Mahou Sensei Negima! Fan Fiction ❯ Life In A Bottle ❯ At The Stroke Of Midnight ( Chapter 14 )
[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
By: Serac 
Watching time makes it go slower.....
Anime/Manga: Mahou Sensei Negima! Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Drama / Comedy | Type: Divergence | Uploaded On: 07.02.2007 | Pages: 5 | Words: 6.5K | Visits: 225 | Status: Work In Progress
Watching time makes it go slower.....
Anime/Manga: Mahou Sensei Negima! Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Drama / Comedy | Type: Divergence | Uploaded On: 07.02.2007 | Pages: 5 | Words: 6.5K | Visits: 225 | Status: Work In Progress
-----Author’s note: I do not own Negima!, but any other characters and ideas (Save for Masayoshi, who is Master Masa Random’s) are my own. Enjoy.....-----
It was an interesting position to be in, to say the least. We’re not talking about ‘Negi Springfield with -Insert ANY girl’s name, here- on top of him’ interesting, we’re talking about ‘girlfriend just found out about my magic’ interesting. What Masayoshi did next could very well decide her future, and more than likely his very own. He was aware of this, and thus was doing his best to clearly think it through and make a rational decision. Of course, being able to hear himself think might have helped.
“OH MY GOD! Magic is real!? Negi-sensei knows about it, and Evangeline can DO it!? YOU CAN DO IT!? Why didn’t you tell me? How long have you been able to do it? How did you float Chachamaru back up, so easy? Why did you draw on the tile? Is your hand ok? Is Chachamaru ok? Who’s the Mother!? Who else knows about magic? Can I do magic!? I hope I can, don’t you hope? Can Zazie do magic? I’ve seen her do tricks before but I didn’t think they were real! Can Setsuna do magic? She carries a sword, so maybe she knows about that kind of stuff, too! Will you show me some of your magic? Can you make yourself invisible? That would be so cool, wouldn’t it Masa-kun? Haven’t you ever had moments where you just wish you could disappear?”
The preceding hunk of words came from Natsumi’s mouth rather quickly. Masayoshi believed that those were the first two seconds of her questions, which went on from the time they left Library Island to the time they arrived at Hakase’s lab; About twenty minutes. The boy, naturally, did his best to answer the questions, which are as follow:
“Yes, dear. He can do it, too, sweetheart. Surely I can, my love. It’s supposed to be a secret, pumpkin. Quite a long while, my little flower. It was simple magic, darling. I need circles to use my magic, cuddle bunny. Yes, honey. I hope so, muffin. Don’t have a clue, precious. Not really sure, sugar plum. Maybe.....I suppose if you’d like to, buttercup. Um, who? Don’t know a Setsuna, either, honey bee. Er, perhaps later, sweety. I could for a brief time, jelly bean. It has it’s perks, kitten. Having one right now, dearest.....”
Was it so unreasonable to assume she needed to breathe, and would thus eventually black out from lack of oxygen? Or would at least pause long enough to suck in some air and he could think for a moment? Well, apparently it was, because he never did get that moment. He hadn’t gotten further in his thought process than a severe burn victim past first base by the time they were ringing for entry into the robotics club. By being honest with her about the whole thing, though, he made the decision without getting to mull the revelation over.
As they stood there, ringing the doorbell over and over again and waiting patiently for a response, Masayoshi realized something. Not only had he just carried a freaking android for a twenty minute trek across unforgiving cement (His feet would never be the same), but he had also handled a girl, who was very close to him, discover magic and assault him with enough questions to start her own game show. And he had done it without blowing anyone’s head off. His own, included. As he rang the bell for the eighth time, he was proud of himself.
“Suppose she isn’t here?” The boy looked to the girl on his left, using his free hand to poke his glasses back up the bridge of his nose.
“No, she’s in there. Hakase sleeps in the lab, I think, so she’s probably just ignoring us. No way she’s asleep yet, either,” Natsumi checked her watch, “It’s only 10:58! She’s still doing stuff, at this hour, for sure.”
“Well then, how do we get her to.....” Masayoshi tried to shift the heavy robot from his now sore right shoulder to his left one, losing his balance in the process. He quickly found himself in a pile on the ground before the steel doors, crushed under the busted Chachamaru.
“Hm, good question, Masa-kun.....” Natsumi put her chin in her hand as she thought about how to draw her classmate out. Masayoshi’s predicament right next to her going unnoticed. She snapped her fingers, “Oh! I’ve got it! Masa-kun,” She called loudly, not looking at her flattened boyfriend, “I conceived immaculately, last night!”
As Masayoshi’s nose spouted forth copious amounts of blood at the simple thought of an otherworldly experience so fantastic that it shook his love Natsumi’s world into pregnancy without actually doing the nasty, the door to the complex flew open. Hakase popped out and explained rather loudly how that was utterly impossible, and that she would run numerous tests on Natsumi to prove it. Natsumi stood there, a little surprised, though she had expected her words to draw the scientist out.
Once done ranting in a stunningly stereotypical mad scientist manner, Hakase looked down to find Chachamaru sprawled out rather suggestively on top of Natsumi’s boyfriend, whose name escaped her, at the moment. It didn’t help her observations that the boy was bleeding profusely from his nose in an almost comical fashion, and his efforts to get out from beneath her were little to none. Very lost in her own thoughts, Hakase mutters, “I haven’t given you the upgrade that lets you do that, yet.....”
The freckled performer looks down for the first time at her squashed boyfriend, seeing the blood all over the place and him under heavy machinery/an unconscious classmate, “MASA-KUN’S DEAD!” She shrieked, her eyes then quickly rolled up in the back of her head, and she blacked out.
-
‘Come here.....’
“No! You can’t be here!”
‘I am everywhere.....’
“S-Stay away from me!”
Yue Ayase, plummeting so much as sprinting, continued to dash through the maelstrom of shadows and haze as fast as she could. There was no way this could be happening! It was impossible, it was supposed to be finished! But.....But wasn’t it happening, anyway? Her normally collected and polished mind scattered under the waves of panic as the ground itself turned into an enemy, the twisting darkness latching onto her, tripping her.
As she fell forward onto her stomach, the moist ground trying to envelope her with serpent-like arms of shadow, the voice called out, ‘You are a dirty stain on the canvas that is the world. You must be removed.....’
Tearing desperately at the formless enmity surrounding her, the voice drawing closer with every fractured second that seemed unending, Yue realized that there wasn’t a way out. She knew at a conscious level that there was no way she could escape something that was everywhere all at the same time, but still her body continued to try and free itself in vain. Every word spoken by the chilling voice echoed through her very being, dashing her strength and collapsing her will.
‘I’ve found you.....’ It jeered, now as though it were inside her very head.
Screaming in thoughtless terror as she ripped at the swirling miasma, Yue slowly vanished into the sea of darkness.
Nodoka’s heart practically gave out when, at 11:04 PM, Yue started screaming at the top of her lungs, thrashing around in her bed as though her very life depended on it. Matsuro, her cradle beside Nodoka, began to wail loudly at the intrusion upon her sleep, and Haruna rolled out of her bed, screaming, “RAPE!”
The quietest of the trio hopped from her bed, rushing to her distressed friend, “Yue! Yue, wake up! You’re having a nightmare!” Nodoka called loudly, catching the sleeping girl by the shoulders and steadying her.
“.....No rape?” Haruna asked, heaving a sigh of relief as she slid her sketch pad back under the bed.
Yue’s eyes flew open, tears leaking down her cheeks and onto her hair as a result. Nodoka barely recognized the girl’s eyes as they darted around in the dark, filled with horror and panic. The leaky eyes landed on her own after a few seconds, and the small girl lunged up, throwing her arms around Nodoka and clinging to her as though her life depended on it, trembling violently.
Haruna watched in quiet wonder as the two sat on Yue’s bed, holding each other. The tears continued to fall from Yue’s wide eyes, though she wasn’t crying. Her breath was drawn in rapid, shaky rasps through her nose, her lips pursed in a displeased grimace. Or maybe that was what she always looked like, it just seemed more significant, right now, Haruna wasn’t sure. The only other noise in the room was Matsuro’s crying, which no one was ready to address, just yet.
After a long few moments of this, Nodoka asked beside Yue’s ear, still holding on, “What was it?”
Haruna wanted to know, too, because nothing should set Yue off like that. Nothing. She held her breath as Yue’s lips parted enough for her to mutter a sentence.
“I remembered that Mershon’s Bookstore is having a clearance blowout until midnight!” Yue scooted back, snatching her alarm clock from her bedside stand, “It’s only 11:06! There’s still time if I run! I’ll be back soon!”
And with those words, Yue leapt from the bed and, still in her nighty, flew from the dorm as though it were about to fill with the plague. Nodoka watched in wonder as Haruna started to bang her head against the wall, saddened that the reason for such an outburst wasn’t because of, say, Negi, but instead a sale.
It was about this time that Nodoka realized Matsuro had lapsed into total psycho freak out crying mode, which meant it was going to be next to impossible to console her. She looked to Haruna in a dramatic fashion, “Haruna! Emergency tactic number seventeen!”
In under two seconds Haruna had retrieved her sketch pad and whipped up a drawing to help solve their problems: Whip up a stunningly chiseled and magnificently gorgeous naked teen for them to ogle!
Nodoka’s eyes quickly wandered south of the border, then blood spewed forth from her nose as she fell backwards, covering her eyes, “I said emergency tactic number SEVENTEEN!”
“That one isn’t summon Clyde, then?” Haruna grinned stupidly, using her finger to wipe back the little bit of red on her upper lip.
The blonde teen looked around, confused, then looked down, realization dawning, “Ladies, how many times are we gonna do this? I got my own thing to do.....”
“Only as many times as you look like that.....” Haruna drooled.
Matsuro laughed.
-
Yue darted from wide pool of light to wide pool of light as she dashed through the night, the streetlights above almost a bastion of hope that kept the shadows at bay. She caught herself half expecting the ground to turn against her when she was outside of the streetlight’s welcome glow, and found that her steps inside the circles of light were just a bit slower, anything to keep her in the light a little longer.
Her jog wasn’t an unbearably long one; She reached her destination in about fifteen minutes. As she stopped in the glorious luminescence of the streetlight across the street from her destination, Yue was practically scared to death when a hand fell on her shoulder
Asuna pulled her hand back sharply when her diminutive friend yelped, and wobbled forward a couple of steps as though she were a dying old lady, “Yue! A-Are you ok?”
Recognizing her friend’s voice, baka black spun around, “You shouldn’t sneak up on people like that!”
“Who’s sneaking?” Asuna replied, “Me, or the girl in a nighty out for a midnight jog?”
“.....There’s a book sale.....”
“Ha, right! And I’m just out for a leisurely cartwheeling session!” Baka red performed a cartwheel, winding up beside her friend, “So what are you doing in this neck of the woods? .....City?”
Yue looked up at Asuna, then over to her destination, “I could ask you the same thing.....”
“Wh-What?” Asuna turned a little red, “It’s not like I’m doing anything WEIRD, or anything.....”
“Then why aren’t you back at the dorms?”
“W-Well, Negi’s not back yet, and I don’t know where Chachamaru went. Konoka is still in Kyoto with her dad, so I’d be all by myself, and all.....”
Yue motioned to the home before them both, “And would you rather sleep here, then?”
Asuna nodded slowly, then snapped out of her reverie and shook her head fiercely, “N-NO! That’s not it! I’m just.....getting an early start on my deliveries.....” She glanced at her watch, “.....At 11:25 at night.....”
“One day, you’ll find the courage to talk to him about it, again,” Yue reassured her friend, whom she wondered how long had been standing outside of the house. She then crossed the street and walked up the short walkway to the door, Asuna shortly behind.
“Um, wh-what are we doing? You’re not gonna tell on me, are you!? He’ll think I’m a stalker!”
Yue knocked on the door, “No, that’s not why I’m here. It’s actually probably a good thing that you’re here, Asuna.”
Takamichi opened up his door, looking from Asuna to Yue, then frowning a little, “You’ve had it, too?”
“Can we talk?” Yue asked, guessing from the static glow of the television in the house that Death Specs wasn’t planning on bed anytime soon, anyway.
-
Natsumi shot up, looking from her left to her right, confused, sore, and somewhat disoriented. It was dark, save for the occasional flicker of light from the adjacent room. In these brief spurts of light the freckled middle schooler found that she was lying on what appeared to be a steel operating table, as she was surrounded by bits and pieces of various android parts. She squeaked when she found a cybernetic eye on the table, apparently gazing at her. After having successfully slapped the eye across the room, she examined the dim room in search of Masayoshi, Chachamaru, and Hakase. It didn’t take much effort to find Masayoshi, who was only a few feet away from her, on his own operating table. Chachamaru was on the other side of him in their row of tables, still very much unconscious, as was the boy.
Relieved to see him breathing at a normal, not dead, rate, Natsumi slowly crawled off of her table, and looked in the direction of the room with the flickering light. The light was accompanied by a low hissing sound, a drill of some sort, perhaps? Maybe a torch? She edged towards the room, breathing low as if she might disturb some sort of holy power if she were any louder. As quiet as a dead church mouse, Natsumi poked her head into the new room to find the back of Hakase, hunched over a table and surrounded by enough metal to bang your head to. Feeling a tad more secure at the discovery of the light (It was, indeed, a blowtorch) and her friend, Natsumi made her presence known once the flame was silenced, “Hakase, hey!”
The scientist whipped her head around so fast that her mask flipped up over her head, “Natsumi! How long have you been there?” She asked, flinging a tarp over the table and its contents.
The performer raised her eyebrow as she saw what appeared to be a human hand hanging over the table’s edge, but dismissed it as yet another android bit, “A few seconds, is all. What are you working on?”
“I don’t really see how that concerns you at all,” Hakase admitted bluntly, making sure the torch was safely turned off and then removing her mask completely.
“Just curious.....”
Hakase shrugged, “Just a project for a friend, no big deal. Anyway, what did you and loverboy do to my precious Chachamaru, huh?”
Natsumi flinched back at the accusation in the voice aimed at her, “Actually, we didn’t do it! We were sort of.....not really ‘stalking’ Negi-sensei, but.....following him in secret and watching what he was doing.....and she just sort of.....blew a fuse, or something! Honest, we didn’t break her!”
“And just what might have caused THAT to happen? Did you see something bad? Bearing in mind that by ‘bad’ for Chachamaru, I mean ‘good’ for Evangeline,” Hakase muttered dryly, moving for the room Natsumi had emerged from.
“Y-You knew about the date!?” Natsumi made an ‘eep’ sound as she hopped aside out of Hakase’s way, then followed after her.
“Of course I knew about it. Little goes on that involves Chachamaru I don’t know about. I suppose I’d better check her for any file damage. I already have a rudimentary idea of what happened to her wiring, but there’s no predicting just how severe the memory loss is, at the moment.....”
As Hakase spoke, she flipped back the tip part of Chachamaru’s left ear, connecting a cable to it that ran to a monitor that had been behind Natsumi’s table. The monitor flicked to life, and Hakase stepped up to it, her fingers dancing across it masterfully as she tapped buttons and skimmed through data files.
“Well, it doesn’t look like anything was lost that she didn’t have backed up, so everything’s alright. She just had the equivalent of an aneurism,” The scientist nodded, her forehead gleaming in the light of the touchscreen.
Natsumi did a little golf clap, “So you can fix her, now?”
“No, not now. I have to.....wait.....what’s this?”
Hakase, in checking the recent files folder, stumbled onto a script of what Chachamaru had heard before shorting out.
Negi Springfield: “She’s coming back.”
Evangeline A.K. McDowell: “I know.....I know she is.....”
Negi Springfield: “You’ve had the dream, again.....”
Evangeline A.K. McDowell: “What do I do, now?”
“Oh my.....” Hakase mumbled, scrolling up to get all of the conversation. She skipped out on the lovey dovey crap, focusing mainly on the entire Mother ordeal, “Well that certainly does complicate things.....” She whispered, closing the folder.
“Wait, so you know about this person, too?” Natsumi asked in a whisper, her hand by her mouth to accentuate the fact that she was trying to be quiet, as thought it were a taboo topic, “Does she know MAGIC!?” She hissed the last word a bit louder, hardly able to contain herself.
“Well apparently you do. Yay for you, though you’ve chosen to find out at a bad time. Yes, the Mother knows how to use magic, but that’s hardly important. What IS important is that she’s coming back. How, I’m not quite sure, but certainly there can be differences in death for a demon than there would be for a human. It would be arrogant to think it impossible, unless as a demon she did not experience death, only a kind of temporary static period. I now am left to wonder how she will come back, where it will happen, and perhaps most importantly, when?”
Natsumi held up a hand, “Um, hey, did you say ‘demon’? I’m pretty sure I heard ‘demon’ in there.....”
Hakase nodded, “I did say demon.”
Natsumi lowered her hand, thinking, then raised it again, “You mean like.....a monster, ‘demon’?”
“Demon, an evil spirit or a devil. A basic definition, for a basic mind,” Hakase shrugged off Natsumi’s understandable fright and surprise, “The Mother is a demon from another dimension who causes people to have dreams, in which they are pursued by a voice and swallowed by darkness. The dream is a facet of her magic, which leaves an aura on the person, who then becomes a target. Her followers, a media named terrorist group known as the Angels, then go about their business killing those whom the Mother has targeted so that she can harvest their souls through a link established by the dream. She used the raw energy of the souls to become corporeal, to take on a physical form, so that she could become a permanent part of our world, rather than fade away. Shortly after this happened, however, Negi-sensei and Connor-sama were able to confront and kill her in her physical manifestation.”
Natsumi stared blankly at Hakase for a few seconds, then crawled back up onto her table and curled up into a ball on her side, where she lay in silence.
Hakase waved Natsumi’s behavior off like an unpleasant odor, though she admitted, “You took that rather well.”
Still curled up in a ball, Natsumi, who was familiar with the Angels and their exploits of terrorism from the news, asked several questions in tandem:
“Demons are real!? Other dimensions are real, too!? I HAD that dream a while ago! Does that mean those thugs on tv were after me, too!? Negi-sensei and Connor-sensei SAVED THE WORLD!? .....Connor-sama!?”
Hakase answered each question as quickly and bluntly as possible, “Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Leave it be.”
Natsumi accepted the succinct replies she was given, mulling things over for a few moments while Hakase continued to scan Chachamaru’s recent files for anything concerning the Mother’s return that she may have previously overlooked. After having thought about it, the freckled girl asked, “If she’s coming back, then doesn’t that mean we’ll have that dream again?”
Hakase nodded, but didn’t say anything.
“What if we just don’t sleep?”
“You won’t be able to go very long without sleep. A couple of days at the very most, so don’t think that’s the way out.”
“Is there a way out?”
Hakase shrugged, “Go to sleep, have the dream, confront the voice, and wake up.”
“You mean you actually let it catch you?” Natsumi shivered at the very thought.
“After you confront the voice and the Mother in the dream,” The scientist opened up a folder jam packed with picture of Negi, “You stop having the dream. You have the aura, still, but at least you can sleep after.”
“.....What was she like?”
Hakase stopped moving for a split second, then resumed her work, “She was.....nice. A bit of an idealist, but nice.” When Natsumi sent her the most confused look she may have ever gotten, the scientist went on, “Did I not tell you the point of all of this? Well, it doesn’t matter. You can leave Chachamaru here. I’ll tend to her after I finish my other project.”
Natsumi, in pure ditzy fashion, slipped off the edge of the table while she tried to get out of the fetal position, “Something’s taking precedence over Chachamaru? What kind of project are you doing for your friend?”
“Come on, dearest,” Masayoshi spoke for the first time since their arrival in the facility, “She doesn’t seem to be in much of a sharing mood, and it isn’t polite to pry.” Climbing off of his table, Masayoshi gave a little bow, then take Natsumi by the arm and called over his shoulder, “Good luck with your work.”
Hakase watched the two go, not entirely sad about it. There was work that had to be done, “Connor-sama.....you never told me about a comeback,” She muttered, leaving Chachamaru alone on the table.
“M-Masa-kun, how much of that did you hear?” Natsumi asked, stumbling along after her boyfriend, who seemed to be in a hurry to get back to the dorms.
“Well, dearest, there’s a fine line between nothing and everything, and I’m currently doing a little dance on the rather worrisome side of everything, so let’s have a bit less talking and a bit more walking. Or hey, even better, let’s jog!” Masayoshi was talking a lot faster than Natsumi was used to hearing, and at the end of his little spurt of words, she had to start running to keep up with him.
“Masa-kun, slow down!” She panted, “I c-can’t keep up with you!”
Masayoshi hopped back to wind up behind her, and he scooped her up in his arms, taking her with him at a speed there was no way she would have been able to match, “Not a problem, dearest, this suits me just fine!”
Natsumi clung to him for fear of him losing his tight grip and her falling while moving so fast. The buildings around them seemed to meld into one another as they sped by, a solid blur of a city that lost form around them. Before she had managed to catch her breath, she found herself outside of her room, still in Masayoshi’s arms. As the boy tried to set her down, her shaky legs hardly managed to support her, and she had to hold herself up against the wall beside her door.
“Wh-What was that all about, Masa-kun?” She asked, still wobbling.
Masayoshi shrugged, looking up at the ceiling, “What was what about? I simply wanted to get you home as fast as I could so you could stay up all night, gossiping with your friends and practicing parts for a play, and do whatever else sounds entertaining! Maybe you could go take a bath with that tall.....big girl! I could go get you a Playstation 2, how’s that sound? Hang on, I’ll be right back.....”
Masayoshi turned to leave, but Natsumi caught him by the shoulder, “Wait, what are you talking about, Masa-kun?”
Masayoshi looked over his shoulder, nodding, “Right, that stuff isn’t all that interesting. I’ll be back with some Playgirls in a couple of minutes!”
Now blushing at the thought of her boyfriend snagging her some pornographic material, Natsumi pressed the question, “What are you talking about? What’s wrong?”
Masayoshi spun around, stepping into her and wrapping his arms around her, letting her surprise keep his girlfriend quiet. She slipped her arms under his and lowered her cheek onto his shoulder, not sure what else she could do, “Please, please.....” Masayoshi whispered beside her ear, “Please promise me you won’t go to sleep, tonight.....”
Natsumi hugged him tighter, “You heard Hakase.....The most we could go without sleep is a couple of days.”
“A couple of days knowing you’ll be safe means more to me than you could possibly imagine. Promise me,” Masayoshi took enough of a step back out of the hug to look Natsumi in the eyes.
She felt her throat get sore when she saw the tears on Masayoshi’s face, “Oh.....You’re gonna make me cry, too.....” She admitted with a choked laugh, wiping his face dry with her sleeve, “On one condition.”
Masayoshi nodded, “Anything you want.”
“Stay here, tonight.”
“What about your roommates?”
Natsumi shrugged, “Who cares? Chizu-nee sleeps with Kotaro-kun all the time, and Ayaka will get over it. Deal?” The girl reached for her key.
“Lead the way, dearest.”
-
“I’m gonna break his skull in.....” Asuna fumed, her face an interesting shade of purple that suggested this time, she might actually do it. Her hands, which were balled up into white hot fists, were trembling a little bit on her lap.
“Asuna-kun, you shouldn’t be angry with him. If our situations were switched, I could easily see me doing the exact same thing. Besides, he hasn’t known for very long. He may just be waiting for the right moment to do it, or maybe to find out how to even do it at all,” Takamichi sympathized with his small friend.
“No,” Yue now broke in, “I agree with Asuna, this time. It was wrong for him not to tell us about this as soon as he found out. It was wrong of you, too, for that matter. We’re all in danger here, and being in the know would have helped to have us prepared.”
Takamichi looked at the clock on his wall. It read 11:54, which meant that it was about time to send these two off to bed, “Yue-kun, Asuna-kun, I believe we’ve covered everything that needed covering, for the night. Yue, I’m going to call Negi-kun and have him escort you home.”
“What about Asuna?” The philosopher wondered aloud.
Takamichi glanced at Asuna, then back at Yue, “I would like for Asuna to stay here, for the night. There are some things we should discuss. .....While we’re both still able. That is, of course, if you don’t mind, Asuna-kun?”
If there were a suitable adjective to use for incredibly prominent stammering, blushing, rambling, and head shaking, it would have been the perfect adjective for Asuna, right then.
Yue nodded, not displeased with how that went, “Alright, but an escort really isn’t necessary. The Angels don’t seem to have regrouped enough to make any sort of attack, especially not on me.”
“All the same,” Takamichi flipped his cell phone open, punching in Negi’s number.
-
Negi’s eyes turned to his pocket as his phone began to ring.
Evangeline, whose head was currently in his lap, asked quietly, “Do you have to get it?”
Negi glanced at the name on the phone. It was Takamichi. For him to be calling him at this hour likely meant it was relatively important. The clock on the corner of the phone read 11:56. What he was doing now, however, seemed more important.
“I see no need,” Negi said softly, turning his phone off. From atop Library Island, the two resumed star watching.
-
“He’s not answering.....” Takamichi mumbled, flipping his phone shut, “I suppose I could always take you back.”
Yue shook her head, moving for the door, “I won’t allow it. I came here by myself, and I’m going to go back by myself. Thank you for the talk and for the information,” She opened the door, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Asuna.”
Takamichi and Asuna watched the door close, then the man of the two muttered, “Such a hard, wide head she has.”
Yue started the walk back home, recalling what Takamichi had told them so that she could mull over any of the details she may have overlooked the first time. The discussion he had relayed to them played out in her mind a little something like this:
“So, you’re really leaving, then?” Takamichi asked the woman before him, one hand in his pocket, the other bearing a cigarette as he leaned against the wall out in the hall outside of the teacher’s lounge. Shizuna was carrying a box filled with the contents of her old desk, “You’ll be just as safe here at the school as anywhere else. Hell, probably a lot safer.”
“Keep it down, Takahata,” Shizuna hushed him as a cluster of children walked by, “I’m not leaving for my own safety. I’m leaving because it’s just too much for me to handle, right now.”
“In other words, you’re off to join them again, right?”
“No,” The woman replied, grabbing his cigarette and extinguishing it on the side of a trash bin before throwing it away. Both ignored the burn mark, “I’m not going to help them, but I’m certainly not going to get in their way, either. I want nothing to do with what happens. I can’t make a decision that I can live peacefully with.”
“So doing nothing and leaving it all up to fate is the right choice?”
“I didn’t say it was the right choice, but it’s a choice I can be satisfied with. That’s all that matters. Now if you’ll excuse me,” Shizuna turned to leave, pausing when Takamichi spoke up.
“At least tell me this.....Will she be coming back as a physical being, or will she need to perform the Withdrawal a second time, and collect more souls?”
Shizuna looked over her shoulder, “And what makes you think that I would know more than you?”
“Because you were one of them. You stayed with them, talked with them, met with her multiple times. You must have some clue. Anything you could tell me.....would redeem you for abandoning us, now, after we gave you a second chance.”
That stung. Maybe it was because it was true, maybe it was because it was coming from him, maybe it was because she wanted to pick a side. Whatever it was, it poked a hole through her resolution.
Turning her head back around so that all she had offered to Death Specs was her back, the woman confided, “The Mother won’t be coming back as a corporeal being at first, no. Once she is reborn, she will merge with the host body, and take control after consuming the holy vessel’s soul, and become perfect.”
Takamichi glared holes in the back of Shizuna’s head, “So the entire point of her becoming physical was so that she could be killed, and be reborn into this other person?”
“Jesus Christ was made physical so that he could die and be reborn to redeem the world, much like our Mother.”
“This is no second coming of anything, so don’t get all preachy to me.....”
“I thought you wanted me to talk?”
“So who is the eventual host body?” Takamichi jumped back on the path of questions, as he was liable to lose Shizuna at any moment, “Where is it?”
“I’ll not say,” The woman shook her head, “But.....” A few seconds passed as she gave Takamichi a helpful hint, “She has been marked since before she was born, and is only just becoming ready to contain our savior.”
“Is there some sort of tell? Something that happens to them beforehand so that we can catch it, and quarantine them? Try and contain her before she causes any damage?” Takamichi assumed there was nothing they could do to save the vessel, and instead was focusing on damage control.
“A prerequisite? You mean something magical like falling in love? Ha, ha, wouldn’t that be nice?” Shizuna couldn’t help but grin.
“Is there anything to watch for?” Takamichi asked again.
“You’ll not know who the holy vessel is until it is too late. She will then realize her full potential, and our savior will be reborn as a harbinger of change, a power unrivaled in our world. She will be perfect.”
Takamichi frowned, waving Shizuna off, “Take your idealism and get out of here.”
Shizuna, without a word, marched on down the hall and disappeared around the corner.
Shizuna had been rather helpful, whether it be through guilt or whatever else. She had told them that the vessel would be a girl, and that it was only just becoming ready to contain the Mother. That might mean that it was a coming of age thing, which could easily make the girl near Yue’s age. She shivered at the thought. How she had laughed at the thought of love being a prerequisite wasn’t funny, either. What if that in itself was a hint? Yue groaned as she opened up her door, ready to go back to bed, dream or not.
-
Natsumi glanced at her clock, which was flashing her a 12:00. She was currently in her bed, her back to Masayoshi’s chest as the two sat up together against the wall. His arms around her stomach as they sat together in amiable silence, he occasionally lowered his lips to the top of her head in a gentle kiss, as if to check and see if she were still awake without actually speaking. He could tell because she would smile and her breathing would quicken just a little bit.
‘So this is what love feels like.....’ She thought slowly, bringing a hand up to his and giving it a squeeze, ‘It’s nice.....’
-----Author’s other note: If I forgot anything, may damnation fall upon my head in the form of viruses and popup ads. .....Only not. Anyway, Clyde Metro is property of Midnight Sleeper, and I used him here with the permission that everyone throws around in the Train Station like single bills at a strip club. Thanks for reading and reviewing, considering the story had been dead for so long.....-----
It was an interesting position to be in, to say the least. We’re not talking about ‘Negi Springfield with -Insert ANY girl’s name, here- on top of him’ interesting, we’re talking about ‘girlfriend just found out about my magic’ interesting. What Masayoshi did next could very well decide her future, and more than likely his very own. He was aware of this, and thus was doing his best to clearly think it through and make a rational decision. Of course, being able to hear himself think might have helped.
“OH MY GOD! Magic is real!? Negi-sensei knows about it, and Evangeline can DO it!? YOU CAN DO IT!? Why didn’t you tell me? How long have you been able to do it? How did you float Chachamaru back up, so easy? Why did you draw on the tile? Is your hand ok? Is Chachamaru ok? Who’s the Mother!? Who else knows about magic? Can I do magic!? I hope I can, don’t you hope? Can Zazie do magic? I’ve seen her do tricks before but I didn’t think they were real! Can Setsuna do magic? She carries a sword, so maybe she knows about that kind of stuff, too! Will you show me some of your magic? Can you make yourself invisible? That would be so cool, wouldn’t it Masa-kun? Haven’t you ever had moments where you just wish you could disappear?”
The preceding hunk of words came from Natsumi’s mouth rather quickly. Masayoshi believed that those were the first two seconds of her questions, which went on from the time they left Library Island to the time they arrived at Hakase’s lab; About twenty minutes. The boy, naturally, did his best to answer the questions, which are as follow:
“Yes, dear. He can do it, too, sweetheart. Surely I can, my love. It’s supposed to be a secret, pumpkin. Quite a long while, my little flower. It was simple magic, darling. I need circles to use my magic, cuddle bunny. Yes, honey. I hope so, muffin. Don’t have a clue, precious. Not really sure, sugar plum. Maybe.....I suppose if you’d like to, buttercup. Um, who? Don’t know a Setsuna, either, honey bee. Er, perhaps later, sweety. I could for a brief time, jelly bean. It has it’s perks, kitten. Having one right now, dearest.....”
Was it so unreasonable to assume she needed to breathe, and would thus eventually black out from lack of oxygen? Or would at least pause long enough to suck in some air and he could think for a moment? Well, apparently it was, because he never did get that moment. He hadn’t gotten further in his thought process than a severe burn victim past first base by the time they were ringing for entry into the robotics club. By being honest with her about the whole thing, though, he made the decision without getting to mull the revelation over.
As they stood there, ringing the doorbell over and over again and waiting patiently for a response, Masayoshi realized something. Not only had he just carried a freaking android for a twenty minute trek across unforgiving cement (His feet would never be the same), but he had also handled a girl, who was very close to him, discover magic and assault him with enough questions to start her own game show. And he had done it without blowing anyone’s head off. His own, included. As he rang the bell for the eighth time, he was proud of himself.
“Suppose she isn’t here?” The boy looked to the girl on his left, using his free hand to poke his glasses back up the bridge of his nose.
“No, she’s in there. Hakase sleeps in the lab, I think, so she’s probably just ignoring us. No way she’s asleep yet, either,” Natsumi checked her watch, “It’s only 10:58! She’s still doing stuff, at this hour, for sure.”
“Well then, how do we get her to.....” Masayoshi tried to shift the heavy robot from his now sore right shoulder to his left one, losing his balance in the process. He quickly found himself in a pile on the ground before the steel doors, crushed under the busted Chachamaru.
“Hm, good question, Masa-kun.....” Natsumi put her chin in her hand as she thought about how to draw her classmate out. Masayoshi’s predicament right next to her going unnoticed. She snapped her fingers, “Oh! I’ve got it! Masa-kun,” She called loudly, not looking at her flattened boyfriend, “I conceived immaculately, last night!”
As Masayoshi’s nose spouted forth copious amounts of blood at the simple thought of an otherworldly experience so fantastic that it shook his love Natsumi’s world into pregnancy without actually doing the nasty, the door to the complex flew open. Hakase popped out and explained rather loudly how that was utterly impossible, and that she would run numerous tests on Natsumi to prove it. Natsumi stood there, a little surprised, though she had expected her words to draw the scientist out.
Once done ranting in a stunningly stereotypical mad scientist manner, Hakase looked down to find Chachamaru sprawled out rather suggestively on top of Natsumi’s boyfriend, whose name escaped her, at the moment. It didn’t help her observations that the boy was bleeding profusely from his nose in an almost comical fashion, and his efforts to get out from beneath her were little to none. Very lost in her own thoughts, Hakase mutters, “I haven’t given you the upgrade that lets you do that, yet.....”
The freckled performer looks down for the first time at her squashed boyfriend, seeing the blood all over the place and him under heavy machinery/an unconscious classmate, “MASA-KUN’S DEAD!” She shrieked, her eyes then quickly rolled up in the back of her head, and she blacked out.
-
‘Come here.....’
“No! You can’t be here!”
‘I am everywhere.....’
“S-Stay away from me!”
Yue Ayase, plummeting so much as sprinting, continued to dash through the maelstrom of shadows and haze as fast as she could. There was no way this could be happening! It was impossible, it was supposed to be finished! But.....But wasn’t it happening, anyway? Her normally collected and polished mind scattered under the waves of panic as the ground itself turned into an enemy, the twisting darkness latching onto her, tripping her.
As she fell forward onto her stomach, the moist ground trying to envelope her with serpent-like arms of shadow, the voice called out, ‘You are a dirty stain on the canvas that is the world. You must be removed.....’
Tearing desperately at the formless enmity surrounding her, the voice drawing closer with every fractured second that seemed unending, Yue realized that there wasn’t a way out. She knew at a conscious level that there was no way she could escape something that was everywhere all at the same time, but still her body continued to try and free itself in vain. Every word spoken by the chilling voice echoed through her very being, dashing her strength and collapsing her will.
‘I’ve found you.....’ It jeered, now as though it were inside her very head.
Screaming in thoughtless terror as she ripped at the swirling miasma, Yue slowly vanished into the sea of darkness.
Nodoka’s heart practically gave out when, at 11:04 PM, Yue started screaming at the top of her lungs, thrashing around in her bed as though her very life depended on it. Matsuro, her cradle beside Nodoka, began to wail loudly at the intrusion upon her sleep, and Haruna rolled out of her bed, screaming, “RAPE!”
The quietest of the trio hopped from her bed, rushing to her distressed friend, “Yue! Yue, wake up! You’re having a nightmare!” Nodoka called loudly, catching the sleeping girl by the shoulders and steadying her.
“.....No rape?” Haruna asked, heaving a sigh of relief as she slid her sketch pad back under the bed.
Yue’s eyes flew open, tears leaking down her cheeks and onto her hair as a result. Nodoka barely recognized the girl’s eyes as they darted around in the dark, filled with horror and panic. The leaky eyes landed on her own after a few seconds, and the small girl lunged up, throwing her arms around Nodoka and clinging to her as though her life depended on it, trembling violently.
Haruna watched in quiet wonder as the two sat on Yue’s bed, holding each other. The tears continued to fall from Yue’s wide eyes, though she wasn’t crying. Her breath was drawn in rapid, shaky rasps through her nose, her lips pursed in a displeased grimace. Or maybe that was what she always looked like, it just seemed more significant, right now, Haruna wasn’t sure. The only other noise in the room was Matsuro’s crying, which no one was ready to address, just yet.
After a long few moments of this, Nodoka asked beside Yue’s ear, still holding on, “What was it?”
Haruna wanted to know, too, because nothing should set Yue off like that. Nothing. She held her breath as Yue’s lips parted enough for her to mutter a sentence.
“I remembered that Mershon’s Bookstore is having a clearance blowout until midnight!” Yue scooted back, snatching her alarm clock from her bedside stand, “It’s only 11:06! There’s still time if I run! I’ll be back soon!”
And with those words, Yue leapt from the bed and, still in her nighty, flew from the dorm as though it were about to fill with the plague. Nodoka watched in wonder as Haruna started to bang her head against the wall, saddened that the reason for such an outburst wasn’t because of, say, Negi, but instead a sale.
It was about this time that Nodoka realized Matsuro had lapsed into total psycho freak out crying mode, which meant it was going to be next to impossible to console her. She looked to Haruna in a dramatic fashion, “Haruna! Emergency tactic number seventeen!”
In under two seconds Haruna had retrieved her sketch pad and whipped up a drawing to help solve their problems: Whip up a stunningly chiseled and magnificently gorgeous naked teen for them to ogle!
Nodoka’s eyes quickly wandered south of the border, then blood spewed forth from her nose as she fell backwards, covering her eyes, “I said emergency tactic number SEVENTEEN!”
“That one isn’t summon Clyde, then?” Haruna grinned stupidly, using her finger to wipe back the little bit of red on her upper lip.
The blonde teen looked around, confused, then looked down, realization dawning, “Ladies, how many times are we gonna do this? I got my own thing to do.....”
“Only as many times as you look like that.....” Haruna drooled.
Matsuro laughed.
-
Yue darted from wide pool of light to wide pool of light as she dashed through the night, the streetlights above almost a bastion of hope that kept the shadows at bay. She caught herself half expecting the ground to turn against her when she was outside of the streetlight’s welcome glow, and found that her steps inside the circles of light were just a bit slower, anything to keep her in the light a little longer.
Her jog wasn’t an unbearably long one; She reached her destination in about fifteen minutes. As she stopped in the glorious luminescence of the streetlight across the street from her destination, Yue was practically scared to death when a hand fell on her shoulder
Asuna pulled her hand back sharply when her diminutive friend yelped, and wobbled forward a couple of steps as though she were a dying old lady, “Yue! A-Are you ok?”
Recognizing her friend’s voice, baka black spun around, “You shouldn’t sneak up on people like that!”
“Who’s sneaking?” Asuna replied, “Me, or the girl in a nighty out for a midnight jog?”
“.....There’s a book sale.....”
“Ha, right! And I’m just out for a leisurely cartwheeling session!” Baka red performed a cartwheel, winding up beside her friend, “So what are you doing in this neck of the woods? .....City?”
Yue looked up at Asuna, then over to her destination, “I could ask you the same thing.....”
“Wh-What?” Asuna turned a little red, “It’s not like I’m doing anything WEIRD, or anything.....”
“Then why aren’t you back at the dorms?”
“W-Well, Negi’s not back yet, and I don’t know where Chachamaru went. Konoka is still in Kyoto with her dad, so I’d be all by myself, and all.....”
Yue motioned to the home before them both, “And would you rather sleep here, then?”
Asuna nodded slowly, then snapped out of her reverie and shook her head fiercely, “N-NO! That’s not it! I’m just.....getting an early start on my deliveries.....” She glanced at her watch, “.....At 11:25 at night.....”
“One day, you’ll find the courage to talk to him about it, again,” Yue reassured her friend, whom she wondered how long had been standing outside of the house. She then crossed the street and walked up the short walkway to the door, Asuna shortly behind.
“Um, wh-what are we doing? You’re not gonna tell on me, are you!? He’ll think I’m a stalker!”
Yue knocked on the door, “No, that’s not why I’m here. It’s actually probably a good thing that you’re here, Asuna.”
Takamichi opened up his door, looking from Asuna to Yue, then frowning a little, “You’ve had it, too?”
“Can we talk?” Yue asked, guessing from the static glow of the television in the house that Death Specs wasn’t planning on bed anytime soon, anyway.
-
Natsumi shot up, looking from her left to her right, confused, sore, and somewhat disoriented. It was dark, save for the occasional flicker of light from the adjacent room. In these brief spurts of light the freckled middle schooler found that she was lying on what appeared to be a steel operating table, as she was surrounded by bits and pieces of various android parts. She squeaked when she found a cybernetic eye on the table, apparently gazing at her. After having successfully slapped the eye across the room, she examined the dim room in search of Masayoshi, Chachamaru, and Hakase. It didn’t take much effort to find Masayoshi, who was only a few feet away from her, on his own operating table. Chachamaru was on the other side of him in their row of tables, still very much unconscious, as was the boy.
Relieved to see him breathing at a normal, not dead, rate, Natsumi slowly crawled off of her table, and looked in the direction of the room with the flickering light. The light was accompanied by a low hissing sound, a drill of some sort, perhaps? Maybe a torch? She edged towards the room, breathing low as if she might disturb some sort of holy power if she were any louder. As quiet as a dead church mouse, Natsumi poked her head into the new room to find the back of Hakase, hunched over a table and surrounded by enough metal to bang your head to. Feeling a tad more secure at the discovery of the light (It was, indeed, a blowtorch) and her friend, Natsumi made her presence known once the flame was silenced, “Hakase, hey!”
The scientist whipped her head around so fast that her mask flipped up over her head, “Natsumi! How long have you been there?” She asked, flinging a tarp over the table and its contents.
The performer raised her eyebrow as she saw what appeared to be a human hand hanging over the table’s edge, but dismissed it as yet another android bit, “A few seconds, is all. What are you working on?”
“I don’t really see how that concerns you at all,” Hakase admitted bluntly, making sure the torch was safely turned off and then removing her mask completely.
“Just curious.....”
Hakase shrugged, “Just a project for a friend, no big deal. Anyway, what did you and loverboy do to my precious Chachamaru, huh?”
Natsumi flinched back at the accusation in the voice aimed at her, “Actually, we didn’t do it! We were sort of.....not really ‘stalking’ Negi-sensei, but.....following him in secret and watching what he was doing.....and she just sort of.....blew a fuse, or something! Honest, we didn’t break her!”
“And just what might have caused THAT to happen? Did you see something bad? Bearing in mind that by ‘bad’ for Chachamaru, I mean ‘good’ for Evangeline,” Hakase muttered dryly, moving for the room Natsumi had emerged from.
“Y-You knew about the date!?” Natsumi made an ‘eep’ sound as she hopped aside out of Hakase’s way, then followed after her.
“Of course I knew about it. Little goes on that involves Chachamaru I don’t know about. I suppose I’d better check her for any file damage. I already have a rudimentary idea of what happened to her wiring, but there’s no predicting just how severe the memory loss is, at the moment.....”
As Hakase spoke, she flipped back the tip part of Chachamaru’s left ear, connecting a cable to it that ran to a monitor that had been behind Natsumi’s table. The monitor flicked to life, and Hakase stepped up to it, her fingers dancing across it masterfully as she tapped buttons and skimmed through data files.
“Well, it doesn’t look like anything was lost that she didn’t have backed up, so everything’s alright. She just had the equivalent of an aneurism,” The scientist nodded, her forehead gleaming in the light of the touchscreen.
Natsumi did a little golf clap, “So you can fix her, now?”
“No, not now. I have to.....wait.....what’s this?”
Hakase, in checking the recent files folder, stumbled onto a script of what Chachamaru had heard before shorting out.
Negi Springfield: “She’s coming back.”
Evangeline A.K. McDowell: “I know.....I know she is.....”
Negi Springfield: “You’ve had the dream, again.....”
Evangeline A.K. McDowell: “What do I do, now?”
“Oh my.....” Hakase mumbled, scrolling up to get all of the conversation. She skipped out on the lovey dovey crap, focusing mainly on the entire Mother ordeal, “Well that certainly does complicate things.....” She whispered, closing the folder.
“Wait, so you know about this person, too?” Natsumi asked in a whisper, her hand by her mouth to accentuate the fact that she was trying to be quiet, as thought it were a taboo topic, “Does she know MAGIC!?” She hissed the last word a bit louder, hardly able to contain herself.
“Well apparently you do. Yay for you, though you’ve chosen to find out at a bad time. Yes, the Mother knows how to use magic, but that’s hardly important. What IS important is that she’s coming back. How, I’m not quite sure, but certainly there can be differences in death for a demon than there would be for a human. It would be arrogant to think it impossible, unless as a demon she did not experience death, only a kind of temporary static period. I now am left to wonder how she will come back, where it will happen, and perhaps most importantly, when?”
Natsumi held up a hand, “Um, hey, did you say ‘demon’? I’m pretty sure I heard ‘demon’ in there.....”
Hakase nodded, “I did say demon.”
Natsumi lowered her hand, thinking, then raised it again, “You mean like.....a monster, ‘demon’?”
“Demon, an evil spirit or a devil. A basic definition, for a basic mind,” Hakase shrugged off Natsumi’s understandable fright and surprise, “The Mother is a demon from another dimension who causes people to have dreams, in which they are pursued by a voice and swallowed by darkness. The dream is a facet of her magic, which leaves an aura on the person, who then becomes a target. Her followers, a media named terrorist group known as the Angels, then go about their business killing those whom the Mother has targeted so that she can harvest their souls through a link established by the dream. She used the raw energy of the souls to become corporeal, to take on a physical form, so that she could become a permanent part of our world, rather than fade away. Shortly after this happened, however, Negi-sensei and Connor-sama were able to confront and kill her in her physical manifestation.”
Natsumi stared blankly at Hakase for a few seconds, then crawled back up onto her table and curled up into a ball on her side, where she lay in silence.
Hakase waved Natsumi’s behavior off like an unpleasant odor, though she admitted, “You took that rather well.”
Still curled up in a ball, Natsumi, who was familiar with the Angels and their exploits of terrorism from the news, asked several questions in tandem:
“Demons are real!? Other dimensions are real, too!? I HAD that dream a while ago! Does that mean those thugs on tv were after me, too!? Negi-sensei and Connor-sensei SAVED THE WORLD!? .....Connor-sama!?”
Hakase answered each question as quickly and bluntly as possible, “Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Leave it be.”
Natsumi accepted the succinct replies she was given, mulling things over for a few moments while Hakase continued to scan Chachamaru’s recent files for anything concerning the Mother’s return that she may have previously overlooked. After having thought about it, the freckled girl asked, “If she’s coming back, then doesn’t that mean we’ll have that dream again?”
Hakase nodded, but didn’t say anything.
“What if we just don’t sleep?”
“You won’t be able to go very long without sleep. A couple of days at the very most, so don’t think that’s the way out.”
“Is there a way out?”
Hakase shrugged, “Go to sleep, have the dream, confront the voice, and wake up.”
“You mean you actually let it catch you?” Natsumi shivered at the very thought.
“After you confront the voice and the Mother in the dream,” The scientist opened up a folder jam packed with picture of Negi, “You stop having the dream. You have the aura, still, but at least you can sleep after.”
“.....What was she like?”
Hakase stopped moving for a split second, then resumed her work, “She was.....nice. A bit of an idealist, but nice.” When Natsumi sent her the most confused look she may have ever gotten, the scientist went on, “Did I not tell you the point of all of this? Well, it doesn’t matter. You can leave Chachamaru here. I’ll tend to her after I finish my other project.”
Natsumi, in pure ditzy fashion, slipped off the edge of the table while she tried to get out of the fetal position, “Something’s taking precedence over Chachamaru? What kind of project are you doing for your friend?”
“Come on, dearest,” Masayoshi spoke for the first time since their arrival in the facility, “She doesn’t seem to be in much of a sharing mood, and it isn’t polite to pry.” Climbing off of his table, Masayoshi gave a little bow, then take Natsumi by the arm and called over his shoulder, “Good luck with your work.”
Hakase watched the two go, not entirely sad about it. There was work that had to be done, “Connor-sama.....you never told me about a comeback,” She muttered, leaving Chachamaru alone on the table.
“M-Masa-kun, how much of that did you hear?” Natsumi asked, stumbling along after her boyfriend, who seemed to be in a hurry to get back to the dorms.
“Well, dearest, there’s a fine line between nothing and everything, and I’m currently doing a little dance on the rather worrisome side of everything, so let’s have a bit less talking and a bit more walking. Or hey, even better, let’s jog!” Masayoshi was talking a lot faster than Natsumi was used to hearing, and at the end of his little spurt of words, she had to start running to keep up with him.
“Masa-kun, slow down!” She panted, “I c-can’t keep up with you!”
Masayoshi hopped back to wind up behind her, and he scooped her up in his arms, taking her with him at a speed there was no way she would have been able to match, “Not a problem, dearest, this suits me just fine!”
Natsumi clung to him for fear of him losing his tight grip and her falling while moving so fast. The buildings around them seemed to meld into one another as they sped by, a solid blur of a city that lost form around them. Before she had managed to catch her breath, she found herself outside of her room, still in Masayoshi’s arms. As the boy tried to set her down, her shaky legs hardly managed to support her, and she had to hold herself up against the wall beside her door.
“Wh-What was that all about, Masa-kun?” She asked, still wobbling.
Masayoshi shrugged, looking up at the ceiling, “What was what about? I simply wanted to get you home as fast as I could so you could stay up all night, gossiping with your friends and practicing parts for a play, and do whatever else sounds entertaining! Maybe you could go take a bath with that tall.....big girl! I could go get you a Playstation 2, how’s that sound? Hang on, I’ll be right back.....”
Masayoshi turned to leave, but Natsumi caught him by the shoulder, “Wait, what are you talking about, Masa-kun?”
Masayoshi looked over his shoulder, nodding, “Right, that stuff isn’t all that interesting. I’ll be back with some Playgirls in a couple of minutes!”
Now blushing at the thought of her boyfriend snagging her some pornographic material, Natsumi pressed the question, “What are you talking about? What’s wrong?”
Masayoshi spun around, stepping into her and wrapping his arms around her, letting her surprise keep his girlfriend quiet. She slipped her arms under his and lowered her cheek onto his shoulder, not sure what else she could do, “Please, please.....” Masayoshi whispered beside her ear, “Please promise me you won’t go to sleep, tonight.....”
Natsumi hugged him tighter, “You heard Hakase.....The most we could go without sleep is a couple of days.”
“A couple of days knowing you’ll be safe means more to me than you could possibly imagine. Promise me,” Masayoshi took enough of a step back out of the hug to look Natsumi in the eyes.
She felt her throat get sore when she saw the tears on Masayoshi’s face, “Oh.....You’re gonna make me cry, too.....” She admitted with a choked laugh, wiping his face dry with her sleeve, “On one condition.”
Masayoshi nodded, “Anything you want.”
“Stay here, tonight.”
“What about your roommates?”
Natsumi shrugged, “Who cares? Chizu-nee sleeps with Kotaro-kun all the time, and Ayaka will get over it. Deal?” The girl reached for her key.
“Lead the way, dearest.”
-
“I’m gonna break his skull in.....” Asuna fumed, her face an interesting shade of purple that suggested this time, she might actually do it. Her hands, which were balled up into white hot fists, were trembling a little bit on her lap.
“Asuna-kun, you shouldn’t be angry with him. If our situations were switched, I could easily see me doing the exact same thing. Besides, he hasn’t known for very long. He may just be waiting for the right moment to do it, or maybe to find out how to even do it at all,” Takamichi sympathized with his small friend.
“No,” Yue now broke in, “I agree with Asuna, this time. It was wrong for him not to tell us about this as soon as he found out. It was wrong of you, too, for that matter. We’re all in danger here, and being in the know would have helped to have us prepared.”
Takamichi looked at the clock on his wall. It read 11:54, which meant that it was about time to send these two off to bed, “Yue-kun, Asuna-kun, I believe we’ve covered everything that needed covering, for the night. Yue, I’m going to call Negi-kun and have him escort you home.”
“What about Asuna?” The philosopher wondered aloud.
Takamichi glanced at Asuna, then back at Yue, “I would like for Asuna to stay here, for the night. There are some things we should discuss. .....While we’re both still able. That is, of course, if you don’t mind, Asuna-kun?”
If there were a suitable adjective to use for incredibly prominent stammering, blushing, rambling, and head shaking, it would have been the perfect adjective for Asuna, right then.
Yue nodded, not displeased with how that went, “Alright, but an escort really isn’t necessary. The Angels don’t seem to have regrouped enough to make any sort of attack, especially not on me.”
“All the same,” Takamichi flipped his cell phone open, punching in Negi’s number.
-
Negi’s eyes turned to his pocket as his phone began to ring.
Evangeline, whose head was currently in his lap, asked quietly, “Do you have to get it?”
Negi glanced at the name on the phone. It was Takamichi. For him to be calling him at this hour likely meant it was relatively important. The clock on the corner of the phone read 11:56. What he was doing now, however, seemed more important.
“I see no need,” Negi said softly, turning his phone off. From atop Library Island, the two resumed star watching.
-
“He’s not answering.....” Takamichi mumbled, flipping his phone shut, “I suppose I could always take you back.”
Yue shook her head, moving for the door, “I won’t allow it. I came here by myself, and I’m going to go back by myself. Thank you for the talk and for the information,” She opened the door, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Asuna.”
Takamichi and Asuna watched the door close, then the man of the two muttered, “Such a hard, wide head she has.”
Yue started the walk back home, recalling what Takamichi had told them so that she could mull over any of the details she may have overlooked the first time. The discussion he had relayed to them played out in her mind a little something like this:
“So, you’re really leaving, then?” Takamichi asked the woman before him, one hand in his pocket, the other bearing a cigarette as he leaned against the wall out in the hall outside of the teacher’s lounge. Shizuna was carrying a box filled with the contents of her old desk, “You’ll be just as safe here at the school as anywhere else. Hell, probably a lot safer.”
“Keep it down, Takahata,” Shizuna hushed him as a cluster of children walked by, “I’m not leaving for my own safety. I’m leaving because it’s just too much for me to handle, right now.”
“In other words, you’re off to join them again, right?”
“No,” The woman replied, grabbing his cigarette and extinguishing it on the side of a trash bin before throwing it away. Both ignored the burn mark, “I’m not going to help them, but I’m certainly not going to get in their way, either. I want nothing to do with what happens. I can’t make a decision that I can live peacefully with.”
“So doing nothing and leaving it all up to fate is the right choice?”
“I didn’t say it was the right choice, but it’s a choice I can be satisfied with. That’s all that matters. Now if you’ll excuse me,” Shizuna turned to leave, pausing when Takamichi spoke up.
“At least tell me this.....Will she be coming back as a physical being, or will she need to perform the Withdrawal a second time, and collect more souls?”
Shizuna looked over her shoulder, “And what makes you think that I would know more than you?”
“Because you were one of them. You stayed with them, talked with them, met with her multiple times. You must have some clue. Anything you could tell me.....would redeem you for abandoning us, now, after we gave you a second chance.”
That stung. Maybe it was because it was true, maybe it was because it was coming from him, maybe it was because she wanted to pick a side. Whatever it was, it poked a hole through her resolution.
Turning her head back around so that all she had offered to Death Specs was her back, the woman confided, “The Mother won’t be coming back as a corporeal being at first, no. Once she is reborn, she will merge with the host body, and take control after consuming the holy vessel’s soul, and become perfect.”
Takamichi glared holes in the back of Shizuna’s head, “So the entire point of her becoming physical was so that she could be killed, and be reborn into this other person?”
“Jesus Christ was made physical so that he could die and be reborn to redeem the world, much like our Mother.”
“This is no second coming of anything, so don’t get all preachy to me.....”
“I thought you wanted me to talk?”
“So who is the eventual host body?” Takamichi jumped back on the path of questions, as he was liable to lose Shizuna at any moment, “Where is it?”
“I’ll not say,” The woman shook her head, “But.....” A few seconds passed as she gave Takamichi a helpful hint, “She has been marked since before she was born, and is only just becoming ready to contain our savior.”
“Is there some sort of tell? Something that happens to them beforehand so that we can catch it, and quarantine them? Try and contain her before she causes any damage?” Takamichi assumed there was nothing they could do to save the vessel, and instead was focusing on damage control.
“A prerequisite? You mean something magical like falling in love? Ha, ha, wouldn’t that be nice?” Shizuna couldn’t help but grin.
“Is there anything to watch for?” Takamichi asked again.
“You’ll not know who the holy vessel is until it is too late. She will then realize her full potential, and our savior will be reborn as a harbinger of change, a power unrivaled in our world. She will be perfect.”
Takamichi frowned, waving Shizuna off, “Take your idealism and get out of here.”
Shizuna, without a word, marched on down the hall and disappeared around the corner.
Shizuna had been rather helpful, whether it be through guilt or whatever else. She had told them that the vessel would be a girl, and that it was only just becoming ready to contain the Mother. That might mean that it was a coming of age thing, which could easily make the girl near Yue’s age. She shivered at the thought. How she had laughed at the thought of love being a prerequisite wasn’t funny, either. What if that in itself was a hint? Yue groaned as she opened up her door, ready to go back to bed, dream or not.
-
Natsumi glanced at her clock, which was flashing her a 12:00. She was currently in her bed, her back to Masayoshi’s chest as the two sat up together against the wall. His arms around her stomach as they sat together in amiable silence, he occasionally lowered his lips to the top of her head in a gentle kiss, as if to check and see if she were still awake without actually speaking. He could tell because she would smile and her breathing would quicken just a little bit.
‘So this is what love feels like.....’ She thought slowly, bringing a hand up to his and giving it a squeeze, ‘It’s nice.....’
-----Author’s other note: If I forgot anything, may damnation fall upon my head in the form of viruses and popup ads. .....Only not. Anyway, Clyde Metro is property of Midnight Sleeper, and I used him here with the permission that everyone throws around in the Train Station like single bills at a strip club. Thanks for reading and reviewing, considering the story had been dead for so long.....-----