, who spoke no Mandarin.
"It's all good," Fei quickly summarized.
"Well, all right, then."
"Ah hah!" Konoka said as she strolled up the walkway to where they were. "I
knew you wouldn't be in the last place that I was going to look, Negi-kun!"
"Good evening, Konoka-san," Negi said. "Were you looking for me?"
Konoka nodded. "Yes, I've come to pass on a message. There's a person in our
old room who wants to see you," she told him, smiling sweetly. "Someone you
haven't seen in quite a while."
Negi blinked. And then, with neither a word nor a gesture of farewell, he
dashed off in the direction of the girls' dormitory.
***** Fuuka and Fumika *****
The streets of Mahora were filled with children made practically giddy over the
thought of the impending two week break and time spent with their families. The
air rang with their cheerful chatter.
"Fucking bitches," Fumika muttered darkly in Twin. Rest assured, it was even
less-pleasant sounding that way.
Fuuka flinched as she followed along with her sister as they walked those joy-
filled streets together. This was why she hated the holidays. Being separated
from her beloved (in every sense, and frequently) sister, when they went back
to their respective custodial parents, wasn't something she enjoyed, but it was
just two weeks of boredom and loneliness.
But the terribly bad mood that it always put Fumika in — now, that was hard to
take. It made Fuuka nervous and uncomfortable. She felt as though her role, as
the edgy and mischievous older sister to Fumika's sweet and anxious little
sister, was being usurped.
Maybe talking about it would help. Fuuka opened her mouth.
"I hate them," Fumika said, still in Twin. "I hate them all."
Fuuka closed it again. Nope, that wasn't going to cut it.
Eventually, they arrived at the dormitory and headed upstairs to the room that
they shared with Kaede. They were already packed, so really all they had to do
was change out of their school uniforms and into —
The door opened to reveal a rather handsome, bishonen-type fellow in a swanky
blue kimono, with long blue-black hair, sitting at the kotatsu. He blinked when
he saw them, just as they blinked when they saw him. But he spoke first. "Oh,"
he said. "I'm sorry. I wasn't expecting you two to arrive before mother did."
"Huh?" said Fuuka.
The next thing either of them knew, they were firmly bound, gagged and in a
darkened space that looked quite a bit like the inside of their closet. It
probably said something fairly unfortunate about their lifestyle that this
wasn't really a novel situation. Still, because of that, they were able to
distinguish this particular dark space as their closet rather than any other
dark space where they'd suddenly regained consciousness.
Before either of them could start the process of making faint noises and
rocking back and forth to attract attention, the closet door slid open. Kaede
looked down at them with a relieved expression. "Thank goodness," she murmured.
"He didn't misjudge the dose this time."
Fumika's eyes were remarkably communicative. What does she mean, this time?
"Please accept this one's sincere apologies that this happened to you," Kaede
continued as she loosened the ties enough that they could get the rest of the
way out of them on their own. "That visitation, now, was a complete surprise."
"Who was that guy?" Fuuka asked as soon as she got her mouth free of the gag.
She had a clear view of the kotatsu from the now-open closet, and he — whoever
he'd been — was nowhere in sight. Admittedly, the whole ninja thing meant that
didn't mean very much.
"An old acquaintance," Kaede stated in a tone that didn't invite further
inquiry.
"What kind of acquaintance?" Fumika inquired sourly. "He called you —"
"An old acquaintance," their ninja mentor repeated, casting a speculative look
at the ropes that neither of them missed. Subject dropped.
She proceeeded to make up for the unfortunate situation by helping the two of
them to get ready for their departures, mostly getting their hair right. While
Fumika's putatively "normal" hair sytle was easily achieved by removing all her
hair decs and ties, letting her hair flow unfettered down her back, the French
braid that Fuuka supposedly preferred wasn't anywhere as easy to put together.
Without Kaede's help, they probably would have missed the trains.
"Thanks heaps, Kaede-neechan," Fumika growsed as she stood on the train
station's platform, her valises resting at her side.
"You know that there'd be problems if we were late, so please don't be like
that," Fuuka said entreatngly. It was so disturbing, being the one trying to
keep her sister under control, instead of the other way around. "And it's just
two weeks, remember? It could be a lot worse. What if they made us come back
for Golden Week or summer break, too?"
Fumika didn't say anything. She couldn't tell her that the two weeks of boredom
and loneliness that her sister went through were blissful compared to the two
weeks of slave labor punctuated by physical abuse that she endured. If she did,
Fuuka would do something crazy and stupid and wonderful like volunteer to
switch places. And I will never subject you to that, she vowed silently as the
train pulled in.
"And as soon as we turn eighteen —" Fuuka started to say.
"They are never going to let us go. They are never going to let us be." All
this said without a glance in her sister's direction.
"It's not wrong to hope," Fuuka said sharply. "Don't let's part like this,
Otherme," she added in Twin. "I'm hating it when it happens."
Fumika didn't say anything as she headed over to the train doors. Only when
they closed, right after she stepped through, did she turn back. Raising the
fingers of her right hand to her mouth, she pressed them to the window, and
moved her lips in a single silent phrase.
Fuuka duplicated the gesture. "I'm kissing you, too."
And then the train pulled away.
Just two weeks,Fuuka thought. Please, keep her safe and sane for all that time.
Please.
***** Kaede *****
She opened the door to the room that she shared with the twins, and found it
occupied by a slightly feminine-seeming man in a blue kimono, sitting at the
kotatsu with his chin on his forearms. He looked up as she entered and, with a
slight smile on his face, said, "Good evening, mother."
Surely, Kaede thought, with fatigue and annoyance, surely there must be someone
more deserving of such visitations. Mana, for example. Aloud, all she said was,
"Good even to you as well, Kamiya-kun." And she didn't allow any of her anxiety
or dissatisfaction to show on her face as she sat down on the opposite side of
the table from him.
"I hope that I find you in good health?" he asked.
"Reasonably so," she allowed. "And yourself?"
"I am well enough. I endured some minor difficulties on my way here, but
they're nothing too terrible."
"Ah," Kaede replied, wondering what he meant by that, and whether a simple
inquiry would throw more light on the subject. But the latter speculation
troubled her thoughts only briefly. Such queries about his travels in time had
not availed her in the past, and she had no reason to believe that this time
would be any different.
"So then. What brings you to this particular place and time?" she asked
instead. She'd had somewhat more luck with this line of inquiry.
He blinked languidly. "I can't simply wish to pay my respects to my esteemed
mother?"
"Certainly you can wish that," she agreed. "But one asked what brings you here
and now. There is always a reason behind your actions, Kamiya-kun. One knows
this all too well."
"Well, as it happens, I do have another errand to accomplish in this time, but
it doesn't directly concern you as yet," Kamiya said, with the air of one
making a great concession.
"Not 'as yet'. An ambiguous way of phrasing it, wouldn't you say? How will it
come to concern me, then?" Her eyes opened a bit, focusing on his features,
trying to look past the similarities that leapt out at her. If, as he claimed,
he was her son, then he clearly favored her. Which implied unfortunate things
about the fact that she found his features to be so appealing.
He let out a sigh. "I suppose it shall do no harm to tell you, for you cannot
stop me. It is father. There is a fairly good chance that, over the course of
this New Years Day, he will be introduced to a young woman who might still hold
his interest when the time comes for you two to wed. So I will take steps to
ensure that does not happen."
"You will take steps," Kaede repeated, shaking her head slightly. "Which of
them do you plan to seduce, then?"
"Her, of course," he answered easily, shifting so that he appeared completely
feminine. "Unlike you, I have not appeared to Father since I relieved him of
the burden of his virginity, since he does not need to have certain questions
answered, as you did after I relieved you of yours."
Her lips tightened as she remembered that afternoon, and fought the nostalgia.
Dropping the archaic language, she continued speaking. "This is all very wrong
of you, Kamiya-kun. I cannot approve of any of this, and —" She would have said
more, but the downcast expression on that girlish face stilled her tongue. Did
she imagine that she saw remorse there?
"I am sorry to disappoint you, mother," he said solemnly as his features
shifted to their more masculine appearance. "But I must follow the course I
have chosen. The fate of all reality depends on my actions, not to mention my
own existence. I know that I have caused you unhappiness from time to time, but
—"
"It is not a question of my own happiness, Kamiya-kun, " she interjected
sharply. "It is the harm that you cause to other people. I cannot forget that
you ruined my parents' marriage simply so that I would be sent to live with my
grandparents, and so begin to learn my skills. Was there truly no other way to
arrange that? Was it really necessary to debauch your grandparents, as well?"
"No, there was no other way, " he answered. "My birth is a remarkably low
probability event in the timelines — I do not exist on the majority of parallel
worlds I have surveyed. I will do whatever I must do to arrange the events
which led to my birth. Too much depends on it. It is, literally, everything to
me."
"You sound like Chao, now."
"Not surprising."
"... wait," she said, eyes opening even wider. "You will do whatever is
necessary?"
Kamiya sighed. "Yes, I will. And yes, your guess is correct. From my
perspective, most of my acts that you find most objectionable have not yet
happened."
She narrowed her eyes once more. "But then surely, Kamiya-kun, surely you can
—"
He was already shaking his head. "From the fact that we are having this
conversation at all, and from dozens of other pieces of evidence, I know what
will be. Even if I wished to turn from this path now, I would not be able to do
so. As I said, too much rests on the foundation I will build."
"That can't be right."
"Mother. Ask yourself. Had you not learned that your first love was forbidden,
would your perspective on such matters be what it is? Would you be close to
Fuuka-san and Fumika-san? Without them, and the lessons you learned from
teaching them, your strength will turn in on itself. You will not become a
mentor to your teacher, you would not fight at his side. And so much will come
of that, mother. You have no idea how much."
"And now you act like none of us have any free will," Kaede said, more weary
than she'd been when all this began.
"That is the case, as far as I can tell," he agreed.
"I cannot approve," she repeated.
"And I am sorry. But this will continue." He stood up. "I took the liberty of
sedating and binding your room-mates, and of hiding them in the closet. They
should recover shortly. Please bid them a Happy New Year on my behalf, and
please have one yourself. Goodbye for now, mother."
And then he was gone, in a flurry of sakura leaves that she was going to have
to clean up, probably.
"How did I raise such a show-off?" she murmured, then got up to let the other
children she raised out of the closet.
***** Yuna *****
So here she was, stuck on campus while most of her friends were heading off to
visit with their families. Since her only family was here, she didn't have to
go anywhere. On the other hand, since her only family had kind of a complicated
relationship with her, she was more or less alone.
It wasn't good for her to be alone with her thoughts. She had a tendency to do
crazy things when that happened. It was really a lot better for everyone if she
had friends around her who could at least try to calm her down and talk her out
of them.
Unfortunately, her nearest and dearest friendships had almost all gotten
complicated in the same way as her relationship with her dad. And anyway, Makie
and Ako were both heading home to their families, leaving her alone with Akira.
Talk about complicated ...
Finding out that Akira had been with her shouldn't have messed things up as
much as it did. After all, Yuna wasn't some pathetic loser otaku who was
obsessed over "purity" and "innocence". (Which was all just code meaning "I
want it so mai waifu has no basis for comparison and can't realize what a loser
I am.") So what difference did it make if Akira had been with a version of Yuna
from a parallel world before she'd been with the real, genuine version of
Yuna's own bad self? Who cared?
Yuna cared, unfortunately. Even though she knew it was ridiculous, she found
herself worrying about it. What if the only reason that Akira wanted to be with
Yuna was because of her (supposedly erased) memories of that other Yuna? That
was entirely too close for comfort to the situation with her dad, where she was
a constant reminder of her mom.
And since Akira supposedly didn't remember ever meeting that other Yuna, the
real one couldn't even talk about any of this with her. Aggh, but it sucked! It
was so unequal, the way that she was the only one who had to be rational and
emotional about the whole thing!
So it was that, after the two of them saw Ako and the despondent-looking Makie
(and her creepy little entourage) off at the station, with Ako quietly kissing
them both when she thought no one was looking, Yuna had told Akira that was
going to go walk around a little before heading back to the dorm. And Akira,
despite knowing that nothing good could come of this, had callously agreed and
gone off on her own way alone.
Just as alone as Yuna was now, wandering the evening streets of Mahora and
looking for trouble.
"Hey, baby, you looking for a good time?" asked a masculine voice to her side.
Found some, she thought happily as she turned to face the individual who'd just
addressed her. Then, Good grief, the eighties live again. The guy clearly
hadn't heard that even Don Johnson shaved these days, and the shoulder pads on
his bright red jacket couldn't be comfortable. And he was grinning despite a
clearly missing tooth.
"Did you really just say, 'you looking for a good time'?" Yuna asked curiously.
"Yes, I did, and yes, you heard it," the vision replied.
"You realize that you're soliciting a minor, right?"
"Shit, baby, I'm not gonna report me if you don't. And face it, I'm ir-re-re-
resistable," he said, making like Max Headroom for some reason.
Yuna briefly considered laughing her head off at the absurd figure before her,
and then thought better of it. After all, she'd been trying to get away from
complicated relationships. This sort of thing was exactly what she was hoping
for. And hell, she even had one of the condoms Misa kept pressing on everyone
in the class!
"Okay, why not?" she asked, not really expecting an answer.
"Well, mostly 'cause you'll be strolling on into a meet and greet with this
lowlife's three best friends, who'll help him to rape and rob you, not
necessarily in that order," a girl's voice said from behind her.
Yuna saw the eighties relic's face twist in fury, which at the very least
suggested that whoever had just spoken up was on the right track. She turned to
look at that person and caught a glimpse of shockingly red hair over a startled
looking expression. That made her turn her eyes forward quickly, just in time
to see the guy coming at her.
She sidestepped his charge and drove a knee up into his stomach so that he'd
bend over far enough that his upper back was in position to take one of her
elbow drops. That had him on his knees, and a stomp to the ribs put him the
rest of the way down. She considered saying something pithy and badass, but
nothing she could think of seemed all that applicable. I bet that never happens
to Bruce Willis, she thought disgustedly.
"Damn," said the red-haired girl as she came forward. "Guess all those stories
about you 3A girls ain't just stories. Maybe I didn't need to say anything."
"Eh, four guys at once is a little more than I can handle," Yuna replied. Three
was about her limit. That was how many she'd taken on in the park, that one
time. And she wasn't sure about fighting that many, either. "There's really
four of them?"
"Yeah, but the other three already lit outta here, prolly," the girl noted as
she bent down to determine if the guy was still breathing.
"I didn't catch your name," Yuna said. The girl was clearly another student at
Mahora, and knew of 3A by reputation, but Yuna couldn't place her face.
"Didn't drop it, " the girl answered. Yuuki Nao, Mahora Girls Junior High class
2C. Pleasure's all mine."
***** Nao *****
There was a fair chunk of change in the wallet she'd just lifted off the
unconscious scuzzball, as well as a credit card. (Whoo-hoo! Gotta do some
online shopping real quick before he reports it stolen!) Nao got herself a can
of coffee out of the machine. She looked at Yuna. "So what's your poison?"
"Eh, I don't drink a lot of coffee, so just order anything and I'll be fine,"
the other girl replied dismissively.
Nao proceeded to pick out the cheapest brand on sale and tossed it to her.
"Here's to your health," she said as she started to drink from her own,
considerably more expensive can.
"Yick," Yuna noted after her first taste. "Sensei is right about this stuff."
"It's not without its charm," Nao opined.
"So do those guys really seriously go around and —"
"Eh, they're pretty much wanna-bes. I've seen 'em a couple times trying that
schtick, and the girls are usually too smart to fall for it. No offense," she
added unconvincingly.
"None taken."
"But, yeah, this town has a pretty lame scumbag element. More of 'em been
coming outta the woodwork lately, but, I mean, they're mostly just dumbasses,
you know. Not like the serious slime you get in Tokyo."
"I wouldn't know, having lived here all my life," Yuna said, dubiously. "But
things can't really be that bad there, can they? I mean —"
"Oh, you poor naive soul," Nao said smirking. "Yeah, they can. Here, you get
lured into alleys, beaten up and robbed and maybe they paw at you a little if
they suddenly grow some stones. In Tokyo ..." She trailed off, and when she
spoke again, her voice had the quality of an unhealed wound. "In Tokyo, they
wait until they can get into your house, and then they go in. And they don't
just paw you."
"Shit," said Yuna, wide-eyed.
"Yeah, that's the word for 'em all right. And the worst part? When they get
caught, they get three heats a day and a roof over the head for the rest of
their lousy lives. Yeah, shit is the word of them, all right. All of them."
"All of —"
"Men."
Yuna flinched at the venom in the girl's tone. "Hey, they're not all —"
"No, they are. They are. I can't believe I gotta explain this who used to be in
2A. I mean, didn't the asshole who used to teach you guys get kicked out of
town for screwing around with his students?"
"It was a little more complicated than that," Yuna said, feeling as embarrassed
as only someone who has schtupped two teachers can when the subject comes up.
"Anyway, our new teacher is really nice." And pretty good in bed, her
conscience insisted on reminding her.
"Sure, it's always complicated. They've always got an excuse. And it's always
all bullshit. They all just do what they want because they want to, and any
excuses they make up afterwards are complete garbage." Nao fell silent for a
moment, then spoke up with obvious great reluctance. "I mean, I might give your
new teacher a break, 'cause, hell, he's just a kid. But he's probably gonna
gonna end up just like the rest of 'em, when his balls finally drop."
They already have, Yuna felt compelled to say, but she managed to restrain her
tongue. After a moment of silence, she decided to broach the obvious subject.
"So if you hate guys so much, do you like girls?"
Nao blinked. "Huh?"
"Girls. Women. Female of the species? What do you think about them?"
She seemed bewildered. "Well, I mean, girls are okay. A lot of 'em piss me off
by being so dumb and falling for guys' BS when it's shovelled at them, but I
guess it's not really their fault —"
"No, I don't think you're getting what I'm asking. You hate men, right?
Obviously, you don't want to date one. So ..." She trailed off, raising an
eyebrow.
"Not following you," said Nao, blank faced.
"Holy crap, and you called me a poor naive soul?"
"Wait," she said, as the penny abruptly dropped. "Are you talking about —" She
stopped short and made lewd hand gestures.
"Sex," Yuna supplied, finding this pretty funny. "It's a simple word, you know.
Don't even need any kanji to write it."
"Oh, gross, " Nao exclaimed. "I mean, do people actually do that? Like ...
how?"
Yuna guessed that an offer to demonstrate would not go over too well, and that
the amusement it would cause wouldn't justify it. "It's kind of complicated,"
she hedged.
"Gross," Nao repeated, not really listening. Why would a girl want to do stuff
like that to another girl, who'd hate it and her? Didn't make sense!
Before she could express any of this, however, their conversation was
interrupted by the high, rhythmic wailing of a siren. Seconds later, a fire
truck sped down the street beside them, clearly the source of the sound.
"Ah, geez, lemme guess," Nao said, raising her voice to be heard over the
siren. "Some little bimbo's got her cat stuck in a tree or something?"
Yuna took a quick sniff of the air. "Nope, I can definitely smell smoke. Maybe,
uh, about eight blocks from here?" It was really just a guess.
Nao blinked as she visualized the map of Mahora, almost involuntarily, then
froze on the spot. "That's the university hospital," she said, in a voice
drained of emotion.
And then she was running.
Yuna watched her go, then looked down to see that the can Nao had just dropped
had amazingly not tipped over when it hit the ground. Curious, she picked it up
and took a drink.
"Damn, that's a lot better than the stuff she gave me," she muttered.
***** Kazumi *****
Getting the story was what mattered to her. It wasn't the only thing that
mattered to her, like it had been in the past, but it was still very important.
All the fighting she'd been through had been a distraction compared to her
quest to understand the narrative into which she'd stumbled, really.
So when her (highly illegal) police scanner had picked up the bulletin about a
fire at the university hospital, her course was clear. She darted out of the
room she now shared with Sayo and hopped on the motor-scooter that Hakase had
given her as a thank you gift, right before she left. (It certainly, certainly
hadn't been intended as a bribe to get her to stop poking around into the
reasons she was leaving.)
By the time she got to the hospital, the police, fire department and ambulance
service were already there. A cordon had been set up to keep the looky-loos and
gawkers a safe distance away from the unfolding situation. Asakura was
uncomfortably aware that she fit into that category, so she didn't try to slip
past that barrier.
Time was, she wouldn't have hesitated. Time was, this would have been just an
interesting and exciting sight for her to report about to the paper. But she'd
changed — not a lot, but a little. And so she was at least slightly conscious
of how this interesting and exciting sight was causing a lot of heartbreak and
upset for a lot of people.
From what she understood, the hospital had fire doors that would theoretically
act to contain the fire and its smoke, the real danger, from spreading too far
from its point of origin. That was good, again theoretically, because it meant
that the patients who couldn't be evacuated easily would have the time they
needed to do so.
Always assuming that they weren't actually in the area that was on fire.
Asakura was snapping shots of the doctors and patients coming out as the
firefighters went in. The juxtoposition of the two different types of heroism
would make for a pretty cool picture, she thought, and that was when she heard
the word she'd hoped she wouldn't hear. It was murmured between two of the
paramedics as they helped set up the aid stations in the hospital parking lot.
Arson.
Asakura didn't want to believe it. Not here, not in Mahora. She knew, better
than most, how unpleasant things had been getting recently, but still, things
couldn't be that bad, could they? No. And anyway, it was surely too soon to be
jumping to conclusions like that. They were probably just running off at the —
"Lemme go!"
Her thoughts were abruptly derailed by the sight and, when she turned around,
sight of a girl, maybe a year or so younger than she was, trying to wrestle her
way past a campus cop trying to push her back to the cordon. It was pretty
obvious who was going to win, since he was taller than Asakura who was taller
than the rather petite girl. Fury only took you so far.
Asakura was considering heading over to try and talk some sense into the
clearly panicky young woman, and maybe get her story in the process, when a
whole row of windows on one of the hospital's upper floors exploded outward,
raining glass down on the ground. Fortunately, the people who'd set up the
cordon had been pretty cautious when they did so, and none of it landed on
anyone in the crowd outside of it.
The cop was distracted enough by a bit of it that had smacked into his neck
that the girl, who'd been shielded by his body, was able to slip past him and
run into the hospital's door. She didn't even spare him a glance as she did.
Asakura let out a low whistle as paramedics ran over to help him. The girl had
guts if not a lot of brains. And again, how much she'd been changed by what
she'd been through was obvious, as what occupied her own thoughts was how to
help the kid out.
She pulled away from the crowd, looking for a concealed position. She found one
— not an ideal one but she had to work with what she had — behind a large car,
beside which a purple-haired girl in a wheelchair and her maid were watching
the fire. Ducking down, she called up her artifact and sent her remote flying
into the building, hopefully too fast to be seen by anyone outside.
If it found her before any of the rescue workers did, then Asakura was going to
go tell one of them where to look. That'd mean exposing herself, but hopefully
there'd be a mage involved in all of this somehow who'd help her keep things
quiet. Surely this would count as the mage version of exigent —
Found her!
Oh, this wasn't good. She was heading into the hospital's coma ward, and from
the smoke in the air, that was pretty close to where the fire had broken out.
The evacuation of patients who couldn't even tell that they were in danger was
ongoing. There was so much distraction that no one even noticed the presence of
her remote, much less the pretty sneaky girl she was following with it.
Asakura watched as the girl found her patient, a catatonic woman who looked
like an aged-up version of the girl. Duh, Asakura thought, shaking her head
slightly. Should've figured that was what was going on here. Fortunately, the
woman didn't seem to be on any life support other than an IV that the girl
yanked out of her arm before trying to hoist the body over her shoulders.
But it was too much weight for her to carry. She could only manage a few
tottering steps. "Please! Somebody help me!" she called out.
Just hold on, Asakura silently urged her as she started to stand up. Help is
coming, you just have to —
"Well, all right," said another voice from the image Asakura was watching. A
strange voice, neither male nor female. "But you'll be risking what you value
most, you know."
Wait. What?
"I'll do anything!" the red-haired girl screamed as she tried to hoist her
mother's body on her shoulders.
Hold on. If I can hear that but can't see who's saying it, then they'd have to
be — oh no.
"Let me just take care of something else, first."
And then Asakura's drone exploded, and the feedback sent her tumbling into
oblivion.
===============================================================================
"Fumi," said the girl in the wheelchair. "I believe the young lady hiding
behind our car has just collapsed. Would you kindly go and ask one of the
paramedics to come have a look at her? You might want to mention my name."
"Yes, Mashiro-sama," the maid said, and quickly headed off.
The dance begins anew, thought the girl ... who was not a girl in any of the
senses of that word.
***** Sayo *****
When Sayo came through Asakura's door — having unlocked it with her spare key
and opened it, since she was in her robot body rather than ghosting — she
wasn't all that surprised to see that her friend wasn't there. The radio had
been left on, and reports were still coming in.
Not surprised, no, but a little bit sad. She'd been looking forward to spending
the evening with her, and then the night, as well, after she finished her
training. But Sayo was well aware of her friends' priorities, after all. Since
that determination to get the story was part of the reason that they'd met in
the first place, she had no real problem accepting it. But it was saddening.
She sat down at the kotatsu, indulging in it even though she had no real sense
of heat or cold. Inevitably, her thoughts turned to her friend once again.
Her friend. Considering how intimate their relationship was, she supposed that
it was a bit odd that she didn't use terms more indicative of that intimacy.
But she was the product of a different time, when such things weren't ever
talked about. Of course, she could remember perfectly well (sometimes) that not
being talked about had not stopped them from happening.
But that wasn't important, really. The point was, she wasn't ready to think of
Asakura as her 'lover'. Much less her 'girlfriend'. (How was a girl supposed to
distinguish between girlfriend as girl friend and girlfriend as lover, anyway?)
Asakura was Sayo's friend. Her best friend. Her dearest friend. The person whom
she cherished most in the world, and about whom she worried.
That was enough. For now.
So she waited for Asakura to come back, patiently.
One of the problems of her existence as a ghost was that she couldn't really
rest. (Or to put it another way, that avoiding eternal rest also meant passing
up temporary rest.) While she could overwork herself and become dormant, to use
the expression that Asakura preferred, she would never otherwise sleep.
That was sometimes a bit frustrating. Like now, when there was nothing going on
at her current location, and yet she didn't want to leave. One of the living,
in this siutation, would probably just curl up and wait for sleep to come. But
it would never come to her.
Sometimes she wondered whether the gaps in her memory might not be times when
everything that happened around her was boring. Or maybe unpleasant, rather
than boring. That would fit with why she'd had a hard time remembering how
she'd ... well. That would explain a few things. But there was no way she could
know for sure.
Maybe she should try overworking herself now, and —
Then the door opened, and Asakura trudged in with a bandage on her head. "I'm
getting too old for this shit," she said, in lieu of the traditional 'tadaima'.
"What happened?" Sayo gasped, quickly coming to her feet.
"Oh, I'm fine, I'm fine, 's just a bruise," Asakura said dismissively. "I fell
down and, well, never mind that now. One of the EMTs put this on for me. Of
course, they couldn't do anything about the real damage."
"What real damage?"
Reluctantly, Asakura took out her card and summoned up her artifact. Sayo let
out a moan of disbelief as it materialized, barely managing to remain in the
air and resembling Chachamaru after she had been sliced in half. "Oh," said the
ghost. "Oh, that's not good, is it."
"No, no it isn't," Asakura said, slumping down heavily on the bottom bunk. "And
I don't know how or even if it can be fixed. Gonna have to talk to Negi about
it tomorrow."
"What happened, anyway?"
Asakura shook her head. "I am pretty much in the dark. I sent it into the
hospital, and it found the girl I was trying to follow, but there was someone
else there." Her tone began to get progressively angrier. "Someone I didn't get
a good look at, and somehow, that person did this to one of my guys."
"Who could do this?" Sayo wondered aloud, as she took a closer look at the
damage. Wait, was that a fist impression? And then she took an even closer
look. "Asakura, I think it's repairing itself!"
"Eh?" the reporter said, looking alive again. She brought it over and took a
look for herself. "Huh! Well, that's one less thing to worry about. Still gotta
talk to Negi and let him know that there's a bad moon rising."
"Maybe we should do that now," Sayo volunteered.
"No, " Asakura said firmly, as she brought up a hand to caress Sayo's cheek.
"Tonight belongs to us, remember?"
"But, you're hurt, and —"
"Sayo. Hush."
The ghost in the shell allowed herself to be pulled down to where Asakura was
reclining, and rested her lips on Asakura's own, at first gently and then with
increasing urgency. The intimacy was wonderful, but lacking in real sensation
for her, though her systems readout told her that her body was starting to heat
up in ways that were unusual for normal performance. That was all right; if she
could make Asakura happy by doing this -
"You remember that thing we talked about a while ago?" Asakura murmured as she
started to gently nuzzle her nose against one of Sayo's ears. "I'm ready to try
it."
If Sayo had had a pulse, it would have increased dramatically. Their first
experiment in this direction had been a mixed bag, causing unintentional harm
to a kind person who'd tried to help them out. They'd resolved to only do that
sort of thing in the future if they were the only ones at risk. And there
hadn't been a chance, before now. "But you're hurt," Sayo whispered in
response.
"I am fine. But you'll be seeing it for yourself, right?"
If she'd had breath, she'd have held it, as she released her hold on the
robotic body and the doll hidden within it, letting her spectral self surge
outwards, and then overlaying Asakura's body.
Becoming one with her.
She paused to indulge in some narcissism by kissing her own replica body before
setting it aside to reach down and undo the jeans that she was wearing. Her
panties came down with them, and she began to rub down there, gently caressing
the lightly haired pubic area, resting one finger on her clitoris as her other
hand came up to caress her full breasts. She found herself wishing that they
were a bit bigger and not quite as firm, so that she could possibly bring one
of her nipples up to her mouth, and taste them for herself. From past
experience, she knew how much she enjoyed having them suckled by a gentle
tongue, but the taste had been lost on her.
It only took her a few minutes to bring her to a shrieking orgasm.
"I love you," she said. "Even if I only call you my friend, I love you. And I
think I always will."
Who spoke those words? Which of them?
Did it matter?
***** Satsuki *****
She sighed.
A problem with running an open-air restaurant, like her beloved diner car, was
that most customers stayed away when the weather was bad. (She'd actually been
considering moving the business into a more climate controlled location for a
while now, but it was a big decision.) So even though there were plenty of
people on campus during the break, they would be hiding in their rooms for the
most part.
Ironically, it was that 'most part' that proved troublesome. The Chao Bao Zi
had its regulars who wouldn't be stopped by snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of
night. So they would be coming in regardless, which was unfortunate, because
otherwise she could just close down for the duration. She knew that they'd be
coming, and she couldn't disappoint them like that.
But she didn't know when they'd be coming. So she'd have a much smaller
customer base than usual, and she'd have to buy just as much food as she
usually did, even if she didn't use most of it. It was a good thing that she
wasn't in this for the money, Satsuki mused, because she'd be spending quite a
bit more of it than she was making, for the next little while.
"Charity begins to home," Zazie mused in response, from where she lay on her
stomach on the top bunk.
Well, as it happened, she was planning on donating quite a few hours to the
local branch of the Salvation Army. Hm. Actually, that might be the solution to
her problem. She could kill two birds with one stone.
"Ahem."
Yes, yes, the proverbs were not her department. But she could persuade the
Major to let her work a few more days than they'd agreed, close up the
restaurant, and post a sign indicating what she was doing instead. If they
wanted her cooking, her customers could come down to the soup kitchen and help
out. It would be consciousness-raising and charitable all in one. A nice
bargain!
She turned to look at Zazie, wondering if her girlfriend had any other good
ideas. What should she cook, for example?
"Tacos," Zazie replied easily.
Octopus? Sort of expensive for this sort of thing, but —
"No, not tako. Tacos. Ground beef, vegetables, cheese, in a tortilla wrap." And
with that, she rolled out of the top bunk and dropped to the floor with uncanny
grace, landing en pointe. She began to sing, holding up one hand as though
there were a plate resting on it.
Tacos tacos tacos
Deliciosos tacos
Los mejores tacos
Son 'Amigos Tacos'!
She spun around on the last line, and held out the hand as though offering
Satsuki the 'plate'.
Satsuki stared.
"Tacos are very tasty," Zazie assured her.
Satsuki was speechless.
"And fairly inexpensive to make."
Still somewhat dazed from what had just happened, she suspected that tortilla
wraps weren't quite as easily found in Japanese shopping markets as they were
elsewhere. But she'd see what she could do.
Zazie nodded, clearly pleased, and then vaulted back up to the top bunk.
Every now and then, her girlfriend did things that couldn't help but remind
Satsuki of just how extraordinary she was. How amazing, how incredible, how
remarkable.
And, yes, how disconcerting and surprising.
She'd never felt much curiousity about other people before all this. If they
wanted to talk about themselves, she'd lend a friendly ear if she wasn't too
busy. But actually wanting to know more about someone was very new to her, and
she didn't really know how to handle it.
She supposed that it wasn't much of a surprise that Zazie was well-travelled
and familiar with foreign languages. She and her circus friends would surely
have spent a lot of time in exotic locales, like Mexico and other western lands
that were really only names to her.
And that was without getting into the one part of her girlfriend's background
that sometimes gave her pause. The fact that she wasn't human wasn't
frightening or intimidating, but it was something that she couldn't pretend was
just a little bit out of the ordinary, like her agility.
Did it worry her? She supposed that it did, but she flattered herself that it
wasn't for any reasons like concern for her soul, or her purity, or any of that
silliness. No, her thoughts were of the future.
How long did a mazoku live? Especially one who (as she was given to understand)
was some sort of aristocrat of her kind. She didn't think that they were
actually immortal, since her philosophy didn't permit the existence of anything
like that, but everything suggested that they were at least very long-lived. In
other words, it was a given that Zazie would certainly outlive her.
And Satsuki worried about the pain that her inevitable death would cause her.
But at the same time, that worry was tinged with a bit of wonder. That girl,
who had lived a life so much more vivid than Satsuki's own had been, and who
could choose anyone to love ... chose her.
And it was beautiful.
"Flirt," Zazie said.
She really must stop talking out loud one of these days.
There was a knock at the door. Satsuki rose to get it, wondering who it could
be, and opened it to reveal an exact double of Zazie standing there. "Yotsuba-
san. Good evening, poyo," she said.
Satsuki blinked. How was her girlfriend in two places at once?
***** Zazie *****
Zazie had mixed feelings about her older sister. There was nothing terribly
novel about that; her feelings about most topics generally balanced between two
opposite emotions. For her older sister, she balanced a great deal of respect
with an equal amount of distrust. However, her feelings for her sister were
somewhat unique among her emotions in that she had a considerable amount of
lust for her without any contradictory disgust at all.
Of course, being a mazoku, she had yet to encounter phenomena that invoked
feelings of genuine disgust in her.
In any event, when Satsuki stood up and answered the door, and Zazie heard the
voice almost exactly like her own saying, "Good evening, Yotsuba-san poyo," she
knew that her wish for a peaceful evening were not to be.
Again, she dropped to the floor, and stood beside Satsuki, who was staring at
her double in perplexity. "Good evening, oneesama," she said, using the
Japanese term for Satsuki's benefit. There was an equivalent term in their
native language, but the subtleties would be lost. Just as 'oneesama' implied
certain things beyond mere sisterhood, so too did their word mean more than its
literal translation of 'dearest most wonderful and adored big sister of mine,
wai.'
Satsuki's eyes widened in sudden comprehension. She had never met Zazie's
sister before this. She quickly and politely introduced herself (overlooking
for the moment the fact that Poyo clearly knew who she was) and invited her
into her home.
"I thank you for your courtesy, poyo," Poyo replied with a nod as she walked
in. "Honesty compels me to point out that I've visited these premises in the
past, when Chao-san herein dwelled, poyo." She looked about with dull
disinterest. "Still very homely, I see."
No, Zazie thought. No, you didn't just say that.
Satsuki obliviously thanked Poyo for what she took for a compliment, and, as
they sat down around the room's kotatsu, inquired whether she could provide
some manner of snack or drink.
"Thank you, but I have already dined this evening, poyo. There was a fire at
the university hospital, and I paused there on my way in," she added in Mazoku,
turning to look right at Zazie. "The suffering of the burn victims was
exquisite. Would you care to relive it with me, sweetling?"
"I don't think so," Zazie replied in Japanese. Part of her heart exulted in the
familiarity, while another part — but she must focus on more immediate
concerns. "What brings you to Mahora, oneesama?"
"Business, of no possible interest to young people such as yourselves, poyo,"
she said dismissively. "I will be needing a place to stay while I attend to
these affairs, poyo. Can you recommend a good hotel nearby, poyo?" she asked
Zazie.
Before Zazie could do so, Satsuki interrupted, pointing out that it wouldn't be
right to ask a member of Zazie's family to stay at a hotel, when there was
plenty of space right here in their dorm room.
"How generous, poyo!" Poyo exclaimed.
Zazie felt her jaw clenched. It had always been easy to tell her when her elder
sister was being manipulative, even if it had usually been all but impossible
to resist those manipulations. And now, of course, she would say —
"But I wouldn't want to be a burden, poyo."
Satsuki predictably assured her that there would be no burden involved.
"Well, if you insist, poyo, " Poyo said, with the air of one doing someone else
a great favor. "In truth, I have been yearning to learn more about my younger
sister's new companion, ever since I first heard of you, poyo," she confessed,
clearly checking Satsuki out as she did so.
Satsuki blushed.
Poyo's smile didn't alter at all as she continued to speak. "I don't think much
of your taste in girls, but I suppose all the fat on this one will lend the
meat a unique flavor. You are planning on eating her eventually, right? Can I
have a few bites when you do?"
As the world around her turned red-tinted, Zazie's mind involuntarily went back
to her grandmother's funeral orgy and feast. She'd spent much of the
celebration not partaking, but rather watching her older sister as she was
serviced by three of their cousins while chewing the meat off a rib of the main
dish. Young Zazie had never seen such utter carnality as at that moment, and it
had birthed a terrible yearning in her. Fortunately, the yearning had been
satisfied a few hours later, and many times since. (One of the cousins had
provided the feast for their private celebration after he annoyed one of their
uncles.) Their union was one of her most precious memories.
"I have no sister," she announced.
"What?" said Poyo, as Satsuki also expressed confusion.
"I have no sister," she repeated.
"Zazie!" Poyo snapped.
"What I tell you three times is true," Zazie said evenly. "Apologize. Leave. Or
else. I —"
Poyo promptly turned to Satsuki, and, still speaking in Mazoku, declared, "I
offer my humblest apologies to thee, Yotsuba Satsuki, for the insults I have
spoken to thee."
"I accept," Satsuki replied in the same language.
Poyo's face grew incredibly still. "Well. I am clearly outmatched. Poyo," she
said, in Japanese once again. "Good evening." And she gracefully rose and
walked out the door, which opened for her without being touched, and into the
hallway. There she narrowly avoided being knocked over by Negi-sensei as he
made a headlong dash down the hall. Their last sight of her suggested that she
found this unamusing as she closed their door with a gesture.
After a moment, Satsuki quietly assured Zazie that she hadn't been bothered by
Poyo's words.
"She should not have said them regardless." You are not a meal. You are not a
toy. You are not a game. To the Abyss with anyone, anyone who thinks otherwise.
Zazie's heart was generally divided between opposing emotions. But she felt no
indifference for Satsuki. Not at all.
===============================================================================
Negi ran towards the room where he'd lived until recently, fumbled with the
spare key that he still kept, and then threw open the door and jumped in,
crying out, "A—"
The cry died in his throat.
"I'm sorry," said Chizuru, sitting at the kotatsu in a long black coat. "You
were clearly expecting someone else."
***** Chizuru *****
Well, it was really his own fault. All that Konoka-san had said was that it was
someone he hadn't seen in a while. And, sure enough, he hadn't seen Chizuru-san
since the funeral.
"No, no," he said at last, in response to her comment. "I wasn't really
expecting anyone in particular."
"Mm-hm," she said, clearly not believing him. "I am sorry, sensei. I suppose
that I could have had Natsumi-chan or Kotaro-kun deliver the message rather
than Konoka-chan. But I wanted to surprise them, too, and, well, here we are."
"Oh, please don't apologize, the mistake is entirely mine," Negi insisted as he
sat down across the table from her. He was a bit confused by the fact that she
was still wearing a coat, but then he noticed that the kotatsu's heater was
turned off, and that the room was rather cold. "Wouldn't you rather —"
"I don't plan to stay too long, sensei. And I really do understand why you'd be
disappointed. I'd like to see the person you were hoping for myself." Chizuru's
tone grew about as cold as the room. "I have a few choice words I'd like to say
to her."
Time was, he'd have been completely oblivious to the implications behind that
remark. Now he grasped that Chizuru-san was not looking for a friendly
conversation with Asuna, and decided to politely ignore this, since he didn't
want to quarrel with anyone right now. "How have you and Ayaka been?" he asked
instead.
"Busy, for the most part," the former maid said. "A disturbingly large number
of the Yukihiro Group's properties and businesses turned out to be fronts for
Alladia's operation. We've — or rather, she has had to clean house, and it's
still a work in progress. Meanwhile, I make sure that she remembers to eat, and
that there are comfortable cushions around her when she falls asleep on her
feet." Then she smiled, and he was reminded that she was his mother's younger
sister. "Among other things. Of course, I'm not alone in this. Her mother is
very helpful in all this as well."
Negi had a sinking feeling. "She helps with the food and the cushions —"
"And the other things."
"Oh dear, " he sighed. "I thought, from what mother told me about you, that you
didn't like that sort of thing!"
"I don't approve, exactly. If it were my mother ..." "She trailed off, as a
shadow crossed her lovely face. "But then my mother has told me that she wants
nothing to do with me, and that she's sorry I was ever born." She fell silent
for a second, then shook her head.
"It's a slippery slope, isn't it? I didn't want to cross taboos, but the fact
was, simply by being with Ayaka, I already had. I didn't regret it. I could
never, ever regret loving that sweet crazy girl. And then Ayaka realized that
her mother was lonely, and she wanted to relieve that loneliness ... and I
chose to help her do so. And it became easier, every time. Sometimes I look
back and think that it would have been better if I'd never known. But I can't
go back. I expect you know exactly what I'm talking about."
"Yes," Negi said heavily. "I was given a choice. And there have been many
times, so many, that I've wished that I made the other choice."
"That is maturity, Negi-kun, " she told him. "It is the process by which your
heart is slowly broken. But the alternative is worse. We both have regrets
about some things we've done, but I've seen someone who didn't have any regrets
about anything he'd ever done. Regret is healthy, as long as you don't let it
rule your life. Such is my view, at least."
They sat in silence, reflecting on that.
"She wants to meet you, by the way, " Chizuru added.
Negi blinked. "Who does?"
"Minako-sama. Ayaka's mother. She's understandably curious about you, as the
product of her — well, she refers to your father as her 'great secret love',
but I think it would be more appropriate to call him her 'abiding infatuation',
or possibly —"
Negi finally found his voice again. "Now?" he squeaked.
Chizuru blinked, then laughed at his obvious distress. "No, not now. In a few
months, maybe."
He was relieved, but not very much. "Forgive me if I'm not looking forward to
it. My, erm, situation with Chisame and her mother is already complicated
without —"
"Then resist the temptation that they present," she interrupted with a shrug.
"Ayaka loves you, as a brother and as a person, and will want you to be happy.
And her mother is not a monster, Negi-kun. She won't take you against your
will."
"But my will isn't firm when it comes to this sort of thing," he protested.
"Every time, Chizuru-san, every time I say it'll be different. And it's always
the same. Someone wants me, and I can't bring myself to disappoint them. It's a
slippery slope, like you said, and —"
"Negi," she said, dropping any honorific as she stood up. "You can control
yourself." And with those words, she opened the front of her coat and let it
fall to her elbows, revealing that beneath it she was wearing some of the most
erotic black lingerie he'd ever seen.
"You've been talking to me this whole while without making any passes or even
flirting," Chizuru said. "Have you even noticed the rather seductive perfume
that I'm wearing? If I may say so, I'm pretty damn hot. So I really do think
that you can control yourself.
"But if you can't ... well, I'm fond of you, and I'm more than a bit curious
about what it would be like with a boy. I've only ever been with girls, you
see. And there is the fact that you're my cute little nephew. So. What's it
gonna be, boya?"
It was perhaps unfortunate that these were not the longest moments of Negi's
life so far, as he sat there gazing up at Chizuru's fantastic figure so
artfully displayed. But he finally found the strength to stand, reach out to
her ... and start pulling the neck of her coat up to her shoulders. "No, thank
you, obasan," he managed to say.
Her smile twitched. "Ahem. All right, I'll give you that one. This time. In any
event, clearly, you can choose, even if it is hard." She looked down. "Which it
is."
He nodded rapidly, not really trusting himself to say anything more.
"Well, if you'll excuse me, then. I have that surprise visit to pay to Natsumi-
chan and Kotaro-kun. Thank you for not ruining it, incidentally," she added as
she did up the coat's buttons again. "I'm sure that Kotaro-kun wouldn't want
sloppy seconds." She considered. "Well, if he knew it was you, it might be all
right, but, oh, never mind. Merry Christmas, Negi-kun."
"Wait," Negi said abruptly. "You, you and Kotaro-kun? But you said you'd never
—"
"Ah. That was a lie, Negi. I do that sometimes. Woman's prerogative." And just
in case he hadn't thought that this situation was completely unfair, she bent
down to kiss him, firmly, on the lips.
A kiss from a decidedly non-maiden aunt, he thought dazedly as he watched her
saunter out the room's door.
Fortunately, Konoka still kept her supply of tissues in the same place as when
he'd lived here.
***** Akira *****
She hadn't wanted to let Yuna go off by herself the way that she did. But she
didn't want to force her companionship on her friend either. Akira knew
perfectly well that Yuna would be feeling her usual welter of poorly understood
emotions about her father and their ... relationship.
She sometimes found it difficult to avoid shuddering at the very idea of it.
She was sure that Yuna noticed it when she did, and that it upset her. Yet more
proof that Akira was the most socially maladroit person in their class. Move
over Zazie! Here comes a new challenger!
Oh, what a mass of self-pity she'd become. She was almost glad that her parents
were busy helping to get that new hospital in Metropolis up and running,
resulting in her being effectively stuck here over the holidays. They'd have
had no patience with her immaturity and self-absorption.
She missed them terribly.
Well, then, what to do with herself this evening? It was a question asked more
in jest than in earnest. It would have been nice if she'd had more interests,
but the fact was that there was only one thing Akira cared to do when she was
in this sort of mood. Well, two things, but going back to the dorms so that she
could masturbate didn't appeal at the moment.
Of course, there were always distractions in any endeavor. As she walked, she
chanced to glimpse Negi sitting by the river and chatting with Ku Fei. She
watched from a distance, just a bit envious of their closeness and ease with
one another, as they sparred a bit. Then Konoka showed up and said something
that had Negi running off, and she and Ku Fei chatted a bit, and parted after a
hug.
A hug. Such a simple gesture. She could probably have gotten a hug herself if
she'd just gone up to them. But she'd let the moment pass, and now it was too
late. Story of her life, really. Akira went on her way.
She came to the indoor pool a little while later. It was locked up, of course,
but she had a key given to her by the swim team's captain given to her after
her first gold. It was strictly against school rules for her to come her on her
own to train when there was no supervision, but the rules were bent on
occasion.
Making her way to the locker room, Akira changed out of her clothes and into
her swimsuit, then headed out into the pool. She considered turning on the
lights, but decided that it would attract too much attention. Besides, the
darkness suited her dark mood.
The water was much cooler than the heated baths at the dorm would have been.
But she had it all to herself. She reflected on that priority as she floated
along the pool's surface, getting used to the temperature. I'm all over the
place, aren't I, she thought. I want to be alone. I'm envious of people who
aren't alone.
I hate violence, and it's all that I'm good at.
Now, that bothered her a lot more than all the internal confusion did. The only
way that she could help her friends was to embrace a part of her that terrified
both her and them. Why did this have to happen to me? she thought as she
started swimming the pool's length. Why couldn't I make a simple pactio and get
a nice power, like Makie's or Natsumi's? Why do I have to be some sort of
berserker? Who needs that? What's the point —
It came to Akira, then, that she'd just swam the regulation length of the pool
and back twice over, in just a bit under two minutes. She wasn't sure, but she
thought that might be a record. Not a school record. A world record. And she
wasn't even out of breath.
Well, maybe she was useful for something other than simply chopping people's
heads off. But she couldn't see a way that being able to swim very fast was
supposed to help someone. Maybe she should consider a career as a lifeguard.
A vision of herself in a Baywatch swimsuit, running verrry slowly down a beach,
floated through her head, and she sighed. Drawing in a deep breath, she let
herself sink down below the surface. Ever since that day, so long ago, when
she'd seen that dolphin playing, she'd yearned to be surrounded by water like
he'd been. Like she was now. It was comforting, the way all of her troubles
seemed to slip away into the cool caress of the water.
And then she stopped holding her breath.
Wait, she thought as the water flowed into her mouth and nose. What am I doing?
Not quite panicking, but with her earlier comfort a distant memory, Akira
slammed her feet against the pool's surface and pushed herself up towards the
surface. As she cleared it, she gagged, forcing the water she'd swallowed and
inhaled back up again. It was awful. But better than the alternative.
"That doesn't look like a whole lot of fun," Yuna opined form where she was
sitting on the bleachers overlooking the pool.
"Yuna?" Akira gasped, breathing more heavily than she had when she'd swam those
lengths. "What, when, how —"
"A while ago," Yuna answered vaguely. "You looked pretty into it, so I didn't
want to interrupt. As for how I got in here, well, I kinda sorta shot off the
door's lock."
"Of course you did," Akira sighed.
"Mind if I join you?" Yuna asked, kicking off her shoes.
"Oh. Sure, there are some spare suits in the change room, and there's bound to
be one in your size."
Yuna stared at her. Akira stared back.
"Oh, " Akira said a moment later, as Yuna started to strip off her clothes and
drop them on the pool's deck. "Or you could do that, of course."
Moments later, Yuna bobbed nakedly in the water beside her, and Akira found it
difficult to avoid staring. Why? she thought. The first time we did anything
was in the shower. I've seen her wet and naked plenty of times. There's no
reason for my hormones to be so —
"We gotta talk," Yuna said abruptly. "There's, there's something I've got to
tell you. About me, and you, and, well, me, sort of ..." She trailed off.
"I'm listening," Akira said. She might only be good at swimming and berserk
violence, but she could listen pretty well. Maybe that was her real talent. She
hoped so.
***** Madoka *****
"So how's your band doing these days?" her father asked out of nowhere, as they
were driving from the train station back to their building.
There is only one thing that a teenager hates more than their parents showing
no interest in their hobbies and activities. That one thing is their parents
showing any interest in their hobbies and activities. The mere sound of a
question like that sends chills up their backs and provokes stomach
disturbance. At least, that was Madoka's experience, and she was an ordinary
teenage girl.
"We're doing okay," she answered cautiously. Drown the enemy in minutiae wasn't
one of the thirty-six strategies, but it probably should be. "During the
festival, our concert was one of the best-attended events on campus, and a lot
of people bought our CD. I think we must have sold all of the ones we burned,
except for some we gave away to our friends. A few people wanted it
autographed, and —"
"Mm-hm, sounds good," her dad interjected, eyes firmly on the road. Certainly
not glazing over.
Was this a win, then? No, too soon to tell.
"I had a band, too, you know. Back when I was your age. That's how I met your
mother, at one of our concerts, actually."
Agh, no, not a win, and now they were going in this direction! She did in fact
know all of that — going over it again did not appeal! While the thought of her
chubby, salariman father as a rock-n-rolla (well, maybe boy band wannabe was
more appropriate, considering what she'd heard of his music) was kind of cool,
she really didn't want to think about her mother as a groupie!
But he persisted in talking about it as they drove through the evening, and
Madoka soon found herself hoping for the sweet release of death.
Eventually, they arrived at the building, and Madoka was dropped off in front
while her father drove around to the parking garage. Hoisting her suitcase, she
ambled in and took the elevator up to their floor.
"Tadaima," she announced as she came in the door, which led into a hallway that
ran past her bedroom to the main area of the apartment. Upon her arrival, there
was a thump from ahead of her, followed by a faint rustling sound, before her
mother strolled out of the door to Madoka's room, smiling brightly.
"Welcome home, dear," she said.
"What were you doing in my room?" Madoka asked before she could give the
question much thought.
"Nothing!" her mother asserted.
And then another woman stepped out from the same door with the same bright
smile on her face. "Hello, Madoka-chan," she said.
"Actually, I was having a little talk with Aunty Chiriko. And she wanted to see
your baby pictures," her mother amended.
"My baby pictures are in your room, though," Madoka said dazedly. The scent of
bullshit always did that to her.
"We moved them into yours," her mother continued the specious narrative.
It was really kind of remarkable, the way that the woman maintained this
pretense. Doubtless she'd have a ready answer for the obvious questions if
Madoka went into her room to find that there were no baby pictures in there,
and instead found her futon unfolded. And messed up.
Time was, this would have been extremely traumatizing for Madoka. Now, though,
it was only ordinarily traumatizing. She retained enough presence of mind to be
glad that 'Aunty' Chiriko was only her mother's very (very very very) close
friend, and not her actual aunt. (At least, probably not. Her maternal
grandfather had apparently really got around, so who knew?)
Eventually, her father came back just as Aunty Chiriko was heading out the
door. They exchanged pleasant greetings and even some small talk. Madoka was
fairly sure that her dad knew what was going on, and thought that Chiriko
probably knew that he knew. And yet they maintained this facade.
Well, it wasn't as though she couldn't understand doing that. After all, she
was keeping up a facade herself. Nobody (except for Makie, maybe) knew about
her 'thing' with Ako, Sakurako, Akira, and sometimes Yuna and (that one time)
Misa. And nobody knew that she knew all about the other crazy bad stuff that
was going on, thanks to Haruna blabbing about it back when —
No, it was probably better not to even think about that weird episode.
Sometimes, she thought it might be better to let all of the secrets out. That
had been Chao's whole deal, apparently, and she would've been a lot more
sympathetic to the crazy genius if she'd know that was what was going on. But
she got that it would cause problems, too. Even if she found him a little bit
freaky, now, she didn't want Negi-kun to have to leave. And —
Oh, forget it, she thought disgustedly as she lay in her room, trying to ignore
the obvious scent. I'm the last normal girl in our class. (Misa practiced a
weird religion and slept with guys for money and presents. She'd never been
normal.) All this stuff is just too big and too strange for me to have to think
about. Almost makes me want to forget everything ...
A little while later, Madoka realized that she was more thirsty than she'd
realized. Dinner had been a rather salty ramen. So she got up and headed for
the kitchen to get some bottled water out of the fridge, moving as quietly as
possible.
Sure enough, there were a few bottles in the fridge when she opened it, but her
eyes were drawn from them to a six pack of cans that were nestled in the back.
Bad idea, she thought. Dad will probably notice if one goes missing.
But maybe he could be persuaded that Aunty Chiriko took it? Hmm. Yeah. That
could work.
Well, she thought, opening the can for her first taste of beer. Here's to your
health.
***** Misa *****
When you got right down to it, it probably made very little sense for her to
like her stepfather more than she liked her mother. After all, he was the guy
who'd ruined her innocent tweeny years fantasy that one day mommy and daddy
would come to their senses and get back together. By that standard, she ought
to hate him.
But she was just too darn smart for that kind of thing. It was a curse, much
like her beauty which attracted the wrong kind of guys as well as the right
kind. (Without money vs. with, of course.) The fact was that her "innocent
tweeny years fantasy" had been on life support even before he'd come along and
pulled the plug. She'd basically come to terms with the fact that her mommy and
daddy were never going to get back together, and realized that this was better
for everyone.
Well, actually, whether it was better for everyone was irrelevant, because it
was certainly better for her. It meant that she was able to exploit her
parents' wish to buy the lion's share of her love through games of one-
upmanship when it came to presents. From an early age, she'd learned how to
describe the lamest present in glowing terms to the parent who hadn't given it.
It had been her first lesson in how to use people.
But it had gotten old, eventually. And, really, her mother had been on the
losing end of far too many of these games of power and influence, even before
her stepfather had come on the scene. So it was fortunate that he'd come along
right when Misa was getting interested in other kinds of games.
So Misa and her stepfather had a pretty good relationship, and an understanding
of where they both stood in it. He didn't want Misa's mother to know that he'd
been fucking her daughter for the last four years, and Misa didn't want her
mother to know that either. And they both knew that he had a lot more to lose
from that revelation than she did, since no one would believe him if he claimed
that she'd made the first move.
It was so nice to be understood. It made her feel so powerful. And she liked
that a lot. So why wouldn't she like the person whom she used to make herself
feel this way?
She'd been reflecting on this for a while as she sat on the couch watching some
silly variety show with him, while her mother was in the kitchen making dinner.
But the time for reflection, she deemed, was over. So she coughed to attract
his attention, then gave him the hair-flip and smile.
He blinked. Then, quickly glancing in the direction of the kitchen area, cut
off from the TV room by a curtain, he blinked again. In response, she simply
nodded, then slid down to the floor so that her head and hands were where they
needed to be.
With practiced ease, she undid his zipper and pulled his prick out of the hole,
so that it could be tucked back in quickly if he had to get up in a hurry. It
was on the small side of average for Japanese pricks - Misa had more experience
with them than she did with foreigners, though she intended to change that -
and he was at best mediocre at using it. Well, so what? Ugly guys who suck in
bed need love too. And the art of the courtesan (or so she'd read in one of the
books that helped her form her philosophy) was to make the merest of mortals
think himself a god.
Of course, she'd had a god, and she knew that no mortal could come close to
comparing. She made a small bow of her head in the direction of their shrine to
Orum before she took the head of the prick in her mouth and began slowly
bobbing her head on it while he leaned back, eyes closed as the sensation ran
up his spine.
Abruptly, she stopped what she was doing, and looked up at his face. "Mom," she
said, raising her voice. "Do you think it'd be possible for me to spend some
time at Dad's place in Hawaii this summer vacation?" She watched with amusement
as as her stepfather's face quickly went white, as though all the blood in it
were flowing away to some place where it was needed.
"Oh, I don't know about that, Misa-chan," her mother's voice replied, as the
woman herself didn't bother to leave her kitchen. As expected. "That could be
pretty expensive, don't you know?"
"I'll pay for part of the ticket with the money from my share of our CD's sale.
We're doing really good business," she said, nodding to him to show that she
wasn't making that part up.
He nodded back, having calmed down and found his voice again. "Dear, I think we
can probably find the money for it, as long as she doesn't mind flying tourist.
And she's going to be graduating, after all."
She smiled sweetly in response.
"Well, you can work it out then," her mother said absently. "I really don't pay
a lot of attention to our financial situation ..."
"All right, then, we'll see how it works out," he concluded. Pleased with the
way things had gone, Misa resumed.
His prick quickly yielded up its prick-milk, and she swallowed it immediately.
She didn't actually like the taste. Cum, in her opinion, belonged in exactly
one place: inside the top of a condom, ideallly resting in a wastebacket while
she rested after a vigorous screwing. Still, she could adapt, and had gotten
used to taking loads in her mouth, on her face and elsewhere in her body. The
only place she would absolutely not take one was in the womb, in accordance
with the teachings of Orum. She'd refused a lot of money offered to let one of
her boyfriends do that, and ended the relationship.
A girl had to have standards, after all.
Anyway, she knew that this wasn't the end of it. As sure as she knew anything,
Misa knew that stepdaddy would be coming to her room later that night and
looking to get between her legs. She was definitely getting the money for the
trip to Hawaii first, though. She was going to make sure that it was the money,
not a promise of the ticket. That was important.
It was perfect, really. A few months ago, her dad had offered to buy her a
ticket to come visit him when they spoke on the phone. His ticket was bound to
be better than the crappy one that stepdaddy would pay for, so she could put
that money to better use. And she would be winging her way to Hawaii for the
summer. The sand, the surf, the sun ... it was going to be soooo much fun!
Particularly if she followed through on finding out how daddy compared to
stepdaddy. He was better at buying presents and certainly richer, so he was
bound to be a better fuck too. It just stood to reason.
She liked her stepfather more than her mother.
That wasn`t saying very much, really.
***** Negi *****
It had been a long day, Negi mused as he walked up the stairs of the teachers'
dormitory to his room. But then again, they were all long days, recently. And
yet this one had been longer than most. Nor was it really over yet.
He opened the door to the room, expecting to see Kitty sprawled in front of the
TV as she usually was when he came home. To his surprise, she wasn't there.
Nor, he saw in an instant, was she curled up in bed or by the kotatsu. And
there was a faint acrid smell in the air.
"Kitty?" he asked, keeping a reign on his suddenly welling panic.
And then she walked out of the suite's kitchenette, holding a plate in front of
her that had a few slices of golden brown toast on it. "Ohkyeree nahsigh," she
said, face and voice a little stiff.
He blinked. "You made toast," he announced, as though she weren't aware of
this.
"Hi," she said with a sharp bob of her head.
He decided to correct the pronounciation of 'hai' some other time. "That's very
nice of you," he told her as he came over to take one of the slices off the
plate. It was done just as he liked it, though there was probably a bit too
much margarine for his own good.
It was better to get the hard question out of the way. So, after chewing on it
and making appreciative noises, he asked, "Did you burn much bread practicing?"
Kitty flushed, and, avoiding his gaze, replied, "We need more o' the bread." In
a low, embarassed tone.
They'd had two loaves when he'd started out this morning. "Well, the end result
is worth it. Thank you, Kitty, this is very good toast, and it was a very
thoughtful gesture."
Now her face swiveled up to let her look at him again, and he had the distinct
impression that his Master was somehow present once again, evaluating him with
a skeptical, judicious expression. But it was Kitty's voice that spoke up,
eventually. "Aye? Well. 'Tis good, then."
"Have some yourself," he offered as he went past her to check on the
kitchenette. As he suspected, she'd left a huge mess there for him to clean up.
Quite beyond the piles of burnt toast, she'd apparently started out with more
expansive culinary ambitions before settling on preparing it. The wreckage of
those ambitions was lying in plain sight.
His day was definitely not over.
Before he could even get started on cleaning this anteroom of the Augean
stables, he heard Kitty clearing her throat, and turned to look back at her. He
was a bit surprised that she was standing right where he'd left her, rather
than sitting down to eat the toast. Judging by the way that the toes of her
bare feet were twitching —
"You should really wear socks or slippers in this weather," Negi said before
she could say anything.
Kitty blinked, confused. Then coughed, and said, "Dinnae like socks. But that
be neither here nor there." She drew in a deep breath. "That Chachamaru person
came here this morn, after ye had gone yer way, and bade me tell ye that ye
could come visit her friends. And that I might come too —"
"Yes, Chisame said the same to me," Negi interjected.
"I havenae finished," Kitty growled.
"Sorry, please continue."
"— and," she said, somewhat loudly, "that, did I come, she would nae be be
there, that I would nae be vexed by her."
Now Negi was genuinely startled. He knew how much Chachamaru liked being
separated from Chisame. (Not at all.) So he was at once surprised by the fact
that she'd made the offer, and more than a bit upset that someone he cared
about was putting herself through such hardships. "I see," he said, not letting
any of that show. "And what would you like to do, Kitty?"
She drew in what looked like an even deeper breath before answering. "I'd have
ye tell them that, that we will both be visiting, and, and, and, that the daft
heathen girl need not make herself scarce on my account." The last was
delivered in a rush.
"Kitty!" Negi said, astonished.
"'Tis Christmas!" she shouted, frowning heavily. "Folk should make peace, aye,
though they will nae keep it."
"That's very noble of you, but, but why are you so angry about it?"
She closed her eyes, then blurted out, "Because I'm scairt, o' course! So many
people, all of them easier to be with than me! Sure 'n they'll steal ye away
from me, ye'll go off and leave me, and I'll be alone again!" And then she
started crying.
Negi promptly went over to her and hugged her tightly. "Ssh," he said. "Ssh,
don't cry. That will never happen. As long as I'm alive, I'll never leave you
without coming back. No matter what happens, no matter how hard it can be."
After a while, her sobs settled down. But he didn't stop hugging her until it
was time for bed, and even then it was just for long enough for them to get
ready. (The kitchen never got cleaned.) Rather than waiting for her to crawl
into his bed, they settled down in the same one together. The last words that
Negi heard before sleep claimed him were a gently voiced, "Merry Christmas,"
whispered into his ear.
Asuna wasn't here. His mother wasn't here. His father was still missing. One of
his own children had died before even being born.
Nekane-neechan was gone forever.
But there was a little person who needed him more than anything.
He might not have all that he wanted, but he had all he needed.
                                    THE END
                                      Of
                          A Decadent Habits Christmas
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