Prelude
The party had been winding down for a while now, and Asuna Vesperina Theotanasia Entheofushia was fairly sure that some of the people who had been present for the celebration of her return to the world - or at least, the celebration which had used her return to the world as its ostensible raison d'etre while actually, as some of the celebrants had more or less admitted to her, being held for the sake of celebration - had passed from consciousness in ways completely natural. In fact, some of those who had earlier passed from consciousness in ways other than natural had roused themselves and then returned to sleep, often alongside those who had ended their earlier period of awareness. In the distance, some few were still celebrating, but even so, what she could hear of their charitably-termed discourse suggested that stupor was not far away for them, either.
She felt no urge to sleep herself. Indeed, the memories she had inherited from the girl who was gone reminded her of how so many things had begun simply because that other girl had been unable to sleep owing to her awareness of the great sleep she would embark upon. Though she had none of the desires that had driven that girl - they were truly lost with her, for good or ill - she found that she also wished to hold on to wakefulness for as long as she possibly could.
And so, comforting though it was, Asuna picked up the creature, cat-like in so many ways yet not, she had been sternly informed not long ago, at all a cat, that lay sleeping on her lap, and set it down beside the child-like woman who dozed beside her. She smiled to watch arms come up to wrap around the furry creature, holding it close as the breathing of the two seemed to synchronize. With that, she was free to stand, and walk away from the mock throne which had been bestowed on her at the start of the party, so that she could gaze up at the stars.
There were more of them than she remembered - some fixed, some tilting more swiftly than any planet ever would. She found herself momentarily aching to know the names of these points of light with a hunger that surprised her until she realized how long it had been since she had had to learn anything new, rather than an endless reiteration of facts only slightly changed from the last time she had been compelled to study. She forgave herself the hunger even as she reminded herself that she had time to do that learning.
She had spent quite a bit of that time watching the many lights which gleamed on the surface of the half-occulted moon before she found herself distracted by a familiar sound ... almost achingly familiar, really. So Asuna stopped watching the skies to look down around herself for the source of the scrt-scrting which had drawn her attention. The source of the sound of writing presented itself immediately, not too far from where she stood, and she casually walked among the sleeping forms over to the girl who was no more sleeping than she was, rather bent over a tablet and marking it with a stylus.
Sanjou Kozue heard her approach, and looked up with a smile which would have been perfectly at home on Konoka's face. "My geas," she said by way of explanation. "When fate keeps allowing you to be present for the great events of your epoch, you know that you must chronicle them for future generations. And this is one such event, both for your awakening and for ... well, I won't bore you with the details."
"Thank you," said Asuna. And then, "I think I'm ready, now."
Kozue blinked. "Ready for what?"
"For a long story for another day. It is," she said seriously, "now another day."
She was rewarded by the sight of this seemingly unflappable girl looking nonplussed, before a wry grin took that look's place. "So it is," Kozue admitted. "All right. I'll tell you that tale now. But first a warning. A lot of the pleasure of any story is the questions left unanswered. Most of those questions from the previous story will now be told, and even though there may be new questions raised to replace them, it might ruin your enjoyment of that older tale. Knowing this, decide if you really want to proceed."
"I do," replied Asuna. "I wouldn't have asked -"
"I know, I know. I wasn't just talking to you, though.
"All right. We begin not too long after the last story ended, in a certain dorm room ..."
Conquests of an Accidental Stud-Monkey II:
A Complicated Bloodline
And then he woke up.
It was a measure of how much he had, despite everything, grown accustomed to the recent changes in his life that Negi did not find himself wondering whether recent events had been simply a dream. Then again, considering the way that he was wrapped up in the sleeping and denuded forms of Akira, Makie and Nodoka, any such imagination would have had the lifespan of the proverbial infernal snowball. Negi himself had reverted to his actual, pre-adolescent (or possibly very early adolescent) persona while sleeping, but that had not stopped them from cozying up to him in what he genuinely hoped had been unconscious instinct.
A vote in favor of such hope passed the polls a moment or so later. After having delicately and deliberately disentangled himself from the sleeping girls without disturbing their dormancy, he saw Makie's sleeping form proceed to sleep-cuddle up to Akira, nuzzling against the swimmer's motherly breasts and unthinkingly wrapping her lips around a nipple. He watched this entire process in silence, feeling a strange mixture of regret and envy as he did, then sighed and crept over to the ladder leading down from his nook.
In the dim light of morning that made its way into the dorm room through its main window, he could see Chisame's ankle and Ayaka's unmistakable hair dangling from the upper bunk bed while Konoka and Setsuna occupied the lower. His breath quickened a little bit at that sight, as a certain absence registered, and he looked about somewhat madly. Despite his wish for silence, he couldn't help but let out a rather noisy sigh of relief as he caught sight of the couch.
And, more particularly, the orange haired girl, hair decs momentarily absent, who was couched out on that couch.
He approached Asuna's somnolent form with what he realized was an attitude bordering on the reverent. Despite everything - which everything had included their immediate reunion, witnessing her reunion with other members of the class, and then some truly ferocious coupling the night before - the fact of her return truly hit him now, and it was hard to hold back the tears he had avoided shedding even when he had despaired about failing her and losing her forever. He loved Akira, just as he had loved Makie, but despite the primacy in his heart that he yearned to give the one just as he had yearned to give it to the other, he knew that on some level he would always be unfaithful to whoever he loved, because -
"I love you," he whispered to Asuna. "I love you, I love you, I love you ..."
"I love you, too," she whispered back, eyes still shut.
Negi flushed. "Ummm," he said softly. "I, I thought you were -"
His lips were stilled as her mismatched eyes opened up and a hand came up to press against them, holding them closed for a moment before sitting up and leaning forward to replace the hand with lips of her own. All without a word more spoken.
He ruined it as she pulled back to gaze at him. "I'll get the pills," he began to say.
She shook her head just once. "I love you," she said, and the hand that had held his lips moved to hold something else. That said, she kissed him again, this time on his chin, holding him tightly and pulling him onto the couch with her.
Some trace of decency within him still rebelled. "I don't know -" he said as he pressed up against her as she continued to kiss down his throat, his chest, his stomach.
"Love you," she repeated, and took his tiny member into her mouth. He shuddered as he felt a swelling he had both experienced many times before and at the same time never known before.
"Ah," he gasped. "A-A-Asuna ..."
"Yyyyyyyes?" she said from behind his head.
Something seemed odd about that, he decided as arms wrapped around his throat while his head leaned back against the armrest of the couch and something even warmer as Asuna sucked away at him. Something odd about where her voice was coming from.
Oh well.
It was a measure of how much she had, despite everything, embraced the recent changes in her life - indeed, so enthusiastically that one could only wonder what despite everything might refer to - that Kagarazuka Asuna did not react with surprise when she emerged from the toilet to find Negi Springfield quietly and passionately confessing his love to a copy of her that lay on the couch. Of course, she could not really be surprised by the sight of a copy of herself lying on the couch, since Shiori-san - who, having had Asuna's tongue up her, should probably not be addressed with -san - had been wearing that illusionary disguise when Asuna temporarily departed. Nor was the revelation of the conflicted feelings of her teacher, roommate, partner in battle, little brother-figure and thus notionally-incestuous lover terribly startling.
Painful, slightly, but not startling.
She cared about him in so many ways. And she enjoyed the way that his cock felt inside of her, or even pressed up against her, when he was appropriately grown, perhaps, as she'd said, more than any other that she'd had there. That had been true when she'd said it - oh, was it truly only a day or so past? - and she believed that it was true now. But she was more than a bit curious about some of the other cock she'd seen being used, like that of Yuna's hunky father, or even heard about, like that of (yikes!) the Headmaster.
If she loved him, truly loved him, she wouldn't be so curious, so fickle in her interests. If she loved him, she would be faithful in her heart, even if she was momentarily unfaithful in her body, and she knew that she could not be. She was, after all, a doll, not a real person. Their relationship would always be that of siblings with incest on the table ...
It occurred to her, abruptly, as she watched Shiori-as-Asuna starting to kiss her way down Negi's chest, that that last thought had the character of a quote, even though her conscious mind couldn't place it. Which meant that it had come from her other self, bubbling up into her awareness. And the fact that it did so, bubbling up rather than breaking through into her awareness as her previous moments of heightened knowledge had, was startling. Not since that odd dream right before she had awakened in the future had she clearly heard the voice of that ancient child.
Something had changed in her, and she wondered what it was.
Or would wonder, later.
For now, she joined the lovers on the couch, embracing Negi's neck from behind as she enjoyed the unique pleasure (mixed with a tiny amount of pain, for the spice of it) of watching one who truly loved him without reservations do such things to ease his pain.
The truth, decided the consummate liar known as Luna, Shiori, Asuna and a few other long-term aliases, as she licked and sucked at a twelve-year old boy's member, was a tricky thing. She supposed that it had to be, given that fate (and also, ah-hah, Fate) had given her a power which enabled her abilities of deception ... so that she could fight for a higher truth, a greater good, of course, or so she had been constantly assured. Clearly, this demonstrated that lies and deception were of equal value when compared to truth in the eyes of whatever ambiguously-existential beings decided such matters, and so she should take no shame in them, either.
Or something.
This was at least how she justified employing one of her alternate identities to seduce Negi Springfield, one of the two people (or, as she'd realized not long ago, one of the two instances of the same person) to whom she was most attracted. (Except for ... well, never mind that.) Other girls - wicked, wicked, treacherous girls - might have been quicker to offer themselves to him once he'd been temporarily aged into young adulthood, but now that that lie had been dispelled, she was the first to offer herself to him in this true self. Admittedly, she was doing so while enmeshed in a lie herself, which might turn the whole thing around from right to wrong once more if it was looked at the right way. Or the wrong way.
Or something.
The presence of the true instance of what she was pretending to be nearby and somewhat more distantly involved - kissing at the ears of Negi-san (whom, having had him inside her, she supposed she should address as Negi-sama) and holding him tightly as though he would flee if she did not - might have dismayed her, but for two things. The first and most important of those two things was that LunaShioriAsunaEtc was almost entirely focused on her immediate goal of pleasuring Negi-san/-sama, and could utterly disregard what was happening around her if it didn't contribute to that goal. And the second of those things ...
Well ... it made the first of those things a lie, actually. But she was sort of used to that.
And anyway, the second of those things was that she was aware that it wasn't even that she was attracted to the same person, separated into two different bodies. She knew that despite their similarities, Negi and Fate were two very different people, with a deep and fundamental commonality. And it was that commonality which attracted her to both of them, and which also attracted her to people like Sakurako, and was now also attracting her to Princess Asuna, as well. This commonality did not speak particularly well of her, but it was the higher truth behind her actions, and it could not be denied.
She was attracted to power.
Or something.
And so, once she had licked and sucked and teased and taunted Negi's negi until it was hard - not as hard as it was when the illusion of adulthood was upon him, but hard nonetheless - EtcAsunaShioriLuna rose up, drew her body along Negi's until their crotches enmeshed and then pulled him up into her, all the while leaning past his head to rain kisses down on the true Asuna's face. Not until those kisses drew a sound of pleasure from the Princess' throat did she begin to rock and roll on Negi.
She might be a lie and a liar, but she would give them the best that she had, nonetheless.
Or something.
It has been said, and perhaps rightly, that it is exhilarating to quit. To assert, and truly so, that someone else is truly not the boss of oneself is a wonderful thing. The sensation of declaring one's independence, that one is the master of one's fate, the captain of one's soul, and other stirring self-appellations, rather than the veritable slave to one's wage-giver, can be a truly intoxicating feeling. True, this experience is at best momentary, almost invariably followed by concern for one's future welfare, but it is a glorious moment nonetheless. Everyone can understand this.
Everyone can then also imagine how discouraging it is to be told that one cannot quit - or, to be accurate, that the reasons which one gave for ending one's employment are no longer sufficient reason for one's employment to be terminated by one's employer, and so one must remain in the unhappy current situation.
"I hate my life," said Fate Averruncus once more.
Shiina Sakurako, at present engaged in giving said substitute child teacher a foot massage, paused in her efforts and turned to give him a mildly annoyed glance. "Okay, Fate? Comments like that are not really conducive to foot massages."
He let out what even he had to admit was a sigh. "Very well, I will cease to express that opinion." After a moment, he added, "Please continue."
She took that addition as a major victory. Fate could tell that much from the grin on her face that she didn't bother to hide in the moment before she bent to her chosen task once again. He might have kept completely silent if not for that grin. It practically demanded a response.
"However, my current employment situation remains vexing," Fate said after a moment.
Sakurako's practiced foot rub motions didn't even hesitate. "Okay, that's reasonable," she replied without looking up.
He didn't exactly take that as encouragement to continue, as he would have continued regardless of anything less than a full stoppage of the massage. "Even if it is now inconvenient to discharge all the staff members who have experienced intimacies with members of the student population, owing to the likelihood that the school could not continue to function if such a large number of its staff were discharged, one would expect that there would be some effort to sequester staff such as myself from those members of the student population with whom they experienced intimacies."
"Well, from what you told me, you didn't exactly tell the Headmaster whose ashes you hauled," Sakurako noted.
"He could have deduced it was your homeroom," said Fate.
"Could've. Should've. Didn't. Chose not to?" she said with the air of one engaged in speculation. "Anyway, then there's the other thing to take into consideration."
"What other thing?"
She looked over her shoulder with a sly grin. "Nobody else wants to be teaching 3-A, either, ya know? Except Negi-kun."
He let out an annoyed snort. "I suppose not, at that. Well, at least I can take pleasure in one part of this entire mess - he was unconscious and entirely uninvolved with any of that silliness." Fate noticed the momentary pause in Sakurako's efforts, but as she resumed a moment later, he thought nothing of it. "Even if he has unaccountably given up his power - something I cannot even begin to imagine -"
"Hey, Fate?" Sakurako asked mildly. "When's the last time you petrified somebody?"
"That," he said after a moment, "is an entirely different matter."
"Oh."
"It is. I am still able to do so, even if I have not done so in some time, so it is not as though I have given up that ... it is an entirely different matter."
"Oh," she repeated. Exact same tone as before.
"Regardless ... even if Negi-kun has undergone changes, he remains able to focus on what matters rather than being distracted by trivialities and affairs of the heart with young women and -"
"Okay, that's it," Sakurako snapped, stopping the foot massage entirely and turning around to look at Fate crossly. "How did he fix the World Tree, Fate?"
"Excuse me?"
"Do you know how he fixed the World Free?"
"I presume that he employed some manner of overpowered spell -"
"He was fucking Akira-san against its bark and made a Permanent Pactio or whatever with her and before that he'd doinked just about every girl in the class including me and he's probably knocking boots with Shiori right now," she told him.
A moment later, she let out an annoyed sigh. "Even this only gets your eyes to go down to little circles instead of making them bulge out of your skull? Maaaaan."
The tiny little circles kept right on gazing at her in stony silence.
"What, you think I'm making this up or something?" Sakurako asked. "I'm telling you, that's what happened. It started back when Negi-kun got aged up, that very night." She then proceeded to explain her understanding of events, which more or less coincided with events that have already been chronicled, though with perhaps incorrect amounts of emphasis on certain aspects and some details which she had largely made up out of whole cloth while believing that they naturally derived from what she'd been told. Such matters will not be expanded on until they become pertinent and/or funny.
At last, she reached the end of her narrative, and looked at Fate expectantly.
The tiny little circles kept right on -
"React, dammit," she said.
"I see," he replied.
"Oh no," Sakurako groaned. "No, no, no. We are not doing the 'I see' routine again, thank you verrrry mu-"
A strange noise emitted from the general vicinity of Fate's chest. To Sakurako, who promptly fell silent, it sounded like a cough more than anything else, even though she knew, or thought she knew, that he never experienced difficulties of breathing like that. And then the sound repeated, twice in rapid sequence. They were almost deafening in the stillness which had suddenly fallen in Fate's dormitory room.
Oh so slowly, oh so terrifyingly slowly, the sides of Fate's mouth tilted upward, as he opened his mouth to let out further repetitions of that noise ... which Sakurako realized, to her shock, could only be laughter.
"Ah," Fate said, after the initial bout of hilarity ceased. "Now, now we learn precisely how idiotic Inugami actually is. 'Nothing will happen', he said. 'Sakurazaki will cut you right open', he said. And what happened? Did Konoe's vaunted protector serve as a guarantor of anyone's chastity, even her own?"
"Uh, no?" Sakurako peeped.
"Indeed no!" Fate proclaimed, and then laughed some more. "Amusing! Very amusing! So! This is what self-righteousness feels like!"
"Um, you doinked me and Haruna-chan, remember, so you can't really be too self-righteous," she reminded him.
"Had I, in your charming phrase, 'doinked' all of the members of your class, and not on one of those occasions only to be sociable during a time of great confusion, then I would be wrongly self-righteous. But I did not!"
"'Only to be sociable'?" Sakurako repeated.
"This is all Negi-kun's fault!"
"He pushed Haruna-chan so she slipped, fell, and landed on your dick?" Sakurako asked, growing less impressed with each passing moment.
"I will have him take responsibility for the corruption unto which Shiori and I have been unwittingly dragged!"
"The odds of you getting another foot massage are diminishing rapidly!"
"VENGEANCE WILL BE MINE! Mwah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah!" laughed the artificial boy.
"They're in negative numbers now!" said Sakurako, whose understanding of probability was not that good.
"So what, exactly, was the point of that?" Negi asked wearily as he slumped on the couch between Asuna and Shiori, who had reverted from her Asuna-mimicry at some point during what had ensued.
"Does there have to be a point to it?" Shiori murmured into his ear.
"Yeah, Negi, does there have to be a point to it?" Asuna murmured into his other ear.
Negi sighed. "That doesn't work under these circumstances, you know."
"I was being honest," Shiori said, sounding slightly surprised. "That's how we tend to view this place, as a land where nothing serious ever happens."
"Well, it's not -" Negi started to reply.
"Negi," Asuna interjected. "Particularizing it a little bit from 'the Old World' and even 'Japan' to 'Mahora' ... she's kinda right, you know."
"Serious things happen, here," he said, with a determined cast to his lips that was not, of course, a pout.
"How many times you almost got killed here?"
"... once!" he said triumphantly. "When I was falling, after that fight with Chao, if we hadn't both been rescued, it would have been -"
"Versus how many times you almost got killed over there?"
"... dammit. But still, serious things happen here!"
"Uh-huh," said Asuna, and winked at Shiori.
It was sad, how that little wink, a kindly meant gesture, made Shiori go all tense inside. She knows, came the first panicked thought, followed soon by a more rueful, Of course she knows. There had been a time, not so terribly long ago, when she'd found herself hoping that with the Princess' retreat into the sleep of ages, there might come a time when she'd be needed to stand in her place as she had before ... that she could recapture the feeling of being at Negi-san's side that she'd known during her imposture, which had faded (as she'd known it would) once the true Asuna was recovered. She'd yearned for that. And so, in this place where nothing serious happened, she had allowed herself the opportunity to know what that might have been like, to take his confession of his feelings as being truly directed towards herself. It was harmless.
But it was known, now, and nobody could possibly have such a great heart as to allow such things to happen again.
Could they?
"Anyways, Shiori, I hope you understand how important it is that Fate can't ever find out about any of this," Negi said to her once he'd gotten over his not-pouting.
"I understand that you don't want that to happen, but I don't really understand why," she admitted. "What would he do?"
Abruptly, the door to the dorm room flew in through the short hallway leading to the entrance and smashed against the far wall. "Oh dear," Fate's voice could be heard saying, loudly but calmly. "I seem to have done damage to this door. Might I enter to discuss reparations?"
"This," said Negi and Asuna, fully synchronized, as they stood up to start getting dressed in a hurry.
"I have struggled to overcome my prejudices where the people of this world are concerned," Fate announced some time later, as he momentarily paused in his silent pacing before the assembled inhabitants of the dormitory room.
"No you haven't," Nodoka replied promptly as she sat wrapped in a bedsheet.
"I haven't seen any sign of that," Chisame agreed, just as promptly, just as bedsheeted.
"Nope, not even a hint," Makie concurred, nodding in a sober manner utterly unbecoming one who defiantly wore nothing other than a pout on her face.
Akira, who had managed to get into her bra and panties before she was hauled out of bed, was too mortified to say anything.
Ayaka was opening her mouth to offer some further testimony on the subject of Fate's struggles when the pale boy spoke again. "That the struggles have not been apparent to others should not be taken as meaning that they have not taken place. I am aware that I have had something of a chip on my shoulder about this world's inhabitants, and I have, through positive interactions with some of its denizens, gradually managed to move past them. YES I HAVE," he added, just a bit louder than was truly necessary, when he saw that Nodoka had been about to offer a contrasting view of the situation.
"Fate-kun, could you please keep it down? It's early in the morning, and we don't want to disturb the neighbors. More than the explosion of the door and its replacement with a stone slab have already done," Konoka asked with surprising politeness.
"I am certain that your neighbors have long since grown used to unusual noises coming from this particular room," Fate replied.
"... well, yes, but that doesn't change the fact that it's earl-"
"However," Fate spoke over her. "I am sometimes disappointed to be reminded that individuals, including some of those present, exhibit behaviors which would wholly justify such prejudices as I once held. It is bad enough that they are given over to such sensual pleasures as to distract a young man from the stern burdens of his duty," he said, then paused. "And it makes matters worse when that is pointed out to them and they react not with appropriate shame but with gloating amusement."
"Hey!" Makie said, standing up on her knees and frowning angrily. "Don't be mean to Akira-chan just because Negi-kun likes her more than he likes you!"
"I was not in fact including Okochi in that latter assessment," Fate said through clenched teeth.
"Huh?"
"Akira's not gloating," Chisame whispered. "You were."
"Oh. Um. Never mind."
"But for these individuals to then draw a vulnerable and innocent visitor to this world into their debaucheries -" Fate said, really starting to rise to his point.
"It was her idea in the first place," Nodoka and Makie chorused.
And Fate fell silent.
"Um, sort of, yes," Shiori admitted, blushing brightly.
"Luna," Fate said, very quietly, as he stared at the individual whom he was addressing with, yes, tiny little circles for eyes. It seemed that he ran out of steam once he'd done so, however, for whatever else he might have wanted to say went unsaid in the silence which then fell.
"Why's he calling Shiori-chan Luna?" Makie quietly asked nobody in particular.
"That's her birth name," Chisame in particular whispered back.
"Oh."
Ignoring this byplay, Shiori drew in a deep breath, and forced herself to answer the implicit question. "I think," she said, "that I have explained to you, Fate-san, how I feel. I think that I did that. And I think that you accepted how I feel. I think that you did that. Am I wrong?"
Fate was silent for a long time, and then he replied in the same quiet tone. "You are not wrong."
"Thank you," Shiori said, looking unspeakably grateful in that moment, before her obvious anxiety returned. "Then ... it seemed to me that it was ... wrong ... for me to share my feelings with you but not, then, to share them with Negi-san. That was the conclusion that I reached. And this is what came of that conclusion.
"Or something," she added a moment later.
"Wait, so she did ecchi with Fate-kun first?" asked Makie.
"Yes, she did it with the howling hypocrite first," replied Nodoka.
"I am not howling," snapped Fate, glaring in Nodoka's direction.
"The not-howling still-a-hypocrite," Nodoka corrected without looking in Fate's direction.
"Okay," Asuna declared in a voice comparable to Fate's neighbor disturbing tone as she stood up from where she was seated on the couch with the figuratively petrified form of Negi. "This is going to go nowhere good really fast, isn't it? Therefore, as the senior entity present, I think that I and Mr. Fate should have a little chat about matters while the rest of you go wait in the corridor or maybe even back to your rooms."
"Little problem with that idea in the form of the stone slab blocking the exit," Chisame replied.
"Indeed. Maybe someone will do something about that," Asuna agreed, still gazing at Fate.
Fate glowered, but nonetheless turned to remove the slab.
"Asuna," said the abruptly figuratively-depetrified Negi. "What are you going to do?"
"Like I said, I'm going to have a little chat with Fate and -"
"Are you using chat as a euphemism?" he asked, sounding horrified.
"What? No! Where would you ... okay, yes, that is the sort of thing that I'd do, but it's not what I'm going to do this time! Geez!"
"Aw," muttered Shiori, looking downcast.
"Geez!" Asuna repeated.
"You and Bookstore really bring out the worst in each other, y'know that?" Asuna asked of Fate a few moments later, when everyone else had tromped out through the unobstructed doorway ... which was then re-obstructed by the former door, fixed into place by some creative petrification magic on Fate's part.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Fate replied.
"I mean the way her usual strong-willed, confident self goes into total overdrive, turning to rudeness, whenever you're around, and the way you seem to go out of your way to antagonize her right back. If I didn't know better, I'd say that there was some chemistry there ... but that's definitely not it," she added wryly.
"I still don't know what you're talking about."
"And I explained it and -"
"I mean that I don't see what you mean when you talk about bringing out the worst in her. As far as I can determine, that attitude is all of her."
"Fate, I'm kinda fond of Bookstore," Asuna told him after a moment. "Insulting her in my hearing - or Negi's, for that matter - is not a good way to get either of us on your side."
"I do not want -" he began to snap.
"Yeah, you do want Negi on your side," she interrupted, firmly. "We both know that's pretty high on your list of priorities."
Fate closed his eyes. "Do you truly want to know what I want, Princess Asuna?"
She decided to let that "princess" bit slide this once, given that she was in fact drawing on the authority of her position for this negotiation. "Lay it on me."
"I want to finish the job my creator gave me, to complete the rescue of Mundus Magicus, to find a way to overcome my creator without destroying myself in the process. And then, once that's done, I want to place myself and Negi-kun in suspended animation for about a million years or so, so that we can emerge in a solar system long since cleared off of the intelligent life which exists here now, so that there are no more distractions ... and just be with him for the rest of eternity.
"Not in the sexual manner that the rest of you are so quick to embrace," he added hastily. "While I can engage in that mode, it is not the way my inclination lies. But just to be with him, to talk of things that matter, to strive against each other when we choose ... endlessly, through the aeons to come."
Asuna looked at him.
"A foolish dream," Fate admitted. "Impossible, now that he has shed his undying immortality. And probably impossible regardless. But it is my dream, nonetheless."
"You don't think you're going to survive the battle with the Life-Maker, do you?" she asked.
"I see myself dissolving into nothingness with his defeat," he answered. "This is the fate I expect for all of his creations ... with the exception, of course, of your inimitable self."
"If I'm inimitable, how come he tried to imitate me so many times?" Asuna asked.
"Madness. What else is there to say?"
"So, basically, you don't think you're going to be around much longer, so you'd like to spend as much time with Negi in the time you've got left as you can," she said at last. "Sounds kind of familiar. If you'd let me know about this before, we could probably have worked something out, you know."
"I do not want your pity," said Fate, a touch of his old hauteur returning.
"Good, 'cause I'm not offering it to you," Asuna replied. "You can reasonably expect to have years to spend with Negi before he's ready to confront the Life-Maker, where I was operating under the idea that I had months with everybody I care about. Even if we had worked something out, that something would not involve you getting to monopolize Negi's time. I get that your feelings are unique to you, but everybody else's feelings are unique to them, and if you have any of my pity, you have it for not getting that. My advice would be to work on getting it."
"... very well," he replied. "I will essay ... to 'get it'." Just what he thought of this latest task was readily apparent on his face.
Asuna chose to regally ignore that. "Well, at least you deserve some credit for not threatening to blackmail us in order to get your way."
"A pointless act, given that the authority to which I would threaten to expose your illicit activities is choosing to ignore my own, already known ones, as well as those of the rest of the faculty," Fate said, sounding oddly weary.
"Good point. And I guess you also deserve credit for not rejecting the notion on the grounds that if the Headmaster found out that he was fooling around with Konoka, he'd force him to marry her, which would be counter-productive."
Fate stared at her.
She stared back. "Never even crossed your mind, huh?" she asked.
"The odds of my 'getting it' are diminishing," he said moodily.
Asuna giggled. "You know, despite what I said before, I have to admit that you do have a certain enigmatic appeal, Fate-kun," she mused out loud, leaning back on the couch where she'd been sitting all this while, drawing up the hem of her bathrobe as she did. "Maybe we could settle this -"
"You're not my type," he said, and turned to leave.
Fate had told her to stay behind. She had pretty clear memories of telling him that she was going to obey him as much only as the girls in class obeyed Negi-kun, so, really, the fact that she had followed him at a safe distance was entirely his own fault. Especially since, if anything, she should be hanging around in her own dorm room instead of his.
So she followed him into the building, past a dazed but not petrified dorm manager, and up the stairs to their level. She was just climbing the last stair when she heard the explosion and his 'apology' for the same. Letting out a sigh, Sakurako started to head in the direction of Negi, Konoka and Asuna's room, then paused as she caught sight of another dorm room which had, somewhat implausibly, not opened up to allow its residents to see the source of the hub-bub. The fact that it hadn't was something of a bad sign.
She considered, and - in a moment of quantum uncertainty that could easily have gone the other way - chose to deal with that situation right then rather than going on to kibitz about Fate's jealous hissy fit. It was a discussion that had been a long time coming. So, after taking a deep breath, she walked over and knocked on Haruna's door.
It opened up after a moment, with Haruna peeping out in a comically slow manner. "Since the door didn't go flying off its hinges, would I be right in guessing you're here on your own?" she asked after a brief interval of silence.
"Yes, I'm here on my own," Sakurako said as patiently as she could, which wasn't much. "Can I come in, Haruna-chan?"
"So it's Haruna-chan, now?"
"Can I come in or what?"
Haruna let the door swing the rest of the way open, and turned her back to start leading Sakurako in. Almost immediately, she was disconcerted to hear a voice singing in Chinese, loud enough to - she suspected - possibly drown out even loud noises coming from outside the dorm room. Given the givens, she wasn't surprised to see that the singer was Ku Fei, curled up in her bunk and rocking back and forth even as she sang.
"What's going on?" Sakurako asked. She didn't recognize any of the words but she did recognize that the verses that Fei was singing were all variations on each other.
"Well, I think it's a combination of shame over passing up her reunion rematch with Chao in favor of getting gangbanged -" Haruna started to explain.
Fei sang a note of purest regret.
"- mixed with a certain measure of grief over Negi choosing Akira, in as much as he's made a choice, the little harem keeper," the artist concluded. "The lyrics are pretty much, um, 'the flowers are dead, there is no morning dew, my honey is gone and I feel so blue' ... with lots and lots of substitutions in there."
Sakurako swallowed. "Ohhhhkay, then. Um ... I was hoping you and I could talk, maybe, but this is clearly going to be a distraction -"
"I'm used to it, by now," Haruna replied with a shrug. "Since she started about, oh, eight hours ago and hasn't quit since."
"Oh wow. How did you sleep?"
"What's sleep?" Haruna asked, blinking innocently.
"Oh, seriously, wow, wow, wow," Sakurako groaned, face over her hand. "This is really not how I want to talk about things ..."
"What things?" Haruna asked, blinking innocently.
"What things?" Sakurako repeated, somewhat more loudly and higher pitched.
"Isn't that what I just said?" Haruna asked, blinking ... you get the idea. "I'm really not sure, I might have imagined it."
"I'm talking about how I have a crush on you and have had one since we were little kids!" Sakurako ranted.
"Oh, that."
Sakurako gaped. "Oh, that?" she repeated.
"Wow," said Haruna, eyes gone all sparkly. "Did Fate-kun give you mind-reading powers when you pactio'd with him? So cool! You should totally have a mind-reading duel with Nodochin! How do mind-reading duels work, though?"
"You said it out loud you spacy -"
"Awwww," Haruna sighed, now gone downcast. "I guess it was too much to hope for that you'd know how mind-reading duels work, then." Another sigh, a long one this time. Then she perked up again. "So what were we talking about, just now?"
With great difficulty and lots of practice drawn from dealing with Fate and Misa, Sakurako controlled her urge to kill, covering one shaky fist with the palm of her other hand. "We were talking about me, crushing on you, and how we need to talk about it now that me, crushing on you, has turned into me, fucking with you!"
Haruna gazed at her in silence, mouthing the words just said without actually speaking them. "I think if Yuetchin were, she'd say that there was a fundamental flaw in your premise," she finally replied.
"What flaw?" Sakurako demanded.
"Well, I'm honestly not sure what she'd say next, but the flaw that I'm seeing is the lack of a causal connection between us needing to talk about something because we fucked. A lot of people have fucked, but they don't necessarily have to talk about it afterwards, or want to, even. For example - hey, Ku? You wanna talk to or even see any of the martial arts boys you let make you airtight the other day?"
"... 沒有朝露," Fei sang sorrowfully. (Méiyǒu zhāolù, for those who can't read Chinese characters.)
"See?"
"You're unbelievable," said Sakurako.
"Gee, thanks!"
Thankfully, Sakurako didn't actually hear that remark as she warmed to her topic. "This, this is why I never told you about it. I knew that if you did, all you'd ever do would be to crack jokes! Yes, we have a lot of fun as cheerleaders, but we take things seriously sometimes! You have never ever understood that, have you! You never will! Agggggh! Between this and someone whose sense of humor is terrible, give me Fate-kun any day of the flipping week!" On that note, she whirled on her heel and stormed out of the dorm room, slamming the door shut behind her.
Haruna stood in silence, watching the door vibrate.
"I think maybe you could handled that better," Fei informed her from the top bunk, having stopped singing while Sakurako ranted.
"Konoka told me about training with Li Shu-Wen before she told you," Haruna answered without looking up at her roommate ... and speaking in a much less vague tone.
Fei went back to singing, now sounding even more tragic.
When at last Fate managed to escape from Negi's dormitory, and what he chose to view as Kagarazuka's pathetic attempt at seduction which had not tempted him even a little bit, and the stammering apologies and reassurances about the project that Negi offered him, and the hostile glares of the girls who continued to surround Negi as he did so, he proceeded to make his way out of the building in stony silence. He paused on the doorstep as he saw Sakurako sitting on the stairs leading up to the door, facing away from him and slumped in a way conveying obvious dejection.
"I told you to stay behind," he said, simply stating a fact, no condemnation or anger in his tone.
Sakurako sighed. "Yeah, you did," she said. "That was a smart thing you said, then. If I'd done that, I'd probably be a lot happier right now. You gave some really smart advice, smart guy. You should go be a teacher, you're so smart." All of this delivered in a weary monotone.
Over the interval of her response, he had come over to sit down beside her. "You visited Saotome."
"Again with the smartness. Boiling over with the smartness, you."
"I'm surprised you didn't retreat to the room you share with your teammates," he mused aloud.
She shrugged, still without looking at him. "I knew what they'd say if I told them about this."
"Hm. There is a fable," Fate abruptly announced.
"Say what?"
"A fable. 'Driven by hunger, a fox tried to reach some grapes hanging high on the vine but was unable to, although he leaped with all his strength. As he went away, the fox remarked "Oh, you aren't even ripe yet! I don't need any sour grapes." People who speak disparagingly of things that they cannot attain would do well to apply this story to themselves,'" he concluded.
"... is the fox meant to be me?" Sakurako asked, slightly bewildered.
"It might be you. It might be your friends. It might be Saotome." He paused, then shrugged. "It might be me. It seems to be a fairly widely applicable moral."
"Huh," she said.
They sat a while in silence.
"I find your unhappiness regrettable," Fate said eventually.
"Yeah. Backatcha."
And then they sat a while in silence even longer.
"Eventually, when the sun had risen high enough in the sky, they - or at least Sakurako - grew tired of sitting there and got up to go get some coffee together," Kozue said with the air of one concluding her narration.
As it became perfectly clear that that was exactly what she had done, Asuna blinked her eyes slowly. "Is that it?" she asked.
"For now. I do need to take some water before I continue. While I have a lot of wonderful talents, not needing food or drink isn't among them."
"Oh," Asuna said. "Then ... you're descended from Negi and that Shiori girl?"
Kozue paused in drinking from the flask she kept by her side, raising an eyebrow in a way that reminded Asuna very much of Yue. "If I gave you that impression, I apologize. No. This first part of the story was about how two of my great-grandparents grew a little closer than they already had, but the grandparent in question was one of the children Fate and Sakurako had together. Did you think Negi was my only ancestor? That would make this a verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry complicated bloodline, instead of just a complicated one."
"I suppose so," Asuna admitted. "Then was Akira the ancestor who was with Negi?"
"Complicated," she repeated, smiling warmly. Then she took a deep breath. "But I'll tell you a story that you'll need to understand part of that one, now."
"I'm in da money! I'm in da money! I gottalotta what it takes to get along!" sang Albert Chamomile brokenly as he danced around his computer, currently displaying his bank balance.
Not only had his unspoken dread that the permanent contract, which Negi had somehow stumbled into in that terrible time when his aniki had been bereft of his sage counsel, would result in the dissolution of all of Negi's temporary contracts - thus cutting off a critical stream of revenue that Chamo always used only for aniki's benefit and never for his own selfish purposes -
Chamo paused, and coughed, trying to get the strange black covering which had suddenly appeared on his tongue off of it.
- but rather, he continued to narrate to himself and anyone who happened to be listening in on his thoughts at the moment, the permanent contract seemed to pay out dividends which seemed to be influenced by the mutual affection rating between Akira-nego and whoever else Negi had a contract with! And that weird contract that had Negi as ... somebody's ministra was also paying out money into Chamo's account, even though he didn't have any relationship with that anonymous entity!
Life was grand!
And yet!
Anything could be improved, and Chamo saw potential for improvement. Yes! The time had come at last for Anya-nego to admit her feelings for Negi and be joined with him in a pactio which would firmly establish once and for all who wore the pants in their relationship. (Which was Negi, of course, no matter what might have happened in some of the weirder moments of their relationship.) And once that and a few more pactios had been made, he would work night and day to make sure that they all loved Akira-nego and she loved all of them, thus ensuring that the money would keep flowing in for all time!
"We're in the money! Come on ma honey! Let's lend it! Spend it! Send it rooooooollllin' -"
"You're noisy," said Asuna, opening the closet door and smiting him.
To Be Continued
Author's Note
So here we are again. Back for another go at it, this time no longer following all the rules that I set down for myself, so girls outside the class are possible partners, people may turn out to be related to each other without knowing it, Chamo will still not get laid ... yes, it's good to still have some things the same, don't you think?
Let's see how this goes.
A side story to this one is already in progress, OverMaster's Further Side Conquests of an Accidental Stud Monkey, which crosses the side story to the previous iteration with his own Unequally Emotional and Rational series to produce something ... unique, to say the least. Check it out if you liked this.