Disclaimer: I do NOT own Mahou Sensei Negima! Or any of the characters or concepts contained therein! If I did, then let me tell you, that Setsuna and Konoka would have actually hooked up somewhere in the middle of it, Setsuna would have dueled Eishun as well as Konoemon to earn their respect as she asks for her hand in marriage and-

WHAP!

Ahem! I am only doing this because my mind is a scary place and forces me to! I make absolutely NO money off of this! (Sad kitten is me!)
Onwards with the fanfiction! *Sizable bump forms*


Chapter 1: What do you mean you're like me!?

Things weren't supposed to turn out like this.

They were supposed to go on a little trip. Like a school trip. Yeah. Everyone knows what those are like, right?
You go around in one big group taking in some local sights, breaking up into smaller groups to explore on your own for a
few hours before meeting up again and going to a hotel to sleep. Days filled with early risings, boring local history lessons
coupled with some crap assignment made up on the spot just to make sure you didn't end up having too much fun, coupled
with a few hours of freedom before curfew. And then you'd catch a ride back home at an ungodly hour and be back in your
own house and bed again by the next nightfall.
Yeah, Nice and simple. That's what they were supposed to experience.

So why in all the Hells' name did they end up getting tangled up in all THAT!? Running through jungles, fighting for their lives
against frickin' magical beasts that seemed to have come directly out of the imagination of a deranged hentai artist (She still got
the heeby-jeebies when she so much as looked at anything with tentacles), having their teacher (who was TEN by the way!),
plunge himself into a kind of darkness that surely only existed in fantasy novels (She still wasn't sure she had forgiven him for
making her babysit him for DAYS while he struggled for his very soul, with that infernal thing of a man as her only source of company!
And then he'd had the gall to wake up at the last friggin' second, like he'd made an appointment!), topped off with intercepting
a plot to destroy the entire magical world that was so insane and nonsensical it would have to work (Destroying a planet, not
just a room or a building but a PLANET, with what amounted to a magical stick? Wielding it to cast flashy spells and such, sure.
But… Damn! There's a limit even to a fantasy… Seriously!), led by an evil organization whose only opposition was… A bunch of kids
who were very much still in school and who weren't even legally allowed to drink yet! As if all that wasn't enough, the topping
was finished off with the mother of all "Last Boss" rushes in a climax so cliché it was crap-quality fanfiction worthy!

Hasegawa Chisame. A girl who cherished normality and detested tales of fantasy and idiotic behavior. Who only wanted to
be an onlooker, never a looker. A reviewer, never an actress. Pulled into a string of events that ended up deciding the fate
of an entire world.

Once this all really truly dawned on her, Chisame had quite literally sought out the hardest-looking wall in her vicinity and
banged her head against it in an attempt to drive the idiocy of reality out of it. A smart and down-to-earth girl driven
to stupidity…by stupidity!

But in the end… After everything was said and done… It was actually okay. She actually felt rather fine. Crazy hijinks, insane
but real world-destroying villains aside, she felt fine. Something she realized with no small amount of surprise.

Throughout their journey, everything had changed.

She, had changed.

However, despite her actually turning out alright in the end, she still felt uneasy, several years after their adventure, when she thought back on a specific point during the chaos in Mundus Magicus. Uneasy and… Immensely comforted.


At some point, the way everything seemed to move between 'Everything's quite alright' (Like the first few moments after having
stepped through the gate), 'Crap in a basket!' (When Fate and his crew turned up at the gate), 'Smoke 'em if you got 'em, people!'
(When Fate quite literally gate-crashed their party, or when Negi almost succumbed to the darkness of Evangeline's scroll) and
'Fuck me, we're all going to Hell!' (Every damn time she thought they were going to die… Which had been OFTEN!), something
snapped inside her. Something broke. It wasn't so much the fantasy-like nature of it all, but rather the reality of it, that finally
caught up with the hacker and engulfed her.

Separating herself from the rest of "Negi's band of merry misfits" as Rakan had so lovingly christened them, Chisame had
slipped away to somewhere a bit more isolated.
As the noise and occasional shouted curse followed by an explosion of some description and cheerful laughter gradually faded
to a low murmur a distance behind her, Chisame stumbled into the ruin of a small tower, barely taller than herself now.
Coming to a stop near the edge, she stood there for a while. Eyes trained on the vast landscape and nothing at all at
the same time.

Slowly… The tears began to fall.

Leaning against a stone square, the redhead sank down to sitting, hand clasped over her mouth to try and quell the sounds
it kept making, her eyes already spilling water.

It was stupid. Feeling like this.
The gang had more or less come back together, and everything looked to have returned to the 'Everything's quite alright' setting.

Yeah… Right.

Negi was struggling with himself, the darkness becoming difficult to contain at times. He put up a brave face, as if he
wasn't only ten years old, while in reality he was fretting and worrying himself to bits over Fate, defeating him and his
band of miscreants while also somehow stopping them from destroying the world and killing everyone in it. As if HE was the
ONLY one who could actually do something about it! That kid and his honest nature and "I will find some way to save them all!"
attitude was enough to drive her absolutely bonkers! Who in their right mind would even think of such a thing!?

He wasn't from an alien planet where his parents stuck him in a spacecraft just before it exploded and sent him to Earth
where he was raised by farmers!

When Chisame was honest with herself, like she was now, sitting out here alone, she knew it wasn't just Negi.
Everyone were on edge. Everyone had doubts. And everyone worried in some way or another.

Choking out a curse, Chisame released her hold on her mouth. The sounds of her crying, though still kept at a subdued sobbing,
seemed to bounce on the surrounding stone. Throwing one arm around herself while wiping at her overflowing eyes
with the other, she finally tore her glasses off her face with a broken snarl and leaned sideways against the cold stone,
holding herself as she broke down.
It was just too much. To take in all the crap she'd seen and process it as not a fantasy but reality. The reality of all the
monstrous mages and crap. The reality of her being just a girl with no special power to speak of. The reality of her death becoming
a very real future possibility. And the reality of her ten year old teacher who was trying to shoulder it all…

"What…! Just what…!" She ground out, her voice broken with sobs. "Just what kind of crap…! IS all this!?"

Her body shivered, wracked with sobs and her crying. Pulling her legs up close, her knees were soon warm with
her tears as she tried, desperately, to find some form of solace within her mind. But she found none. Instead she
found only the memories of the shit Negi'd gone through during his Magia Erebia training, his face, the disappointment
in himself she had seen when he had thought no one was looking… The-

"Graah…! Just what the Hell is this…!?"

"That-"

Jerking her head away from the square stone with a startled gasp, Chisame fumbled with her glasses as she whirled
around to locate the source of the unexpected sound.

"-would be 'reality'… Unfortunately enough, Chisame-san."

Through eyes still blurry with tears, she saw a rather familiar person. One she knew the face of quite well. And while she
would have been able to pick her out in a crowd at any time, especially now that her hair was as white as snow (which, by her
own admission, was her original hair color. She started dyeing it black because of some personal crap she didn't feel like
discussing at the time, but said that after clearing things up with Konoka once and for all after rendezvousing in a village
somewhere, she didn't feel any need to keep coloring it.) and her eyes having gone from brown to red (contact lenses,
another habit obviously ditched), she could not claim to actually know her.
Grounding her teeth together, Chisame thought 'Out of ALL the people to find me like this…! It just HAD to be the
goddamned birdbrain, didn't it!?'.
Turning back to her earlier view, the hacker wiped at her eyes.

"… What do you want…?" She asked rudely, too agitated to be bothered with pleasantries.

"Just to help." The other girl responded simply.

Chisame snorted and gave a weak sob as she laughed.

"Help…? Hah…! Help who, me? Hah…! Yeah… Yeah that'd be exactly what I need right now…! I mean, I came out here
to be alone, so, CLEARLY, what I need right now, is fucking company isn't it!? Yeah… Yeah, real brilliant deduction
skills there…! Sakurazaki!"

Though her sarcastic words would probably have pissed Asuna right off and made Negi fidget, all they did to Setsuna
was blow past her like a gentle summer breeze.
Watching her classmate for a few moments, mostly to see if she would say anything else, Setsuna started to slowly
approach her. One step at a time.

"I want you to know that I understand, Chisame-san." Setsuna spoke. "I believe I have been in much the same
place you are right now, so I think I can-"

A loud bark of a laugh coming suddenly from the redhead in front of her cut off her words.

"Understand!?" Chisame whirled around, her face practically glowed with anger. "You're a half-human half-bird! You're like
something out of a fantasy novel! Just…! Just what the Hell do you understand about me!? You…! You…! Birdbrain!"

"For starters I know we are both ALIVE!"

Chisame recoiled from the sudden yell. To see (and more importantly hear) the swordswoman actually raise her voice
was a true rarity. Even she, as someone who barely knew her, knew this. But while Chisame had been angry, there
was no anger to be found in Setsuna's facial expression. Instead she radiated determination.

The kind she showed when heading into a battle.

Watching her classmate blink in surprised bewilderment, Setsuna's expression softened and she stopped walking.
She now stood approximately four steps away from her classmate.

"We are both alive… Right here and now, in this Mundus Magicus." Setsuna said, keeping her voice calm and even.
"I know I fit the bill for your idea of a 'fantasy character' rather well, but that still doesn't change the fact that I am
alive, same as you."

She kept speaking calmly, almost as if she was holding a lecture. And for some reason, Chisame couldn't muster up
the energy to snap at her again. She just turned a bit more toward her, resting the back of her head against the
stone once again.

"… What do you want, Sakurazaki…?" Chisame asked tiredly.

Her tears had stopped for the moment. The grief that brought them were still present in the back of her head, however.
Threatening to overwhelm her again at any time.
In the face of this, Setsuna offered a small smile.

"I want to help you, Chisame-san." She repeated. "Since from where I'm standing right now, it would seem like you are
in the same place I was, at the start of the term."

As if suddenly realizing what she just said, Setsuna chuckled.

"The start of the term… Feels like another life at this point." She reflected.

Chisame was not in the mood for making friendly with her classmate however, and showed it.

"You are a half-demon, wielding the sword in ways that really shouldn't be possible, you have wings tucked into
your back that you can actually use to fly with, and to top it all off, you are the childhood friend and bodyguard of
the sole heiress to the old and powerful Konoe family. Me? I'm a reclusive hacker." Chisame stated as-a-matter-of-factly.
"How in Hell are you and I the same?"

'Blunt and to the point. Just like always.' Setsuna thought with a smile.
When she spoke next, surprise broke out unhindered across the redhead's face.

"We were the same. In that you are an onlooker,"

Chisame's eyes widened.

"Just like I was. At the start of the term."

Setsuna finished her sentence and took a few steps to the side, Chisame's gaze following her, intrigued now.
Casting a glance in her direction, Setsuna smiled and raised her right index finger.

"Tell me if any of this sounds familiar." She said and leaned her weight on one foot, bending the other leg a little
while crossing her arms lazily. "At the start of the term, I didn't socialize with anyone. Fact is, I made it a point not to.
It made it easy for me to go on about my own business without any distractions."

'Like working with my Chiu website.'

Chisame blinked. Surprised at how easily she made the comparison.

"Interacting with others would just get in the way and complicate things."

'There's no way they'd understand my hobby anyway.'

Again, Chisame blinked in surprise at herself. This wasn't the way this was supposed to go! They were way too different!
Way different! Like, down to the basics different!
So then, why in the Hells did her words connect with her so naturally!?

"My job was all I needed to focus on. Protecting Konoka, that was all I had to do. As such, I needed to be able to keep
track of the people around her at all times. And being an onlooker, standing outside and looking in, made that bit easy."

'I need to keep track of everyone else so they don't find out about me being Chiu or try to approach me. Even I get that my
hobby would be considered weird. And besides, if word got out that I'm Chiu, and my fans got my address…
Nope, I am
not even gonna go there.' Chisame found herself thinking.

Something came into Setsuna's eyes then, as she stood there, reflecting. A form of melancholy, almost. She sure as Hell
didn't look happy, that was for sure.

"I swore, all on my own, that I would protect Konoka from any and all kinds of harm and pain. And that included any kind
of stress coming her way too. I did my best to intercept these harmful things, and in the cases where I couldn't, I made
sure to remove them from Konoka's shoulders and put them on my own instead." Setsuna reminisced, staring off
into the distance. "… And for a while there, at the start of the term, I actually thought I was doing a good job at it."

The whitenette shook her head slowly, keeping her gaze straight.

"… But I was wrong. So woefully wrong. All I was doing was piling on more and more stress, more and more weight
on my shoulders. Weighing me down all the heavier. Hell, I wasn't even protecting Konoka all that well, either. Instead of
shielding her from pain, by distancing myself I was causing her pain. It took the school trip, coupled with the combined
efforts of Konoka, Asuna, Negi-sensei and even Evangeline to make me see just what the Hell I was doing…"

Watching the swordswoman like this and hearing her words, made something constrict inside Chisame. It was as if
every word she said hit something within her. Resonated with her, somehow.

Setsuna suddenly smiled, as if she had heard Chisame's thoughts. Though the gesture did not quite reach her eyes.

"You know, I actually find it quite funny…" Setsuna said and turned her head toward her, faint smile and all. "The way you're
constantly getting on Negi-sensei's case about taking on too much all by himself. Of shouldering too much on his own.
Fact, you get on his case even more than Asuna sometimes, and THAT, is saying something."

Chisame frowned.
Where the Hell did that come from? Was she making fun of her? No, that would not make sense. So, what was it then?

"… What are you on about?"

She hadn't planned on listening to her this much. She hadn't planned on actually giving her words any
real thought. And she really had not planned on sitting there, waiting, no wanting her to continue talking, either.
She was almost starting to feel like… Like she had known her for a long time.
Like they really had led similar lives up to this point… Which was of course ridiculous.
… But still.

"Oh, you know…" Setsuna said, her smile changing, becoming a bit warmer, a bit truer. "Chiding him for hiding stuff
from you and trying to deal with it on his own. Arguing or outright yelling at him for having either hidden or attempted
something dangerous, or found something out that would directly influence what course of action we should take and
pondering it without saying a word, and so on and so forth. Even going so far as to hit him or pull his ears sometimes."

Maybe she was tired. Maybe she was just fed up. Chisame didn't know. But something was responsible for the utter frustration
that built up in an instant inside her chest. Keeping the things Negi did or didn't do, should or shouldn't do, bottled up
inside and constantly fretting over them was one thing. But hearing it said by someone else…
It filled her with the need to vent.

"That… Wise-ass little brat…! He just…! He just…! He just drives me BONKERS sometimes! And he's TEN! I just don't know
what the Hell to DO with that kid sometimes!"

She would have gone on for a reasonable amount of time, but the sound of a gentle laugh stopped her.

"He drives us all bonkers at times, Chisame-san." Setsuna chuckled. "But it really IS funny, though."

Chisame felt her frustration recede a bit, but her frown stayed on strong.

"How you keep pestering Negi-sensei about shouldering too much…" Setsuna said and walked over to her classmate,
coming to stand right next to her, only a step away, her smile turning gentle. "When you are doing the exact same
thing yourself."

'…!'

"Wh…!"

Chisame tried. She really did.
She drew in air, inhaled it into her lungs, opened her mouth and everything.
And yet-

… Nothing came out.

Only the sounds of air escaping her lungs in vain attempts at forming words.
Chisame just sat there. Staring up at her classmate in surprise bordering on shock.

She had her.
Had nailed her.
Had nailed her at spear-point, even.

It was utterly ridiculous. Here she was, with one of her classmates, one she had barely said two words past
"Good morning" to. One she really did not know. A girl and yet a foreign creature. A person she did not know.

And yet Setsuna had hit the mark so completely that Chisame couldn't figure out a single thing to say. She instead thought
back, reflecting on the arguments she could remember having with their teacher. She grasped for the words she had
used and ways she had felt.

… And realized that Setsuna was right.

Hell, it was the very reason she had even gone out to where they were sitting/standing. The very reason why she
had sought solitude away from the others that evening.
The very reason why she had suffered for weeks on end. So much so that she had even broken down hard enough
to cry. Because she had tried to take away Negi's pain, his anxiety, his worries. All in an attempt to protect him.
To spare the kid, for that was really what he was, from all that suffering and worry.
A dry chuckle made its way up her throat.

Gods, she was such a hypocrite.

Chisame sat there, chuckling at herself. At the irony of it all.
Her eyes were blurring, filling once again with water.

"Hey… Chisame-san?"

Wiping at her eyes, the redhead looked up just in time to see her classmate sit down beside her. The whitenette placed
a hand meant to comfort on her shoulder.

"… Allow me to offer you the same advice you always give Negi-sensei." Setsuna said and squeezed her shoulder gently.
"… Don't try and take on the pain of someone else. For even though that might seem noble and like the right thing
to do, especially in certain situations, if you keep on doing it, then the weight will keep piling up on you. Until the
point where you can't even move, much less breathe."

By this point, Chisame was trembling. Biting her lower lip with choked sounds fighting to escape, eyes shut tight
but leaking all the same.

"I know we barely know one another, Chisame-san…." Setsuna said with a smile. "But won't you share some of
your pain with me? Just enough so you can breathe again…"

Setsuna moved her hand from Chisame's shoulder to her back and flattened it. Feeling a slight pressure pushing
her forward, the redhead didn't waste any time and dove in, throwing herself into the embrace of a classmate she
barely knew half an hour ago. Clinging to her desperately, her breakdown imminent.

It was at this moment that Chisame realized that Setsuna had actually come out there alone. No Konoka at her
side. No Asuna. And no Negi.

"Why did you come out here… Setsuna-san?" Chisame hiccupped.

"To help a friend trapped in the same place I was at the beginning of the term." Setsuna replied simply.

"Why?" Chisame took a shaky breath and heaved a sob.

"Because I've been where you are right now. And I know what you're going through." Setsuna elaborated.
"I can't speak for any of the others, but Chisame-san… You can share your worries with me."

Feeling her last wall crumble and the pent up stress and near-constant worry bear down on her once again,
Chisame threw her arms around the half-demon in a firm embrace and buried her face in her shoulder.

Setsuna held her all throughout.
Never once complaining about her being too loud, or crying for too long.
Setsuna simply held her. Rocking slowly back and forth, drawing figures on the redhead's heaving back as
she cried. Whispering reassurances every now and again.

No man or woman was an island. You could call yourself a loner all you liked, but in the end, you still needed
someone to come up to you once in a while, and just tell you flat out, that everything will be alright.

No one could change their perspective of reality following one single discussion. However the seeds for
change could still be sown. For, as Setsuna had heard both her masters, Tsuruko and Touko, say on more
than one occasion; "When we reach our lowest point, we are the most open to change. And no matter how
long the journey, it always begins, with but a single step.".

Setsuna had never once doubted those words.
And holding the crying Chisame in her arms as she reached her point, did nothing to change her mind.


Aaaand that is chapter, folks!

Whew...! Wait, am I reading this right? Over 4000 words and it's only the first chapter?

I really *am* long-winded! Hahahah! Ah well! I hope you will share some thoughts and feelings on this
in the review section!

That said... To the next chapter cave!